Sunday, May 29, 2022

mars needs nerd girls

andi mccarthy, the heroine of nerd girls go 2 hell, is my favorite character to date. she pretty much writes herself. in fact, she almost never shuts up. so while i'm mostly working on rest stop, an idea for a sequel to the first andi book (titled mars needs nerd girls) has been percolating and, well, i thought you might like a taste of the intro.

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Space: The Futile Frontier


In 1983, a fleck of paint the size of your thumbnail hit a window on the space shuttle Challenger and caused an impact crater. The paint chip was traveling at 20,000 miles per hour - fast enough to have killed an astronaut, if one had been out for a stroll.

This is just one reason why the tons of trash orbiting our planet is a bad thing.

Another astro-factoid: Rather than waste precious water washing dirty clothes, astronauts on the International Space Station eject them into space, where they burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. This is the most brilliant, lazy, and human thing EVER.

Traveling at 40,000 miles per hour - fast enough to squish you into spaghetti sauce - it still took the Voyager probe 40 years just to leave our solar system. That’s more than 350 billion-with-a-B miles, a number that human brains simply cannot grok.

It will be at least another 40 years before Voyager comes within range of the next-closest star.

“But eventually we’ll develop warp technology,” say the Trekkers, which is BS, because we’re already pretty far into the 22nd century and most women’s clothes still don’t even have pockets. But just for funzies, let’s say we do…

At maximum warp, it would still take the U.S.S. Enterprise more than 1 million-with-an-M years to reach the next closest galaxy. And because our universe is expanding like my Uncle Dave on Turkey Day, every galaxy gets millions of miles further apart from the others every hour of every day - even Christmas.

If you still dream about being Han Solo, this will pop your balloon for good: The expansion is speeding up.

I personally know an alien. He’s my gynecologist.

Okay, not really, but it makes me feel all weird to say he’s my pediatrician, because who still goes to a pediatrician at 16?

It’s cool that he’s an alien, though. Even cooler than that - he’s an alien plus a science teacher from like 100 years ago who share a body and a love that dare not speak its name. The alien came here to study money, politics, religion, and sports - stuff they don’t have in outer space, I guess - then got stuck here when his bosses figured out those things are contagious.

Okay, here you go - last one, I promise: Doritos was the first company on Earth to purposely send an ad into space targeting potential extraterrestrial customers.

They heard. They came. They’re here now. Only you know what? These aliens are nothing like my pediatrician. Turns out they’re not that big on Doritos, either. But they’re just crazy about us.

That’s right - this is a cookbook.


Tuesday, April 19, 2022

crayon sugarsweet: the beginning

when our daughter was a toddler, i invented a character that was like her in many ways, but exaggerated. i named her crayon sugarsweet because it sounded like polly pocket or one of the other dolls that our daughter liked, and i made up crazy adventures for her and gave her a friend named benji bean.

i made up these stories on the spot, usually during long drives or at bedtime. crayon and benji had a rogue's gallery of enemies that included the tango bees, the swamp witch (who became an important part of benji's story, especially his family life) and her mudmen, and the cue balls.

i always meant to write them down, but there never seemed to be time between working full time, working on our first house, spending time with our daughter and my wife while planning the next addition to our family and looking for a new day job.

i was always kind of disappointed that the first crayon sugarsweet story i wrote and published was a horror story (crayon sugarsweet and the spooky thing) that creeps me out to this day.

i did start to write them down, though, more than 20 years ago. here's what made it to the page:

The Adventures of Crayon Sugarsweet

    Benji Bean's mother was a goat. This made life rather awkward (for example, at parent-teacher conferences), but on the plus side it meant that Benji's macaroni and cheese always included fresh feta cheese, which he loved.
    This is yet another example of how the universe tends to work itself out.
    Presumably his mother had not always been a goat. Benji’s father never said, and beyond that it was probably best not to inquire. She kept the house picked up (mostly by eating anything left lying around, including dirty socks), his father kept a roof over their heads, and little Benji beat the snot out of anyone who had anything else to say about it.
    Benji's best friend lived next door. Her name was Crayon Sugarsweet. With a name like that, there were only two possible courses life could take: Overcome, or be the butt of every bully's joke until the bus hit you.
    Crayon Sugarsweet scared the daylights out of bullies. Teachers, large dogs, and strangers, too. This was because she had the unnerving habit of staring them straight in the eye. When she did that, it was very clear that what she saw was not very much, and that it had better get out of her way if it knew what was good for it.
    Crayon and Benji thrived because they had been taught by their parents to behave, and to expect the world and everyone in it to behave, too. And because they would tolerate no argument, the world eventually gave up and did.