Orbital reads. Essay. 1100 words, 6-minute read. Books in Space By Ray Tabler. Recently, I visited an Air and Space Museum. Tucked away in one of the display cases was the unexpected gem pictured above, a copy of Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land read aboard a space shuttle…
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Alien Booze
Alcoholic worldbuilding. 200 words, and some tables. Here’s a page from the appendices of Smitty’s Guide to Interstellar Bartending. http://nazcapress.com/product/smitty/NP/52/ A reader asked if any cocktail recipes were included. Part of the fun writing this book was coming up with alien spirits, then concocting cocktails with them. As a writing…
Snippet: Smitty’s Guide to Interstellar Bartending
“I hate this job.” Fiction. 1100 words, 6-minute read. Please enjoy a snippet from the 1st chapter of my recently released 5th, published novel, Smitty’s Guide to Interstellar Bartending. Smitty is an itinerant bartender. He just wanted to pour drinks and drift from town to town. Being abducted by aliens…
If You Give a Writer an Idea
One thing leads to another. Essay. 300 words, 2-minute read. If You Give a Writer an Idea By Ray Tabler If you give a writer an idea, he’s going to tell a story. If he wants to tell a story, he’ll have to write it. If he wants to write…
Operation Bedrock Cover Reveal
Tanks versus dinosaurs. What’s not to love? My next novel, OPERATION BEDROCK, volume 1 of the Containment Protocol series, will soon be available from Cannon Publishing (https://www.cannonpublishing.us/). The brass has ordered Lieutenant Booker and his platoon of Abrams tanks through the portal to another universe. Dinos, volcanoes, and sexy predatory…
Getting Too Close to Indie Publishers
A shining dream. Essay. 500 words, 3-minute read. Getting Too Close to Indie Publishers By Ray Tabler. “…Don’t get too close to people. You’ll catch their dreams…” – Martin Landau, Tucker: The Man and His Dreams I recently learned some interesting facts about independent publishers. There are nearly 70,000 indie…
Novel Origin Stories
TRIZ and the rizz. Essay. 1500 words, 8-minute read Novel Origin Stories By Ray Tabler Where do ideas come from? I really don’t know. TRIZ is an organized, methodical problem-solving technique, created in 1946 by Soviet inventor and science fiction author, Genrich Altshuller. The acronym is from the Russian words…
Good News Bad News
Star Trek vs Mad Max. Essay. 1100 words, 6-minute read. Good News Bad News By Ray Tabler I have good news and bad news. First the bad news. The robots are coming to take our jobs, enslave us, and maybe exterminate us. (Terminator, Westworld, The Matrix, Robopocalypse) The aliens are…
Hardcover Edition of Smitty’s Guide to Interstellar Bartending
Great news! The preorder response for Smitty’s Guide to Interstellar Bartending has been large enough that my publisher will now be offering a hardcover edition, as well as paperback & ebook. Thank you. https://nazcapress.com/product/smitty/NP/52/