Followers of the Space Sloth,

I know you haven’t heard much from me lately but don’t despair! I’m busy finishing out the academic semester (a couple hundred exams and projects to grade). With the extension from Inkshares we have 100 days left. In ten days the grading will be done and we’ll start our 90 day summer marketing extravaganza. 

Some quick updates. Congratulate Michelle on being the Space Sloth Your Time Fitness open house winner. 

And the viewers choice for the next Prof. Hornblower video is the Professor with a puppet. Yes, a puppet. I’ve got some fun things planned for that so stayed tuned.

As always, thank you for your support.

PT

Greetings Followers of the Space Sloth,

We have some new faces in the crowd tonight. Welcome all, and thank you for supporting my book. You can do something for me tonight and it won’t even cost you anything. The Hard Science Fiction contest is currently going on. Find a book that isn’t in the top ten and follow it. It can be discouraging being behind in a contest. Just having a new follower can pick up your spirits. So find something that looks interesting and give them a little support.

Now, back to Fortunes of the Space Sloth. I give you this short excerpt from Chapter 24:

Sebastian had finished with the supports and was now rummaging in his pack for something.  “In an ideal world I’d try to take this whole thing, but we don’t have time.  We’ll have to settle for one out of eight units and hope it can do something on its own.”  Finally he found what he had been looking for, a roll of tape.

“Duct tape?  Seriously?” Buttercup asked in irritation. “What do you expect to do with that?”

“This just isn’t any duct tape,” Sebastian began in his best info-vid salesman voice. “This is the new and improved, Spacer Duct Tape. When heated the polymers inside change shape to fill and seal and surface.” Then switching back to his normal voice, “I’m going to use it to seal the ends of these fluid tubes so nothing leaks out. Whatever this stuff is, it’s probably important.”

“That’s never going to work. We need to find some kind of clamp to use.” When Sebastian continued working with the tape she tried again to get him to see reason. “It’s just duct tape. It holds stuff together, it doesn’t stop leaks.”

“You better hope it does,” Sebastian mumbled under his breath, “it’s stopping several leaks on the Sloth right now.”

Ahoy followers of the Space Sloth...

Hmm...no, I think we’ll go back to Greetings!

Two items of news for you. First, Inkshares has graciously extended the funding deadline for Fortunes of the Space Sloth until August. With the extra time I have in the summer I’ll be able to update the draft, do some full blown marketing, and send you some clever updates.

Second, I handed out cards and explained Inkshares tonight at the Your Time Fitness open house (thank you Kris). There are actually a number connections between fitness, space, and the Space Sloth. It’s been fun this week sending out updates on Facebook with the connections. And everyone seemed really interested in the Inkshares concept of publishing.

More to come...thanks for following.

Greetings followers of the Space Sloth,

Big news first, this Wednesday I’ll be promoting Fortunes of the Space Sloth at the Your Time Fitness Open House in town. Handing out book cards, explaining Inkshares, talking about the story. If you are in the area stop by. 

We’ve had some success with pitching things off-Inkshares this week as well and I’m expecting Pre-Orders to be rolling in. The first draft has actually been done for several weeks now.  A few people are reading through the entire thing to offer some initial insight but I’ve been taking a little time away from the draft to get perspective.

If you’d like to see more of the Engineering Behind the Space Sloth series please give me some feedback. I have segments in mind covering ship maneuvering, radiation protection, and artificial intelligence. If you’d like to see more of these short essays leave feedback on Inkshares or send me an email at ptebbe@mchsi.com.

And one more reminder, you can now use #CSVSpaceSloth and @PatrickTebbe to share information about the book.

And as always, thank you for your support.

PT

Hey there followers of "Fortunes of the Space Sloth",

Tomorrow morning I will get up before the sun, pack my stuff into the car, and drive two hours to the Zumbro River Bottoms Management Area.  There I will run a 17 mile trail race, on trails that I know some people won’t take their horses on, in temperatures that will probably start off around 30 F (or lower), and if I’m lucky there won’t be any snow falling.

Anyone who considers this a fun weekend activity has to be an interesting person, right?  And a person like that probably writes an interesting story, right?  Now that would be a story you probably want to Pre-Order and support.  Fortunately you already know about a story like that, "Fortunes of the Space Sloth".  If you haven’t already, why not make a Pre-Order?

And you’ll want to tell your friends about the crazy engineer-writer-type person who thinks it’s fun to run up and down rocky hills when any sane person would be inside having a hot cup of coffee...

Followers of the Space Sloth,

Chapter 5 of the book is tentatively titled “Zumbro”. This is the name given to the first solar system the crew finds themselves in.  The name comes from a region of Minnesota where I occasionally do a trail run.  This Saturday I’ll be running the Zumbro 17 (seventeen miles of trails meant for horses). It’s a tough run, typically with unpleasant weather. 

If I can get up really early this Saturday just to run 17 miles of rocky hills don’t you think you can make a Pre-Order?  Or recommend the book to a friend? However, if you’d rather do the run with me...I’m up for it :)

Regardless, I thought the post from the race organizers today was very appropriate.

 

Greetings supporters of the Space Sloth crew,

I haven’t posted an update on Inkshares in a couple days but progress is being made in the physical world. The last several days I have been working to get some business cards for the book distributed to potential buyers. Word is slowly getting around.

I have also continued putting down my thoughts on the engineering and technology behind the story.  Part two of The Engineering Behind Fortunes of the Space Sloth is now available.  Currently the articles are only online through my Dropbox account.  Feel free to share these links with others.

Part 1: Interstellar Travel https://www.dropbox.com/s/jd1ta4k9ba6zu3i/behindthescenes-1.pdf?dl=0

Part 2: Interplanetary Travel https://www.dropbox.com/s/zcktm6l8tyzfqhb/behindthescenes-2.pdf?dl=0

In each of these articles you will find references to a few science fiction books or series that have influenced me (there are many however).  There are also some links to related technical information.

Please help get the word out about Fortunes of the Space Sloth.  And if you have any comments on the story or the technology in it I would love to discuss it with you.

Greetings readers,

You may not realize it but I’m actually trained as a mechanical (and nuclear engineer).  So when I started writing the background story behind Fortunes of the Space Sloth I took some time to research how I was going to incorporate realistic technology...while trying not to become too picky about it.

I’ve started writing a series of short essays describing my technology choices.  The first details interplanetary travel and can be found at the following link.  If there is interest I will keep posting these and try to include some links to further information.  Feel free to share the address if you think others might be interested.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jd1ta4k9ba6zu3i/behindthescenes-1.pdf?dl=0

And as always, thank you for your support...and PLEASE recommend others to have a look at the story.

Still plugging along...

This week I did make some updates to the first two sample chapters (correcting some grammar and formatting issues) and got new promotional cards for Fortunes of the Space Sloth.  New email pitches also went out to a group of contacts from Facebook and LinkedIn.

The biggest activity was finding the time to run up to Minicon 51 in Minneapolis on Saturday.  I heard some crazy stories from Seanan McGuire about cats and spiders, attended a panel on dystopian young adult fiction, and went to a panel on Self Publishing that Lojo Russo was on.  

And  yes, I tried to get some cards for Fortunes of the Space Sloth out there in the mix as well.

Just over 40 days left.  It’s a blast, a learning experience, and we’ll keep pushing until the end.  The crew of the Space Sloth would do no less.  They’d just do it with more...attitude.

As always, I thank you for your support.

PT

Greetings Space Sloth followers!

After a busy week at work I’ve finally made some progress on promotions.  I now have cards to hand out promoting the book.  It took more effort than I wanted (let’s just say I can now custom design a business card with about any online vendor).

Have a look.  The back of the card shows the Inkshares and Facebook urls.


Recommendations (in and out of Inkshares) are always appreciated.

PT
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