There is no velvet so soft as a mother’s lap, no rose as lovely as her smile, no path so flowery as that imprinted with her footsteps.

— Archibald Thompson

Ray Bradbury was the Poet Of Science Fiction.  Not only could he spin a great yarn, but he spun it with panache.  He could draw an amazing world, and then draw you into it so that you didn’t even realize it was happening.  Eloquent, brilliant, innovative, genius…well, there are lots of words to describe him, but they all mean that if there’s anybody worth listening to for good advice, it’s Ray.

Emily Temple at Literary Hub has published a great compilation of Bradbury’s advice, and it’s an enlightening read.  I just stumbled across it and it made me realize I needed to subscribe to Lit Hub’s newsletter so I wouldn’t miss out on seeing great stuff like this unless I stumbled across it.  So I did…and now I’ve been too busy to even look at my daily e-mails for the past week.  But I’ll get there…I promise!  And I’ll quite babbling and post that article so you can see the good stuff instead of babble.  And good stuff it is.

Success is not final; failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.

— Winston S. Churchill

I’m learning!

I’m not sure why so many people think so many things should be this complicated, but every time you want to do something for the first time, there seems to be a steep learning curve.  Of course, I’m talking about doing things with and through electronic machinery and software developers, all tangled up in The Web.  And it’s my first time.  Too bad you can’t start with the second or third time, so you know what to expect.

So here I am trying to “boost” a Facebook post.  It’s an ad for a sale I’m running on my self-published book, which hasn’t sold a lot of copies on Amazon for a while.  First thing to do was lower the price to make it at least a little more attractive than how it appeared during all that time it wasn’t selling.

I changed the Kindle price from $3.99 to $2.99, and the paperback price from $9.99 to $7.99.  Not huge, I’ll grant you, but 25% and 20% are reasonable to experiment with.  Not having done any price changing or boosting before, I suspected this would be plenty to learn with.  But to make the paperback just a little more attractive, I activated the Matchbook function and set it to allow anyone buying the paperback to get the e-book for free.  There.  That should attract somebody.

Almost immediately, the new Kindle price was reflected on the Amazon page for the book.  And the paperback price was…almost reflected.  By that I mean the Kindle price showed the savings of its price compared to the new paperback price, or $7.99.  But the paperback, right there next to it, still showed $9.99.  And it continued to do so for THREE DAYS.

So I sat for three days, waiting for the price to be right so I could put a post on Facebook saying I’d lowered the prices.  I was doing this at this time because I wanted to take advantage of the upcoming Mother’s Day, perhaps persuading someone who had given up hope of finding the right gift to leap at the chance.  It was a hope.  Maybe not rational, but a hope nonetheless.  But the days were going by without an ad.

Finally, the stars aligned and the prices did as well.  Time to go to Facebook and tell the world.  I pasted my carefully-crafted words into a post, added a link to the Amazon page, and posted it.  Then I clicked “Boost.”  It took me to a page to customize my boost effort, and I just authorized their recommended audience algorithm, adjusted it to run for 12 days, ending on Mother’s Day, and gave them my credit card info for $36.  Hopefully it will expand my audience enough to encourage enough sales to at least let me break even…but my hopes aren’t that high, especially because  I just lowered my prices and therefore decreased my royalties.

Six hours later, I still have a notification that my ad is being reviewed and they’ll let me know when…or if…it gets approved.  During that time, four of my friends responded with “likes” and one commented that it was a great read.  Also, one shared it, though he actually only shared the link to the Amazon page and didn’t include my carefully-crafted text that would convince people to buy a book for Mom.

But, well, I’m learning.  That’s what this whole self-publishing thing is all about.  Apparently.  It could have been all about raking in piles of dough…but that’s in a different universe.

Learning now…piles of dough later.  Maybe much later.  Like, next book.  Or the next.  But, hey…learning is good!  At least it’s moving forward.  And next time, it’ll go quicker and easier.

I can hope.

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

— Will Rogers

Senility does have its bright side — I can hide my own Easter eggs.

I believe we should all pay our taxes with a smile. I tried — but they wanted cash.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

–Henry Kissinger

The purpose of life is to discover your gift; the work of life is to develop it; and the meaning of life is to give your gift away.

— David Viscott

“Suspicious package! Let’s go, Chief!” That was Lt Col Jones, hollering through my office doorway as she headed out to the parking lot. She was the 28^th Mission Support Group Deputy Commander, and as such got to check out a whole bunch of the interesting stuff that happened on Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, especially when the Commander was off doing something else and left her in charge, like now.

I was the Group Superintendent, and I got to tag along on all kinds of interesting things, too. The Mission Support Group was an umbrella that covered five different squadrons in those days: Communications, Mission Support, Services, Security Forces, and Civil Engineers — the framework that kept the whole base functioning. Today’s event involved four of them, and this was a great opportunity to not only provide a command presence, coordinate operations among squadrons, and handle liaison with Wing HQ, but also a chance for us to see some incredible troops demonstrating their professions.

I grabbed my hat and brick and we headed for the parking lot at a run. Side note for my civilian friends: a “brick” was called that because it was the approximate size, shape, and weight — and usefulness, if you forget to charge the battery — of its namesake. The folks in the Comm Squadron who managed the equipment and networks called it a land mobile radio, or LMR. I usually called it my electronic leash.

We arrived at the Services Squadron’s billeting area in minutes and joined one Security Forces checkpoint at the cordon they had already established. Traffic was being re-routed and personnel were being evacuated from the vicinity of the billeting lobby, and those in nearby facilities were notified and directed to shelter in place until the nature of the threat was assessed.

It was a small suitcase someone had left in the lobby when they checked out that morning. Or so it seemed. The problem with a situation like this is that bad guys succeed by making things look normal. Over the years, tons of innocent-looking objects have been discovered holding bombs, from fire extinguishers to pressure cookers to backpacks to shoeshine boxes to babies’ dolls. And they’ve succeeded way too often.

But this, of course, was just a collection of underwear that someone had overlooked in the hurry to get on the road. Probably. But efforts to get ahold of people who could have accidentally left this suitcase behind came up empty. Once suspicion is raised, you can’t afford to take chances until you know for sure. So now the experts would take over.

The Civil Engineers’ Explosive Ordnance Disposal team had responded in a flash and was setting up. Technicians had done a visual inspection and could see no external wires or triggering system. This called for a little more in-depth analysis.

Time to bring in the robot.

It trundled into the lobby on its twin treads like a miniature tank/erector set, controlled from a safe distance by a bomb technician at a console with a video screen. It unfolded its articulated arm, carefully gripped the suitcase handle, and slowly moved it away from the wall far enough to deploy the x-ray equipment.

No boom. That was good.

X-ray images are always a bit shadowy and it takes some concentration and patience to interpret them, especially when you don’t really know what to expect inside. The hope was for a few amorphous stacks of t-shirts and socks. But in the midst of miscellaneous clutter, there was no mistaking the outline of a cylindrical object and coils of wiring.

EOD shifted into high gear to set up the next phase of the operation and the cops swiftly evacuated all personnel remaining in nearby buildings.

You can’t rush these things, but you also can’t afford to waste too many tick-tocks of the clock. Explosives can be triggered by changes in time, orientation, position, or elevation. By bumps or vibration. By remote control. By stray electromagnetic signals, which meant we couldn’t use our bricks within a certain radius of the suspicious object. They didn’t have enough power to be considered a threat out here at the cordon perimeter, so we could still monitor traffic over the air and coordinate with the Wing. We waited and watched as well as we could from a distance as the scenario unfolded.

With the speed of a reluctant snail, the robot picked up the suitcase and crept out of the lobby and into the open where a bit less damage might occur if something went wrong. The suitcase was lowered to the ground delicately and the technician moved the robot into position to put its projected water disruptor into action.

These disruptors are amazing gizmos. This one, called a “pigstick,” used a small explosive charge, like a shotgun shell, to propel a cylinder of water at blinding speed into the targeted object. The shaped-charge water projectile can destroy a bomb by blasting the device apart and severing any detonating connections faster than any fuse or anti-tampering device on the bomb can react.

If everything goes right.

Technicians double- and triple-checked their setup and made sure, once again, that all personnel were out of the potential blast zone. The cops ensured the cordon was secure and all bystanders had been evacuated to a safe distance. The EOD guys were as cool as a mountain breeze, but they’d trained and trained and done this kind of thing over and over. It’s how you become a professional, and that they were. I, on the other hand, was a straphanger at my first event. I caught myself holding my breath.

There was a short countdown so we could all be prepared, and then. . .BOOM!! A flash and concussion, smoke and flying debris, and it was over. Not nearly enough explosion to damage a building or cause widespread casualties, so it appeared the disruptor had done its job. The bomb team moved in cautiously to assess the remnants in case there was still some live explosive that might yet detonate.

The technicians slowly moved through the wreckage, scanning the scattered, tattered, smoldering pieces of suitcase, shattered makeup containers, and smoking scraps of bras and panties. They finally discovered the cylindrical object and wiring seen in shadowy profile in the x-ray and examined it carefully.

My brick crackled to life and the verdict came across the airways: “The world has been rendered safe from. . .one ladies’ curling iron.”

All in a day’s work for the EOD gang and the cops. It isn’t always a terrorist or evil scientist or existential threat to the entire known universe, but it’s always something to approach carefully and professionally and with all the skill they can muster. ‘Cause you never know ‘til it’s over.

But sometimes it ends up being a really good laugh.

The poor retired colonel’s wife on vacation who lost her stuff, and finally called to see if it had been found? Well, she and the hubby were probably both more careful about counting suitcases after that.

And as for Lt Col Jones and me? We had a blast!

A projected water disruptor in action against a piece of suspicious luggage.

To see a video, click here.