Wallpaper, Editors and Updates

A few people asked me where I got the wallpaper for my iPhone. Here it is:

It’s the cover of a new book that will come out early in 2014. It’s called …evil…

Here’s the short teaser:

A friendly game

A deadly player

It’s name is …evil…

If anyone wants to use it as wallpaper, please go ahead. Just copy it from here.

On another subject, David Gatewood has agreed to edit The Field, which is very exciting. The only downer is that he won’t be able to start until April 22nd, 2014. I’ll be done with the third rewrite by then so it will be interesting to see what his edits are.

I planned on releasing The Field around the end of March 2014 so this will set the release back, but that’s a trade off I’m more than willing to make. The Field is going to be longer than I thought. First estimated at 60,000 words, it looks like it may wind up in the 90,000 range.

In the meantime I’ve started work on …evil… and plan on having it finished and released possibly before The Field.

This is probably the last post for 2013, so everyone please have a happy and safe holiday season!

 

New Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR Cover

I’ve refreshed the cover for Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR since I felt it needed a change. Here it is:

I took the photograph inside Edison’s Menlo Park lab at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.

Also just got word that The System- A Detroit Story and The Day Detroit Went Dark are ‘headed for retail’ on Audible.com. They should appear on Audible any time now. The covers had to change, since Audible requires square covers (just like CDs) instead of rectangles.

Lawrence’s Cyclotron

I’ll be posting some cool nerdy stuff tech from the past on this blog during the research phase for the new novel SITE Z. The story takes place during World War II and revolves around super-weapon development, including the uranium bomb. One of the early problems to overcome was efficiently separating U235 from U238. Ernest O. Lawrence patented (although Leo Slizard invented) a cyclotron in 1934. Lawrence was a physicist at the Berkley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California.

A cyclotron accelerates charged particles from the center outward in a spiral trajectory, held within the cyclotron by a magnetic field. The particles are accelerated by a pulsed electric field. Check out the figure below from Lawrence’s 1934 patent to see how it works.

Looking at Fig. 1, components 1 and 2 are electrodes and are ‘semicylindrical hollow plates’ closed on the outer diameter but open facing each other. Component 4 is a high frequency oscillator that produces a pulsating electric field to accelerate the ions. Ions or electrically charged particles are inserted into the space between the two electrodes 1 and 2. this is where the pulsating electric field is concentrated. The ions accelerate and spiral outward and are held in check by the magnetic field provided by magnets (Fig 2, component 3), unless they are allowed to eject from the cyclotron. Look at the bottom left of Fig. 1 where there’s an arrow pointing out of electrode 2 and labeled High Speed Ions.

One of the cool things about cyclotrons are relativistic considerations. As ions approach the speed of light their mass increases. In the early cyclotron shown here the frequency of the  pulsating electric field is held constant.

This is a clever machine and Lawrence was convinced that a device based on its principles could separate U235 from U238 and provide fissionable material for a bomb.

Current Historical Characters in Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR

Here’s a partial list of the historical characters in the book:

Thomas Edison

Nikola Tesla

George Westinghouse

Sarah Jordan

Henry Ford

Teddy Roosevelt

Albert Einstein

Harry Houdini (maybe)

 The book is cruising along.

Reckoning in Escobara For Free

Reckoning in Escobara will be available as a Kindle book on Amazon.com for free Friday Feb 10 through Sunday February 12, 2012.

Here’s the synopsis:

After taking down Vlad Dragovic in Detroit, Ann Peabody quits the DEA and heads to Mexico to investigate and avenge the murder of her brother Jason Peabody, a U.S. Border Patrol agent. The trail leads to Escobara, a suburb of drug cartel controlled Juarez. Peabody becomes a bodyguard and security consultant to Olga Espinosa , the newly elected Mayor of Escobara, and works with Olga and her brother Manuel to rid Escobara of the drug trade and gangs. A certain ex-DPD Inspector Freeman Washington shows up to help Peabody out.

Along with the multiple, horrific drug-related slayings a serial killer is on the loose around Escobara, and he’s prolific. Peabody discovers that Jason was killed elsewhere before being found on the Texas-Juarez border. Why? Was he connected to the drug trade, or worse, the serial killer?

…then there’s the CIA...

Stand tall with Ann Peabody and Freeman Washington on the vicious streets of Escobara as they build a force to protect the people, unravel the mystery of Jason’s murder and uncover the rabid serial killer in RECKONING IN ESCOBARA.

CLICK HERE FOR Reckoning in Escobara ON AMAZON’S KINDLE STORE:

http://www.amazon.com/Reckoning-in-Escobara-ebook/dp/B006P0O0L4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1324591819&sr=1-1