A Book to read – To Hunt a Sub

Instead of an essay this week I’d like to share a little news from fellow blogger, Jacqui Murray.  Her book, To Hunt a Sub is now available on Kindle.  She posts monthly over at Today’s Author, which is where I first saw her writing.  I’ve been following her progress on this book and am looking forward reading it.  It’s a big step to put your work out in public and I wish her all the best with this book.  Someday, my book might be available as well.

Here’s a summary of the book:

The USS Hampton SSN 767 quietly floated unseen a hundred fifty-two feet below the ocean’s surface. Despite its deadly nuclear-tipped arsenal of Trident missiles, its task for the past six months has been reconnaissance and surveillance. The biggest danger the crew faced was running out of olives for their pizza. That all changed one morning, four days before the end of the Hampton’s tour. Halfway through the Captain’s first morning coffee, every system on the submarine shut down. No navigation, no communication, and no defensive measures. Within minutes, the sub began a terrifying descent through the murky greys and blacks of the deep Atlantic and settled to the ocean floor five miles from Cuba and perilously close to the sub’s crush depth. When it missed its mandated contact, an emergency call went out to retired Navy intel officer, Zeke Rowe, top of his field before a botched mission left him physically crippled and psychologically shaken. Rowe quickly determined that the sub was the victim of a cybervirus secreted inside the sub’s top secret operating systems.  What Rowe couldn’t figure out was who did it or how to stop it sinking every other submarine in the American fleet.

Kali Delamagente is a struggling over-the-hill grad student who entered a DARPA cybersecurity competition as a desperate last hope to fund a sophisticated artificial intelligence she called Otto. Though her presentation imploded, she caught the attention of two people: a terrorist intent on destroying America and a rapt Dr. Zeke Rowe. An anonymous blank check to finish her research is quickly followed by multiple break-ins to her lab, a hack of her computer, the disappearance of her three-legged dog, and finally the kidnapping of her only son.

By all measures, Rowe and Delamagente are an unlikely duo. Rowe believes in brawn and Delamagente brains. To save the America they both love, they find a middle ground, guided with the wisdom of a formidable female who died two million years ago.

 

Just downloaded this one to my Kindle.

Just downloaded this one to my Kindle.

Author bio:

Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer,  a columnist for TeachHUB, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. You can find her books at her publisher’s website, Structured Learning.

I follow Jacqui’s blog over at: Word Dreams

Till next time,
Andrew

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Friday Question

Ambivalent?

Well, yes and no.

More next Friday – maybe.
Andrew

Posted in wisdom | Tagged , | 17 Comments

Wednesday Woodworking – Cutting Garden update

With the little libraries mostly done, I took a break to get some progress on the cutting garden project.  It’s just about ready to the wire screen put on.  First it needs a little paint to protect the wood.  Here’s what looked today:

View from the side with all the main beams up.

View from the side with all the main beams up.

There will be two screen doors where. The stack of slabs are for the walk ways between the planter boxes.

There will be two screen doors where. The stack of slabs are for the walk ways between the planter boxes.

Next weekend I hope to get the doors built and some of the wire up.  The slabs are heavy, so I’ll see how long I can put off working on that part.

If you need me – I’ll be out back with a roll of chicken wire.
Andrew

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Woes of Researching

I love researching facts and interesting points of obscure history.  It’s fun and useful, but it can also be a trap.

It’s been both this week as I research and continue to add to my novel.  For example, at one point I was writing about my story’s hero hiking through the woods.  I thought, one obstacle he could face is blisters. Which got me thinking about shoes.

Now most of us just go to the store and buy shoes.  That’s not so easy in my novel’s world as it is recovering from a number of disasters that have left my hero in a place that doesn’t have a shoe factory.

So I opened up a ton windows in my browser and started checking stuff out.  First what are shoes made of?  Some are leather, some rubber, and some an unknown material know only to chemical companies.  It seemed reasonable to assume that leather would be a likely material as you can get that from animals.

But, it turns out that you just don’t kill a cow and cut bits up for shoes. The hides have to be tanned – a process that can happen in many ways.  I discovered at least four different methods.  Two methods are possible in my world and a third probable if I can just find a source for chromium sulfate.  Let me assure you that the YouTube videos on the subject are not pleasant to watch – at least the one I started to watch seemed like it was heading that way.

Sadly, the central California coastal area seems to lack chromium mines, wells, pits or where ever the stuff comes from, so it’s likely my hero’s boots are likely tanned using tannins from the tan oak trees that are native to the area.

Naturally, after all that research, I decided that my hero’s journey was really being slowed down because he twisted his ankle after falling over a rock – way more dramatic than a blister.

And so it goes, three words to an hour of research.  At this rate my book will be completed sometime around 2032.

I have to cut this essay short as I need to confirm the probability of a 9.1 earthquake with a resulting tsunami in the Santa Barbara Channel within the next 200 years.  The right answer gets me two whole sentences in my novel.

Till next week,
Andrew

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | 31 Comments