Dawn arrives, p.21
Dawn Arrives,
p.21
From Me (replying as Ellie): hey BT, I need to be at computer to respond to these. Lemme come back to you soon! 🙂
BT: Absolutely I look forward to learning and discussing.
Now, 1 week later (Thursday to Thursday):
Thursday at 1:24PM I reply: So, I’ve been in England since you asked these questions- some I think Ell Leigh Clarke and MD Cooper would know more, some I can guess at.
I mention Ell since she is a physicist.
Are you curious for a reason or to scratch an inquisition itch?
Now, thank goodness, Ellie realizes my FU and jumps on to HER messages, and answers BT who must be scratching his head at this point:
Ellie (6 hours later): Hey this looks like MA has jumped onto this msg thread... so this is Ellie again... When I came on board and started playing with the etheric, MA and I talked about how it ties up with the physics. I decided, and MA kinda went along with my sciency back story, that this could be a vector space known as the Calabi-Yaw manifold, which is a versatile 6 dimensional space which is used in things like string theory and quantum loop gravity to make the maths work.
Re the energy - yes it would... but more than that, stretching space time in that way right now is nigh on impossible. Anything that exists at that scale (plank scale) kinda bubbles in and out of existence. Then, if we look at concepts like black holes and worm holes (i had a whole rant about this with MDC on a podcast episode we recorded) nothing can survive even part of the black hole journey - let alone anything else.
Re the particle accelerator... yes, the smashing action can cause us to view some of these plank scale phenomenon - but only in terms of the particles it throws off. Conceivably this could cause a slight rippling, though I don't think we have tech to detect it. I'm sure there are some equations somewhere that try to model that - but you'd have to be using a gravitation wave model of the standard model i think (modeling particles as waves).
Re dimensional collisions, just look into any brane theory stuff. I think there is a great review paper on M theory that talks about applying brane theory (modeling universes) as branes and the effects of that: the big bang, new universes, lots of consecutive big bangs etc etc . Basically though, no one knows the answers to these questions, but we can hypothesize about what might be, and then make mathematical models to fit the ideas... which then spur more ideas and "understanding". Hope this helps! It's a lot to answer in a msg... 🙂
BT: Yes. It is a lot to answer for sure. I wish I could say I had a practical reason for asking but the honest truth is I'm just curious. And you seemed like the physicist to answer the question. It's surprisingly hard to Google and find coherent answers to questions like interdimensional energy transference. I guess the last question I have if you're willing to answer (aka isn't a plot point I've missed). Why would someone be able to transfer between dimensions yet have an entire dimension (etheric) be unobtainable/surprising when accessed?
Thank you so much for your detailed answer!
Now, Ellie answers with what I knew to be true (but I had rather she had stayed with the aforementioned cool answers.)
Ellie: Ah you're talking about BA and Michael? That's just coz the author decided that was the physical set up of their universe. That's all 😉
After this, our fan comes back with:
BT: Actually Molly. She is able to travel through dimensions yet when she accesses and is able to fee BA the general and Adam both seem concerned that she's able to access that dimension.
And, in true Ellie fashion…she punts to the future. (Right where I wish I could have put the answer!)
Ellie: AAh yes.. that's all still unfolding.
Now, this is how the story unfolded on our SLACK channel:
Ellie: Hey, was this you? (She provides a screenshot of the previous message (the one I told you about up above.)
Then, before I can answer, she says:
Ellie: ps. i just answered him. I'm such a badass. (eyeroll)
Me: Yes, that was me... I was reading on my phone, so I didn't realize I wasn't on my personal channel.
sorry! :-/
And you are a badass.
Ellie: yeah, but you're saying that without even looking at what i wrote him! :-o
Me: True, but that's because I am ashamed that I was answering your questions in the first place. (I consider it 'yours' - so, I don't go in there...).
Do you want me to check?
Ellie: No. Don't bother. It's just geeky shit. Nothing interesting ;)
Now, I go to sleep, and I don’t remember if I saw this before I went to sleep, or at something like 4:30AM in the morning, when I wake up.
Mike (4:35 AM): Grrrrr, now I will HAVE to ... :-)
Mike (5:12 AM): Holy crap!
Can I grab that?
Damn, now THAT was an answer!
And that is the story of how you get a physicist to answer a fan question!
… by getting involved in their own messages and mucking everything up!
Thank you SO MUCH for reading these stories, and I look forward to seeing you again when the next series with Bethany Anne, Michael, Akio, Yuko, Eve, Mark and Jacqueline start up: The Kurtherian Endgame!
Ad Aeternitatem,
Michael Anderle
Author Notes - Ell Leigh Clarke
Written February 11th, 2018
Thank yous
MA
Big thanks must first go out to my collaborator, Mr. Anderle.
As you know this tickles me that I get to have my name under yours… (Snigger, snigger). Yeah, some of us just have a dirty mind. Dear reader, you may have to re-read that to see where I was going with it.
It also amuses me that you (MA/ yoda/ the boss) have to do the final punch for a change. Hahahahahahahahahaha. Seriously though… thank you for having me on this project and trusting me with your baby.
It’s been a blast! Truly – thank you.
Steve and the JITers
Thank you also to Steve Campbell and his team of JITers.
Steve is aka. The Silver Fox, according to my friends in the UK who saw our picture on fb recently…! He didn’t protest it, so it’s kinda stuck. It’s how I introduce him to anyone now :)
Apart from allowing me to give him a new nick name every book, he also smooths the process of editing, proofing and publishing so that I can be completely hands off. Steve, you’re a life saver.
Our fabulous Just in Time team are awesome too. In reading and proofing the final product before it goes to the Zon, you give us peace of mind. Knowing that we’re not going to get slated for bad punctuation, typos, gaps in the stories, or even downright blatant inconsistencies, is a huge help.
You’ve also been super awesome in helping me fact check stuff when I’m in the grind of writing and just can’t recall certain details that whole scenes will hinge on. You’re the best, and I’m forever grateful for your input and support. Thank you!
Amazon Reviewers
As always massive thanks goes out to our hoard of Zon reviewers. It’s because of you that we get to do this full time. Without your five star reviews and thoughtful words on the Zon we simply wouldn’t have enough folks reading these space shenanigans to be able to write full time.
You are the reason these stories exist and you have no idea how frikkin’ grateful I am to you.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
Readers and FB page supporters
Last, and certainly by no means least, I’d like to thank you for reading this book… and all the others. Your enthusiasm for the world, and the characters, is heart-warming. Your words of encouragement, and demands for the next episode, are the things that often stay in my mind as I flick from checking the facebook page to the scrivener file when I start each writing session.
It used to be that caffeine was my drug of choice.
Now it’s you.
Thank you for being here, for reading, for reviewing, and for always brightening my day with your words of support on the fb page. You rock my world, and without you, there really would be no reason to write these stories.
Thank you <3
Ellie and Speed Reading
Since starting this indie publishing game I’ve been talking about how I should learn to frikkin’ speed read. Then maybe I’d have a chance of… I dunno, reading my collaborator’s previous books so I’d get shit right.
Or maybe just even be able to re-read something that we’re meant to be working on the sequel for… and being able to recall what we wrote the first-time round.
The reality has been that as we work on more and more series (Michael, Molly, Giles…) it’s becoming increasingly difficult, and important, to have it fresh in one’s mind. And this problem is only going to get compounded as we fire up new series in this universe, and the Ellie’verse. (More on the Ellie’verse in a moment.)
So finally, after a certain fan mentioned his reading speed on the fb page - and MA made another comment about how I’m still behind on reading his 21-book-masterpieces - I got my act together and googled “speed reading courses”.
Within 15 minutes I was signed up to a big ass course that is going to teach me how to be a “Super Learner.”
Rather than just increasing my reading speed, it’s also promises to help me remember what I read!
Perfect.
So far I’m only a little way into it, but I can feel my memory improving. About 3/5 of the course is all about memory techniques.
Not only that but I’ve been coming to the awareness that when I’ve been struggling to write it’s not so much that I’m “mentally burnt out”, although that’s been part of it. But more than that, I think my brain has been bored.
Yup.
Believe it or not, it’s not been getting the right kind of stimulation.
So where I was using ear plugs and orange glasses just to try and cut out the “noise” the bigger problem seems to be I just wasn’t giving it new information. I haven’t been taking in non-fiction in the way I always used to. Plus, I’m coming off a three-year book hiatus because when I was nomadic I couldn’t carry them. (I’d even given my kindle away because I didn’t want the luggage weight. I will rethink this differently in future, mark my words!)
Plus I’d been so busy DOING that I “didn’t have time”.
Well, as I’m getting more and more into this speed reading/ memory thing I’m finding my hunger for learning has been returning. I’ve been buying physical books again. (Man, I love paper!) As well as reading stuff on the Kindle that MA bought me to try and get me to finish reading his series!
It’s been working.
My daily word count is up, I’m recovering my physical strength and focus, and everything is on the up and up.
Woot :D
I think moving to Austin is working for me too…
Plus practicing presence and surrender has been a big turning point. But in terms of getting (coherent!) words on the page, having a constant input has been awesome.
Anyhoo – for those who are interested, my reading speed at the beginning of the course was about 255 words per min.
This is abysmally slow.
Slower than average. Honestly, I dunno how I survived this long.
The guy who is teaching the course reads 1500 words per minute with an 80% retention rate. I can barely believe that is possible, but he’s the one I’m shooting to emulate. Even if I get half way to that it will change my life.
But with this new-found hope, I’ve actually been starting to read faster I think… though I haven’t measured it again yet. I noticed how it wasn’t that painful to read Michael 3 in preparation for writing this book – Michael 4.
MA also noticed I knocked it off over the weekend… rather than it taking me 8 weeks to get through it.
I think something is working.
Reading Michael 3 (Darkest Before the Dawn)
Clearly I needed to catch up on this because I couldn’t remember all the threads and details that we had to incorporate into the next episode.
But I kinda also needed to know what had happened on the Michael/ Akio side of the adventure too…
Confession: I had no idea until I read it a few weeks ago. I mean sure, we had discussed beats… but MA doesn’t seem to stick solidly to what he said he was gonna write.
PLUS, a lot of stuff evolves as one writes, so the published version was essentially a whole new story to me.
Even the bits *I’d* written…
I’d be a few pages into a scene and be like:
hmmm, this feels familiar.
Oh shit, yeah, I remember writing this.
Yup. I know. I’m slow. But hey…
It reminds me of a game I played once in primary school.
You know, the one where you send a note around in class and every adds one line to the story? And you end up with a completely bizarre off the wall tale.
Well reading back through M3 was kinda like that.
Now that this series is complete I can now confess that I didn’t read MAs half at all during the process.
I know. Shoddy work on my part. But on the flip side, I totally trusted my awesome collaborator to stitch it together in the way that only he knows how.
And thankfully from the reviews for M3, it seemed to work.
Let’s hope it did for M4!
Michael 4 was a little trickier though as there was a lot more going on.
Not only had MA cleverly woven BA 21 together with it from Michael’s perspective, but we also had a tonne of stuff to pick up from Michael 3: like Hirano, who if we left behind we would never be forgiven by you guys, like the baddies that needed killing, and like the Sabine-Akio thing that needed clarifying.
Sabine and Akio
So I’m hoping that my dear collaborator tidied this up in the end, because as of writing several days after the final draft was sent to the editors, I still haven’t seen MA’s side of the manuscript.
And last I read in Michael 3 there seemed to be something going on with Sabine and Akio.
But Akio is gay. Right?
Confused, and hopeful, I posted this on fb:
++
QUESTION:
Did anyone else read Michael #3 and think that there was something heating up between Sabine and Akio?
Or was it just me (projecting)?
Need to know. MA giving me shit... and potentially missing a very real thread that needs to be tied up.
++
The response was huge.
To begin with I was told that I was just projecting.
However, as the thread gained momentum there was an overwhelming majority of folks who also had the impression that there was something going on: at least on Sabine’s side. And if it was all one sided, well Akio still needed some romantic action of whatever persuasion the Author chose to give him.
So while I am comforted that it “wasn’t just me”, I’m also mildly concerned that MA has sent this to the editing team without addressing this thread.
Because, like, it’s romance.
And while he’s all down with the killy-killy, he keeps telling me he’s not into doing the kissy-kissy writing thing.
(He’ll be blushing as he reads this. And when we read it out on the audio recording, you’ll probably wanna go check the video!)
Anyway – I’m sure y’all’ll let me know in the amazon reviews or indeed on my fb page what the verdict was.
I’m not holding my breath for any romantic conclusion though.
The other cool thing about actually going back and reading the other half of the story is that you realize all the shit your collaborator pulled.
Like modelling the evil scientists on the exact same mannerisms that he’s teased you about. And when I mentioned it, everyone else clocked that too!
Sigh.
The crap I put up with…
Ellie and Giles
So one of the things I realized over the last few weeks is that not everyone has the same taste in characters I do.
I like ‘em (like my men): broken yet evolving.
Like Molly.
Or Giles.
So when the Giles series didn’t take off like gang-busters I was kinda surprised.
But then MA and I figured a few things out:
We didn’t do the rapid release. Book 1, 2, then 3 all within the space of a month.
Not everyone understood the Giles character.
Those that kinda got him thought: yeah he’s interesting… But he’s also kind of a jerk. In talking to a number of folks since it seems that his charm in the early Molly books wasn’t enough to counteract his douchiness.
Now, for those who have read Confessions of a Space Archeologist: Rogue Operator, and some of the Molly books where he appears (book 5 onwards) you start to see more of him. It was our hope in Michael 4 and the Epilogue that you’d get to see some of his backstory.
i.e. What prompts an archeologist to nomad across the galaxies, looking to get his ya-yas out Indiana Jones style. What is he searching for… literally, and emotionally? Why is he missing the mark? What isn’t he getting?
What you’re seeing in this book is a little of what makes him want to go off and touch other civilizations.
And as you probably figured out, he has a huge heart.
A heart that feels deeply.
