In my story, my characters are flying in a shuttle that's been hit by another ship, causing the leak. They're racing to reach a flagship before their air runs out. I want to knock them out with them realizing they may not be rescued in time and may never wake up. I can't have their blood/tissues boil/explode while they're unconscious.
Charles, thanks for the links. I read through it quickly and it looks useful. I'll read it in detail later today.
Does anyone know what the effects would be on humans in a Star Trek-style shuttle (e.g., no space suits) if it sprung an air leak. The lack of oxygen will eventually knock them out (which is what I want). However, there is also loss of heat and pressure. Loss of heat I understand. Loss of pressure I don't.
What happens to the human body? And which effect(s) come first? If I can rescue the unconscious crew shortly after they pass out, will they suffer any injuries?
Thanks.
Dirk
Took down Ch. 35. needs a better epigraph.
Chapter 35, battle chapter two of three, is up.
Not only did I blow my target date by over half a week, but I had to cut the material in half, leaving room for a Joseph chapter.
Thanks.
Dirk
Christian, Anastasia, and Noah were accompanied by a rookie pilot everyone referred to as red for his fondness for wearing "lucky" red shirts.
Excrementum scribit issum.
Yikes! Nine pages and counting, with lots left to tell. I'll probably whack it in two and give half to Apollo and the 2nd half to Joseph. That gives me enough room to breathe. This is the climax of the book.
What do you think of this for Joseph's chapter title: The Lord is My Shield, His Words are My Sword? It's for a chapter where Joseph accompanies a squad of marines to seize the enemy flagship. He's never killed before, but he's armed. I wonder what he does. "Thou shall not kill!" remains the likely alternative.
Should "sir" be capitalized in the following case:
"You're out of uniform, cadet!" the admiral said.
"Yes, Sir!"
Replace Sir with Mom or Dad and it clearly should be capitalized. I've seen "son" written both ways (with or without caps). A grammar site I use says to capitalize when the word replaces a name, but not for nicknames (e.g., sonny boy).
In the example above, cadet is lowercase, even though it stands in for a name. Therefore I think Sir should be lowercase as well, for consistency.
What then to do about Son?
Thanks
Dirk
Hmm. Only two pages this evening. Life intrudes and I need to reorder what I've written. Nuts.
Four pages!
Or, since it's Joseph's chapter, we could go with:
- the Lord is my strength and my shield
- the Lord is my shield (not a direct Bible quote, but catchier)
- thou shalt not kill
Page one of Release the Hounds! is written. It goes faster from here. I'm thinking about renaming the chapter "Cry 'Havoc' and Let Slip the Dogs of War!" although that quote was also used in Star Trek VI. Preference?
Either way, my U.S. retirement account is going to take a beating. I was going to sell pending this vote, but was lulled into"do nothing" by pollsters and Wall Street analysts.
Where is everyone, tonight? Are you all glued to your TVs watching British voters commit harakiri?
Have you found an accountant or are you navigating this yourself? Oh, you poor thing. I'm sorry this is getting so irritating.
Let yourself fall into your book and write a section where C and M have a rip-roaring fight. Then you get to write the make-up sex :-) You go girl!
I think I mentioned before, but DO NOT forget to file FBAR/FATCA forms by the end of the month.Nasty nasty nasty forms.
Yabba dabba doo! Figured out a way to slip multiple bomber groups past 187 warships into planetary orbit without an asspull! Even gave it a nice religious element. I'm sure I'll blow the date, but I'm targeting to get the chapter up by the end of June.
Off to bed. Soon will I rest, yes, forever sleep. Earned it I have. Twilight is upon me, soon night must fall.
I'm such a geek.
Elisheva, consider deferring retrofits until your next whole draft. I tried going back to keep the beginning of my story up to date but found it impossible the further along I got in the book. The way I do it now is to treat all future chapters as if the change had been made. I then add a chapter note that an important continuity change has been made and describe it briefly. For example, Caligula's secret scheme will require changes across numerous early chapters. I've also made changes that I subsequently refined or even punted without having to go back and fix the whole book.
it's me and the American tax system at the moment - I'll tell you about all the fun I'm having, but I'm trying to stop swearing
It could be worse. As far as I can tell, if I want my disability benefits to continue, I have to let the IRS tax me as a resident of the U.S. even though I'm now living in Canada. That means two "resident" tax returns every year until I flatline. It wouldn't be so bad, except you have to declare all of your foreign accounts to each taxing authority every year, with fines that can bankrupt you, even for honest mistakes. So I have to tell Canada about all of my U.S. accounts, and I have to tell the IRS about my Canadian accounts, even though both idiotic organizations get this information electronically from the banks in both countries. Futuo!
However, I'm looking at how to revamp the first page of my website. I have had several other bookstores invite me to send them books and they will sell on consignment.
Janet, how did the bookstores find you?
That's a great idea. Thank you, Elisheva.
I'm not. Almost by definition, FTL travel requires some kind of technology. I'm just trying to define something very simple that functions the way required by my story. One requirement is that most of my other ship tech (shields, sensors, thrusters, weapons, etc.) function the same way they do in spacetime. It also has to include elapsed time in the starlanes (e.g., 30 - 60 minutes between nearby stars, without relativistic effects). In addition, I want all spacetime objects (e.g., planets, moons, etc.) to be visible from within the starlanes, only ghostly in appearance. The starlanes, then, are relatively cleared paths that minimize the number of objects that have to be circumnavigated.
I'm trying to introduce a lot of background stuff so that it doesn't feel like asspull.
In my book, they're called starlanes and dark energizers.
I've been identifying/sorting all of the paragraphs I need for the chapter. Who lives? Who dies? I have one last thorny impossibility to work out, after which I can actually write. It's an amazing pain in the asinus when there are so many story threads to pull together. After this, I'll be able to coast until the end, about three chapters further out. Doctor's appointment and grocery shopping are in the way tomorrow, but I should have time to solve the aforementioned impossibility. Basically, I need to get a bomber group past 187 warships to drop a few gigatons of death and destruction. It will be glorious! Kdot will be so proud.
njc wrote:What, you're the privy councillor?
Nay, 'tis the Groom of the Stool that's a most coveted position.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groom_of_the_Stool
View yourselves educated as from now.
What a crappy job. Imagine having that role with the 300+ lbs. King Henry VIII. Yikes!
(Somehow this long rambling speech boils down to me agrees with your starlanes. Then a stardrive is more of a "raft" that keeps the ship's particile energized enough for it to stay in the starlanes where all distances are shorter)
I'm quoting the part of your post that I understood. :-) If I shorten distances, then scanners ought to work. Ditto for my "sublight" thrusters. I think.
I wonder what technobabble Data would use. And what's a particile?
Hmm. It occurs to me that I do need something other than "go like a bat out of hell." Without another dimension, I'm still in spacetime. If you recall, God claims in my book that Einstein made up General Relativity as a lark while soused. Nevertheless, any alternate explanation for what we experience in spacetime is still limited by the upper limit of light speed.
So we're, back to the starlanes. I still need a stardrive to shift to the starlanes, where everything in spacetime appears as ghostly images. Besides that, there are no flows. The stardrive simply allows you to go like a bat out of hell, or distances are shorter. I can either force the traveler to circumnavigate massive objects or allow the ships to pass right through the objects, including stars. I'm leaning toward the former (circumnavigating), otherwise you could fly through black holes, too. If the object has substantial mass, you have to go around it. Will ponder what to do about smaller objects (pass through them or deflect/destroy them).
