mcgrew's Journal: Orbital mechanics problem solved!

First, I want to thank you folks for your suggestions, although I didn't see them until I logged in this morning. The answer came to me last night when I was sitting on my porch with a beer in my hand and several in my gut.

The answer was simple and I don't know why I hadn't already thought of it, maybe I should drink more. I hacked out maybe 500 words, about half a chapter that will go between the present chapters 9 and 10. I'll post it when there's more than a skeleton, tomorrow is chapter 24.

And the answer was something you guys have probably seen way too many times at work -- corporate bureaucracy and lack of communications. What I wrote last night had the CEO chewing out the head of scheduling, a women with a BS in math who had only taken one physics class, and the head of finance, who held an MBA.

Stopping the boat a couple of times (like to help Captain Kelly) and detours around meteors didn't hurt.

As to the CEO, I have to apologize to you folks for something that may be a bit confusing; I'm changing the CEO's name.

The first germ of an idea for this book came last spring when I was sitting in the beer garden at Felber's talking to a couple of guys about Nobots. I hadn't realized that the patrons there were more literate than the general population, probably half of them read Nobots when I published it.

A few crack whores were walking down the street (it's a pretty bad neighborhood with plenty of characters who make fodder for fiction), and Dewey laughed and said "you ought to write a book about whores in space." I'd never seen a book with space whores, so it might be a unique idea, and writing a book about whores without it being pornography was a challenge.

A few days ago, Dewey said he wanted to be in the book, so I named the CEO after him, even though the Dewey Green in the story is nothing like the real Dewey.