Smale Christmas 2014

Welcome to Christmas 2014! This felt like quite a long year in some respects, and in others, it just flew by.

On the book front, we're now in the long home straight. Alan's novel of a Roman invasion of ancient America, CLASH OF EAGLES, will be released in hardback by Del Rey Books in the US on March 17th 2015, and almost simultaneously by Titan Books in paperback in the UK, Europe and beyond. Alan finished the copyedits in early 2014, received the advanced reading copies in September, and is now getting cover blurbs from SF luminaries like Harry Turtledove, Stephen Baxter and Nancy Kress. The book is available for preorder online, and we have flashy promotional postcards if anyone would like some.

Meanwhile, Alan has been writing Book Two. He submitted the first version to Del Rey in May, and after receiving editorial comments waded back in for a deep edit. The revised version goes back to his agent and editor in early December, meaning he can spend the run-up to Christmas sketching out Book Three. Alan also went to a pro-level writers' workshop called Rio Hondo in May, and the story he took there has now sold to Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. It's called "English Wildlife", contains no Romans or native Americans at all, and will be published in late 2015. In addition Alan made local visits to science fiction conventions: Capclave in October, and the World Fantasy Convention in November.

At work Alan hung up his hat as the Physics of the Cosmos Deputy Chief Scientist to concentrate more fully on being HEASARC Director. He spent much of 2014 working on various proposals, for Virtual Observatory follow-on work, sounding rocket data restoration, and lately for future Small Explorer missions. He shared three summer interns with a science colleague, went to Savannah for the American Physical Society meeting in April, and made two trips to Pasadena in connection with his data archive work. On a less jolly note, he was felled twice by tonsillitis in February and October, the second time with an interesting throat abscess just for added pain points. Ew.

Karen's big new thing this year was participating in the 365 Project: taking -- and posting online -- a photo every day. She started this as a New Year's resolution and has learned new photographic techniques and a whole lot about her camera. While it has occasionally been a bit of a chore taking a photo after a long day at work (or on rehearsal nights), the inspiration of other participants' photos makes up for it. Nine of Karen's photos from the project were also displayed at the Goddard Photo Club's first Photo Showcase. Now that we have a bunch of 11"x14" photos.... we will have to redecorate! Karen also went on several photo field trips this year, most notably to see birds of prey (owls, hawks, vultures) and to the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, PA. The latter was a photographer's wonderland, full of creepy peeling paint, rusted cell doors, and decaying walls. Gorgeous!

Karen is still leading a small team of web developers at Goddard, providing support to the Sciences and Exploration Directorate. Some big new projects and web releases this year made the job more interesting at times. No interns to work with or travel to exciting places but, not to be outdone by Alan, she sprained her big toe in March, just before a major a cappella competition. This made it a tad hard to walk and so special non-flexible dress shoes were purchased for the performance. More on that later.

Karen's brother Karl, and his wife, Kristina, visited us in February and March on their way to and from South Africa. They provided lots of ideas and information for a similar safari trip that's on our short list of "places to visit before we die."

In other travel news, our big trip this year was to Iceland, where we did a "self-drive tour" involving a rental car, a 12-day itinerary with prearranged lodgings for each night, and a list of twice as many things to see each day than is humanly possible. Iceland in June never gets dark, so we spent long days hiking to waterfalls, traversing lava fields and climbing basalt formations, admiring glaciers, fjords, and lakes, boating on glacial lagoons full of icebergs, trawling for the freshest sushi ever, soaking in hot springs-fed pools, and getting very up-close-and-personal with geysers (named after the original Geysir there). It was one of those trips where we were planning our return while on the plane home.

We also paid a visit to Arizona at the end of September, for Karen's mom's 80th birthday. We spent several days in the White Mountains with Karen's mom, her brother Jim, and his wife, Donna. We did some sightseeing, took some walks, made and ate some good meals, and enjoyed our cabin in the woods. It was quite cool there -- nearly freezing at night, making it a difficult trip to pack for, as we also visited Karen's friend Kelly and her family in Scottsdale, where the temperatures were still in the upper 90s.

The Chromatics continued to spread astronomy through a cappella and a cappella through astronomy. We performed again with the Tone Rangers, sang at the Folk Society of Greater Washington, the National Air and Space Museum, and various other venues. The Chromatics returned to competition at the A Ca Challenge in March, where we tied for first place and were narrowly beaten back to second as a result of an audience text vote. Ironic that technology should be our downfall, in this case...! However, the high point of the year was probably our performances at the USA Science and Engineering Festival, where we shared a stage with Bill Nye the Science Guy.

On the home front, we finally replaced our back door (NB the new one is not only more energy efficient and elegant but it also opens in the correct direction), and repainted and reorganized our family room. As a useful side effect of this, the Christmas tree fits in there much better....

Happy Holidays!

Alan     alansmale@gmail.com
Karen     karen.smale@gmail.com

• Alan's writing life
• Karen's 365 Project photos
• Karen and Alan's work with The Chromatics
• AstroCappella: our astronomy-related singing
• Alan's Facebook
• Karen's Facebook (including lots of photo albums of the above events)
• The Chromatics Facebook
• AstroCappella Facebook