Smale Christmas 2021

Year Two of the New Normal! We mostly stayed home, got our vaccines and boosters as soon as they were available to us, and did a bunch of local walks and exercising with occasional forays into the wider world. But given the constraints we're living under, we still managed to achieve... quite a bit, actually.

The Chromatics began the year quietly — a six month musical rest, if you will. We cautiously reemerged for our first in-person rehearsals in July, and recorded backing vocals for "The Elements" for a talent show at work, and then the infection rates went back up and we scattered again. This November and December we got back together again (suitably masked) to record a couple of science songs for social media release, and perform an Astrocappella set — again, masked — on the Empire Ballroom stage at the World Science Fiction Convention in Washington DC in December. Even though this was our first live performance for almost two years we all fell comfortably back into the groove as if we'd never been offstage, and the show went really well. We have several gigs tentatively lined up for 2022, and... if the good luck's willing and the omicron creek don't rise... maybe we can do those as well?

In Alan's writing life, things started heating up again. In March he sold his alternate-Apollo thriller, Hot Moon, to CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, who also publish Robert Sawyer, Harry Turtledove, Ed Lerner, and a swarm of other cool SF people. The audiobook rights also sold, so it'll be available to those of you who like listening to your fiction. All the edits and copyedits are complete, and it'll be out in hardback in June 2022. His other new alt.hist novel, set in 400 AD in a politically very different version of the Mediterranean, is complete and currently doing the rounds at various publishing houses.

In 2021 the audiobook version of The Wandering Warriors came out. (Warriors is Alan's collaborative short novel with Rick Wilber, combining their passions — Romans, and baseball, respectively — which originally came out in Asimov's Magazine in 2018 and was later published in book form by Kevin Anderson's WordFire Press in 2020.) In the short fiction world, two of Alan's stories appeared in original anthologies: The Dogs of Babylon, alt.Alexander-the-Great, in the culture-mashing When Worlds Collide antho in July, and Gunpowder Treason, in the most excellent anthology series Tales from Alternate Earths, Vol. 3 in September. His non-fiction article about British 1970s cult TV shows, Anderson Planet: Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, and UFO, came out in the Hugo-award-winning online magazine Journey Planet in November, in an issue devoted to science fiction TV shows that were canceled too soon. (Free download, no signup or personal info required)

Convention-wise, Alan attended (virtual) ICFA, the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, in March, and helped present the Dell Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. In August he did a half-day tactical strike into DC for a panel at Awesome Con. Bad coronavirus stats in Atlanta persuaded him to cancel his Dragon Con appearance in September, but he did attend the (much smaller, and more local) Capclave in person in October, and that went very well — lots of panels, get-togethers with old friends, and dinner with his publisher. At Worldcon in Washington DC in December, in addition to the Chromatics gig, writer-Alan had a full schedule with multiple panels, a reading and a signing, and various business meetings, and he attended the Hugo Awards Reception and Ceremony (with Karen as his +1) as the designated acceptor for Galen Dara (nominated for the Best Artist Hugo). The tux still fits!

Karen continues her photography and is now on the executive board of two photo clubs. She's the new "VP of How-to" for the Bowie-Crofton Camera Club for the next two years, which means she chooses the topic and finds a speaker for 8 of 34 meetings of the club year. She's also continuing her board position (Webmaster) for the Goddard Photo Club. She hasn't entered as many gallery exhibit calls, but did get into one (virtual) juried show this year. She gave a talk on time-lapse photography to the Goddard Photo Club and organized the Club's annual Showcase (photos) which went well and was full of great photography. She has won some competition awards with the Bowie club (scroll down for the new ones). Having only gone on a few photo outings (a portraiture workshop, a regional park, a skipjack sailing tour, and a motocross event), Karen is mainly shooting for her own amusement and education at the moment, posting photos on Instagram (smale.karen) and uploading a few images to her Pixels.com site. Maybe 2022 will bring more photo mojo and opportunities for photo travel and photo exhibiting.

For a second year our trips have been "local", meaning within driving distance. In May we stayed in a house in Chincoteague, rented bikes, and did a lot of quiet touring of the National Wildlife Refuge to check out the horses, birds, and other animals. We went kayaking, and dined in a restaurant for the first time in many a month (where by "in" we mean "outside"). We did a day trip to Skyline Drive in September, and a boat tour off Solomon's Island later that month in the skipjack "Dee of St. Mary's." Our big vacation was a two-week stay at OBX in October in a friend's large and splendid beach house. We had a fine time hanging out on the beach, checking out the local lighthouses, swimming in the pool and hot tub, and eating great meals.

Work... sure. Work is fine. We are extremely fortunate that we're still 100% telework, meaning our offices are in our house, but it's a big house and we're now in the groove. We're not exactly missing the commute.

Alan is still HEASARC Director. Right now there are several NASA initiatives to transition into the big data, artificial intelligence, multi-disciplinary archiving world, and the HEASARC is ahead of the game there, He was also deputy PI on the (again multi-disciplinary!) EarthShine proposal to put awesome telescopes on the lunar surface to look back at the Earth as an exoplanet proxy and achieve some neat Earth Science, Heliophysics, and Astrophysics objectives at the same time, but it wasn't selected for funding. Maybe there'll be a future opportunity where the team will have more luck.

Karen continues to lead her small team of web developers in the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Sciences & Exploration Directorate, where they are working hard on the redesign of the flagship website for that organization.

We wish you a joyful holiday season and hope that 2022 allows us to all visit those we miss seeing in person!

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

• Alan's writing life
• The Chromatics
• AstroCappella: our astronomy-related singing
• Alan's Facebook
• Karen's Facebook (including lots of photo albums of the above events)
• Karen's Flickr albums
• Karen's Pixels site
• The Chromatics Facebook
• AstroCappella Facebook