Richardson & Bluhm update

Listening to: Kingdom Comes, Sara Groves

As I told you last month, the plan is to release four books during 2008. The easy one, The Imaginary Bomb, is already available at Lulu.com, and why the bejeebers haven't you ordered your copy yet? You know you've wanted it ever since you finished listening to Uncle Warren's podcast of my inaugural interstellar romp. And thanks to those who've already purchased it to sweep The I-Bomb up to #34,223 at the Lulu marketplace!

The hard one has been the fourth one. Despite a promising start, all I had until a few days ago was a cast of characters — actually a small list of archetypes — and a general feeling that I wanted to write about freedom, revolution, nonviolence and the Zero Aggression Principle. This, my "Great Freedom Novel," is on the plan for release Oct. 15.

Then I realized something important about the early returns on The I-Bomb: Some of the people who really, really like it are bright young men (I know they're bright because they like the book) in that 8-15 age group. I started thinking about Robert Heinlein's so-called "juvenile" fiction — not that I compare myself to Heinlein, but it doesn't hurt to think about his audiences — and wondered what I would want to say to that "young adult reader" audience. Suddenly, as I wrote to a couple of these guys' moms, my brain exploded.

I didn't intend to return to the time of imaginary physics, but here I am. This is not going to be another story about Bob Whelan, Pete Wong and Baxter Hetznecker, but the novel is set in their universe, and it involves Sirius 4's declaration of independence, which plays a key role in The I-Bomb. The working title: The Imaginary Revolution. (A quick search turns up another book with the same name, but I'm guessing they would not be confused with each other. Still, I expect the writing process will suggest an alternative to me.)

A couple of quick notes about the other projects.

+++ Warren Bluhm's collection of short stories is still more or less on track. Working title: Wildflower Man, a collection of short stories. Maybe that'll be the final name, maybe not. Most of these are scribblings he created in the early to mid 1990s, with the major exception of a new short story he just started working on.

Another interesting highlight: Once upon a time he wanted to update and revive the concept of the dime novel, inventing kind of a hybrid between the old pulps and comic books — few or no pictures, but shorter stories. The farthest he got with this concept was a superhero named Myke Phoenix — he actually had two years' worth of stories plotted and several issues in various stages of completion. The book will include the two most fully realized Myke Phoenix stories: "Our Best Hope: The Origin of Myke Phoenix" and "The Strange Ultimatum of Quincy Quackenbos." Target release date: April 15. Gulp!

+++ Our dual-bylined book Refuse to Be Afraid is more or less on track for its target release date of July 15. The main news on this front is UW continues to threaten to record a new collection of his songs for public release, some of which you may have heard on his "Uncle Warren's Attic" podcast. One song you have not heard would be the title song of his collection, which for obvious reasons would also be released July 15: "Refuse to Be Afraid."

The plan today is to sit down and map out a way to get all of the above accomplished by the indicated target dates. One important thing I've learned about goals is that when you make the deadlines public, it generates a real incentive. So as I write this, I have no idea how we're going to get it all done, but I'm telling you now to further my goal to have at least five items on the Richardson & Bluhm homepage eight months from now. Thanks for listening!