A new month already? Wow. Blogging sure makes time zip by. In a way that's a good thing, since I’m excited about Bird Nerd coming out in the fall. On the flip side, once you get over a certain age, you don’t mind the clock slowing down a little.
Having said that, with this new month comes some actual news to report. My publisher and I agreed on what Book 2 will be, and it looks like I’ll be headed to the moon! Okay, let me rephrase that, just in case you thought those were two separate reports. No, I’m not actually headed to the moon. But I will be spending time with characters who'll be making the trip. A story that had gone through countless iterations—from short story to novel with multiple revisions along the way—will now be seeing the light of day under the expert guidance of my editor.
I won’t give more details yet since I’m not sure how much I can divulge. Perhaps there will be some kind of official announcement. Stay tuned!
Speaking of the moon, as some of you probably know, a commercially built lander called Odysseus arrived there in late February. Not only was it the first commercially built spacecraft to land on the moon, but it was also the United States’ first moon landing since Apollo 17 in 1972.
Despite it toppling over (oops!), Odysseus still managed to send back valuable data to NASA as well as some cool photos. Some of the data sent during descent and landing will hopefully help improve future landings.
Now that lunar night has fallen, the question will be whether Odysseus will wake back up in three weeks when the sun is at its highest again. Here’s its final transmission:
In bird news, nothing exciting to report—well, other than my first snow goose experience. A huge flock made a pretty picture while traveling across the blue sky. Klaus saw them first while working in the yard. Then later, while I was out running errands, I saw them again (could’ve been a different flock, though, since I was pretty far from home).
For more on birds, be sure to check out the latest Bird of the Month!