Greetings Dear Subscribers,

How are you? Any news? Send me a note. Seriously. I’m not kidding. :)

* Books
* I met Jordan Peele at Galacticon…
* The standard stuff

Post reviews, not just of my books, on TheStoryGraph.com! I like it better than Goodreads. I think it uses a much smarter cross-connection system than the traditional flat categorization system, helping you find what you’ll enjoy across categories. Plus, it’s not owned by the ‘Zon.
I’m NOT affiliated with TheStoryGraph.

============ Books ============

1)
Both MSD and CotF received 5/5-rated reviews at ReadersFavorite.com, and MSD is now being carried by my local library system! As always, links to editorial reviews can be found on each book’s individual page, which can be found through my /Books page (or /MSD and /CotF directly).

Another way to help with outreach is to contact your local library system and request MSD be carried there. Let them know it has a strong Kirkus review, and is in the Arapahoe Libraries system in Colorado. You can send them these links for reference:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/x-ho-yen/minimum-safe-distance/
https://arapahoelibraries.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S981C15574806
Library availability is a try-before-you-buy tool that does help me with outreach, so this is a great, zero-cost holiday gift for me. :) I’ll probably never break even monetarily, but finding my small audience remains the goal.

2)
As a reminder there will be another *eBook* promotional period (USD0.99) from 4 Dec to 11 Dec 2023, which applies to both MSD and CotF. Please consider passing the word to any possible interested parties. My books are flagged as “for adults”, but really are appropriate for new adults as well as precocious young adults (with parental approval), so they should make good holiday season gifts.

All those wonderful reviews should help make a case for holiday gifting!

As always, all books in all available formats through all vendors can be purchased through my books page: https://XHoYenAuthor.com/books

============ Galacticon 2023 AAR ============

This weekend (24-26 Nov) we had a Community Table at Galacticon (Marriott Denver Tech Center). In exchange for the table and a presentation, we got free passes to the con, although we mostly attended our table.

For reasons not worth getting into here, this was not a selling event but an outreach event.

And despite my talk being scheduled for 2 hours before con’s end, I had 12 wonderful attendees! We were only provided a tv instead of a standard projector/screen combo, so I had to mitigate that by boosting its height as shown in the pic below. I’m deeply gratified that my attendees nevertheless expressed tons of enthusiasm at the end.

Last year at Mile Hi Con 2022, mostly people quickly breezed past my table. I think I managed to hand out 2 postcards. It was, frankly, deeply disheartening, especially since Mile Hi Con is touted as being more about books than other things.

This year at Galacticon, however, we had something like two dozen attendees express some level of interest and take cards for later perusal. That alone was great.

But what really made this a great experience for us was meeting our extremely sympatico table neighbors, Sarah, Allie, and Becca of the humanisttrek.com podcast. They’re the nicest people, and they’re Trek fans who can be critical of its issues while also geeking out and having fun. They absolutely rock, and they filled our area with Trek soundtrack (including Subspace Rhapsody) all weekend! Sympatico!

Sarah, Allie, and Becca do a humorous podcast going through every Star Trek episode and evaluating it through the lens of Trek’s humanist message (they’re currently in TOS season 3). I hope to be a guest on a near future episode covering the TOS ep “Day of the Dove”! Stay tuned!

Here are things one might see at a geek-fun con:

Makers!

Starting in the upper left we have a glimpse at the DENLUG.net (Denver LEGO User Group) offerings. The SATURN V was possibly the only kit there, others being amazing custom designs, such as the huge, detailed “Empire Strikes Back” planet Endor scenes set, the huge DS9 model beside it (lower right), and much more (e.g. motorized ‘The Beatles’ in the Ed Sullivan era, ~half size motorized Zoltar coin-op machine, a custom designed, functional tri-level 1920s themed Escape Room, etc.
Non-LEGO modelmakers filled other tables with models, some from kits, many custom works, all impressive, including the Space Shuttle shown here and the real-CAD-based 3D-printed Mars Insight Lander (lower left).
There were many costumes, of course. One that stood out was that huge dinosaur, who snuck up on us and then activated its blaring roar sound, causing Allie to blurt profanity. lol
Aside from R2D2, there was also a fully articulated and amazing Wall-E RC robot, shown here interacting with a biological near-equivalent.

Peeps!

Our Humanist Trek buddies and a small sample of their visitors. The young Bajoran was brilliant, as was her parental unit. The Mr. Data/Lore cosplayer had facial features resembling Brent Spiner, and he was a real performer, very fun (that’s a Spiner-autographed violin). The Klingon is 81 years old, retired military (iirc), a routine conventiongoer, and had different costumes on different days. At bottom we see our HT friends doing their live podcast, protecting themselves from “maddening ugliness” (TOS ep “Is There In Truth No Beauty?”) with those brilliant visors Becca (at right) handcrafted. We all need something to protect us from maddening ugliness!

This doesn’t even get into the guest stars, panels, etc., but gives you a feel for it.

Sarah (from HT!) was kind enough to capture my entire presentation on audio, so I intend to use that to build a youtube video of the presentation. I’ll let you know when it’s up!

============ The standard stuff ============

Here’s a printable, one-page ad for MSD if anyone has a nice bulletin board/ad column nearby.

Printable, one-page ad for CotF

All purchase options can be found here: https://XHoYenAuthor.com/books or at GrandUnificationMonastery.com. Both sites include links showing how several of the big vendors allow you to gift eBooks.

Thanks for sticking with me! I hope it’s at least mildly entertaining to watch this author second career thing come together.

Please do share my page with fellow realism-based sci fi fans, especially anyone who enjoys Andy Weir’s books, Older’s Infomocracy, Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, Card’s Speaker for the Dead, Mandel’s Station Eleven, Corey’s The Expanse, or Suarez’ Delta-V. I'm convinced my books would appeal to the same audience, because I wrote it for me and *I'm* in that audience.
Thanks for your support!
XHY
https://XHoYenAuthor.com

X. Ho Yen's Author Newsletter (27 Nov 2023) - Galacticon AAR!

Greetings Dear Subscribers,

Makers!

Peeps!

X. Ho Yen's Author Newsletter (21 Dec 2023)

X. Ho Yen's Author Newsletter (9 Nov 2023) - Galacticon (Denver)