Browsing all posts in Asides.
Hey Barnes & Noble: Stop Bitchin’ and Start Competing!
I got an email from a friend this morning: On 2/8/2012 9:47 AM, Eric wrote: Good morning, Lew.I just got a Nook Tablet and tried to purchase Die By Wire.What’s up and when will I be able to get it? Eric Dear Eric: Attached is a free ePub of Die By Wire. Sorry you can’t […]
Wine, Art, Thrillers & Music: Smells Like Beethoven, Sounds Like A Forgery
A current article from The Economist provokes some intriguing questions about wine tasting, synaesthesia and environmental influences on perception of taste and quality. It’s one of my favorite topics. In one of my best-selling thrillers, Daughter of God, my heroine was an art expert with an uncanny ability to detect forged paintings. Her secret weapon: […]
Two More Reasons To Go Indie – Print Units Fell 9% in 2011
No additional commentary needed. These excerpts are from Publisher’s Weekly and show why legacy publishing is sinking. Print Units Fell 9% in 2011 “The final numbers from Nielsen BookScan are in for 2011 and they show that print sales through the outlets it tracks fell by just over 9% in the year. Total units sold […]
How To Send A Kindle Book As A Gift
Sure, Christmas and Chanukah are behind us (or way, way, ahead) but here comes Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, birthdays etc. And because there were a record number of ereaders sold over the holidays, giving someone a Kindle book as a gift fits the bill … especially if you’ve waited until the night before […]
Ground The Airbus A380: Not sky-worthy, say engineers
This is not Die By Wire’s precise reason for calling fly-by-wire aircraft “death traps.” But it does emphasize that we should not be gullible when it comes to accepting the airline industry’s assurances Ground The Airbus A380: Not sky-worthy, say engineers “Australian aircraft engineers have called for Airbus A380 – the world’s biggest passenger aircraft […]
Software bug fingered as cause of Aussie A330 plunge
In Die By Wire, I talk about the software and hardware vulnerablities inherent in fly-by-wire computer systems. In that book, the villain, through a series of corporate shells, buys a reliability testing company that services airliner computer systems. His aim: even if you can’t eliminate all the bugs (like the Aussie A330’s) you can exploit […]
John Orser: The English Professor Who Changed My Life
Die By Wire is dedicated to John Orser, my freshman English professor at Corning Community College. John was first person ever to tell me I had a future as a writer. This was bizarre. After all, I was a science and math geek. What’s more, I had always been a weird science wonk (International Science […]
Quantum Theories Of Consciousness Get More Likely (And The Idea Of Determinism Less Likely)
In Perfect Killer, I write about the emerging theories of consciousness being rooted in the quantum levels of the brain. One of the issues that the “meat is everything scientists have with this is their belief (belief — not scientific evidence, mind you) that quantum coherence cannot exist at the temperatures where organic cells function. […]
Don’t Buy My Book If …
If you’re going to buy only one book this holiday season, don’t buy any of mine. Buy one from Peter Winkler who makes me ashamed ever to think again that writing us a struggle for me. In fact, you should buy a lot of copies of his book and give them as gifts. From the […]
First Non-Racist Gov. Of Mississippi & My Former Boss Dies
From the New York Times today: “William L. Waller, who as a prosecutor in 1964 twice tried to convict the segregationist Byron De La Beckwith of murdering the civil rights leader Medgar Evers, and who in 1971 forged a coalition of poor whites and newly enfranchised blacks to become governor of Mississippi, died Wednesday in […]
