Monthly Archives: February 2022

Full Spectrum Cyberwar

24 Thursday Feb 2022

Posted by in cyber war, Novel

≈ 1 Comment

Life imitating art. I don’t claim to be especially prescient, but the Russian-Ukraine conflict and Nord Stream 2 was the obvious background for the story I wanted to tell on hybrid warfare. My novel, Full Spectrum Cyberwar tells the story of what is currently playing out this week.

The graphic above illustrates how current affairs have impacted my book sales. I typically sell one book per month, so it’s easy to note trending from a zero sales line. The top graphic displays ebooks in orange and print in gray. Roughly half these are from the UK and roughly half are my second book Full Spectrum Cyberwar. The bottom graphic displays page reads from an Amazon program termed Kindle Page Reads. It allows Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscribers to buy by the page rather than commit to an actual book purchase. The royalties are significantly less, and I don’t have to opt-in to selling in this program, but it’s less about the revenue and more about getting people to read my book.

Especially with the Kindle pages-read program, the trend in my book sales is clearly correlated with Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Readers are searching for things like GRU and Nord Stream 2 paired with the term cyberwar. Hard to be proud of that, but the anti-mimesis is interesting nonetheless.

Run Nan, Run

20 Sunday Feb 2022

Posted by in Running

≈ Leave a comment

My little sister Nancy said she was thinking about running the Austin Half Marathon. I dared her to. Then I double dared her. And then I said if she would run it, I’d run it with her. It would be my third Austin Half. By the time we were finished daring each other to train through the winter, my brother, another of my sisters (I have countless sisters and grew up playing with paper dolls), and two of my many nieces all found themselves day-drinking in a swanky Austin hotel.

I wasn’t always playing with paper dolls while growing up. My brother is five or six years older, depending on the season, and taught me to play sports. He taught me to throw and hit a ball right-handed. Turns out I’m left-handed.

After a day and a half partying in downtown Austin, Nan and I found our way to the starting line Sunday morning. I gifted her the tech t-shirt the Christmas before last. A tip for other self-published authors; never overlook the opportunity of leveraging your siblings as billboards.

Nan was still smiling at mile 12 as she crossed the bridge over Lamar. Youth.

As we passed the Capitol, with maybe 200 yards to go, Nan had the audacity to ask me how much further we had to run. Thinking back, that was most of our conversation over the 13 mile course.

My sister Sandy captured our final steps on video, proof of another Austin Half completed.

Sandy led our nieces, Michelle and Brook up and down South Congress for the 5K.

They finished, hardly breaking a sweat. But then it was only forty-some degrees outside, which is chilly for Austin.

We all found ourselves at the finish for a team photo. And before everyone returned home to our five respective states, I turned them on to the amazing fries at Hyde Park Bar and Grill.

Running Sunrise to Sunset

13 Sunday Feb 2022

Posted by in Britt&Eric, Running

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

It’s not unusual for long runs, marathons and half marathons, to begin at sunrise. A 100K (62 mile) ultra will take you from sunrise to sunset. My son-in-law Eric is taking his first steps in this photo above in the Black Canyon 100K Ultra yesterday.

I wasn’t there to crew this time around, so I began my morning viewing the photos stream into my mobile. It seemed a no brainer to then choose “ultra” for my starter word in my morning Wordle ritual and I was rewarded with a hole-in-one, guessing correctly on the first row. Still, I was jealous of Eric’s parents getting to crew him to glory. Eric’s running mate, Matthew is standing to the right in the photo above.

Margot was the youngest member of the crew, held here in the early morning hours by her grandmother, Julie.

Eric called Brit a third of the way into the run to tell her he was considering dropping out. He felt that he had heat exhaustion. Black Canyon is high-altitude desert north of Phoenix. My response to that is, if you have never DNF’d in an ultra, then you haven’t run enough ultras. Brit told him to tough it out to the next aid station to see how he felt. Ten hours later, he was crossing this finish line.

Cyberpunk Runner

05 Saturday Feb 2022

Posted by in cyber war, Novel, Running

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

I met with Ellie today at Atomic Bob’s Burgers in Golden for lunch. A bit of a hole-in-the-wall but decent burgers. Running afterwards wasn’t easy on a full stomach and I found myself walking a bit. And it was windier than Alexa led me to believe, but it was a good sun and nice to get outside.

I’ve noticed a surge in book sales this past week from the UK, followed up by more reads than usual from the UK on this blog. I thought maybe they were finding my book by searching for Crimea or Ukraine since my second novel touches on that topic. Reviewing the analytics on it though showed the clicks coming from queries for cyber, cybersecurity and cyberpunk. Cyber, cyber, cyber.

Could still be related to the current events between Putin and the Ukraine. My book details the Russian use of cyberwar as a prelude to combat, hence the title – Full Spectrum Cyberwar. There are some good non-fiction reads out there if you want to brush up on the topic, as the Brits are apparently doing. I recommend fiction though, to keep things light.