Podcast with Tech Central Station in the works

Dateline: In the Shire, Indy, 12 January 2006

Gave good 45 minutes over the phone with Max Borders. TCSdaily.com (a publication of Tech Central Station) will do edited podcast and maybe a transcript.

Borders was good. Interview was thus easy, despite the long holiday layover.

I am getting, for weeks now, a real flood of AskTom emails that are particularly good. Plenty of people who've read both PNM and BFA, and pushing me on further points. I find my replies getting better and better (any good interview is driven by the interviewer, as I've often pointed out), and that I'm taking the key points and punching them into a file of ideas I maintain on my Treo for Vol. III of the PNM series.

Having that great give-and-take brings my out of the January doldrums. Too early to discuss Vol. III with Putnam, but I know I will write it (as does Mark Warren) and publish it somewhere eventually. My fun working title is "Release the Inner Grand Strategist in You!"

I don't feel the need to crank this one as fast as BFA. First, I'm a bit winded from the last two years. Two, I would like to settle in the house this year, as well as go full-court press with Enterra, because there are so many great opportunities to go great and good things through it with the government. I say, "as fast," because I am committed to the notion that III comes out in the spring, like PNM. I found the fall release too damn hard (and crowded). So either I write III next summer and fall for the spring of 07, or I bide my time for the next go-around and catch the spring 08 release date. I am partial to the second scenario for the reasons cited, and simply because it makes sense to me in terms of the maturation/flow of my thinking. I just feel like taking more time this time.

Then again, if Putnam were to like III for the spring of 07, I would take up the challenge like anyone would. I just will be okay if it doesn't work out that way, because the pace might be better, and it would give both PNM and BFA time to keep building and spreading and doing their thing.

Also, in this longer pathway, I wouldn't seek publication of my prequel manuscript (the "Hobbit" to my "Lord of the Rings" trilogy" until 2009, when the main subject of the book would be reaching her 18th birthday ... which would feel about right to me.

But I digress ...

All these emails make for a good biweekly newsletter.

Yes, Steffany and I decided to go two times a month, because weekly was just too much! So the plan now is: mid-month is guest writer (this next time my long-time mentor from the Center for Naval Analyses Hank Gaffney, in a great essay) and end of month will be me. But in both issues lotsa Q&A with readers, which I think are getting better and better because you write better and better questions. So thanks for all your efforts.

UPDATE: The transcript, audio excerpt, and iTunes podcast instructions (search for keyword "TCS" in the iTunes Podcast directory) for the TCS interview with Max Borders are now available. Other link: TCS Daily Podcast RSS feed.