January 8, 2023 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature:  34°F Outside Relative Humidity: 94% Sunrise: 7:07 AM EST January 8, 2023 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Stuff & Complexity Wind, Sand and Stars Gas Cooktops Footprints Cafe Literature Map Reidea Lighter PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress More Free Books Stuff & Complexity If you have just one stick, not much can go wrong. It's simple, and if you have a purpose for a stick, a simple stick will serve the purpose. But then you see a more sophisticated stick - one that has more features and does more things. So you get a second stick. You can handle an even more sophisticated stick, one with dual quasipods and high speed rear view mirrors. And now you're making more money so you can get other stuff besides sticks - whamdingers and tuntootlers and framfiddlers (to paraphrase Dr. Zeus). Every one of those devices adds convenience, color, and pleasure to your life. And brings complexity. A baby faces its mother and father and then adds more and more people to its life. And people add complexity. And people and stuff can go wrong. The more people and the more stuff, the more complexity. Limiting change limits complexity. But it also limits color in the tapestry of life. Not all color or complexity is pleasing. But even the simplest event - like a broken stick - is a splash of color and expands the experience of a life well lived. Stay well, Paul@paulhraymer.com Wind, Sand and Stars - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry    Saint-Exupéry is most famous for his Little Prince (Le Petit Prince), but he wrote some other exceptional books such as Wind, Stand and Stars and Flight to Arras. He was a French aviator who was born in 1900 and disappeared in 1944 during the second world war. Aviation was in its infancy during the first world war and the purpose of airplanes were just being explored. Saint-Ex loved flying and became an airmail pilot, delivering mail from Paris over the Pyrenees across the Mediterranean and the Sahara, flying across the South Atlantic and then over the South American continent, over the Andes to Chile. An extraordinary feat in an open cockpit. Wind, Sand and Stars recounts some of those adventures. Staint-Ex was a philosopher and wrote with the passion of a lover. He dives into the souls of the people he describes. One of the tales about his friend Guillaumet who crashed in the Andes includes the line, "What serves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it." Guillaumet was afraid that if he didn't manage to reach an obvious location, his body wouldn't be found and his wife wouldn't get his insurance and so he continued to move forward, step by step through the frigid air. This is not a major work, but it is beautifully written and reflects a world getting used to the beginnings of technologies - airplanes, automobiles, radio, telephone. The world confronted these changes with wars and economic upheavals, and Saint-Exupéry reflected the turbulence of those times superbly. Gas Cooktops People love gas stoves. But they're not good for health in homes. When things burn, lots of pollutants and particulates get emitted into the air. I have been told that chefs like them because they provide greater control of the heat on the pot. And since they are associated with fine cooking and great chefs, they get installed in high end homes, sporting six or eight burners. That may be true and I would be the first to tell you that I am not a chef, but induction stoves provide extraordinary control as well and they are a whole lot better for the environment. Gas stoves produce large amount of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) that is not good for the chef. According to the American Lung Association, NO2 "causes a range of harmful effects on the lungs including: Increased inflammation of the airways; Worsened cough and wheezing; Reduced lung function; Increased asthma attacks; and Greater likelihood of emergency department and hospital admissions. New research warns that NO2 is likely to be a cause of asthma in children." I want to say that there is something organic and living about the dancing flames of a gas stove and the shiny, smooth, glass surface of an induction stove is clinical and sterile. But any time we can get fire out of the house from cigarettes to gas stoves to gas furnaces, the better the air quality will be and the healthier the occupants. Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $24 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here Footprints Café Stefanie Corbin the proprietor of Footprints Cafe has moved her shop from Buzzards Bay to New Bedford, MA. New space. New year. Congratulations! 127 W. Rodney French Blvd. ~ 3rd FL New Bedford, MA 02744 Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole (These are things I use. I don't get paid to put them here, but I might be lucky if there is an affiliate link.) Literature Map This app lets you identify authors that are close to one another with a word cloud. Plug in an author you like (or hate) and find authors that are similar. The closer they are to your target author, the closer they will be in a variety of ways. This one is for John Kellerman. When I plugged in Robert Coover (one of my favorites), the names were spread out over my whole screen! (Thanks Jane Friedman) REIDEA Lighter My daughter gave me this thing for Christmas. I have collected a million books/boxes of matches over the years, so I was wondering what I was going to do with this. It's electronic. You charge it off your computer or USB block. You switch it on on the base and a blue light lights. And when you're ready to light something - woodstove, candle, etc. - you slide the switch forward and a little electronic arc appears on the end. It works great. I've been repairing the lines on a model boat and this thing cuts and seals the nylon line beautifully! Who knew? PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Second Law Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress  Confined Spaces is making progress. Confined spaces are not often pleasant places to be. Things That Go Bump in the Night Here's another free book opportunity. Bookfunnel provides a means for a group of authors to get together to give away electronic copies of their books in return for adding subscribers to their mailing lists. There are some great undiscovered authors in these books (including me!). Click this button and check them out. Free Books! If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 2,000 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

February 5, 2023 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature:  -5.2 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 53% Sunrise: 6:50 AM EST February 5, 2023 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Sales Master and Commander A House is a System Tell Us Something MagVent Fireplace/Woodstove Gloves PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress Sales I clearly remember my mother once telling me that if I wanted something I shouldn't buy it right away. I should walk away, think about it, and come back. Maybe by that time it might not be there or it would still be there but it might be on sale. I think that's what she told me. It seemed really wise at the time. I've been thinking about getting one of those big screen TVs. It is all picked out and the reviews were read, but I didn't have the place for it so I waited. And the price went down. Even then it didn't quite seem like the right time. So I waited. And the price went down some more. Here's the thing: when do you wait? And if companies can give these half-off sales, wasn't the product over-priced to begin with? I didn't always listen to my mother's advice, but this was one time that I am glad I did. The price of that TV is now about half of what I was going to buy it for back in September. Paul@paulhraymer.com Stay well, Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian It's been awhile since I read this one. When I just pulled it off my shelf, I had airline boarding passes from 24MAR00 - almost 23 years ago. All those years ago reading Master and Commander led me to reading all 20 of the Aubrey/Maturin novels, his book of short stories, along with Patrick O'Brian's biography, watching the movie and buying the music CD. And it didn't stop there: I went on to read Dewey Lambdin's and Dudley Pope's nautical novels and a handful of other sea stories. Living here on Cape Cod and loving to sail led me to nautical adventures of all kinds. There is something about those amazing ships with their acres of sails and masts as high as the sky. The thought of climbing up there in a howling gale with the thunderous roar of the canvas torn in the wind and the surface of the sea being rent asunder far below that puts me in awe of the sailors. And there is the seamanship to maneuver those massive craft into position to fire cannons at one another, taking into account the winds and currents and tides to fire a thirty-six pound cannon ball that would rip apart with wood of the opposing ship and send splinters flying. The friendship between Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin does not start well in this book, and there is a constant rubbing between the two characters throughout the series as they compliment and support each other. O'Brian's writing is masterful, and he has an extraordinary understanding of history, ships, the sea, and the British navy. This is a series worth reading for the skill of the writing as well as the spinning of a good yarn. A House is a System A house is a system. A house is a system. A house is a system. It's a fact. Things in a house work together and if you change one thing you're going to change something else. The trick is figuring out what else you changed. It goes back to the old song: there was an old lady who swallowed a fly. She swallows a spider to catch the fly. She swallows a bird to catch the spider. Etc. Etc. But I don't know why she swallowed the fly. A leak in the basement might be caused by high intensity recessed lights in the kitchen that cause an ice damn on the roof when the snow melts from the heat loss and the water runs down the wall and through a crack in the basement wall. If you heat your house or your hot water with an atmospheric combustion appliance where does the combustion air come from? Combustion systems need air and a difference in pressure between the area around the appliance in the chimney. If you work hard at reducing the drafts in the house, that's great, but it may be cutting off the air that is needed to drive the combustion gasses up the chimney. A furnace technician or an energy auditor can test the pressure in your flue and make sure the gasses are moving the right way - out! And as homes get tighter and more energy efficient, the margin for error gets smaller and smaller even though the space may become more comfortable and cost less to keep it that way. Care and understanding is required. Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $24 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here Tell us Something Magazines: What magazine (any format) do you subscribe to that more people should know about? Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole MagVent I just found about these today and I was going to hold off writing about them until I'd tried one, but I couldn't wait. We have a dryer that is jammed up against the wall and the duct wanders through an embarassing number of twists and turns to find its way outside. This is a magnetic fitting that joins the dryer to the exhaust pipe through the magic of magnetism. I ordered one right away. I'll let you know how it works out. Fireplace/Woodstove Gloves I don't know where these came from, but they've been great. When I'm feeding our woodstove and it's smokin' hot, I can reach in there and place a new log just where I want it without burning my hands. Most likely they are welder's gloves. You can find welders gloves of all flavors, but if you have to work with a woodstove, you should get yourself a pair of something like these. I've had this woodstove for over forty years, and these gloves just about as long. PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Second Law Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress There are times when the characters don't want to help, mornings when their coffee needs coffee. If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 2,000 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

November 27, 2022 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature: 45 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 62% Sunrise: 6:40 AM EST November 27, 2022 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Where are we going with this? New England Crime Bake Holiday Lighting Authors Worth Reading Soundprint Econo Heat Radiant Panel PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress   Where are we going with this? U-Haul has been around since 1945. The former gas station, present-day U-Haul rental lot in this picture is probably about as old. The building has accumulated all the stuff associated with automotive service and repair. There are shelves of ancient Chilton's Manuals which haven't been opened in years. In place of the gas pumps are planter tubs filled with dead plants. The proprietor looked like he had been there almost as long as the building, and I bet he would have some interesting tales to tell. It wasn't an evil place, but it looks like it would be a great setting for an intense mystery buried among the piles of old auto parts. You have to wonder if maybe there is an old Duesenberg back there that was dropped off for repair and never picked up. Before the interstate was completed, summer tourists would have stopped here to fill up on their way to the Cape. Buildings always have interesting stories to tell if you only listen. Paul@paulhraymer.com Stay well, New England Crime Bake This conference took place in Dedham, Massachusetts November 11 - 13. The guest of honor was William Martin, the author of Back Bay, City of Dreams, Bound for Gold, Citizen Washington, and Cape Cod. There were about 300 attendees who participated in about twenty different sessions. Most of them were panel discussions among over sixty panelists. There were a series of Master Classes on topics such as "The Dos and Don'ts of working with book bloggers", "First Line, First Paragraph, First Page" and "The Art of the Twist". There was also a series of sessions for interacting with editors and agents including sessions on "Practice your pitch", "First Page Critique", "Query Letter", and "One-on-one pitch sessions". These are wonderful opportunities to get in front of experienced literary agents not only to get their input on your writing but also to meet them face-to face. Trying to query an agent by email or snail-mail is a frustrating and time consuming job. I wasn't prepared to take advantage of this process, but I would consider this a primary value of attending one of these conferences. My favorite sessions at this conference came on the last day with Dr. Katherine Ramsland (author of I Scream Man) called Reading the Crime Scene and a second session by Dr. Margaret Press called Naming the Dead: Five years in the Trenches of the DNA Doe Project. It is absolutely amazing the things that real people can do to each other. People came to this conference from all across the country and when I asked them why the common line was, "It's the community." Building your tribe. Holiday Lighting Ooh! Aah! All those twinkly, sparkling lights that illuminate the season. Hard to believe that people used to put burning candles on their holiday trees. Then there were strings of incandescent lights. There were ones that had little water tubes that would get hot enough for the water to bubble up inside of them. These things are still available. Not exactly energy efficient. A 100-count string of incandescent mini lights runs at 40 watts, while a 70 count of 5mm wide angle LEDs is approximately 4.8 watts total. Neither of these strings of lights is going to break the bank on their own. After all, a door bell transformer sits waiting to be activated, sucking down a couple of watts. But there are many strings of lights, and they all add up. If you want to see how much an electric device is costing you, get a Kill-A-Watt device. You can enter the cost per kWH in your area and see how much electicity a string of lights, a refrigerator, or a dehumidifier is using. You might be surprised. That old beer fridge in the basement might be hanging in there doing a great job, but it may have a major impact on the electric bill. Dehumidifiers are particularly power hungry. One house I worked on saved almost half the electric bill by simply reducing the set point on the dehumidifier. About 60% RH or half way down the dial is a reasonable setting. Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $23 million for local bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here Authors Worth Reading Tana French is an excellent writer. There is a passage in "The Searcher" when her protagonist drinks too much, and after reading it I was fearful that I would wake up with a hangover the next morning.  TanaFrench.com Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole Soundprint I don't find noisy restaurants fun places to try to carry on a conversation. The Soundprint app can measure the noise level in public places and share the findings with other people who appreciate quiet environments. A map shows the decibel measurements of coffee shops, clubs, parks, and restaurants around the world and around the neighborhood. A list of the local restaurants around me rate the sound levels from Very Loud at the Glass Onion to Moderate at the Pickle Jar. Econo Heat Radiant Panel One of the issues with mini-split heat pump units is that very small units are not available for bathrooms. I have one of these radiant panels mounted on the wall of our bathroom. It is controlled by a wireless thermostat so that when the temperature in the bathroom drops below 68 F, the panel starts to warm the room. Although it is radiant heat, it just feels warm. It does not glow like the electric space heaters. The one that I have is a different brand, but it has been functioning for sixteen years. There's not a lot to go wrong! PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Second Law Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress Attacking the points of view. It is a challenge to see and feel the world imagined and lived by an inherently evil character. If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,900 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

December 11, 2022 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature: 51 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 94% Sunrise: 6:55 AM EST December 11, 2022 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: As the Earth Turns The Disappeared - C.J. Box Newsletter Comments Authors Worth Reading Fralinger's Almond Macaroons Asko Dishwasher PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress As the Earth Turns Across from my desk in the early morning hours, I look across the street and sometimes I can see the moon setting. It slowly appears to slide down the sky, through the trees, and behind my neighbor's house. The moon is like a mile marker on the side of the highway. It's an indicator of the turning earth that I am sitting on, moving at just the right speed to start another day. I can watch as it slowly and smoothly and inevitably moves into the past. And while the moon is setting on this side of my house, the sun is rising on the other side. So when I leave my study to get my coffee in the kitchen, the colors of the new day begin to glow and silhouette the trees in the east. And that just keeps happening. Stay well, Paul@paulhraymer.com The Disappeared - C.J.Box     Joe Pickett is a game warden in Wyoming. Like a good protagonist, life isn’t all ‘skittles and beer’ for him. But this book doesn’t begin with Joe Pickett. It begins in the small burg of Encampment, Wyoming where nasty things seem to be going on around the sawmill sawdust burner. It begins with the story of Wylie Frye who is tending to the burner, feeding it sawdust with a bucket loader and checking out messages on his cell phone. The story begins when a truck hits a dog and old Carol Schmidt catches the license plate. When Joe Pickett enters the story he is waiting for the new governor’s Citation jet at the Saddlestring Municipal Airport. He is met by the governor’s manager who sends him off in a completely unexpected direction to find a missing British PR mogul who has disappeared without a trace. And from there the story marches on through the blinding snow of a Wyoming winter. C.J. Box has written twenty-six books and The Disappeared is number twenty, published in 2018. Box pushes them out at a rate of one per year. I like the fact that this book stands on its own. Without knowing the details, it makes sense that the story is connected to the preceding Joe Pickett stories, but you don’t have to read them to get to this one. Joe is a likeable, comfortable, clean living protagonist. He leaves his ugly work to his buddy, Nate Romanowski who isn’t adverse to using a frozen trout as a club. Box portrays his characters smoothly and cleanly and the frigid air of the Wyoming winter is abundantly clear and very cold. He reflects the character of his villain through the eyes of a needy side-kick so there isn’t a great deal of depth to him. But that’s not what the story is about. The story is about Joe Pickett and his family, a dedicated public servant getting his job done despite the barriers of the bureaucracy and the world. And in this book, his job is finding the missing woman. And the reader knows from the beginning that he won’t stop until he gets that done. Newsletter Comments I love the comments that I get to this newsletter. Makes it worth writing. Chris Clay of the Opportunity Council in Bellingham, WA reacted to my story in the last issue about old buildings with new uses: "The BPC [Building Performance Center] got to remodel and use as our office what was originally a bus station built in 1922, 10 yrs after that it was changed to a car parts store and we made it into offices and WX shop in the year 2000. Lots of cool things we found in there like old newspapers, painted signs on the woodwork for where to catch the buses, old metal signs and a 1964 Chevy Impala SS hub cap. The story continues for the building as we have 13 brew pubs in town now and one of them has leased the building so now I can go over there and drink a beer in my old office." Larry Zarker of the Building Performance Institute (BPI) asked about the old car that I mentioned in the article: "What’s in the trunk of that Duesenberg?" Wayne Dean of Smart Ventilation reacted to the story I wrote about the Lotus Europa in the November 13th issue: "I read the first paragraph and was reminded of two Lotus Europas I owned. The first was a 71 with Renault engine, electric windows. It was red. I never learned how fast it would go as oil pressure would drop at high speed. I think it needed an oil cooler of mammoth proportions. It could get me quickly the 21 miles on back roads from my office to the courthouse. (Unless I was caught behind a low-moving deputy) I loved it. I was fearless. It got set afire in my front yard by way of a truck tire filled with newspapers and diesel fuel placed beneath the engine. I smelled plastic burning in the middle of the night and looked out the window. I had filled the fuel tank on my way home that day. I had filed a lawsuit against a Phoenix business that paid little attention to the law. My client immediately asked me to dismiss the lawsuit, as I think he feared for himself and family. I did. Got a death threat on butcher paper with words cut out of a magazine that I was near death. I immediately began to carry a concealed Mauser HSC .380 handgun. I didn’t shoot anyone until about two weeks later. (leg shot) Jury found me not guilty of ag battery.   Second Lotus Europa was an earlier one with clip in windows. It may have had a few more horsepower and was lighter. 1300 pound. Black, John Player Special replica. Soon acquired a Honda Civic for a much lower profile.   While in law school I had acquired a Lotus Elan S-2 with the big valve Lotus engine. Almost had to wear ballet slippers to operate the pedals. Ran out of money and had to sell it for $1500.00. Pity. 60,000 miles My muscles still remember the odd motions required to get either Europa into reverse." Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $23 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here Authors Worth Reading Belinda Bauer Belinda Bauer has written nine books. They are well written and unusual. Exit has an interesting perspective on death and aging. Snap is very troubling. I hope she writes more of them Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole Fralinger's Almond Macaroons So these are not devices or books or writing tools. I'm not sure that I would call them cookies. They're better than that. Fralinger's is the James Candy Company on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. These things are awesome! Keep them fresh and they are just the right kind of chewy with a wonderful almond flavor. (The James Candy Company sells other stuff too.) Asko Dishwasher I probably shouldn't write this so as not to jinx it, but we have had this Asko dishwasher for about fifteen years. According to Consumer Reports, the  manufacturers surveyed say that the life expectancy of a dishwasher is ten years. and that issues with appliances tend to develop within the first five years. There isn't anything fancy about this dishwasher. It just works and for that I am grateful. PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Second Law Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress I may have mentioned this before, but point of view or POV is a difficult challenge. Crawling inside the head of a character and seeing, hearing, tasting, measuring the world just the way they do can be very scary. If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,900 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Note that all the issues of this newsletter are available on www.PaulHRaymer.com Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

December 25, 2022 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature:  29°F Outside Relative Humidity: 85% Sunrise: 7:05 AM EST September 4, 2022 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Your Call is Important to us Writing Resources Cold weather safety - indoors Elizabeth George PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress Free Books! Salute "Your call is important to us ..." All these automatic telephone systems are just great. Although I am not sure for whom. If you happen to have the dubious pleasure to need to call for assistance and you're using an iPhone, you should know that iPhones are set to time out of a call after 4 hours and one minute. I've been on hold a lot recently and after listening to the same saxophone riff for four hours, my phone efficiently cut off the call. I thought it was the pleasant people on the other end who just hung it up, so I redialed, jumped through the opening hoops again, and hung on for another four hours when the call abruptly cut itself off again. Apparently, Apple built that feature in for butt dialed, unintentional calls. They probably never thought that anyone would stay on hold for that long. I'm thinking of making a playlist of on-hold music interrupted by the occasional public service message! But if you have to make a call, I hope you get the best, real, most helpful customer service person in the world. Happy holidays. Paul@paulhraymer.com Stay well, Writing Resources There are an enormous number of books about writing and editing and story crafting. These are a few of the ones on my shelf; Stephen King - On Writing Elizabeth George - Write Away Grant Richards - How to Write a Novel (1901) Natalie Goldberg - Writing Down the Bones Then there are some great references: James Charlton - The Writer's Quotation Book Laurel Yorke - Beyond the First Draft William Strunk & E.B. White - The Elements of Style Roget's Thesaurus Garner's Modern English Usage Becca Puglisi & Angela Ackerman - The Emotion Thesaurus J.I. Rodale - The Synonym Finder Linda N. Edelstein - The Writer's Guide to Character Traits Fay Faron - Rip Off - A Writer's Guide to Crimes of Deception Joe Navarro - What Every Body is Saying Lee Lofland - Police Procedure & Investigation A little light after the holiday reading! Cold weather safety - indoors Just a couple of highlights here: Anything that burns will produce some level of carbon monoxide. Anything that burns be it candles, fireplaces, gas ranges. Generally the levels are very low. If your CO detector goes off, don't try to defeat it. It's not at all like a smoke detector. You can't wave a towel at it and hope that it will stop being annoying. And don't take the batteries out. If you lose power, don't bring your generator into the garage and run it - even with the garage door open. I know it's cold and miserable outside, but you want to live through the weather event. Don't idle your car in the garage to warm it up - even with a remote start. Cars produce CO too. Make sure your furnace, boiler, and water heater are drafting properly. The exhaust gases have to go up the chimney and out of the house. Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $24 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here Writers Worth Reading Elizabeth George Elizabeth George is a professional writer the way Beethoven is a professional composer or Stan Getz is a professional sax player. There is just something in the way she handles words. She writes mystery stories about Inspector Lynley. Her latest is Something to Hide. Salute I want to salute the truck and bus drivers who have to drive through nasty weather to get people and packages to their destinations. I also want to salute the pilots who have to fly people home to their families and their own families who worry about them flying through stormy skies. I also want to recognize people who work in restaurants on holidays and those front line, customer service people who have to face grouchy, last minute shoppers with a smile. Happy holidays to all and thanks for being there. As Robert Palmer said, "It takes every kinda people to make the world go 'round." PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Second Law Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress It's amazing to me how characters can take over a tale and twist it around to make it go where they want it to. And if you dare to try to change their minds, it all falls apart! Fill Up Your eReader for Free! If you just got a new eReader, Bookfunnel provides a means for a group of authors to get together to give away electronic copies of their books in return for adding subscribers to their mailing lists. There are some great undiscovered authors in these books. Chick this button and check them out. Free books! If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,900 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

November 13, 2022 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature: 38 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 51% Sunrise: 6:24 AM EST November 13, 2022 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Cars The Black Wolf - Samantha Raymer ACCA Manual J Bose Roomate Speakers Caraway Cookware PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress Cars - There is something about a special car that is unexplainable. I could have slept in this car. (It wasn't much bigger than a bed anyway. It was bright yellow. The windows didn't open. It was all fiberglass so I couldn't put a radio in it because there was no way to ground it. But it was a head turner and wonderful to drive. Maybe it's not cars for everyone. Maybe it's shoes or electronic equipment or a musical instrument. This car was like a drug. When I got in it and accepted the fact that it was mine, it was a feeling like no other. I don't have the right words to explain it or define the feeling. It was just an object. There are many powerful emotions that defy description. Maybe once I can define that feeling, I'll have written a Nobel prize winning novel. Stay well, Paul@paulhraymer.com The Black Wolf - Samantha Raymer The Legend of Moonglade Book One In a world where everyone has a living spirit animal to accompany them through their lives and bestow them with special powers, superstition prohibits association with just one animal: a black wolf.  Zuri, the protagonist of this tale, is a member of the Wolf Clan and when it comes time for a wolf to select her, a black wolf pup chooses her. And so the clan condemn her to growing up as an outcast.   The world of Akaidia has been divided into clans: Wolf Clan, Serpent Clan, Panther Clan, and Hawk Clan. After the choosing, the black wolf is expelled from the clan and Zuri is shunned, chosen only for the most menial of tasks. But one day outside of the camp, when Zuri is fourteen, the black wolf finds her and they communicate telepathically. When the clan discovers this relationship, she is chased out to the edge of the cliff that hangs over the ocean. Zuri has to choose whether to stay where she is to be killed by the clan or leap off the cliff to what seems like certain death.   Ms. Raymer handles such cliff hangers with skill. She has created a world that has self-destructed under the influence of an evil power that has divided all the people, separated them into warring clans, and spread them apart while the source of the ultimate evil is trapped but growing ever stronger. Ms. Raymer has populated the world with wise teenagers who use their knowledge and the power of their animals to thrive together despite the blindness of the majority of adults.   The Black Wolf is the first novel for this talented thirteen-year-old author. It is an extraordinary start to what promises to be an exceptional artistic ride. It expresses mature writing skills generated from extensive reading, immersion in the world of fantastic tales, determination, and joy in the journey.   ACCA Manual J ACCA is the Air Conditioning Contractors of America. They have created a whole lot of documents to describe and define various aspect of heating and cooling systems. Manual J describes the heating and cooling loads of every room in a house so that the heating and/or cooling system can be properly sized to keep the occupants comfortable throughout the year. Every surface in the house has the ability to resist the flow of heat. That resistance is referred to as its 'R' value. A wall is made up of a series of components from the inside of the house to the outside - sheetrock to shingles. The better the resistance the better the wall is at keeping the heat in in winter and and keeping the heat out in summer. Each room in the house is made up of all those surfaces. A heating and cooling contractor can use that process to design a system that will keep every room comfortable throughout the year. Adding up all the loads of all the rooms provides the heat retention capability of the whole house. It takes some work to do all those calculations  and even though there is software that you can plug the information into and it will do all the math, contractors are not fond of what they consider to be extra work. But if the system is too big, it won't operate efficiently and will be less comfortable than a system that is properly sized. So if you are thinking of installing a heat pump system, be sure you ask your contractor for the Manual J. They might tell you that there is no need to do Manual J calculations or that the calculations are always wrong anyway. Manual J is a sophisticated tool, and just like any other tool, it takes patience and dedication to learn how to use it properly.   Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $23 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole Bose Roomate Speakers They don't make these any more. I have a pair of them sitting on my 5 foot long desk. So they are nicely separated and it is very pleasant sitting here listening to all my music. I have had these since the late 1980's. And they still work great. Call me old-fashioned but I'm a fan of stereo separation. There are a bunch of used ones available on-line. Caraway Cookware I can't claim this one. I'm not the chef in this house. But this Caraway pan is used every day. It is made with naturally smooth ceramic, not synthetics like polytetrafluoroethylene (such as Teflon®)—an impossible to pronounce chemical that can leach toxic substances into your food and the air. It is beautifully made and a pleasure to use. But I don't think I'm going to work it into a plot any time soon. PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Second Law Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress Confined Spaces Oh, what a tangled web is woven here. A year in and about half-way through the first draft. If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,900 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

October 31, 2021 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature: 56 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 93% Sunrise: 7:11 AM EDT October 31, 2021 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Wind Pressure and Falling Trees Ghoulies & Ghosties Things that Go BUMP in the House Storybook Cove Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress   Wind Pressure and Falling Trees It is certainly the season when things go “bump in the night”.  Last night a significant fall Nor’easter smacked into Cape Cod. The winds were louder during the night than I’ve ever heard them in all the years I have lived in this house. Parts of this house have been here for over 150 years and has survived many storms and that is  a comfort when one is lying in bed listening to the storm windows singing and shutters banging. Transformers exploded during the night, lighting up the sky. A 50 foot tree was pushed over in our yard. People walk by and take selfies standing in front of the branches. It's just air, isn't it? It's all around you as you read this. How can air be strong enough to push over a gigantic tree? They called what happened here a 'bomb cyclone' - a reflection of a rapid drop in pressure. It scary how strong the wind - the movement of air - can be. We lost power and the internet. I was shocked to realize how connected I am to the electronic world. I thought when the electricity came back on so would my connection to the internet, the phones, email, and TV. How did I get so far from my manual typewriter, roof-top TV antenna, and land-line phone? The drop in pressure and the wind it caused pulled the plug. I'll have to put that in a story. Stay well, Paul@paulhraymer.com Ghoulies & Ghosties How much do you really understand about your house? How much do you understand the systems and the materials? For example, did you know that Stachybotrys chartarum mold spores are too heavy to float around on air currents? The spores are imbedded in the gypsum board during the manufacturing process, the board is installed on the walls, and the spores lie dormant until the gypsum board gets wet. Then deadly black mold grows. (Rob Dunn does a spectacular job of mapping out many of these real, scary things in his non-fiction book called Never Home Alone.) But nature is really patient which can make it difficult for a story teller to use the effects of the second law of thermodynamics to work as a killer weapon. The second law compels equilibrium - hot goes to cold, wet goes too dry, high pressure goes to low pressure. The temperature of a gin and tonic with ice cubes will reach room temperature given time. It is a challenge to use such long term, seemingly unpredictable forces to kill someone on cue. So writers resort to conjuring up ghoulies and ghosties and long legged beasties to annoy, torture, and tantalize. But it’s not the physical components of the house itself that are doing the tormenting. Many of the old family houses are grand mansions, meant to impress, with hundreds of rooms. (Some mysteriously have more space inside than outside.) Some of them are as simple as a London flat as in Jemma Wayne’s To Dare or the cottage in Billy O’Callaghan’s The Dead House. In Noel Vindry’s locked room novel, The House that Kills, the house of stones is definitely an innocent bystander that gets attacked by investigators with picks and shovels seeking a secret passage. (As a house investigator, I found it particularly telling that the investigators in this 1932 novel used a perfume as a tracer gas to find air currents.) The only book I have found (until my own Death at the Edge of the Diamond) where the house is actually used as a weapon is 17 Church Row by James Carol. The concept of that story makes reading these words electronically truly scary.   Things that Go BUMP in the House Houses make a lot of noises. They creak in the wind, settle on their foundations, tick the pipes, ducts, and radiators, and bang loose shutters. Equipment cycles on and off: refrigerators, boilers, furnaces, AC systems, attic fans, and bathroom fans. It is a lot like the stomach of the beast rumbling when it’s hungry or just complaining. You get used to the sounds over time. You know when things are cycling and you can even miss the sound if it doesn’t happen when you expect it to.   There are times when a disconnect occurs between the occupant and the familiar household bumps and twangs. Just say you came home from a long weekend and the house is dark and cold. And you stand by the door listening and you hear a tap-tap-tap and you say, “Oh, that’s the whooseewhatsits.” And you pause and think, “But wait, the whooseewhatsits shouldn’t be running now! I know I turned it off before I left.” Now your anxiety has cranked up a notch and then you catch an unfamiliar smell. “Is that gas?” You think. You feel a draft, and a door swings open, and there seems to be an unfamiliar light in an upstairs hallway.   The house isn’t causing the problem. It’s you. It’s your anxieties that are turning the house into a villain – filling it with goblins and murderers lying in wait. It’s not the house. Honest. Houses can certainly seem to have spirits from all the lives and all the events that happened inside their walls. But sometimes the familiar can just disconnect. That’s why little kids or dolls or even clowns can change the pleasant to the unpleasant. It’s the surprise that is so scary. Dark houses can conjure up spirits in the mind. When you scare yourself, just keep in mind it's just thermodynamics. Honest. Nothing to be afraid of. Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $16 million of bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here. Storybook Cove Hanover, MA Storybook Cove is a more than 20-year-old independent business run by Janet Bibeau. It has all of the features of a good bookstore, such as reading time, toys and a special doll boutique. It features a wide array of children’s book, so parents can rely on Storybook Cove for one-stop book shopping. The real highlight of this great local store is what you can get back from it. Frequent book buyers can opt into the “Preferred Customer Program” and earn back the average of each purchase in store credit. That means that they can save as much as they spend at Storybook Cove.   2053 Washington St. Hanover, MA 02339 (781) 871-7801 www.storybookcove.com Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole Easily Finding TV and Film Scenes Flim (still in beta) allows you to search TV/film for specific things. Like lobsters or Scary Houses. Or anything you want. You can also filter by type of media, genre, release year, and more. Looking for a type of movie? JustWatch: This is impressive: you can type in a brief plot description of a movie you’d like to see and get instant results. Here’s what I tried: aspiring author decides to build a house. Top two results: Venus in Fur, I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House. It would be great to see this for books!  Promote your podcast with video Headliner: The cool factor of this tool almost makes me wish I had a podcast. (Almost.) Headliner puts together spiffy, dynamic videos that look tempting on social media. You can select whatever clips you want, have closed captions, and export in multiple sizes. PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress The new novel - Second Law - using AI editing software to pull up all the typos and word nasties and all the sticky sentences and instances of passive voice. It can be painful! Big Autumn eBook Giveaway - Romance - Mystery - Suspense - Thrillers Click for Free Books! If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,000 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

October 17, 2021 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature: 57 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 93% Sunrise: 6:54 AM EDT October 17, 2021 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Time Dead by Dawn - Paul Doiron Building Science Resources Borgin's Books - Plymouth Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress   Time - Can you mark the passage of time by the stuff in your life? What stuff? How much of it should be kept in the family and passed on from generation to generation? Years ago I met a very inspirational woman who grew up in a family who had fallen on tough times. They lived in mobile homes and put their stuff in storage containers when they were forced to move because they couldn't pay the rent. And when they couldn't pay the rent on the storage locker, all that stuff was gone as well. So when she was in school, she had no pictures of herself as a child. She overcame that difficult childhood and went on to get her PhD and turn to helping other people. On the other hand, I have been blessed with an overwhelming amount of stuff. "The attic's full and the closets are bursting at the seams!" I have pictures of ancestors that I don't recognize. I have my great aunt's stamp collection. I have my grandfather's pocket watch and the watch my mother gave my father at their wedding on June 6, 1944. I have this fan that my grandmother loaned to some exhibit that she noted was purchased in Paris in 1844. It does give one a unique perspective on the passage of time to hold an object that was around when John Tyler (10th president of the U.S.) was in office. It makes it seem like it wasn't so long ago. Do people care about family history stuff any more? If you give someone an Apple watch to mark their retirement, that won't last for 100 years. It won't be something that will mark the passage of generations! Although the monetary value of an object can be good for the bank account, isn't it the history that has the real value? Over the years we have to shed stuff, leave it behind, or it would be impossible to move forward. It is the luxury of being able to decide what to keep and the stories they tell that has real value. Stay well, Paul@paulhraymer.com Dead by Dawn - Paul Doiron Mike Bowditch, Maine game warden extraordinaire, has made a name for himself among some naturally nasty people. In the opening scene in this novel, his Jeep plunges off the edge of the road and down into the partially frozen Androscoggin river. He and his wolf-dog rapidly submerge in the freezing water. The chapters in the book alternate between Bowditch's survival efforts and his activities earlier in the day that got him into this predicament. He is just taking his dog (wolf) to the vet, and was just going to make a quick stop to check up on a complaint about a potentially mishandled investigation. But Bowditch is a curious character and follows lead after lead until the sun has set, he begins his journey home, and is ambushed. Mike Bowditch is a great character and has proven his bravery and curiosity about life through the series of Doiron's books. Another thing I like about this book is that it matches its genres of both mystery and thriller. It is a mystery right from the opening scene as to why this deadly scenario is happening. And it is a thriller as to how Bowditch is going to extricate himself from the multiple 'crucible' situations that Doiron puts his protagonist in, chapter after chapter. Just when you think he has come up with a clever way to get dry and warm and get home for Christmas, his tormentors inflict another wound. One other thing: Doiron keeps fans hanging about Bowditch's situation with women. That may be another author cliff hanger to keep love-story readers hanging from book to book. This book, written in the first person, alternates between the present and the past tense until the two story lines finally merge. Poul Doiron is one of my favorite contemporary writers. His books are a pleasure to read, and I'm sure that's because he takes pleasure in writing them. Paul Doiron - Dead by Dawn Building Science Resources One might think that there is little change in the fundamental nature of buildings since Newton had that apple plunk down on his head. Not so. I have been working with this stuff for over forty years now, and I am amazed at how much new information is available every day. It would be great if all of it could be loaded immediately into the head of those just entering the field, but I'm afraid that an enormous amount is ignored or constantly forgotten. Here are a handful of wonderful websites that serve as fundamental resources. Building Science Corporation: The articles on this site are the go-to resource on a wide range of subjects. Although they are based on engineering principles, they have been generated from years of practical experience, working with people and materials in the field. Dr. Joe Lstiburek has an exceptional sense of humor and doesn't bow to stuffy, professional writing to get his message across. Energy Vanguard: Allison Bailes has been writing his blog about these topics for years. I have seen him sitting at conferences dashing off daily information about things he has just learned. His newsletter is definitely worth signing up for. And good news: he has just completed pulling all this information together for a book which I am sure will be a bible that people will be able to turn to. Building America Solutions Center: This is a government website that has survived and grown for years. It is full of articles and drawings that can be used in publications and research papers. There is so much stuff on this site that it can be overwhelming. But you've paid for this. It is truly an authoritative resource you can turn to. Home Diagnosis TV Show: Then there is Grace and Corbett Lundsford's TV show. You can watch video's about all sorts of building science stuff! Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $16 million of bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and Bookshops in the Newsletter Borgin's Books - Plymouth Borgin's Books is an independently owned bookshop that boasts a selection of local authors, some bestselling authors and hopefully some new authors that may spark your interest. We have a selection of children's books, classics, local history, and fiction for all genres. There are also several book themed gifts to choose from for any book enthusiast. 12 North Street   Plymouth, MA   02360 Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole Story Plotting Software. There are a lot of choices. Scrivener has been a longtime favorite, but there’s also Novel Factory, Plottr, and Plot Factory. Dave Chesson at Kindlepreneur helpfully reviews the most well-known tools and offers a compare-and-contrast piece. If you don’t want to read about them, he’s also recorded a video. Newspaper Research. Elefind accesses 3,866,107 Newspapers — 4,345 Newspaper Files for stories you may need information on. A treasure trove for genealogists, reporters and writers. PowerPoint Slide Templates: I don't know about you, but I seem to be doing ever more presentations sitting behind my desk, and I'm getting a bit tired of the same old templates. Here are some new choices: Slides Carnival, SlidesGo, and SlidesMania. PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work in-Progress Second Law - It's getting there! Over half-way through the rework. Goal is to have it back out to final editing in mid-November. Time flies. Words don't always follow suit. Big Autumn eBook Giveaway - Romance | Mystery | Suspense | Thrillers Click for Free Books! If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,000 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

October 3, 2021 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature: 56 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 62% Sunrise: 6:40 AM EDT October 3, 2021 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Learning - The End of Everything - Megan Abbott Recovery Ventilators Parnassus Book Service, Inc. Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress   Learning - Yesterday I was walking past my local elementary school. Second and third grade students were playing and learning out in the sunshine under the watchful eyes of their teachers. Several thoughts struck me: the first was wonder at how timeless those young people are. They will never change. They will always be children. Of course that isn't true. They will grow up and become adults just the way my students in that picture have. But as I walked past, they seemed ageless. The other thought that struck me was that those teachers are shaping the beginning of the path to learning that will follow those children for the rest of their lives - and that seems like a very, very important job. More important on the scale of importance than being able to throw a football. The median salary for an NFL player is $860,000. The average salary for an elementary school teacher is $47,260. Imagine what would happen if we flipped that - teachers got $860,000 and football players get paid $47,260! The easiest thing to imagine in that scenario is that I wouldn't be watching the Patriots take on Tom Brady and the Buccaneers this evening. It wouldn't even be broadcast. I have the greatest respect for those teachers outside in the sunshine with their students. They do that job for the love of the job. They impact the future of the planet. I don't think a professional athlete has quite the same impact because they say, "There's always next year." Stay well, Paul@paulhraymer.com The End of Everything - Megan Abbott I don’t think I will make many people will be happy with my feelings about this book. There are pages and pages of raving reviews included with the book, but I must have missed something because I couldn’t wait for it to get to the end. The structure of the story reminded me of Nabokov’s Lolita, told from an outside observer’s point of view - like a neighbor left behind. The story is written in the present tense by thirteen-year-old Lizzie Hood. Lizzie’s neighbor and best friend, Evie, vanishes, and the story centers on figuring out what has happened to her. Is she dead? Has she been raped, murdered, and dumped in the lake? Lizzie thinks she should know more intuitively. After all, she and Evie did everything together. They lived like sisters. There are numerous sexual innuendos in the story: Evie’s father flirts with Lizzie and Evie’s sister, Dusty. Lizzie’s mother is having sex with a local doctor. And then there is the mysterious man who may have spirited Evie away, fragmenting his own family in the process. Telling tales in the present tense is difficult because, frankly, the reader is not there where Lizzie is telling the story. Abbott is certainly a skilled writer. A reviewer from the Los Angeles Times called the book a “psychological thriller and a freshly imagined coming-of-age story”. I’m good with the psychological and the coming-of-age, but I don’t see the ‘thriller’ component. Maybe because I really didn’t care what happened to the characters. End of Everything - Megan Abbott Recovery Ventilators Tight houses need mechanical ventilation. It's not a question. It's a fact. Houses used to rely on drafts and convective flows to circulate air. Making a house tight is great for a lot of issues including comfort, energy efficiency, and operating cost. BUT a tight house is not drafty by design. A mechanical system is required to circulate new air throughout the house and expel old air. The second law of thermodynamics states that heat moves from places that are warmer to places that are cooler. And moisture moves from places that are wetter to places that are dryer. Heat and energy recovery ventilators (HRV/ERVs) guide the old air to an exchanger box. The heat from the warmer air stream is transferred through the exchanger to the cooler air stream without mixing! Moisture from the wetter air stream moves to the drier air stream - again without mixing. The key to the effectiveness of this system is the distribution: the solution to pollution is distribution dilution. The most effective way to accomplish this is to duct the new air to all the rooms in the house. If the new air is simply added to the conditioned air ducting, there is no way of knowing how much new air is being delivered to each room. It may be only slightly better than natural convective ventilation. There is a lot more to this, and I am concerned that many of these systems are being installed without adequate thought and care. For more information on HRV/ERV ventilation take a look at the Building America Solutions Center website. Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $16 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books and bookshops I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for Books & Bookshops in this Newsletter   Parnassus Book Service, Inc.   Known as Knowles General Store and built in the early 1800s, the building housed a general store for many years. Our family have run a general book store selling new and old (often rare) books as well as issuing specialty catalogs on a variety of subjects: Americana, Latin America, Maritime, Art, the Orient and a variety of other subjects. As a new world appears on the horizon requiring roads not previously taken, Parnassus is changing too. We will continue offering new and old books on interesting subjects, on the Internet and in Yarmouthport. We look forward to seeing you. 220 Route 6A | Yarmouthport, MA 02675 | (508) 362-6420 | sarah@parnassusbooks.com Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole Grammarly: This is an extensive writing assistance tool - much more than just punctuation and spelling. It is an AI-powered writing assistant. It organizes wrting feedback and helps readers to understand the message you are trying to get across. And it works with email, documents, projects, and social media. ProWritingAid: A more extensive writing assistance tool. I tried this on a draft of my new novel - Second Law. Turned up some interesting stuff. Live copy editors can be expensive. This might be a worthwhile investment - especially if I can compare it to a live editor. Bookboro: I like the concept here. It seems like it is kind of a book club for works in progress. It's a critique service. I would love to hear about any experience or thoughts on this one. PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress Second Law is experiencing some major re-tuning of characters to make them 'tweak' some ears and kick some shins. Oh, and then there is the rewrite of the beginning. Big Autumn eBook Giveaway - Romance | Mystery | Suspense | Thrillers Click for Free Books! If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,000 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

August 8, 2021 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature: 72 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 95% Sunrise: 5:43AM EDT August 8, 2021 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Professionalism Unfinished Business - J.A. Jance EPA's Indoor airPLUS Edgartown Books Benjamin Bunny and the Rabbit Hole PHR Books PHR Work-in-Progress Your Turn Professionalism - I love professionals -- not just people who are professional because they get paid for what they do. But people who love what they do and do it with skill and grace. I remember watching a crew behind the counter at a delicatessen dance around each other, never missing a step and never missing a beat. I just had an enormous tree removed from my back yard. There were three professionals who all knew their jobs and how their tasks complimented and did not conflict with each other. I really love customer service professionals. They are pretty rare, but when they can do their (often thankless) job with compassion and grace, it is a joy to behold. I understand that finding good help is a problem everywhere. Usually, here on Cape Cod, students love to come and work the retail jobs and enjoy the sun and beaches. These folks have little training or experience in the jobs they are doing, but there is absolutely NO REASON for customers to take out their frustrations on them with expressions like, "I hope you get hit by a car on your way home!" The fact is that we all need to be professionals too, especially when we are customers. it's an interaction of people's lives. Thank a professional today! Stay well, Paul Paul H. Raymer Unfinished Business - J.A. Jance Ali Reynolds Series #16 Genre: Thrillers & Suspense "In this heart-pounding and sharply written thriller from J.A. Jance, the 'grand master of the genre' (The Providence Journal), Ali Reynolds's personal life is thrown into turmoil . . ." so the review promises. I mean, I've had a hear attack but this book didn't send me to my cardiologist. "Sharply written"? I'm not sure what that means. J.A. Jance has written forty-six contemporary novels in this genre. She is a professional. She travels a lot (at least she used to before the pandemic). I like professionals as I mentioned above.They know what they are doing, and they do it well. But this book seems like it was written in a kind of a hurry to meet a contract obligation perhaps. There is an interesting plot element of a guy in jail for a murder that he didn't commit and is unwilling to admit that he did it just to get out earlier on parole All the while he is in prison he studied computer science so that he can get a good job and turn his life around when he gets out. Pasted on top of this is a nasty character who has killed a number of people--including his mother--who has settled into trying to make a living as a home inspector. But he doesn't pay his rent and gets evicted by Ali Reynolds, which causes him to develop a serious grudge putting Ali and members of her staff in the way of a psychotic killer. Meanwhile, Ali's father is losing his mind, causing Ali other extenuating problems. Ali is the thread that ties all these pieces together, and I guess if you've read the other books in the series you could empathize with the character develoopment. But this was my first experience with J.A. Jance and Ali Reynolds so I found this story a bit like one of those threatening murder notes where the words are cut out of different printed articles: they delivered the message, but it wasn't a joy to read. EPA's Indoor airPLUS If you are building a new house, you might consider having it built to ENERGY STAR for Homes or even Zero Energy Ready Homes (ZERH) standards. Those programs include fantastic details for energy efficiency. With ZERH, the house can actually generate more energy than it uses so that instead of paying for electricity, you can get PAID! This was just a theoretical dream until recently. If you are going to go that far, it doesn't take much to consider the air quality in your energy efficient home. Indoor airPLUS (IAP) does exactly that. The standard builds on the energy efficient criteria. IAP highlights seven elements: moisture, radon, pest barriers, hvac (heating, cooling and ventilation), combustion pollutant control, low emission materials, and home commissioning. Most of the elements are only minor, common sense adjustments to a well built home. The fact is that just building to code now requires a very tight house, so it is an excellent and common sensical (if there is such a word) idea to not keep nasty stuff inside. And the first step in doing that is to not bring it into the house in the first place. So keeping the water (and moisture) and pests out just takes careful attention to the details and should be a part of professional construction. There is no level of radon that is perfectly safe -- keeping it below 4 pCi/L the EPA threshold action level is a good place to start. But even if the house is not located in Radon Zone 1, radon levels can vary from house to house  and day to day. It just makes sense to test. It's not expensive. Indoor airPLUS is the next step in a state-of-the-art home. Edgartown Books We are a beloved independent bookstore nestled on the island of Martha's Vineyard where readers, leaders, and day dreamers can pick up great books as well as thoughtful gifts for every celebration. Drop into our beautiful Main Street location for the ultimate old-fashioned bookstore experience or support us from afar through our online store! Edgartown Books (508) 627-8463 44 Main Street Edgartown, MA 0253 Martha's Vineyard Benjamin Bunny and the Rabbit Hole Checklist for self-publishing There's a lot to do before a book gets published. Jane Friedman created a LIST to keep track of it all. This parallels similar lists that I have seen, but all the necessary elements are there. Reading list Bookbub is a great resource for finding your next book to read. You can get a daily list of books in genres that you enjoy. Tracking sales BookTrakr is a very cool way to tack all the sales and rankings on your books so when you query an agent and they ask how many copies of your books have sold you can give them an accurate answer. PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work-in-Progress The new novel - Second Law - only 9 months before the launch. Starting to feel a bit of pressure to get it all done! Your Turn: Favorite Way to Stay In-Shape In my last issue I asked you about favorite ways to stay in shape this summer. Here's a selection of what you said: Walking - anywhere, on the beach, in the woods, or through the neighborhood; Swimming - the warm weather let's me swim in the lake in front of my house. Like to get to the ocean once in awhile; Peloton - I can exersize inside in the air conditioning; Yard work - No, really. You can get a lot of exercise behind a lawn-mower. And it's got to be done, right? Next Question: Did you watch the Olympics? If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,000 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

October 30, 2022 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature: 48 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 78% Sunrise: 7:08 AM EST October 30, 2022 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: The Setting Moon New England Crime Bake Voting Matters Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress The Setting Moon - In the early moments of the morning as I am sitting at my desk, some days I can watch the moon flow down behind the house across the street, cars' headlights painting the street. That house could be anywhere and it could be Halloween morning. Read any good spooky stories recently? Told any good spooky stories? The environment is everything. But the setting moon is the harbinger of another day, the sun will be coming up on the other side of my house within minutes of this moment of the setting of the moon. Stay well, Paul@paulhraymer.com New England Crime Bake I'm going to a Crime Bake! I have been attending building science conferences since 1978, but this is my first, in-person writers conference. By attending the building science conferences, I have been able to meet and get to know some of the brilliant minds in the industry and get to call them friends. I have learned a lot from them, particularly since I was starting from scratch. Now I dream about building science conferences and Second Law, and the new book, Confined Spaces involve conferences. The NE Crime Bake takes place in Dedham, MA on November 11, 12, and 13th. William Martin, recognized as the "King of the Historical Thriller", is the guest of honor. There are more than sixty authors listed as speakers for the three day event. The sessions cover the gambit from writing to editing to publishing to talking to book bloggers. But I have found that as informative as the sessions are at conferences, it is the time that one spends chatting in the hallways and at meals and in the bar that bring out the true value. Writing is generally a solitary enterprise - sitting in front of the computer and pulling the story out of your head. So I am glad that this is an in-person event although COVID 19 protocols and masks are still important. (Of course, crime and masks are common companions.) I am going to pull together the synopsis and log-line for Confined Spaces so that I can talk to agents. But mostly, I am going to find out what is going on in the world of words. There are a lot of tales about no one buying books any more, but I think that depends on your perspective and your source of information. The suspense is killing me! Voting Matters It’s time for elections in our country. Many states, such as here in Massachusetts, have early voting and mail in voting to assure that anyone who wants to exercise his/her/their constitutional right to vote, and is legally registered to do so, may cast a ballot in the state’s designated manner. No one is being forced to vote early or by mail or on Election Day. Those are simply choices left to individual voters. I have the privilege of being a poll worker. A role I take seriously and feel strongly about undertaking. I work early voting and tabulation of mail in voting as well as physically being present at my precinct every Election Day. I’ve seen how each poll worker, under the guidance of our town election officials and staff will go to great lengths to make sure every ballot is cast, even if it needs to be a provisional ballot if records for the voter cannot be found. I’ve witnessed firsthand how those provisional ballots are not treated lightly, but are secured for tabulation at the end of the process, so the appropriate amount of care and consideration can be channeled into each ballot. All the work and the counting and attention to detail at the polls is important. Poll watchers are always welcome to observe the process. It’s not rocket science, but it is equally important, if not more! In my humble opinion, voter fraud or rigging ballots is truly an act that would require an orchestrated team of individuals who would be hard pressed to pull off such a crime. At least that is the case in my precinct and my town and I believe in the system of fair voting to assert that it would be a near impossible task to do widespread control across the country. But don’t take my word for it – make sure you vote at every election. Make it your personal responsibility to know who and what is on the ballot and make your informed decision. We won’t always like the outcome, but we can agree it is a fair and just system that is worth protecting. Kate Raymer   Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $22.8 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole Airthings View Plus I have been using this thing now for several months and like most of the air quality monitors, it doesn't do anything except provide information. It is teaching me a bunch of stuff about my house and about how to monitor IAQ issues. It displays the radon level, CO2, PM2.5, RH, temperature, VOC, and atmospheric pressure. By moving it around in my house on a long term basis, I am learning the key measurement points. By far the most important lesson is that long term radon monitoring is necessary. Soundly Hearing Test I get my eyes checked every year, but haven’t had my hearing tested since my mother made me do it. Soundly.com has a free 5-minute hearing test that was designed by audiologists and sound engineers. It’s for educational purposes only, but a good place to start nonetheless. I took the test and it reported back losing my high frequency hearing which is not at all surprising or alarming. So that's why I can't hear my wife. Check it out. PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Second Law Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress Confined Spaces Big title reveal! Looking to have the first draft complete in January of 2023. If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020 - 2 years and 24 issues ago. More than 1,900 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

October 16, 2022 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature: 65 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 93% Sunrise: 6:54 AM EDT October 16, 2022 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Construction In The Woods - Tana French The Beast in the Basement Titcomb's Bookshop Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress Construction "When, looking up with wistful eye, The Bruce beheld a spider try His filmy thread to fling" These are lines from Bruce and the Spider by Bernard Barton, telling the tale of a courageous and patient spider and Robert the Bruce who was to be king of Scotland. This spider web happens to be in the window of my study. I can only see it when the setting sun hits it just right. In the summer I used to watch the spider - sitting patiently in the web. She's gone now that the fall has come, leaving this extraordinary structure behind. I have to marvel at the intricacies of natural construction and design. Spiders find holes where air is flowing through the structure of a building. They don't need smoke pencils, anemometers, or infrared cameras to find the leaks. At some point I will whisk this away, all the time astonished at the natural skill that built it. Paul@paulhraymer.com Stay well, In The Woods - Tana French Tana French published In The Woods in 2007 as the first book in the Dublin Murder Squad series. It seems like it was her first published novel. I have found that writing is often strange in first novels, so having been introduced to her through The Searcher which she published in 2020, I wanted to see how she had begun. And this was quite a beginning. French wrote the book in the first person voice of the narrator, who is a Dublin murder detective whose name varies between Rob Ryan and Adam Ryan. He tells the reader, “What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this - two things: I crave truth. And I lie.” There are two primary story lines: the first is of three young people playing in the summer sun who take off into the woods next to their housing development, as they have done many times before. Only this time two of them disappear, and the third one (who turns out to be Adam Ryan) is found clutching a tree with someone else’s blood in his shoes. The second story line is Rob (Adam) returning to the housing development to investigate the murder of a young girl who is found on top of an ancient sacrificial stone. A highway is about to be built through the ancient site and some people don’t want that to happen. There are lots of threads of emotional entanglements and distress. Adam has changed his name to Rob in order to avoid curious questions about events from ten years earlier. Tana French's writing is as rich as a death-by-chocolate cake. The psychological aspects of this book are disturbing, and the pace seemed slow as lead after lead came to a dead end. But by the time I finished the book, I understood it had to be written the way it was written in order to building the troubled natures of the characters. It clearly fits into the police mystery/psychological genres, and I will keep it on my reference shelf just for the way French handles the suspect interviews. I will also keep it on my reference shelf for the most truly evil character I have ever met in a work of fiction. Another reviewer compared this book to Steinbeck's East of Eden, which had also occurred to me as I was reading it. I wonder if Tana French had to turn away from her character who seems a bit thinly developed compared to the others in the novel. To develop the evil would have meant getting inside and seeing the world through evil eyes. Getting inside the head of a truly evil character is scary as hell. This is not a quick read, but this is another five star novel from Tana French. The Beast in the Basement When the outside temperature drops below 65°F, it’s about time to turn on the heat. Many smart thermostats will do that automatically. Most people pay little or no attention to the beast in the basement that keeping them comfortable. But with the price of energy rising rapidly, getting the furnace or boiler serviced is a splendid idea. It can: Reduce energy bills as much as 15% per month; Keep the system running longer; Bolster its efficiency; Make the house more comfortable; Ensure safety; May be needed to maintain the manufacturer’s warranty. Systems that burn gas or oil don’t burn the fuel perfectly. The goal is to extract the optimum amount of energy with the least amount of waste. And there are a lot of parts in boilers and furnaces that wear out and need cleaning and adjusting after a year of operation. It’s a matter of saving money, improving comfort, and enhancing safety. Getting a regular tune-up for the car seems like a normal idea. It is logical to do the same thing for the boiler or furnace in the house. I just had $815 worth of oil put in my tank this week. My oil fired steam boiler is running at about 83% efficiency. That means that about $140 worth will go up the chimney, or about $400 worth of waste over the course of the year. Money is certainly important, but ensuring that the system is running safely tops my list. A good tune-up can verify that there are no gas leaks (for a gas furnace). When I was testing houses with gas fired heating systems, I found that almost 80% of them had small gas leaks. Combustion systems can also spill carbon monoxide and other nasty fumes into the air. Filters need to be changed. Blower motor belts may need to be adjusted. And preventative maintenance will limit future major repairs. Heat pump systems are not immune to performance degradation. Filters still need to be cleaned or replaced. Condensate drains need to be cleared. Coils need to be cleaned. You don’t want to breathe moldy air. So don’t ignore the beast in the basement. Be nice to it or it may become a dragon. PS: Check out this guide from ENERGY STAR which includes a handy checklist. Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $22.6 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here Titcomb's Bookshop Another one of the Cape treasures - Titcomb's Bookshop has been around for as long as I have lived on Cape Cod. They have a newsletter and Second Law is featured in the October mid-month edition! Click here to see a copy: Titcomb's Newsletter And this Sunday they are featuring a British car show. How fitting is that for Jon Megquire who drives an MG Midget. 432 Route 6A, PO Box 1045, East Sandwich, MA 02537 Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole I have received some very positive reaction to my description of tools that I have found particularly useful.  So I would like to reach out to you to tell me about one such device or tool or app or website that you use regularly. There are likely readers of this newsletter who would welcome your advice. PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Second Law Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress Understanding the nature of evil is an outside observation. Inside the mind of an evil character is a normal world. And that is hard to imagine. If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,950 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

October 3, 2022 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature: 50 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 80% Sunrise: 6:37 AM EDT October 2, 2022 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Osborn & Rugh Gallery This Is Your Brain on Music Inflation Reduction Act Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress   Osborn & Rugh Gallery - In the September 18th issue of this newsletter I highlighted a mural in the Falmouth Post Office. I'm going to highlight another artist here. For the past 15 years I have been walking past this gallery thinking that it was just another gallery that was selling paintings to summer visitors. This week I finally stopped to look and to talk to the owner, Hillary Osborn And I'm truly glad that I did. This is another Falmouth gem. This space is as much a working studio as it is a gallery. Hillary specializes in landscapes and buildings of the Cape. Her husband, Doug Rugh, specializes in capturing the essence of the people in the portraits that he paints. It is a special place, a place to observe where art originates, the soul of the art. Stay well, Paul@paulhraymer.com This Is Your Brain on Music - Daniel Levitin Did you ever wonder why you suffer from musical earworms like "It's a small world after all"? Mark Twain wrote a short story in 1876 called "A Literary Nightmare" imagining the sinister takeover of an entire town by a rhyming jingle. This Is Your Brain on Music is a fascinating, scientific journey through musical phenomena. "Rhythm stirs our bodies. Tonality and melody stir our brains....this is how Ravel's Bolero, Charlie Parker's "Koko", or the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women" inspire us and move us, both metaphorically and physically, exquisite unions of time and melodic space. It is why rock, metal, and hip-hop are the most popular musical genres in the world and have been for the past twenty years." This is a beautifully written and fun-to-read scientific journey through the world of music. Although it is carefully researched and scientifically documented (including drawings of the human mind), this is an enjoyable book and answers a lot of nagging questions about why some songs stick your head, some make you happy and some make you sad, and why music is such an important part of our lives. Before becoming a neuroscientist, Levitin worked as a session musician, sound engineer, and record producer, contributing to records by Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, and Blue Oyster Cult. So he knows what he is writing about. Inflation Reduction Act The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) presents a huge opportunity to build an electric future. RewiringAmerica.org has guides to sort out the opportunities. The IRA "is the largest clean energy investment America has ever made with strategic incentives to make the transition to clean energy and a de-carbonized life easy and financially smart." There is a stampede to go all electric principally to get rid of fossil fuel combustion appliances that spew toxins into the air that are causing problems now and into the future. Resistance electric heat got a bad reputation because of the cost of electricity, but all electric houses were often built with a better attitude toward energy efficiency. But still . . . Heat pumps, on the other hand, can be as much as five times as efficient as resistance electric heating. Natural gas heating systems have gotten increasingly more efficient - 95% or more. They are capable of extracting as much as 95% of the energy in the fuel, but they can never get more than 100%. A heat pump, however, can transfer 300% more energy than it consumes, a bucket load more efficient than a gas furnace. That's why we're going there. But it can be expensive to switch over the house and that's the motivation behind the IRA. So check out the savings calculator at RewiringAmerica.org I think you'll be amazed at what this bill is offering. Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $22.4 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole I am not paid to promote these products. I use them and I like them. I do have an affiliate link with Amazon. Epson Perfection V550 Photo Scanner I have a lot of slides. I have even more slides from my father. I have masses of prints. I have old family prints, some of them of people that I don't even know. I could throw them all away. I could pay someone to copy hundreds of pictures that I don't need or want. But instead I got this great scanner - Epson V550 Photo. I've tried other scanners and camera adapters but the colors were bad. Admittedly this thing only does four slides at a time so it isn't a quick process, but the results are terrific. I scan them and then throw the originals away. It's progress . . . I think. Logitech MX Master Wireless Mouse When my Apple Magic Mouse ate the cheese and died, I needed a replacement and I wanted something that was rechargeable so I wouldn't have to keep feeding it batteries which I can't believe is good for the environment, I found this mouse. It's not cheap, but it does a lot of stuff and feels great in my hand. Use with up to three Windows or Mac computers via included Unifying receiver or Bluetooth Smart wireless technology; Sculpted, hand-crafted shape supports my hand and wrist in a comfortable, natural position. PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Second Law Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress Been plotting and planning and now I am ready to get the writing rolling. If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,900 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

September 4, 2022 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Conditions at Dawn Outside Temperature: 58 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 75% Sunrise: 6:09 AM EST September 4, 2022 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Rotary Club The Lioness - Chris Bohjalian Buildings Don't Lie Where The Sidewalk Ends Bookstore Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress Rotary Club I have lived in the Town of Falmouth Massachusetts for 47 years. It was meant to be a stopping place while I figured out what was going on in my life. But I got stuck. When the kids were growing up, I got involved in the kid activities - school bands, scouts, dance class, sports, etc. My work has taken me to many places away from Falmouth. So I figured it was time to expand my local engagement. Rotary seemed like a good place to start. From the Rotary website, "Rotary is a global network of 1.4 million neighbors, friends, leaders, and problem-solvers who see a world where people unite and take action to create lasting change – across the globe, in our communities, and in ourselves." The Falmouth members are work hard with both local and international projects. With all the anger and craziness in the world, it is good to dedicate time with people who care about other people. Stay well, Paul@paulhraymer.com The Lioness - Chris Bohjalian Kate Raymer    I admit that I’m a big fan of Chris Bohjalian’s work from the first I was introduced to him by being gifted a copy of Midwives in the late 90s. I’m also a huge fan of historical fiction and The Lioness does not disappoint! Taking a luxury African safari in 1964 sets the stage for intrigue with a cast of Hollywood characters with believable and complex backgrounds.  When things take a deadly turn, this becomes a real page turner. Bohjalian is a craftsman with his words as he describes scenes that made my heart race and, if it was a movie, I probably would have had to close my eyes! Rumor has it (if you believe the internet) that this book has been picked up for a TV movie. This is definitely one of those books that has you wanting to read just a bit more before calling it a night, so don’t open this one if you’re looking for sleep-inducing material. Through the conflicts of politics and nature, one is given a true sense of the Serengeti, which is still on my bucket list of things I’d like to see! Buildings Don't Lie - Henry Gifford    Buildings Don't Lie - Better Buildings by Understanding Basic Building Science is a comprehensive, no-nonsense description of issues that help and kill buildings. Henry Gifford is one of those encyclopedias of building science knowledge. Having taught classes with him, I know that he does not shy away from stating his opinion - an opinion that always comes from extensive experienc. From the Amazon description, "A simple, clear, thorough, and complete explanation of basic building science applicable to any building in any climate. Over 1,000 large color drawings and photos, plus fun quizzes. No charts, graphs, or math. Read this book and become your own expert on making buildings comfortable, healthy, safe, durable, and very energy efficient, because you will understand the underlying science of the movement through buildings of heat, air, water, light, sound, fire, and pests, and how these can be controlled. This book also includes sections on designing building enclosures, indoor air quality, choosing heating and cooling systems, and how to ventilate, heat, and cool different types of buildings."   Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $22 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here Where The Sidewalk Ends Bookstore This is a great bookstore in Chatham, MA. The first time I walked into the store, Meghan O'Brien, the store manager, immediately recognized me as one of the local authors whose books they stock. And when I was in there a couple of weeks ago, Second Law was on the shelf by the windows and someone came in and bought a copy. The streets of Chatham were crammed full of summer visitors - kids and families, looking for places to eat and T-shirts, souvenirs, and books to buy, while cars and trucks struggled through the traffic. It is a beautiful post and beam barn-styled store with true divided light windows, a cupola, and a split, morning staircase with stained glass windows overlooking the mezzanine on one side. The store is appropriately named after Shel Silverstein's wonderful book, and they do have a lot of children's books, but also adult books and books for the beach. 432 Main Street * Chatham, Mass. * 508-945-0499 Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole Create Studio Pro I don't know if I should put this in here or not. Videos are great for ads. People are captivated by the movement, and this package seems very cool. And it's not expensive. I would love to hear any input even if you just check out this link. I love stuff like this, and if I don't have to spend hours leaning new software, it can just be fun. MoveMap I hear stories about people retiring and moving to someplace that suits them better. So I came across this app called MoveMap. You can plug in a whole bunch of parameters about what you think would be the ideal conditions of a new county. It's fascinating. Distance from a major airport. Distance from mountains or oceans. Ages, advanced degrees, weather. It turned out that we can't move. We're living exactly where we want to be! PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Second Law Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress I have been buried with my characters all week. It's making my knees hurt and my back ache. And at this point, I don't know if they will survive. I can't just turn the page and see what happens! How about a free book or two? Bookfunnel provides a means for a group of authors to get together to give away electronic copies of their books in return for adding subscribers to their mailing lists. There are some great, undiscovered authors here. Including me! Recalculating Truth is on the list this month. Click for Free Books If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,800 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Please visit my website. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

August 21, 2022 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature at Dawn: 71 °F Outside Relative Humidity at Dawn: 81% Sunrise: 5:55 AM EDT August 21, 2022 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Salman Rushdie Still Life - Louise Penny Volatile Organic Compounds ICannotLiveWithoutBooks Bookshop Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie - I think Salman Rushdie is a wonderful writer, and I am looking forward to reading more of his books. What happened to him on that stage in Chatauqua, New York is heartbreaking.  It says something about the state of this world that a writer of fiction should be attacked for expressing his thoughts in his stories. Victory City."I myself am nothing now. All that remains is the city of words. Words are the only victors," Salman Rushdie from Works of art should move observers emotionally and artists, musicians, writers should be celebrated for accomplishing that. It is the true freedom of expression. Observers don't have to agree or even like what is presented to them, but artistic freedom is as important as political freedom.  I plan to support him by buying his books. Paul@paulhraymer.com Stay well, Still Life - Louise Penny I sometimes wonder how anyone can be an unbiased, professional critic. Each of us has a style or genre that pleases us, and it is hard to get beyond that. I like detective stories. And that’s what Still Life is: a modern day detective story set in Canada. It introduces Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team of investigators. The Canadian setting is interesting itself. So many detective stories are set in England, Ireland, the United States. For a country that is so close, Canadians have their own issues. French Canadians are almost a different country themselves and that brings another layer of issues into this story. Louise Penny is an excellent writer. She has the ability to carefully craft scenes and characters that are worthy of mentorship. There are passages in this book that I will go back to to study how to do it. She has chosen a unique murder weapon—a bow and arrow. In most towns, that would severely limit the number of suspects, but in the town of Three Pines, it appears many inhabitants are proficient with archery and the town is close to the Quebec woods, where hunting is common. There is a town fascination with both archery and art. And there are a lot of odd people in the town as well, which complicates discerning the motive. Although I didn’t map it out, I think she lost track of the passage of time. The detective was supposed to go away for a week and a memorial service was to be held a week out, and yet the murder only happened a week ago. I find it particularly irritating in TV shows when stars seem to travel places at the speed of light for international investigations. Maybe I was wrong and I should go back and reread the time frame. But the other issue I had with this book is the uncontrolled fluttering of the point of view. I understand the omniscient third person, but I don’t believe I have read a book where the point of view shifts in single paragraphs. It makes me uncomfortable not know whose head I am in from sentence to sentence. But there you go. It’s a matter of opinion and obviously many people like Louise Penny’s story telling just the way it is. Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) What are VOCs? Technically they are substances that can evaporate at room temperature and are commonly found in household products and building materials. In this land of sun and vacations on Cape Cod, I have often been out walking and smelled sunscreen through my COVID protecting mask. James Beard, the famous chef, exulted "There is no smell in the world to equal the perfume of baking bread. Unforunately part of that perfume is is ehanol, a natural alcohol given off as yeast metabolizes bread sugars during the fermentation that makes dough rise. Large bakers across the country have installed catalytic oxydizers for their ovens in order to comply with the Clean Air Act of 1990. Beer making releases VOCs into the air as well. Pine trees and rubbing alcohol and Chanel No. 5 all release VOCs. According to the EPA, "The reason that some chemicals that are toxic are exempt from the VOC regulations is because they are not considered to be photochemically reactive. Therefore, some products that are labeled as 'no VOC' or 'low VOC' under the CAA [Clean Air Act] can actually contain volatile organic chemicals that are toxic, sometimes at high levels. In addition, the concept of lowering "total VOC" (TVOC) "does not always assure safer products because the individual VOCs that make up TVOC can vary widely in their toxicity. While it is probably prudent to use products with lower VOC levels, it does not assure that the products are any better (and they may even be worse) than products with higher VOC levels." For example, paints that are labelled "Low VOC" make take longer to outgas their volatility while higher VOC paints may only directly affect the painters. Essential oils are popular, but they do emit numerous VOCs including some that are hazardous such as acetaldehyde, acetone, and ethanol. Smells are one of the markers of life - fragrances that can connect us to events or special moments. I shan't think of them as nasty volatile organic compounds today. Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $21.9 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here ICannotLiveWithoutBooks Bookshop 314 Main Street, West Dennis, MA 02670 508-760-4959  WestDennisBooks@gmail.com On June 10 1815 Thomas Jefferson said to John Adams, "I cannot live without books; but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object." Lew Taylor, the proprietor and former librarian has named his extraordinary bookshop after this worthy quote. It is clear from the contents of the shop that Mr. Taylor loves books and understands how to sell them. He doesn't stock and sell just one James Patterson book: he stocks and sells them all. He doesn't stock and sell just one of Robert Jordan's science fiction books: he stocks and sells them all. This is a gem of a mystery and history bookstore that we are lucky to have proximity to here on Cape Cod. If you are in the area, I would urge you to stop in and pick his brains and browse his inventory. No cookbooks and no toys. (He does sell his books on-line as well.) Facebook Group: ICannotLiveWithoutBooks Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole Luminar Neo I live with a lot of stuff. When I moved into this old inn that I live in, it was fully furnished. And then my family decided that since I lived in a big house, they didn't need to pay for storage any more. So now I am trying to get rid of it. I take pictures with my phone, but they generally have to be edited for one reason or another. I needed software that I could use to quickly and simply edit pictures. Luminar Neo works well. It's not cheap, but it gets the job done effectively. And as I get around to dealing with the thousands of pictures I am also storing, it will help there too. Yes Theory The most positive and uplifting channel on YouTube might be YesTheory. A small band of travelers and filmmakers immerse themselves in strange places (staying with Amish family), challenging situations (total darkness for 5 days), and long periods cruising out of their comfort zone in order to grow and become better people. Their motto is “seek discomfort.” They do it with humor and integrity (for 7.5 million subscribers), so their adventures truly are encouraging and inspiring. Recomendo PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Second Law Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress What genre would you consider the plotted slaying of a personified, really, really evil dragon to be? If he isn't killed, he is going to kill again. How about a free book or two? Bookfunnel provides a means for a group of authors to get together to give away electronic copies of their books in return for adding subscribers to their mailing lists. There are some great, undiscovered authors here. Including me! Click for Free Books Thank You For Posting Reviews, Loyal Readers I am not David Baldacci, Robert Ludlum, or James Patterson. In fact, those of you who are reading this and have read my books are my world of readers and fans. Only you know me. Writing my books is important to me. But you are equally important. If you have enjoyed reading my books, I would really, truly, really love to get you to help me to expand my fan base. And that means getting more reviews on Amazon. I can't tell you how important a few words and a few stars mean. You don't have to have bought the book from Amazon to review it there. Amazon reviews spill over into all aspects of publishing. Thank you for your support. Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,800 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

May 15, 2022 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature: 56 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 94% Sunrise: 5:25 AM EDT Second Law Launch Countdown Available for pre-order now on Amazon Time Remaining! May 15, 2022 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Nature Chooses Its Own Pace Deadly Deeds - Neal Sanders Second Law of Thermodynamics Below the Brine Bookshop Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress Nature Chooses Its Own Pace We are so impatient. We need instant gratification - the Sesame Street Generation. I want my Oompa Loompa and I want it now! Nature doesn't care! I planted a pair of American Chestnut trees on my front lawn. When they arrived, their foliage was sadly abused in the packaging, but I followed all the instructions and planted them carefully and I have been watering them diligently. But so far I haven't seen any signs of new growth. Nature can be quick: Mold growth can explode on a surface in a few days. Nature can be slow: A condensation drip in the dark recesses of the crawl space can slowly, patiently, but inevitably destroy a floor joist and collapse a building. Think about the way a river pushes its banks around or the way sediment on the ocean floor can become rock over the millennia. I do hope these trees will grow and thrive. (If I see signs of that happening, I'll let you know where I bought them.) I like to imagine that the roots of these little trees are reaching out in all directions, and when they are well established down there, they will push out new growth up here. But nature's clock is very personal ...and very patient. Stay well, Paul@paulhraymer.com Deadly Deeds - Neal Sanders I can't blame you for thinking that I like reading books by Neal Sanders because I do. I enjoy his writing, and I enjoy his stories.  And if I had an estate that was worth worrying about, I think I would hire him to organize it. This is one of those books where the plots pile on top of other plots and you have to wonder how the author is going to untangle them and bring the story back together. That's one of the things about life: it's not just one simple plot like they write for TV scripts where the whole case has been researched, brought to trial, and adjudicated in forty-five minutes or less. Life is a complicated but integrated system no matter how much we try to screw it up. Deadly Deeds is part of Sanders' Garden Club Gang series. One of the members dies in a very expensive nursing home/retirement community under, what appear to be, natural circumstances. But the Gang has its doubts. This investigation is layered on top of a previous investigation involving the gang bringing down a crooked car dealer. And that, in turn, is remotely entangled with an investigation at a fairground. In some serial stories, one has to have read the previous books to understand what is going on, but Sanders does a masterful job of providing enough backstory information to provide depth to the characters while allowing the present story to carry its own narrative. As I said before, I enjoy reading Neal Sanders' books. Second Law of Thermodynamics You might be wondering why I would title my new book Second Law. Among the wonders of the second law of thermodynamics is that it describes the fact that heat moves to cold, wet moves to dry, and high pressure moves to low pressure. A cup of hot coffee cools. The paper towel 'picker-upper' soaks up the spilled milk. And if you pop a balloon, it explosively deflates. The second law is everywhere. It explains why insulation works. Different materials resist the flow of heat at different rates. That's why insulation is rated in 'R' values, demonstrating its ability to keep the heat in and the cold out. It's not the glass fibers in fiberglass insulation that slows the movement of the heat. Glass is a good heat conductor. It's the little pockets of air, trapped between all the fibers. Air is not a great heat conductor. The still, un-moving air in the insulation makes it work. The people in my novel are learning about energy issues, but they are also under pressure. The pressure keeps increasing in the story until it has to be released - like popping the balloon. Love, murder, and finding the true path in life are all elements of pressure in life. Some days in our lives are peaceful and calm and the pressure is neutral. But some days, the pressure is intense - pressure to meet a deadline, make a payment, fire an employee, or propose marriage to the love of your life. All of those high pressure moments have to be relieved. I regard all those moments as evidence of the second law. Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $20 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here Below the Brine Bookshop Below the Brine Bookshop is an independently owned bookshop in the heart of Harwich Port. On our shelves, you’ll find a regularly updated selection of new fiction, non-fiction, special interest, children’s and young adult books.   Our shop takes its name from the Walt Whitman poem, The World Below the Brine. We believe that like the sea, books have the power to immerse us in new worlds and encourage us to explore new perspectives...if only we're willing to take to the plunge! 554 Route 28 Harwich Port, MA 02646 774-209-3493 read@harwichportbooks.com Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole These are things I have personally found useful. I don't get paid to put them in this newsletter so I can say what I want about them! Got some stuff for the Second Law launch from VistaPrint, and it came out very well. And they were really, really fast. I went to the site to order the labels and the table top displays, and they said, how about notebooks and coffee mugs? I mean while I was there . . . . As an independently published author among the hardest things to accomplish are press releases. It would be great to have a story about my book launch in the New York Times or on public radio or be a guest on Good Morning America. But writing press releases about a novel is hard. Getting it out there is hard. Paying for it is hard. Is it worth all that? I don't know . . . but I'm giving it a shot. eReleases has an enormous outreach so we'll see. Wish me luck! PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress Just about one month left until the launch of Second Law. It's at the printer, and I just received the first copy! Planning is well under way for the launch party at the Station Grill in Falmouth on the 18th! By the way, Second Law will soon be moving to the PHR Books column and the next Jon Megquire tale will be stationed here! If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. (This is the 40th issue.) More than 1,600 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

May 1, 2022 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature: 45 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 85% Sunrise: 6:45 AM EST Second Law Launch Countdown Available for pre-order now on Amazon Time Remaining May 1, 2022 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: It's Spring! Villains! Air to water heat pumps The Book Nerd Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress How about a free book or two? It's Spring! There are a lot of depressing things going on in the world. Depressing stuff makes better news stories. People love to gather and gape at car wrecks. And all of these nasty things are amplified by media. Imagine spending a day without your cell phone, computer, or television. You could just enjoy the blue sky the spring flowers, and the new life starting all around you. The problem is that thoughts slither into my mind of angry, greedy people. Of bodies lying in the streets, of floods and tornadoes and fires and droughts, and it gets very difficult to enjoy the beauty without feeling guilty. But that's not right either! We only have a limited time on this planet. There has to be a balance between the beauty and the horror, the joy and the sadness. Each moment needs to be savored for whatever it brings because all those moments put together are what makes a life. As Hoots the owl said on Sesame Street, "You have to put down the ducky if you want to play the saxophone." Think about it. Stay well, Paul@paulhraymer.com Villains! I have been thinking a lot about villains. It is entertaining to think about fictional villains. I could do without the real ones! But think about the villains in literature that you know: how were they defeated? Some villains are totally protected by their total lack of empathy for other humans. Some people consider the shark in Jaws as a villain. It certainly didn't have empathy for humans, but it was just doing what it was created to do. But when you get to human villains, authors have to provide them with some element of feeling for a person or a thing in order to provide them with a chink in their armor so they can be defeated. Cathy Ames in East of Eden was a nasty murderer but in the end she becomes aware of her son which flips her switch so that she can commit suicide. Ebenezer Scrooge certainly has an epiphany which required Dickens to call in the supernatural to accomplish. Sherlock Holmes's nemesis, Professor Moriarity had to fall off a cliff, and was that a satisfactory ending for the reader? And what about Mondego in The Count of Monte Cristo? Even Edmond Dantes wasn't satisfied by the ending of that story. And then there was Mr. Potter at the end of "It's a Wonderful Life". I don't think he was truly defeated by the protagonist in that story either.   It's not like St. George and the dragon or Brody killing the shark in Jaws. Getting the protagonist to defeat the villain and, at the same time, satisfy readers is a serious challenge. We're going to need a bigger boat! Air to water heat pumps Heat pumps are the latest answer to electrification in all of their manifestations from wall mounted 'mini-splits' to whole house heating a cooling systems. A heat pump pumps 'heat' from one side of the system to the other. A heat pump keeps the food in the refrigerator cool. A refrigerant system extract the 'heat' from the inside of the refrigerator and pumps it out into the room. An air conditioner is a one way heat pump - a device for cooling a space. A heat pump, on the other hand, can reverse the heat flow so that it can be used for cooling in hot weather and heating in cold weather. Heat pumps can get their 'heat' from the air outside the house, but there are versions of heat pumps that can use ground temperature as the 'heat' source or sink. The most common heat pumps are used to condition air which is then circulated around the house through duct work. Heat pumps can also transfer their heat or cooling to water which is a better heat conducting medium than air. Many homes particularly in the northeast use hydronic baseboard heat. The temperature of the water that runs through those pipes starts out at about 180 °F and the radiators were designed for those temperatures. Air to water heat pumps generate a maximum of about 165 °F and generally closer to 125 °F and that means that the radiator systems have to be reconsidered. There are fantastic new radiator and radiant heat configurations that are exceptionally efficient. There is a lot going on in the heat pump world that will give us new answers to electrification and comfort, but the systems need to be carefully designed and installed. Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $20 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here "The Book Nerd is a used bookstore that prides itself on book condition and customer service. We are children loving and pet friendly, as well. Have a complimentary cup of tea while you browse, and maybe a homemade treat." 70 Maple Ave, Barrington, RI 02806 (401) 337-5228 Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole These are things I have found useful. I don't get paid to put them in this newsletter. Posterburner - I wanted 24" x 36" poster sized images of my books to display at my book launch events, and these folks did a great job. The poster prices are very reasonable - adding the mounting and shipping brings the cost up a bit. Countdown Mail: One of these is at the top of this page, counting down the days to the launch of Second Law. You can modify these things in all sorts of interesting ways. And they go along with your email and are correct as long as the clock on your computer is correct! PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress  Second Law is out at the printers. Looking forward to seeing the first review copies and planning the launch events. Amazon pre-orders are rolling in. Wow! How about a free book or two? BookFunnel provides a means for a group of authors to get together to give away electronic copies of their books in return for adding subscribers to their mailing lists. There are some great undiscovered authors in these groups. Click this button and check it out. Free Books! If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,500 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

April 17, 2022 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature: 48 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 91% Sunrise: 6:02 AM EDT Second Law Launch Countdown Available for pre-order now on Amazon Time remaining April 17, 2022 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Essences The House that She Built National Home Performance Conference 2022 Island Books Benjamin Bunny & the Rabbit Hole PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress Essences - I was sitting in my hotel room at the Nashville Home Performance Conference last week, and it occurred to me that there are hundreds of other rooms in that hotel just like mine. Brilliant observation. Then I wondered how many of those rooms the hotel owner has ever been in. Was there anything about that room that made it different from any other room in the hotel besides the number on the door? When I flew into Nashville, my plane flew We pass by millions of places, objects, and people in our lives without taking the time or making the effort to recognize their individuality. So what makes this rubber duck different from every other rubber duck in the world? What if there was a micro-chip inside it? One of the factors in developing a character for a novel is to determine what makes that character different from any other character - how would you recognize her getting off a plane? Years ago as a writing exercise I would study the picture of an object and try to describe  what made it different and identifiable without stating what it was. over hundreds of houses in clustered developments. From the air, the houses all looked the same. Paul@paulhraymer.com Stay well, The House that She Built - Mollie Elkman & Georgia Castellano Construction is a club. Local contractors often know each other as they move from project to project. There is an attitude of 'we've always done it this way, so why would we change?' That carries over from framing to plumbing to heating and cooling systems. The fear of the dreaded 'call-back' is a major drag on change. Unfortunately that carries over to the gender of the crafts on the job. Sailors said that women on a ship were bad luck. And certainly mixing the genders in the confines of a whaling ship on a two year voyage could be a source of problems. A construction project can be a long project as well, but the participants get to go home at night.  The House That She Built "was inspired by the team of real women who came together from around the country to build a one-of-a-kind home." The Utah Home Builders Association Professional Women in Building Council put this project together. The book is aimed for children to learn that just because you're a girl doesn't mean that you can't be a plumber or a contractor or anything else you might want to be. Equally important is the message for little boys that women can share a construction job site with men. Construction skills can be learned by anyone. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) printed the book. The words, pictures, and messages are simple and clear. There are images and videos on the Utah Home Builders web site along with lots of details about the project. Check it out. Spread the word. My copies of the book were donated by Bill Spohn of TruTech Tools. National Home Performance Conference 2022 I've been to a lot of building related conferences over the years. A lot of information is transferred, but you also see the same group of people and build friendships. Not everybody wants to talk about thermodynamics at the dinner table! But these folks do. So being stuck at home for all these months/years it was wonderful to see real people again. For some reason, people seemed taller than they do on Zoom. They've all been working in their houses and laboratories and learning more stuff. Seems like there is always more to learn. Houses are amazingly complex environments. The push to electrification means movement away from gas, oil, and propane fired heating systems and that means understanding heat pumps and all they can and can't do. They are not the same as traditionally ducted and distributed conditioned air systems. They impact humidity and comfort differently. They install and service differently. And then there is indoor air quality (IAQ). The world has become acutely aware of the chemicals and tiny particles floating around in our houses. So what are you going to do about it. "Thar's gold in them thar hills!" Just put in the gadgets and the whackeys and stomp out the bugs. But it's not that easy. That shiny ozone generator will zap some pollutants while creating others. It's a whack-a-mole exercise. But as frustrating as it is, this is one whack-a-mole game that we can't stop if we want to leave a livable environment on this planet. This wonderful group of caring people have been working at this for a very long time and will continue to do so. But we all have to learn more and continue to transfer that information. Enough said. Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $20 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here Island Books Island Books is a locally owned independent bookstore serving Newport county since 1993. Our centrally located store in Wyatt Square in Middletown proudly serves both the year-round and seasonal communities of Aquidneck Island. At Island Books, we pride ourselves on our carefully chosen selection of titles in fiction, biography, history and current issues. We are the best around for books of local interest, and have a robust selection of cookbooks and books about gardening and green living. 575 E. Main Road Middletown, RI 02842 401-949-2665 www.islandbooks.com Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole Mapline Mapping App: I have now mentioned 30 different bookstores in SE New England, and I thought it would be fun to build a map and put pins in them all and put it on my website. So I'm giving this software a try. So far it's impressive and fun. The free version will probably be all I need since I don't plan on mapping out all my offices. But maybe a route through my novel - a road readers could take? Hmmmm. Best Page Forward: Back in January I mentioned this service as a means for creating a blurb about your book that would knock the socks off the audience. So in my effort to give my Second Law launch every chance of success I shelled out $297 for this service. No one knows your book better than you do, but maybe being too close to it is a hindrance. They did deliver right on time, but I can't say that what they wrote knocked my socks off. It didn't make my novel sound unique. Maybe that's the point? PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress Second Law is back from the early readers, cleaned up, ready to go! Out to the copyright office this week and into the back cover details. Amazon pre-orders rolling in! I'm so excited! If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,000 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

March 20, 2022 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature: 49 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 95% Sunrise: 6:48 AM EDT Second Law Launch Countdown 90 Days Remaining! March 20, 2022 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Stuff East of Eden - John Steinbeck Recalculating Truth Ink Fish Books Benjamin Bunny and the Rabbit Hole PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress Stuff - Over the years, if disaster doesn't strike, you collect a lot of stuff. When you are compelled to move to another place, there is usually a purge of stuff. You pull things out that you haven't looked at in years, and . . . you get rid of it and move on. Of course if you don't move, you have to find another reason to lighten the load. Then you might hear about someone selling a toy you have held since your childhood for a pile of bucks on Ebay, and you run to the attic to see you can find the box you stashed it in. It doesn't seem right to just throw that stuffed bear you spent so many hours cuddling in the trash. Then I see the people in Ukraine having to leave absolutely everything behind - their past, their history now only in their heads. Nature does that too with hurricanes and tornadoes and fires and floods. Poverty does it too - when you can no longer pay the fee for the storage locker. Stuff is not the same as memories. Memories must be passed on verbally as stories. We must be able to tell them to those willing to listen and retell them for us when we are no longer around. Stuff that has provided pleasure is indeed hard to throw away. That's another reason why I am lucky that I have grandchildren I can pass things to. Sorry kids. Stay well, Paul@paulhraymer.com East of Eden - John Steinbeck I don’t need to say it, but John Steinbeck’s writing is masterful. It’s like engaging in a master class in writing. He does break all the rules, and I’m only saying this because it’s how it feels: this book was written by the seat of his pants. It seems to be the work of a pantser from a construction point of view. I didn’t get the sense that there was a great deal of planning in the structure. One idea flows into another and then loops back and weaves together. Woven throughout are what appear to be autobiographical references. Right from the opening paragraphs he writes in the first person. And then in the fifth chapter he writes about “Olive, my mother.” I have not done the research to know whether or not he actually was writing about his family or if it was just another author’s conceit of bringing reality to the fiction. So the words wander from fiction to apparent reality. I wanted to read a tale of a truly evil person, but I got the sense that Steinbeck might have been a bit afraid of Cathy Ames. To achieve the true nature of a character, the author has to bring the persona into themselves. Cathy is evil. She starts killing with her parents in childhood and she kills a number of other people throughout the novel, but it seemed to me that Steinbeck didn’t like writing about her. She is a necessary component to the plot, but Lee, Adam Trask’s servant/companion is more developed, substantive, and powerful. Steinbeck provides a masterful appreciation of the the mistreatment and intrinsic value of Chinese immigrants embodied in Lee’s character - from his shifting Pidgin/English form of speech to the shaving of his pigtail to the remarkable wisdom of his philosophy of life. Looking for the traditional protagonist/antagonist conflict is a challenge in this book. Once again, Steinbeck breaks the rules. Who is the protagonist? Adam Trask seems to shoulder the role, carrying through from beginning to end. But I can also say that Adam or his soul is the antagonist as well, the element that he is fighting against. There are a myriad of sub-scenes and character portrayals that paint the colors around the story but do not always impact the movement of the plot. Steinbeck’s dialog structure is also unique. It is abrupt with few tags to smooth out the changes and it occasionally seems almost innocent or childish in structure which gives it unusual immediacy. East of Eden is obviously a classic and one that will move to my ‘best books’ shelf as soon as I buy a paper copy. Recalculating Truth This novel was publshed in 2014. The reason I'm bringing that up is that was eight years ago, and I introduced one of the principle characters this way, "He was not enjoying being alone with Diamon Jakes. When he had been hired by Tittle and Baines out of Harvard Law, she had awed him. She was an intense lawyer, a fast rising African-American woman, top of her class at Yale Law, who won cases and wrote opinions that the legal community listened to. And she was beautiful. She was shorter than he was, and she held herself like an aristocrat – shoulders back, head up, hands at the ready. She had scary, piercing brown eyes. Boyd could only maintain an exchanged gaze with her for a few moments. He also felt that she was taking apart every word that he said, looking for the lie, even in benign statements about the weather." Eventually Diamon Jakes becomes a candidate for the Supreme Court and her truth is tested in the vetting process. The challenge of a jury is to discern which witnesses are telling the truth about an event. It doesn't seem just that it would boil down to a matter of opinion. I wondered if there would be a better way. This book puts together four different human tells: voice stress analysis, non-verbal communications or body language, statement analysis, and micro-expressions to quadrangulate on the truth. All of these are viable technologies on their own, but putting them together and tying it to the massive data base of the internet, would provide an almost infallible means of determining if a witness is telling the truth or lying. It was fascinating doing the research on these subjects eight years ago. (If you would like a summary sheet of the technologies, I'd be glad to send it to you. Just email me at paul@paulhraymer.com.) There are also references at the back of the book. Recalculating Truth. I was trying come up with a title one day while I was driving and using the navigation system in my car when it suddenly said, "Recalculating!" That seemed like an obvious title for this story. Maybe in the ensuing years some company has actually created a device like this, but if not, they should have. As GUS SAINTE, the protagonist divined, this has to be better than waterboarding to secure solid and reliable information. How hard could it be?   Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $19 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here Inkfish Books Passion for books, food, and culture, Ink Fish Books is a locally woman-owned and operated independent bookstore. We provide unique customer experiences and carry a variety of new and gently used books in all categories including a children’s section. We also carry locally made food and kitchen products with food culture and cookbooks to create “food and book” pairings. Ink Fish Books hosts authors, artists, and educators. The environment is friendly, relaxing, encourages browsing, reading, and community involvement. 488 Main Street Warren, RI 02885 email: info@inkfishbooks.com phone: 401.368.6827 Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole RECOMENDO: A weekly newsletter that gives you 6 brief personal recommendations of cool stuff. This is a dangerous newsletter listing all sorts of truly rabbit hole openings into all sorts of interesting and possibly useful topics you might find helpful - if you can find your way out! BOOKBRUSH: I mentioned this website back in November, and I have been using it more and more. I used the templates for a cover reveal, and I am using it for my Facebook advertising. It's quick and simple to use. And the results are a bunch cheaper than hiring a professional designer. PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress The new novel - Second Law - Is almost ready to go! What do you think of the cover? Dairy Queen is open here in Falmouth so it must be Spring. June 18 is just around the corner. Click for the March Madness - Mystery Giveaway! Free books! If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,400 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

April 3, 2022 Salty Air Publishing Newsletter

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser Outside Temperature: 56 °F Outside Relative Humidity: 95% Sunrise: 6:25 AM EDT Second Law Launch Countdown 76 Days Remaining! Available for pre-order now on Amazon April 3, 2022 - Falmouth, MA In this issue: Clubs Best You - Keith Yocum More about Mini-Splits and Heat Pumps - Oh My! Visit 22 Bookstores in 2022 Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole PHR Books PHR Work In-Progress   Clubs - Clubs are a gathering of power. If you bring recognizably powerful people together in one place, some of that power rubs off. If you socialize with the rich and famous, maybe you can become rich and famous too. That power cluster is a tribe that people want to be a part of no matter the cost. It's a self- perpetuating phenomenon - virtually an addiction. Because the membership size is limited, there is a waiting list and a cost to remain on the waiting list even if you can get on it. You have to be rich and at least somewhat famous (or infamous) just to get on the list. And once you are finally a member, how do you give it up? It's like a drug. People are willing to spend thousands of dollars a year to remain a member even if they aren't around to hob knob with the tribe. Just being a member is a cachet to die or, in the world of fiction anyway, to kill for. And then there was Groucho Marx who said, "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member." Stay well, Paul@paulhraymer.com Best You - Keith Yocum Keith Yocum is a fellow Cape Codder, and I have had the pleasure to read a number of his books. This one clearly parallels his opening sentence: “Many strange things in life cannot be explained.” This is a kind and gentle book and quite different from his others. For example, what appears to be a dead body in this story, is not dead. Phillip Preston is a 36-year-old assistant bank manager who lives in a small seaside town and owns a boat. His wife has left him for his best friend. Until the opening event of this story, he is living a well-ordered, predictable, unimaginative life. He doesn’t have ambitions for major improvements in his future - perhaps just something akin to annual cost of living increases if he keeps his head down and does his job faithfully. His personality is similar to that of William Wilmer in Robert Lawson’s Mr. Wilmer and Anthony Burgess’s (author of A Clockwork Orange) Ambrose in The Eve of Saint Venus, two of my best-book-shelf books. Mr. Wilmer is a mild mannered twenty-nine year old who learns on his twenty-ninth birthday that he can talk to animals. Ambrose, in Burgess’s book, is a young mechanical engineer who is so nervous about getting married that he practices by putting the ring on the finger of the statue of Venus and the statue promptly closes her hand, making it impossible to remove the ring. Ambrose has effectively married the statue. In Best You, what happens to Phillip Preston is as unreal as talking to animals or marrying a statue. Perhaps the protagonists in these tales need to be simple, decent people so that what happens to them is a sharp contrast to their every day lives. Perhaps the character has to be simple in order to accept the “willing suspension of disbelief” and to allow that to transfer to the reader. Frankly, I didn’t want to like the book because I didn’t like the title. It’s simple. It’s not witty, ironic, or clever. I shouldn’t admit that because, as they say, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover (or its title). But when I got to the end of the book, the title made sense and it fits. Often a clever and simple premise is difficult to pull off. Difficulties arise that are unexplainable when referencing real life. People can’t actually talk to animals. Statues don’t actually move. And Phillip Preston in Best You can’t relate to what he experiences any more than the reader can. It is a challenge for the author to pull it off without sounding silly or ‘unrealistic’. Yocum gets close to losing it at times, but is skillfully able to pull it back on track. This is a book worth reading. More about Mini-Splits and Heat Pumps - Oh My! Heat pumps are too weird for me. After all these years I still have trouble wrapping my head around how something can pump heat out of ten degree air and heat the house with it.  There is something inherently odd in the refrigerant boiling at forty or fifty degrees Fahrenheit when you're used to water boiling at 212°F. But I'm going to accept it. I mean I've lived with the refrigeration process in my refrigerator all my life. That thing pumps the heat out of the refrigerator box and chills the orange juice and all the other stuff. I'm just going to go ahead and accept that. There's a lot of stuff that I don't understand about how my car works either. How important is it that we understand the wonders that happen behind the curtain? There is a great deal of press about a transformation to an all-electric world. With the price of oil and gas, it is attractive to try to leap on the bandwagon and convert that old gas furnace to something electric. And what if you could throw some photovoltaic panels on the roof and convert sunlight to heating or cooling and not have to pay a utility bill at all? I hate to say it, but as wonderful as all that sounds, it's not a simple process. Complexity leads to confusion and confusion leads to solution doctors who will solve all your problems for you and throw out a bunch of terms like SEER and AFUE and BTUs that you might not have any desire to understand. Luckily there's the internet and you certainly have to be careful about that information as well. If you are going to look into replacing your existing system, be sure you start from the beginning. The sizing of the system is fundamental. If you don't want to do the sizing calculation yourself, be sure that whatever contractor you choose knows how to do it. Ask them for the ACCA (Air Conditioning Contractors of America)  Manual J calculation. I have contractors tell me that that isn't necessary, sizing the system by the 'rule of thumb' will result in a system that will not operate efficiently. If it's for heating, you definitely don't want to size the system based on the output of your existing heating system - especially if you have improved the insulation. You might want to look at ACCA Standard 5 which is the Quality Control manual. But at some point it's going to come down to how much you trust the contractor and keep in mind that you have to consider all the elements of the system.   Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $19.9 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you. Click for books and bookshops mentioned here Visit 22 Bookstores in 2022     Zibby Books, a new publishing home for fiction and memoir, has launched a fun new way to explore more bookstores and discover great books! Here's how you can participate:   1. Sign up for the challenge by visiting the #22in22 website and clicking the ‘Join the #22in22 challenge’ button at the top of the page. 2. Print out the PDF checklist to track your visits. 3. Every time you visit a bookstore, go to the website and quickly input the name and city/state of the bookstore and date of visit.   Follow @zibbybooks and @titcombsbookshop and see the website for more info!   HAVE FUN! Start discovering books. This program came to me via Titcombs Bookstore, a wonderful bookstore in Sandwich. Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole These are just interesting links. They are not affiliate sites for Salty Air Publishing. If you are a wood carver or prone to slicing you fingers in the kitchen (or know someone who does), you might consider wearing a glove (or gloves) made from HPPE, formerly called Kevlar. It's a soft fabric wound steel and is overall stronger than steel. Yet the gloves are not bulky at all, but are extremely flexible and comfortable, and can be washed easily. These are NoCry Gloves. A pair last a long time in part because the gloves are ambidextrous and you only wear one at a time. Ginkgo: I'm always looking for a better way to make the thoughts for my book flow from my head onto the pages of my novel. I haven't tried this app yet, but it looks promising. In Gingko, you should be able to see and edit the overall structure of the story, and jump in and write the details out. You should be able to write whatever comes to mind: whether it's a great line of dialogue, a sparkling description, or a summary of the final Act. In other words, you can plan your novel, and write it too... PHR Books Residential Ventilation Handbook V2 Recalculating Truth Death at the Edge of the Diamond Also available on-line and in fine bookshops. PHR Work In-Progress Second Law is closing in on the launch. Picking off the last of the typos with my eagle-eyed early readers and it is set-up on Amazon for pre-order. If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you! Forward Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,400 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible. Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues. Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Our website is: https://www.saltyairpublishing.com/ Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|* Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*