The Canal: A Review

Horror website Fatally Yours recently reviewed The Canal. Be sure to check it out! Read the review here...

Canal News: The Cleanup Begins (Sort Of)

Updates on Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal, the real life inspiration behind my book, The Canal.

The E.P.A. recently announced that the Gowanus Canal has been designated a Superfund site. This means that the filthy, yet charming, waterway will soon be undergoing a massive and much-needed cleanup. According to The New York Times, "the agency estimates that the project will last 10 to 12 years and cost $300 million to $500 million." That's a lot of time and a lot of money, but then again, the Gowanus is a pretty polluted place.

While I'm a big fan of the Gowanus' gritty nature (and I certainly enjoyed writing about it), I'm glad to hear things are looking up for the canal. Although I have to ask: what happens to all the gonorrhea?

-Gowanus Canal Gets Superfund Status [The New York Times]

Rocket: The E-Book

Rocket is now electronic. And .99 cents. Get it here...

Time Travel Trip: Part Three

Since I can’t travel through time, I traveled to New Mexico instead - all to do research for my new time travel book. Here’s how it went...

The Chino Mine is an open-pit copper mine outside of Silver City, New Mexico. As far as pits go, it’s pretty large; it actually resembles a small valley more than a pit, making the surrounding hills -- which would otherwise be pretty tame -- seem like mountains.

What does an open-pit mine have to do with time travel? Not much. In the book there’s a big showdown that I figured would take place at a nuclear bomb test site (hence the visit to White Sands), with an open-pit mine being a possible alternative option. The mine has since become the most likely setting, although it probably won’t be based on one as big as Chino (I’ve since found a smaller one in Nevada that seems like a better fit).

And that about sums up my obviously mind-blowing road excursion to New Mexico and back -- pits and radioactive sand and all. I’ll definitely continue to post more updates on the new book as they arise.

-El Chino Mine [Wikipedia]
-A History of Mineral Collecting at the Chino Mine by Virgil W. Lueth, Ronald B. Gibbs, and Robert M. North [Rocks & Minerals]

On the road, strange headwear happens.

Rocket: E-Book Version Soon

Joining The Canal, my novella Rocket will soon be available in E-Book format. Hopefully in a month or two... In the meantine, you can always buy the paperback here.

Time Travel Trip: Part Two

Since I can’t travel through time, I traveled to New Mexico instead - all to do research for my new time travel book. Here’s how it went...

On July 16, 1945 the first atomic bomb - nicknamed the gadget - was detonated in New Mexico at the Trinity Site, which is located within the military-run White Sands Missile Range. In 1975 the area was declared a national historic landmark and Trinity Site is now open to the public two days a year.

The primary landmark is ground zero, where a commemorative obelisk stands at the location of the original 100-foot steel tall tower that held the bomb. After the device detonated, the heat melted the sand on the desert floor, creating a green (and radioactive) glassy substance called Trinitite. Most of the Trinitite has been removed or buried, but if you look carefully you can still find small nuggets of the stuff scattered around. A bunker-type structure has been built in order to preserve a small swath of the original bomb crater and its Trinitite covering, which I was actually curious to see. Unfortunately, while it seems that they used to open this structure to public view, it now looks permanently closed - a sign helpfully explains that sand has since covered what remains of the crater surface.


There were a lot of people at this thing. Supposedly they get about a thousand visitors. Besides ground zero, you can also take a bus to the McDonald ranch house, which is where the bomb was assembled. The house wasn't particularly interesting.

What is interesting though, is that a one hour visit to ground zero results in a radiation exposure of one-half to one millirems, which is about ten times greater than the areas normal background radiation (interestingly, the levels are strongest wherever the concentrations of buried Trinitite are the greatest). However, to put this in perspective: a coast to coast flight will actually net you two millirems and a chest x-ray about six. On average, we receive about 360 millirems per year. I guess for 2009 I’ll be a little closer to 361.

Next up: the Chino open-pit copper mine...

The Trinity explosion.

Time Travel Trip: Part One

Since I can’t travel through time, I traveled to New Mexico instead - all to do research for my new time travel book. Here’s how it went...

Off of Highway 60 in New Mexico, 50 miles west of the city of Socorro is the Very Large Array (driving with my father we came from direction of Arizona, which I mention only because as you travel east on the 60 you pass through a town called Pie Town, which does in fact serve pies). The VLA is a radio astronomy telescope operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and consists of 27 antennas arranged in a ‘Y’ pattern - each antenna weighs 230 tons and the dishes have a diameter of 82 feet.

The VLA has a pretty prominent role in the movie Contact. It is, like you see in the photo, a big farm of satellites, and in person the scale is definitely impressive. The dishes actually changed direction while we were there, and I’m not sure how often that happens, but it felt like a rare thing to witness.

No radio astronomy telescopes will be appearing in my book, although there will be a road trip (and yeah, probably a Pie Town). So to that end, any excuse to escape the interstate and drive through the New Mexico countryside - even just to stare at some giant antennas - was pretty worth it.

Up next: the Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated...

Cassopeia A, a supernova remnant, as captured by the VLA. (Image: NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Canal Monster: At Large

The above video shows what some residents of Madeira Beach, Florida are claiming is a 30-foot long creature that's roaming their canals. According to Russ Sittlow, who has been videotaping the mystery animal: "It's something strange. It's something I've never seen in salt water." Sittlow concedes it might be a snake, "or a serpent-like thing that looks like a snake," although wildlife officials who have viewed the footage seem to think it's a manatee. Either way, it wouldn't last a minute in this stuff.

-Man Says 30-foot 'Monster' Lurking in Canals of Madeira Beach by Rod Challenger [Tampa Bay Online]

Six-Minute Story: The Website

I recently got an email from the creator of a very cool website: Sixminutestory.com. I've written a couple of six minute stories (I cannot lie: it's mostly to fill space), although Sixminutestory.com takes the concept to a whole other level - giving everyone a chance to post their own quick stories in a forum where the most popular ones will rise to the top. Definitely worth checking out...

Canal News: A Less Filthy Future

Updates on Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal, the real life inspiration behind my book, The Canal.

Change is afoot at the Gowanus Canal - the waterways future is being argued over by the EPA, who wants to designate the canal a Superfund site and begin returning it to a nontoxic state, and the city of NY and real estate interests who want to develop the area but argue that Superfund status would be the kiss of death as far as their development plans are concerned (they have proposed their own alternate clean up plan). A recent article in The New York Times Magazine lays out where both sides currently stand, although either way it seems like the bad old days of the Gowanus may be numbered. Good news for the canal, bad news for any flesh-eating sewer dwellers that can’t yet afford a condo.

-On The Waterfront by Andrew Rice [New York Times Magazine]

Kindle Sale: The Canal: .99 Cents

The Kindle version of The Canal is just .99 cents through October!

Canal News: Building A Better Pump

Updates on the Gowanus Canal, the real life inspiration behind The Canal.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle has an interesting article about the Gowanus Canal’s flushing tunnel pump (which is briefly mentioned in the book), which is slated to get an upgrade at the end of this year. Because the Gowanus has little natural current, the flushing tunnel was built to draw in fresh water from the nearby Buttermilk Channel.

As the article points out, the tunnel - which was built in 1911 - was out of operation from the 60’s until 1999. Although I don’t specifically state it in The Canal, the book is meant to take place in the late 80’s when the Gowanus would have been at its most hypothetically stagnant (it also takes place prior to the opening of the Red Hook sewage treatment plant, which began operating around ’89).

On a side note, I also stumbled across a historical overview of the Gowanus at Waterwire.net, which briefly touches on the canal’s earliest history:

"The canal was originally a tidal inlet called the Gowanus Creek in the original saltwater marshland of South Brooklyn. Both Henry Hudson and Giovanni da Verrazano navigated the inlet and a critical portion of the Battle of Brooklyn was fought nearby, when American troops fought off the redcoats long enough to allow George Washington to retreat."

I like the fact that the ‘fresh’ water being drawn into the Gowanus is really just East River water. But then again - at least the East River doesn’t have STD’s. Not yet, anyway.

- Gowanus Canal Flushing Tunnel’s Pumping Mechanism To Get Upgrade by Raanan Geberer [Brooklyn Daily Eagle]
- Imaging the City: Gowanus Canal by Virginia Terry [Waterwire.net]