Goodreads Giveaway Winners - Red Planet Pioneer

Today was the day I sent out ten copies to the winners of my Goodreads book giveaway. I want to thank everyone who signed up for the contest, it really did make for an exciting run. I also want to take the time to thank Goodreads.com for hosting such an awesome event, the book giveaways are a great way for aspiring authors to reach an audience. I know from my experience with this one, I cannot wait to participate in my next goodreads giveaway. Again thanks to all who signed up, and congratulations to the Ten Winners:

M. Isel
S. Crosslin
H. Gordon
B. Jones
K. Krawczu
C. LaClair
S. Williams
Dr. Chaz
M. Smith
C. Duncan

Your copies should arrive within five to 10 days.

Updates on My Other Projects

Just keeping anyone who might be following this posted on my other endeavors.
For the past five years I have worked through an organization I have formed called SkimChicks, which promotes the women of skimboarding. In the past 5 years we have gotten the sport of skimboarding to recognize these women and provide them with a professional division within contests, which has eventually lead to them being apart of their pro tour (the UST).
This past October 5th and 6th saw the final stop of their truncated professional tour, (they were given tour stops halfway through the UST season...which caught a lot of the female athletes off guard...but in the end was a good thing.)
I covered their first stop at Aliso State Beach, in Laguna Beach, CA. and the last stop which was Oktoberfest in Newport Beach (Balboa Pier). These contests are very fun and action packed. A great way to spend part of your day at the beach, and if you are a competitor the sport itself is very addicting.
Our facebook page has the most current postings, https://www.facebook.com/OfficialSkimChicks
 and our instagram page (#skimchicks) is reserved for capturing the spirit of the contest on the day.
I will be posting photos as I process them over the next few weeks from the Oktoberfest contest of October 5th and 6th.
Two things are close to being launched for SkimChicks.
Our Skimming Waxy - Waxy Skim Chix
and our Clothing Line....(which will be launched on line...).
Working on my second Novel...which is coming along just fine...around 290 pages into it....
That's a little window into what I have been up to for the past few weeks....please don't forget to enter the contest on Goodreads.com to have a chance at winning a FREE copy of my first novel: Red Planet Pioneer - Modulus of Resilience....(a link for it is in my last post...).
Thanx for following along . . .

FREE Book Giveaway - GoodReads.com

It took me longer than expected, but I finally got the contest up and running at goodreads...I am giving away ten hard covered books... 338 pages. Goodreads monitors the contest and chooses the winners. If you would like a chance at winning a copy of the book...please go here!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Red Planet Pioneer

by R. Vincent Tibbetts

Giveaway ends November 07, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

 

The first Dextoids . . . and a Book Coupon

Somewhere within the following video lies what I imagine are the first steps to creating the Dextoids of Red Planet Pioneer . . .
DARPA autonomous vehicles and robots

It is a fascinating and scary world we are on the verge of entering with mechanized beings such as this....one that will test the moral fiber as well as the civic values of a nation . . .

On a side note . . . I did manage to figure out the coupon generator for Smashwords . . .

You can pick the book up for .99 cents on September 2nd by using this code: UY33K

It's an opening day savings of $2.00...!!!
Good for only September 2nd...2013


Here is the link if you are interested . . .
Red Planet Pioneer - Modulus of Resilience

As always I appreciate your time.
Have a great Labor Day weekend . . . and if you purchased the book I hope you enjoy the read.

My Copy of Mars Direct

My copy of Mars Direct.
While working on Red Planet Pioneer back in 1999, I bought this book and got completely hooked on the Mars Direct concept of how to get humanity to the Red Planet. The plan was so inspiring to me that I actually went to the world famous Vroman's book store located in Pasadena to meet Dr. Robert Zubrin. I got to hear him speak back on September 8th, of 1999, and have been very passionate about the idea of seeing human beings stepping foot on Mars to colonize it.
The possibilities seem endless on such venture, testing our resolve as a species, and playing out to any number of possible outcomes.
As I am getting ready for the release of my first Novel: Red Planet Pioneer - Modulus of Resilience, I realized that my September 2nd release date is only a few days off of being fourteen years since I was standing in Vromans, and listening to the impassioned plea for colonizing another world.
If you have any interest at all in seeing the Red Planet colonized sometime in the future, than there are ways in which to contribute . .

We can support organizations like: the Mars Society
http://www.marssociety.org/

We can get involved with the missions to Mars:
http://applicants.mars-one.com/

...or we can create Art or Literature that will support the vision and dream of colonizing another world. Perhaps one day, the people of Mars will look at all of these efforts and find an inspiration for pushing even further into space, or an entertainment for what we imagined their future would look like.

I realized almost fourteen years later, that meeting still has me inspired . . .

Perhaps in some way...I will be touching just a little bit of that kind of energy, and getting that much closer to Mars, my launch date is September 2nd, 2013.
Red Planet Pioneer - Modulus of Resilience

Download a few Chapters of the Novel Red Planet Pioneer . . . for Free . . .

Just a reminder . . . you can download for FREE, a sneak preview of the first few chapters of the Novel - Red Planet Pioneer here: Red Planet Pioneer

I am busy researching printing the novel as a paperback or hard cover....

I will also be holding a eBook Release Day Party on September 1st somewhere in the Long Beach, CA. area if anyone is interested in attending . . . I will be posting the information for that as soon as it becomes a little more concrete.

You can also Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Red-Planet-Pioneer/496014557141547?ref=hl and Vote for a possible cover for the book. Your votes do mean something to the various stages of this project.

Thanks in advance for your time and interest!

Mars Artic 365 . . . 2014

The Mars Society will embark on a journey to simulate a one year stay on the Martian surface, located in the polar desert on Canada’s Devon Island in July of 2014. The Flashline Mars Research Station has gone through a series of upgrades, system checks, and appraisals in July of 2013.

Commenting on the success of MA365 Phase 1, crew commander Joseph Palaia said, “Our team completed the critical mission objectives we had set out to accomplish.  We plan to return to FMARS at the beginning of next season to deliver more equipment and supplies and complete preparation of the station for the Mars Society’s historic one-year expedition.”

Please stay tuned as the Mars Society will soon send out a call for crew volunteers for this one year mission.

More information can be found here:
http://ma365.marssociety.org/

Humble beginnings for a story.
There was something about this project I couldn't let go, a story I always felt was there within these pages that wasn't being told, and after everyone walked away from it, I held on, for whatever the reason I didn't want to walk away.
Mars itself has always perked my curiosity, especially when you put it into terms of being the only planet within our solar system we have a real chance of colonizing. It's kind of like when you realize where the planet is in conjunction with the sun when its summertime, or when you look up into the nighttime sky to see the backbone of night, to realize what the orbital positioning of the solar system really is within the galaxy.
Not everything is as it seems. Granted the first issue was clunky the way most first issues are in trying to find themselves. I think from my perspective the hope was there were going to be other issues produced, time to work the story out, time for character development. It didn't sit well with me that those things didn't materialize. It was as if we marooned those characters within those pages.
Writing this novel helped me satiate these desires.
I still have a passion for the story of Red Planet Pioneer.
I still have some copies left, about a hundred and fifty copies.
I will gladly give an autographed first edition of this comic book to the first 150 people who buy the ebook.
I will figure out a way to confirm the purchase and mailing of this, so please stay tuned . . .

A preview of the novel can be found here at Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/343819

I know the CEO of the Red Planet Pioneer Corporation personally, and can say without question Xavier Pentagrass would be very pleased to make your acquaintance . . .

Exodus - The Mars One Project

As I was finishing my novel over the summer, I heard about the Mars One Project and their idea for colonizing Mars. I always had a sneaking suspicion the first plans for colonizing the Red Planet would entail putting more colonists on the planet than they would allow to return, but my rational was based more on what had happened in the past when countries had gone out to colonize distant lands. Granted the technology may not have been there for people to return to their country of origin, but any real effort throughout history always seemed to leave people with some sort of chance to see their homeland. There are exceptions as in the case with the HMS Bounty with the mutineers not wanting to be found, or extremes for motivating the crew as with Cortez and his quest for Aztec gold, but burning the ships to abandon all hope might not be the best strategy for colonizing a new world. There are plenty of compatibility problems between crew members flying out into the vacuum of space for that long, http://oig.nasa.gov/old/inspections_assessments/061998.html , or people who have tried to live within biospheres here on Earth for any extended length of time that will doggedly haunt these future colonists. http://www.oswego.edu/~schneidr/CHE300/envinv/EnvInv01.htm
Another concern would have to be the availability of vehicles. NASA alone has gone through two distinct phases of space flight, from the development of their Apollo Rocket to their Space Shuttle. Each have had substantial gaps between them as they developed the next generation of rockets (in the current case we wait the building of the Orion Rocket - http://www.livescience.com/24343-orion-nasa-spaceship-2014-test-flight.html). Any interruption in these types of services would translate into a delay in getting much needed supplies to the martian colony.
There are no easy answers, but volunteering for marooning yourself on another world might be tantamount to saying one would like to live the rest of their days in Antarctica or the Atacama Desert of Chile.
I'm all for colonizing Mars. I would just like to see the success for such an ambitious venture eclipse any dark scenarios yet written by those of science fiction. The reports of pulling half mad and starved individuals out of Biosphere One here on Earth should wake people up to these very real concerns.
Throughout our history, the act of colonization has allowed us to advance as a species, and would do so again if given a real opportunity on the Red Planet.
After all there will be no going back.
Deadline for applicants....August 31st, 2013
http://applicants.mars-one.com/