non-fiction | M Thomas Apple Author Page

Smashwords End of the Year Sale from 12/15 to 1/1!

December 15, 2022
MThomas

“Find my ebooks and a wide collection of great indie titles as part of the Smashwords 2022 End of Year Sale! Check out https://smashwords.com/shelves/promos before the end of the month and follow @smashwords for more promos like this! #SmashwordsEOYSale #ebook #sale #books2read #indiebooks”

(I swiped this from the Smashwords promo site as a “generic blurb.” But what else, really, do I need to write?

All my ebooks on Smashwords are “50%” off! That means the books that are listed as $0.99 are actually free, since they don’t do $0.49.

And don’t forget that all proceeds from Destiny in the Future are donated to fight cancer.

Gift an ebook to friends and family!

Call a spade a

December 5, 2022
MThomas

Just saw someone on my morning commuter train wearing a fluffy beige coat with a single word in all capital letters, stretching across the back from left elbow to right elbow:

EXPLOIT

Yeah. That’s what happened, alright.

Getting Yourself to Write

December 14, 2021
MThomas

Writing can be a struggle for writers of all levels, from beginning to professional. The struggle has a dreaded name: writer’s block. Writer’s block …
Getting Yourself to Write

I’ve never really experienced the so-called “writer’s block.” Not that I’m bragging…but I often just don’t find I have enough time to write.

By which I mean, writing seriously. It’s easy, however, to find time here and there just to jot down some random thoughts.

(Aside note: if you type really quickly on the WordPress smartphone app, it autocorrect “random” to “radon,” which would put you in an entirely different frame of mind.)

SpooQy-1 action at a distance!

June 30, 2020
MThomas

“In the future, our system could be part of a global quantum network transmitting quantum signals to receivers on Earth or on other spacecraft,” says Aitor Villar, lead author of the study. “These signals could be used to implement any type of quantum communications application, from quantum key distribution for extremely secure data transmission to quantum teleportation, where information is transferred by replicating the state of a quantum system from a distance.”

OK, OK, so it’s not the first time quantum entanglement has been demonstrated. But it sure is the smallest. Only 20 cm by 10 cm!

Now we only need a few thousand of these things and a way of somehow making tangled photons actually carry encrypted messages…

(Sorry, thinking of the SF novel I should have published by now…still figuring out the last two chapters!)

See more at New Atlas (note: I seriously doubt the CubeSat actually looks like that picture when it’s doing its thing).

An ex-Domer Forever: What on Earthside was I thinking?

July 25, 2018
MThomas

It’s the end of the spring term (finally) at my university in Kyoto, which means I’ll be getting ready for my yearlong sabbatical in Montreal soon. From September I’ll be back at a North American university for the first time since 1997.

Ah, Notre Dame. Mixed lapsed Catholic-cum-agnostic memories. Continue Reading

Starving the smartphone addiction

March 10, 2018
MThomas

It’s been six weeks since I decided to take a break from Facebook. Back in mid-January I took a screenshot to show students how to figure out which apps they used the most (Line, by far, in case you’re wondering, followed by YouTube… not surprisingly, since my students are all Japanese).

It was a little shocking to see that I was spending over 8 hours a week on FB on my iPhone. My train commute is about an hour and a half each way, and I go to campus four days a week. So basically I spent 2/3 of my train time looking at FB posts.

Yuck. What a waste of reading time. Continue Reading

Winter: A Time to Read

January 5, 2017
MThomas

Since becoming sick this past November (first a momentary, sudden illness in the pit of my stomach…), I’ve found it difficult to stay 100% healthy as winter has well and truly set in. It’s not terribly cold where I live (the middle of Honshu, the main island of Japan), but the up-and-down irregular temperature pattern this year has made it easier to catch colds, influenza, and other upper respiratory sicknesses.

So while down in the dumps with the mumps (which I contracted over New Year’s from my two children, despite having been vaccinated against it as a child…different strain here, perhaps), I’ve tackled a reading book list compiled from last summer. Even managed to finish one or two! Continue Reading

What’s “creative non-fiction”?

March 24, 2015
MThomas

Yes, this is a real lake and not fictional.

This past week I’ve been scouring through some short stories of mine that have been sitting collecting Microsoft dust for years now…in preparation for putting out a collection of stories and poems later this year or early next (tentatively titled “Notes from the Nineties,” which lets you know how long I’ve been sitting on these files). Some of the earliest versions of the stories were written so long ago that MS Word consisted of a single 3.5″ floppy.

What’s a floppy? To quote George Carlin, next person who asks that gets stabbed between the eyes with a pencil.

As I began the tedious process of converting the files to newer, editable forms of word processing software, it occurred to me that much of my fiction is really very thinly-disguised non-fiction. Kind of. Continue Reading

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