The Affordable Care Act and My Family

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Insuring the Holste/Hanberg clan is expensive business. Since leaving her full-time job in 2007, Mary has been paying for her health care out-of-pocket (as I have since 2008). Mary’s plan was, until now, the only health plan in Washington that includes maternity (if you’re self-employed and buying insurance on your own) and the monthly premiums were very high. When we added Hannah to the plan last year, they got even higher. I’m on an HSA, which is basically the equivalent of a catastrophic health care plan that includes a couple doctor visits. It’s cheaper, but still not cheap, especially for Read more…

Hercule Poirot and the Case of Public Domain

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So here’s the news: there will be a new Hercule Poirot novel commissioned by the estate of Agatha Christie coming in 2014. The first Poirot novel was published in 1920, and the last Poirot novel was published in 1975. So that’s a 39 year break between the last Poirot novel and this one. Why wait so long? Or better yet–why is this book coming out now? Well, to answer that question, let’s jump back a couple decades and investigate the case of the 1991 novel Scarlett, a sequel to Gone With the Wind that was authorized by the estate of Margaret Read more…

Every sale still amazes me …

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The first day of every month is a hard one for an independent author. All your sales are wiped clean. However well you did the month before, all those sales disappear, and the counter resets to zero. This is what the sales report for Kindle looks like when you haven’t sold any books. No matter how good previous month sales were, this is the bar you see before you sell anything this month. Ugh. Back in 2010 and early 2011, there were some months when this bar wouldn’t go away until the end of the month. Now it usually goes away pretty Read more…

An update on “Frank Herbert Park”

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Metro Parks finished its review of the public request to name the peninsula that forms the yacht basin “Frank Herbert Park.” Their conclusion was two-fold: “Frank Herbert” is eligible to be a park name. The peninsula is actually a part of Point Defiance Park, and thus can’t be named Frank Herbert Park. The first conclusion is excellent news. The second conclusion is, personally speaking, disappointing–although after a long discussion with the Historic and Cultural Asset Manager, I learned a lot about the history of the breakwater and its creation to be a part of Point Defiance. So I understand where Read more…

Sneak Peek

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Things are moving along with my sci-fi adventure novel! I’m thinking October, but the hard and fast date is not fixed yet. There’s still a lot to be done, which is why I’m not sure of the date. So until then I want to share a small slice of the cover art from Tacoma artist Chandler O’Leary. It’s just a small hint of what is to come. So very excited to share the rest soon!

Photo blogging

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You might have noticed a dearth of travel photos around these parts. There’s a reason for that, and that is mostly that Instagram is one of my favorite social media services. I love the streams of my friends photos, and I love posting my own. The filters also lend them a bit of drama, and can  make the colors really pop. Here’s Rainier out my airplane window this morning.   Here’s Vashon and Maury Island with Commencement Bay and Tacoma in the haze.   And here’s Mount Saint Helens, looking very cratered.   (I took the 33 minute flight to Read more…

Me … in watercolor

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The awesome Tacoma artist Chandler O’Leary painted a watercolor portrait of me in her sketchbook last month. I’ve been meaning to post it here, but if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll see it there too. Chandler, among other projects, has a cool new site called “Drawn the Road Again” that is a watercolor/sketchbook travelogue. The whole site is illustrated and painted and it looks fantastic. (Side x Side helped her out with building it, hence the awesome portrait as a thank you). You can also expect to see Chandler’s artistic sense on the cover for my science Read more…

Better. Stronger. Faster.

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The new ErikHanberg.com is still a work in progress, but I didn’t want to leave the danged “coming soon” page live any longer than I had to. So the site’s up, and hopefully it will continue to improve. Like the Six Million Dollar Man, the goal is that this version of the website is better, stronger, and faster. The previous site, while it had some features I really liked, was terribly slow to load and if I ever was lucky enough to grab a big influx of traffic, it would have faltered under the load. There were also some issues Read more…

Quick to Market Isn't Always a Good Thing

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I’ve always liked Longfellow’s poem “A Psalm of Life,” which I first read in high school. Here’s the last stanza: Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. When I first read it, the last word felt wrong to me. In a poem that is all about how time is fleeting and how we must be a hero in the strife, it seemed weird to end the poem with an admonishment to learn to wait. Since then, I think I’ve come around to better understanding the Read more…