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Lightning Rod Publishers

Windstorm Creative
Windstorm Creative
7419 Ebbert Dr SE Port Orchard WA 98367
(360) 769-7174 ph (206) 350-7963 fx
www.WindstormCreative.com





TITLE INFORMATION


A Teen's-Eye View of Life on the Moon.
Blue Works, the young adult division of
Windstorm Creative, is pleased to announce Lunar Pioneers, by Robert A. Black, author
of The Real Life Channel and former script writer for You Cant Do That on Television.

All her life, Blair Kelly has listened to the stories of her ancestors on the American
frontier. Now it's her turn to follow in their footsteps but she'll be helping settle the
new frontier of the Moon. Soon, an ordinary 22nd century Earth girl is learning how to
wear a spacesuit, discovering the wonders of space flight and exploring the Moon's
mysteries. But is she ready to leave everything she knew behind and face the challenge
of a new world?



This media kit includes:
Press Release
Author Interview
First-Person Essays (2)
Reader Review
Ordering Information



















Jennifer DiMarco
Cris K.A. DiMarco

All Divisions


Chief Executive Officer
Senior Editor




Blue Works

Little Blue Works



Fandom Press

Orchard Academy Press

Order Processing
Legal and Subsidiary Rights
Immortal Day Publishing

Paper Frog Productions

orders@windstormcreative.com
legal@windstormcreative.com
Lightning Rod Publishers

Windstorm Creative
Windstorm Creative
7419 Ebbert Dr SE Port Orchard WA 98367
(360) 769-7174 ph (206) 350-7963 fx
www.WindstormCreative.com


PRESS RELEASE


She's the New Girl

in Town

On the Moon!


TITLE:
Lunar Pioneers
AUTHOR:
Robert A. Black
PUBLICATION DATE
: 2008
PRICE:
$14.99
PAGE COUNT:
234
ISBN:
9781590923979
DESCRIPTION:
All her life, Blair Kelly has listened to the stories of her ancestors on the
American frontier. Now it's her turn to follow in their footsteps but she'll be helping settle
the new frontier of the Moon. Soon, an ordinary 22nd century Earth girl is learning how to
wear a spacesuit, discovering the wonders of space flight and exploring the Moon's mysteries.
But is she ready to leave everything she knew behind and face the challenge of a new world?
RELEVANCE:
Lunar Pioneers depicts the thrill and adventure of space travel while still being
grounded in scientific fact. The story gives young readers a realistic look at the wonders and
challenges of the final frontier, through the eyes of someone living a life much like their own.
At the same time, the story looks back to the days of an earlier frontier exploring the threads of
time that connect past, present and future.
AUTHORS CREDENTIALS:
Born and raised in Indianapolis, Robert A. Black still remembers
the night in July 1969 when his parents got him out of bed to watch the first astronauts walking
on the Moon. He studied mechanical engineering in college and currently works by day as a
Quality Assurance Manager in Southern California. His previous work includes nine episodes
of the TV series, You Can't Do That On Television, and the book, The Real Life Channel
.
PRINT RUN:
10,000
GENRE:
Young Adult Fiction
DISTRIBUTION:
Ingram, Baker & Taylor, PartnersWest, Midwest Library Service, Brodart,
and more as well as directly from the publisher.
CONTACT:
Cris DiMarco (crisdimarco@windstormcreative.com) or at the address and phone
above.



Jennifer DiMarco
Cris K.A. DiMarco

All Divisions


Chief Executive Officer
Senior Editor




Blue Works

Little Blue Works



Fandom Press

Orchard Academy Press

Order Processing
Legal and Subsidiary Rights
Immortal Day Publishing

Paper Frog Productions

orders@windstormcreative.com
legal@windstormcreative.com
Lightning Rod Publishers

Windstorm Creative
Windstorm Creative
7419 Ebbert Dr SE Port Orchard WA 98367
(360) 769-7174 ph (206) 350-7963 fx
www.WindstormCreative.com



INTERVIEW

Peering into the Future with Lunar Pioneers

An interview with author Robert A. Black. This interview may be reprinted as a whole or
in part. For digital copy of the interview, contact us at legal@windstormcreative.com


What made you want to write this book?
I had two main reasons you could say they were two challenges I gave myself. First, I felt
like I hadn't seen anything in recent science fiction that gave young people a future they
could hope for and try to reach. If you talk to people at NASA or in the aerospace industry,
a lot of them will tell you that when they were young, they read books by Isaac Asimov or
Robert Heinlein, or especially that they watched Star Trek. But today there seems to be a
lot more fantasy being written, and less science fiction that a kid can think about and say,
"Yeah, I want to do that!"

And you think that's important?
Absolutely. If you want to see how much Star Trek has influenced our world, just take out
a cell phone. What do most of them look like? Captain Kirk's communicator. The
Discovery Channel did an entire two-hour special about all the inventions and
developments that Star Trek helped inspire. Fantasy stories can be fun to read, but they
can't inspire people in the same way. You're never going to see someone inventing a real
magic wand or anything like that.

So what was your second reason?
I wanted to write a story that depicted space flight as realistically as possible. In some
ways, the environment within the Earth-Moon system is more alien than what you typically
see in science fiction. The reality of dealing with differences in gravity and atmosphere can
be a lot more fantastic than a typical space battle or fight with a bug-eyed monster.

Why do think there haven't been more "realistic" space stories?
Well, first of all, most people have never had the chance to learn about what space flight is
really like. The public started tuning out on NASA after the Apollo 11 landing in 1969, and
despite NASA's best efforts, they've never been able to recapture the public's attention for
very long. That's not their fault NASA is a scientific organization, not part of the
entertainment industry. But that means much of what it does only gets communicated to
people who already want to know about it.


Jennifer DiMarco
Cris K.A. DiMarco

All Divisions


Chief Executive Officer
Senior Editor




Blue Works

Little Blue Works



Fandom Press

Orchard Academy Press

Order Processing
Legal and Subsidiary Rights
Immortal Day Publishing

Paper Frog Productions

orders@windstormcreative.com
legal@windstormcreative.com
Lightning Rod Publishers

Windstorm Creative

And second, the realities of space flight are simply too difficult for Hollywood to re-create
easily or economically. Look at all the trouble Ron Howard went though to make Apollo 13
he had to build a set on an airplane and fly it up and down repeatedly to simulate zero
gravity. A realistic depiction of life on the Moon would probably be even harder. Of
course, life in space or on the Moon would be easy to show with animation, and I have seen
a couple of Japanese anime series do a good job of it, but Hollywood doesn't seem to be
interested.

So how did you prepare yourself to write the book?
I've been interested in the Moon ever since I watched the first Apollo landing at age four, so
I already had the general knowledge I needed. To get ready for Lunar Pioneers in
particular, I researched a lot of theories and engineering design concepts people have
developed for an actual Moon colony, and I also read a lot of accounts written by actual
astronauts and cosmonauts. I spent several weeks just going over the NASA records of the
Apollo 17 landing site transcripts, photographs, video clips and maps because I wanted
to get everything right when I had Blair and her family go there.

Was there anything in your research that really stood out from the rest?
One book I particularly liked was written by the first British cosmonaut, a woman named
Helen Sharman. She was just a regular person a chemist working for the Mars candy
company, which the press found very amusing and she won a competition to go to the
Mir space station. Her account brought up a lot of the more mundane things about space
flight that I didn't find anywhere else. That was just what I'd been looking for.

And then you named a research center after her.
Yes, I did. A lot of the people and places in the story are named after something or
someone from the history of space flight. For example, the colonies are all named after
space probes that studied the Moon Clementine, Ranger, Zond, and so on. A few months
after I finished the book, I got to meet the engineer who had been in charge of the Lunar
Prospector mission. Fortunately, he didn't mind when I told him that in my book,
Prospector Colony is the settlement that failed, and that all the kids think it's haunted.

What kind of story can you tell about life in space, if you don't have any space
battles or bug-eyed monsters?
You could say that the theme of the book is, "M