Gray Rinehart
Gray Rinehart is an award-winning author, an editor, a singer/songwriter, and a retired Air Force officer. He is the only person to have commanded a USAF satellite tracking station, written speeches for presidential appointees, devised a poetic form, and had music on The Dr. Demento Show. He is currently a contributing editor (the "Slushmaster General") for Baen Books. Gray writes science fiction and fantasy stories, among which is his new book, the lunar colonization novel Walking on the Sea of Clouds. His short fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov's Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, and multiple anthologies. He has also written an eclectic mix of nonfiction books: A Church More Like Christ, Elements of War, and Quality Education. His two latest nonfiction books won Silver Medals from the Military Writers Society of America. In addition, he has written and released four albums, which feature science fiction– and fantasy-inspired music; the most recent is the charity album LibertyCon's Alright for Fandom. During his unusual Air Force career, Gray fought rocket propellant fires, refurbished space launch facilities, "flew" Milstar communications satellites, drove trucks, encrypted nuclear command and control orders, commanded the largest remote tracking station in the Air Force Satellite Control Network, and did other interesting space-related things. Gray's alter ego is the Gray Man, one of several famed ghosts of South Carolina's Grand Strand.
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Walking on the Sea of Clouds
Before permanent lunar encampments such as Clarke's Clavius Base (in 2001: A Space Odyssey) or Heinlein's Luna City (in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress) could be built, there would have to be the first settlers--the first people to set up shop and try to eke out an existence on the Moon.
Walking On the Sea of Clouds is the story of such lunar pioneers: two couples, Stormie and Frank Pastorelli and Van and Barbara Richards, determined to survive and succeed in this near-future technological drama about the risks people will take, the emergencies they'll face, and the sacrifices they'll make as members of the first commercial lunar colony.
In the end, one will decide to leave, one will decide to stay, one will put off deciding ... and one will decide to die so another can live.
