Author David S. Michaels Comments:
Writers don’t work in a vacuum. I’m pleased I had the good fortune to have come upon such a supportive and creative group of talented folk who contributed to the shaping of Red Moon.
DANIEL BRENTON – As I noted in my personal bio, Daniel Brenton was my closest friend in Junior High and High School and quite a talented writer in his own right. Dan wrote “Sea of Crises,” the original short story that carried the germ of inspiration for Red Moon. Dan and I had a sort of Lennon-McCartney competitive collaboration thing going throughout our teenage years. We shared a passion for space flight and good hard SF writing. Our families moved to different states when we were both in High School; afterward, as adulthood engulfed us, we followed a pattern of drifting apart and reestablishing contact. After my encounter with Alexei Leonov in New York, I got in touch with Dan and suggested we develop “Sea of Crises” into a screenplay, then a novel. With a full-time and a part time job and a ready-made family to support, Dan didn’t have as much time to devote to the project as he would have liked. Dan’s contributions were still enormously significant, both in terms of critiquing what I’d written and actually providing several chapters late in the book, including Grigor Belinsky’s lunar landing and his lonely vigil in the Sea of Crises. The material about the Russian Orthodox quasi-saint Xenia of St. Petersburg, which played so crucial a role in the spiritual thread of the book, is Dan’s contribution. Furthermore, he kept pushing me to make Red Moon deeper, more meaningful, more spiritual, which made this a much stronger and more satisfying book. I am greatly in Dan’s debt for his work on Red Moon.
MARK WADE – Founder-owner-operator of the Internet Encyclopedia Astronautica, by far the best aerospace website on the World Wide Web. Early in the writing process, I contacted Mark with some questions about how a one-way Soviet lunar mission might have worked, circa 1969. I told him about Red Moon and gave him the gist of the plot. He fell in love with the story and ended up working out the technical details of the Firebird mission to the Moon. He sketched out everything–launch masses, burn times, flight profile, with such expertise that I that he’s really a Soviet rocket scientist who actually participated in just such a program (For more on Mark’s contributions, see “The Reality Behind the Mystery of Luna 15.”) He also read early drafts of Red Moon and provided great suggestions on improving the plotline and characterizations.
LESLEY KELLAS PAYNE – A professional book editor based in Fresno, California, who took an interest in my work early on and played a critical role in making Red Moon fit for public consumption. Lesley provided invaluable insights into plotting and character development throughout the writing process. She’s a wonderfully perceptive lady who spent countless hours red penciling my rough drafts, all on spec, for which I owe her an enormous debt of gratitude.
DAVID M. HARLAND – This scientist and author probably knows more about the nuts and bolts of the Russian and American space programs than nearly anyone. He is the author of Exploring the Moon: The Apollo Expeditions and Jupiter Odyssey: NASA’s Galileo Mission (which can be purchased via Amazon.com) among other excellent and informative books on space flight. I “met” David, who resides in Scotland, via the Friends and Partners in Space mailing list server, testifying to the immense power the Internet possesses to unite people of similar interests. He read early drafts of Red Moon and provided essential guidance and correction, particularly about the lunar environment and geology. Hearing David describe walking and working on the Moon is the next best thing to being there.
