Five years after the Challenger disaster, NASA launched their newest space shuttle, Endeavor, in a dramatic return to space. But several moments after lift-off, Endeavor exploded over the ocean, taking the lives of all its crew members, and killing the United States' space program. It's 2009, seventeen years after the Endeavor tragedy in 1992, and NASA has been made part of the Department of Defense. America's civilian space program has been permanently discontinued for over fifteen years. Daniel Marks, the Chief Programmer at a research facility in New Mexico, is working on a cutting-edge electromagnetic device. While developing the controller software for the device, an accident occurs and he suddenly finds himself back in his old life in 1992. With his unique knowledge of the future, what should he do with his new life? Should he use his knowledge simply for personal gain, or should he risk his freedom and future to stop a national disaster before it happens?

My second novel, "Endeavor in Time" is about a computer programmer who suddenly finds himself thrown back into 1992, before cell phones, the Internet, and widespread personal computers. How did we ever get anything done back then?

The first draft of this book was much different, and was written early during my first year of college in 1992, in the fall after I left Cape Canaveral. Some of the main characters and scenes are the same, but everything else has been completely rewritten.

The manuscript was started and finished while "The Time of Jacob's Trouble" was still going through it's editing phase, which is why both books were published about the same time. Whereas my first novel took over a year to write, this one took just over a month, mainly due to the use of writing software, better planning and organization, and by applying the principles espoused in "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers".

This novel was also my first experiment with using writing software (yWriter), and I found it so helpful that when the book was finished, I went off and wrote my own book-writing software (iWriterPro). Incidentally, this also gave me a good excuse to dive headfirst into WPF, Microsoft's new framework.

Daniel reached for the mouse and shut down the debugger. However, the application didn’t stop as it should have, nor did it shut down the field being generated by the device. He clicked the application exit button directly, and nothing happened. The application process was locked up hard. He opened the task manager on his system and manually killed the process. The application vanished, but he saw that the display still showed the electromagnetic funnel still spinning and consuming more and more power.

Great, he thought, he would have to reboot the system. He stood up and walked over to the huge device in the far corner of the room.

As he reached down and flipped the reset button, he heard a loud pop and saw a brilliant flash of white light burst from the machine that instantly blinded him. He screamed and covered his face. Everything went silent, and he could only see lights and shadows. Had he gone deaf and blind in the explosion? He staggered back and lay down on the floor, feeling dizzy and disoriented.

He looked up and saw a large circle of light suddenly grow, and a moment later felt someone’s hands on him. He could now see faint outlines and shapes around him. He realized the light had come from the door, but he still couldn’t hear anything.

Suddenly, he could no longer feel the hands on him and he felt as if he was floating. He looked around and saw nothing but darkness; there were no outlines or shapes or anything. He reached down for the floor, and then he felt the peculiar sensation of falling. His mind flashed back to his dream in the airliner, and for a brief moment thought he was dreaming again. But since he had no hearing and no vision, he couldn’t tell what was happening at all.

He forced his eyes closed and tried to use his other senses to figure out where he was. He felt hot blowing air on his face and even thought he could feel the grit of sand and dust striking his skin. He screamed for help and frantically waved his arms and legs, but still he continued to fall.

And finding himself completely helpless, he kept his eyes closed and waited for whatever would happen next.