Marcus Richardson's Blog, page 3

Freehold Friday: The Source released!

Howdy Freeholders!

I got a big one today…lots of news, so I’ll just dive right on in.

First up, I’m happy to announce that The Source is now live on not only Amazon but Kobo and Google Play, Tolino, Scribd, and the Page Foundry…with Apple coming along next.

That’s right, I’m going wide with the first prequel to Apache Dawn. Why you ask? Well, it’s something I’ve long since decided I wanted to do once I built enough of a base on Amazon. Does this mean I’m going whole hog on the wide bandwagon? Nope—more like dipping my toes in. I want to see just how many people I can entice into the Wildfire universe and we’ll look at transitioning wide on a book by book (or series by series) basis going forward.

But wait—there’s more! Not only is The Source available, but it’s FREE. Yeah, you heard me right, it’s FREE. Not temporarily, it’s permafree. So if you don’t like reading in the Kindle app, you’re free (see what I did there?) to go on over to Kobo or Google or (in a matter of hours) Apple and read the book on whatever glowing screen you choose.

You’re welcome!

That said, there’s some kinks to work out. Amazon, as you may or may not know, is famous for not allowing authors to publish their book straight away for FREE. So we have to publish free elsewhere first, then publish on Amazon, then tell them it’s free elsewhere and they will (usually) oblige and price match so their customers don’t get the shaft. Which is good, because I want my loyal Amazon customers to be able to read it free as well!

I got the email today saying they’d price match it and The Source should be listed as free on Amazon in 24–48 hours. So if you don’t want to read on any other app/device, just be patient and you can get it soon. Of course, if you don’t want to be patient, you can buy it on Amazon for .99, but that’s up to you (I won’t turn it down!).

“Let’s see, what else?” he asked while rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

Oh, I know! I’m pretty happy for another reason—The Source marks my 10th book published (11 if you count the Sci-Fi book I published in law school and recently unpublished so’s I can fix it up real nice and re-release it next year). Would you believe I already have the next 10 already either mapped out, partially written, mostly written, or waiting for editing?

Yeah, the kids are all in school and I’m revving the ol’ writing engine now. Hang on, it’s gonna be a wild ride!

On top of all that, I’d like to remind you all that Apache Dawn is in a box set with several excellent other books, called Apocalyptic Fears IV, which is on Amazon for $2.99 at the time of this posting. FYI, AF VI is available for FREE if you want to check that one out. Some good stuff here, folks. So if you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited, I’d really appreciate you showing some love to the box sets there…thanks!

Lastly, I’d like to give you my usual writing update: I’m currently about 50,000 words in to CME, working on Episode 3 (to be released sometime in December I think). As I continue with this story (a LOT of fun, by the way) I’m thinking the first season will be about 6 or 7 episodes long. We’ll see, but either way it’ll be a fun experiment.

Also, I signed up for Nanowrimo. For you uninitiated, that’s where authors make public pledges to write 50,000 words (for some that’s a full novel, for me, that’s like 1/3 of a book) in 1 month. I’ve done this once before (in the spring of 2015 when I took part in Camp Nanowrimo, kind of like a warmup to the big event in November). Back then, I wrote over 100,000 words and finished the better part of The Shift in one month. My aim is to see if I can’t do the same and finish the entire season of CME by the end of next month (if not sooner).

So look for regular updates on that and possibly more (I’m deep in talks with my marketing consultant and there’s likely to be some changes around here, muchachos…like maybe me getting into different avenues of content creation besides just books and blogs…stay tuned…)

Whew. Okay, I think that’s enough for now. Those of you still awake after this marathon post, congratulations! Pour yourself a cup of Joe and pat yourself on the back.

Till we meet again, keep your heads down and your powder dry my friends.

Marcus

Box Set Goodness

Well, howdy muchachos!

I have some pretty exciting news today! Apache Dawn was selected to join a box set of other post-apocalyptic authors in a massive book called Apocalyptic Fears IV. As the name suggests, this is the fourth volume of this series. Volumes III and IV were published yesterday and Volume V will hopefully be soon.

If you like my books—and I certainly hope you do, otherwise I have no idea what you’re doing here unless you work for an alphabet-soup agency—you’re going to like these books. Not all the stories in these box sets are as large as Apache Dawn so some of them will be pretty short, exciting reads. Every one of the stories in each volume deal with certain aspects of what we as survivors will face in a post-apocalyptic scenario whether its at the hands of deadly viruses, aliens, zombies, or things we can’t even identify. These books have something for everyone!

Volume III is currently on sale for $.99 on Amazon and Volume IV is $2.99, but they’re both in Kindle Unlimited, so if you’re a member you can read for free! Box sets like these really help an author (like me) get their name “out there” and introduce a lot of new people to their work. If you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited (or even if you wanted to buy the books!) you’d be doing me a huge favor if you checked these out!

Apocalyptic Fears III

Apocalyptic Fears IV

Thanks everyone. Hope you have a great day and don’t forget to keep your heads down and your powder dry!

Freehold Friday: Hurricanes in space!

It seems I picked a good time to write about the sun and solar storms.  It’s kind of eerie when real life starts to mimic your story.  Here’s an email I got yesterday from the Space Weather Prediction Center (NOAA).

 

Product: 3-Day Forecast
Issued: 2016 Sep 29 0030 UTC
Prepared by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, NOAA, Space Weather Prediction
Center

A. NOAA Geomagnetic Activity Observation and Forecast

The greatest observed 3 hr Kp over the past 24 hours was 6 (NOAA Scale
G2).
The greatest expected 3 hr Kp for Sep 29-Oct 01 2016 is 6 (NOAA Scale
G2).

NOAA Kp index breakdown Sep 29-Oct 01 2016

Sep 29 Sep 30 Oct 01
00-03UT 6 (G2) 6 (G2) 5 (G1)
03-06UT 5 (G1) 5 (G1) 4
06-09UT 5 (G1) 5 (G1) 4
09-12UT 4 4 4
12-15UT 4 3 3
15-18UT 4 4 4
18-21UT 5 (G1) 4 5 (G1)
21-00UT 5 (G1) 5 (G1) 4

Rationale: G1-G2 (Minor-Moderate) geomagnetic storms are likely over the
next three days due to influences from a recurrent, positive polarity CH
HSS.

B. NOAA Solar Radiation Activity Observation and Forecast

Solar radiation, as observed by NOAA GOES-13 over the past 24 hours, was
below S-scale storm level thresholds.

Solar Radiation Storm Forecast for Sep 29-Oct 01 2016

Sep 29 Sep 30 Oct 01
S1 or greater 1% 1% 1%

Rationale: No S1 (Minor) or greater solar radiation storms are expected.
No significant active region activity favorable for radiation storm
production is forecast.

C. NOAA Radio Blackout Activity and Forecast

No radio blackouts were observed over the past 24 hours.

Radio Blackout Forecast for Sep 29-Oct 01 2016

Sep 29 Sep 30 Oct 01
R1-R2 1% 1% 1%
R3 or greater 1% 1% 1%

Rationale: No R1 (Minor) or greater radio blackouts are expected. No
significant active region flare activity is forecast.

What all this basically means is that the earth is getting bombarded with a geomagnetic storm. To put it in perspective, I live in southern Wisconsin. For me to see the northern lights associated with this storm (or the string of storms headed our way) we’d need at least a 7 on the Kp scale (classified as a G3 moderate-strong) storm. Think of it like hurricanes from the sun.

For reference, in 1859 there was a solar storm called the Carrington Event that caused telegraph stations to catch fire in different parts of the world and shocked operators with electric charges. That was the equivalent of shutting down the internet. Worldwide. Oh, and they saw the northern lights in Cuba.

The Carrington Event was a G5, like a direct hit from Hurricane Katrina or Andrew.  But back in 1859 it did little damage and probably spooked more people with lights in the sky than anything else.

What if that kind of event hit the earth today?  The destructive power of an CME of that magnitude would be devastating.  Anything plugged into a power grid, anywhere on earth (except maybe near the equator) would be fried in the blink of an eye.  Some things (like maybe electric cars?) might be fried no matter if they’re plugged in or not. We don’t know because we haven’t funded the research nor taken this threat seriously.

The characters in my new story will be taking things seriously…

What would be the first thing you do if you realized this was about to hit and you had 18-24 hours to prepare?  What would you do when you woke up that first day and everything was dead silent?  I’m finding out as I write that things will probably not be very pretty despite the northern lights…

Freehold Friday: It’s moving day!

Howdy Muchachos!

I am grinning like a ‘possum eatin’ a sweet potato.  Why, you ask?  Because I’m here to announce the launch of my new domain, the permanent home of Marcus Richardson on the internet.  Click on the new site banner below to have a look at my new digs.

Go on–check it out, I’ll wait.

Okay, you back?  Good.  Pretty cool, huh?  Keep in mind that it’s a work in progress, so over the coming weeks and months I’m sure I’ll tweaking things, adding or subtracting graphics, etc…but you get the idea of what the thing is going to look like.

I’ve got everything set up now so the new website will be the hub of all things Marcus going forward.  From there I’ll post my blogs (based on the spiffy urbane WordPress.org engine, not the plebeian WordPress.com  engine you’re enjoying now), have links to all my books and all that stuff you’ve been seeing on my old Wix website (which now does nothing but point people to the new site).  But now it’ll all be in one place–making it way easier for me to manage, meaning I’ll be able to get more content to you.

Speaking of that–most of you are reading this because you’ve subscribed to my blog on WordPress.com.  Well, now that I have a self-hosted WordPress.org site, I won’t be using this blog anymore.   It sounds kind of complicated–actually, kind of silly now that I look at all the .com and .org nonsense, but that’s how they chose to run it.  Anyway…

Don’t worry–I’m going to transfer you all over to the new site over the next few days.  You won’t have to do a thing.  You’ll still get email alerts (if you do now) when I post new stuff.  From now on, you’ll be directed to the new site (fingers crossed).

The only caveat goes out to those folks who only follow me on their WordPress reader accounts.  You don’t get emails about new posts, but you should still be able to follow me in your reader, you’ll just have to check from time to time and see if I’m active.

The easiest way to fix that is to mosey on over to the new site and sign up for email updates!  It’s easy–hey, all the cool kids are doing it!  Here’s the link. Just go to the blog on the new site and fill in your email to get updates.  Easy.

So when all the new books and such start coming out, now you know where to go to hear about it.  Of course, if you want to know even sooner, sign up for my mailing list, The Freeholder Update.  If you haven’t already signed up, then welcome!  Come on over and get your free book!

Okay, that’s it for now.  I just uploaded a book (Dux Bellorum, sequel to Sic Semper Tyrannis) to Amazon for pre-order (my first!).  I now have a deadline to beat!!  This is a first–I’ve always gone by my schedule when publishing.  So, we’ll see how this turns out.  Wish me luck!  I have a little over 3 weeks to get a 170,000 word book edited and polished.

Gulp.

Okay.  I’ll let y’all know when Amazon puts the pre-order up so’s you can check it out.  Till then, Ill catch you over at the new site.  In the meantime, I got some serious editing to do.  Time to break out the tea and get serious.

Have a good ‘un and don’t forget to keep your powder dry!

Marcus

 

Freehold Friday: A record setting day!

Howdy Muchachos! Welcome back to another edition of Freehold Friday.

Got some really exciting news today! It’s been 12 days now since I’ve released Firestorm on Amazon and I’m pleased to announce that the paperback has been finalized and should be ready for purchase any day now. As an added little surprise for you here’s what the paperback cover looks like!

I have to say, I think this is my favorite so far!

In other news, to celebrate the release of Firestorm and the completion of the opening trilogy of the Wildfire series, I am placing False Prey, the first novella of the series (set between Apache Dawn and The Shift) on free promotion between now and Tuesday, the 10th.

So here’s a chance for all you readers out there who haven’t join the mailing list to get this book for free!

Looks like there’s a lot of folks out there that wanted it, too—as of 6:23 PM today, I’ve given away 1803 copies of False Prey! Not only that, but we hit #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list in the free Kindle store in not one, not two, but three different categories:

espionage,

medical,

and terrorism thriller.

Overall, False Prey hit a high point of #82 in the general Kindle (Free) store, beating hundreds of thousands other free books!

I couldn’t be more thankful for the support that you have given me over the past couple years.

My marketing director and I recently sat down to plan out the rest of the year as far as writing and promotion is concerned and I have to say I’m pretty damn excited. Very soon, I’m going to have some exciting announcements about a trio of upcoming releases. I won’t say any more now, other than this summer is going to be exciting.

On top of all this, I’ve been busting my butt to wrap up writing on AJE 3, which I’m calling Dux Bellorum. Fingers crossed, I’m hoping to have that book published by the end of next month! I don’t hold me to that, this is just a rough estimate, but it’s a goal, and I’m going to do my best to make sure I reach it! So far, I’ve been writing every day in May, treating this month like my own personal NANOWRIMO contest. I’m only a few chapters away from wrapping up Erik’s plotline, which will be approximately 2/3 of the book. This one has been a lot of fun to write, and I haven’t even gotten to the antagonist, to Malcolm, or the military points of view!

I also wanted to let you know to look for one more new change. Very soon I’ll be migrating the Freehold to my own domain, so sometime next month everything should change. I’ll keep this blog with WordPress, so things will look different, but the blog will remain stable. I’ll keep you all updated on the progress and make announcements about any changes in addresses or anything like that.

Thanks once again for your continued support—I can’t wait to share with you the new stories I’ve got planned for the rest of this year and next. There’s going to be Coronal Mass Ejections, volcanoes, more Wildfire and who knows what else! With all three kids going to school in the fall, I am planning on ramping up my production about 500%!

Until next time, keep your heads down and your powder dry!

Freehold Friday: Firestorm released!

Wow—it’s been a while. Well, I apologize for that muchachos but I had good reason (I like to think).

I wrote a new book!

I was finishing up the final touches on my latest book, Firestorm. Which, is now finally available for download from Amazon! I’ve shifted gears now to the paperback version so that’ll be ready soon.

This book is the closing act in the opening trilogy that encompasses the Wildfire universe. If you’ve read Apache Dawn and The Shift, a lot of loose ends are going to be tied up in Firestorm.

To celebrate the release of Firestorm, I’m going to put Apache Dawn on promotion starting tomorrow—so if you haven’t yet picked up a copy, now’s your chance. They’ll be going for 99 cents for a few days, then increasing to $1.99 for a few days before sliding to $2.99 and back to its full price of $3.99 by the end of next week. This will coincide with a promotional event I’m trying out this weekend, so fingers crossed!

We interrupt this program for a crass commercial break.

I would like to take this opportunity to ask—no beg—any of you out there who’ve read my books to take a moment and leave a review—it doesn’t have to be long, it doesn’t even have to be positive (although that’s what I’m hoping for!)…every review counts to an indie author like myself. We live and die by these things. The more reviews (especially good ones!) a book has, the better it sells—duh. That’s only partly the reason I’m asking…the main part is the better a book does, the more financial pressure it eases, which means the more time I can spend creating new books….and you see where this goes. More books for you to read, more books for me to write—everyone’s happy!

And now back to the show…

The future looks bright from here, folks. We’re working on the audio book for The Shift and hopefully Firestorm. I’m planning on releasing a box set of the Wildfire trilogy this summer. I’ve got 1/3 of the final book in the AJE series written, so look for that late summer/early fall. Then I’ve got a Kindle World’s story I’m kicking around and the first of the spin-off adventures for Cooper.

Speaking of Cooper and Wildfire, I have a sci-fi book (well, one and a half if you count the sequel that’s not finished yet) that is set in the future—about a hundred years or so after the events in Firestorm. Then there’s going to be narrow-focus books that deal with smaller events around single characters, like Cooper Braaten and the infamous 13.

Thank you all for being so patient with my lack of posts this month—things will get back to normal (if you can call it that) now that the book is finished. I haven’t been completely ignoring the blog though, I’ve been saving up some stuff for when I had time to post. Should prove to be interesting to at least a few of you!

Until next time, muchachos, keep your heads down and your powder dry!

As always, if you want to know before everyone else (even the readers of this blog!) when the next book will be released, any promotions or other cool news, sign up to get the monthly Freeholder Update today!

 

Freehold Friday: Book Updates

Howdy muchachos,

This will just be a quick update to assure you I’m still alive. Been rather busy around the Freehold lately. Between school winding down for Spring Break (three kids in the house all week! Yaaaaay!) and Easter and birthdays and sickness (school is a disease factory, there’s no doubt about it) there hasn’t been a lot of time to crack open the ol’ blog.

But, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been up to anything—as a matter of fact, the beginning of March I’ve logged some 75,000 words on the third book in the AJE series, which I’m going to name Dux Bellorum. Fans of my doorstopper books rejoice! Those 75,000 words are only in the Erik and Ted and Brin plotline. I’m thinking their story alone will be as big as Apache Dawn (about 120,000 words or 250–300 pages). I still need to write the antagonist plot, the Brotherhood plot (Malcolm will be up to things too) and the General/Admiral plot line. This book is looking to be the biggest I’ve ever written (possibly necessitating being split into two…we’ll see).

All that and there’s more—my editor and I are finally back on track with the final read through of Wildfire (it’s going a LOT faster than the other books…the process is getting really streamlined now, or maybe I’m getting better at writing, who knows) now that the kids are healthy and the pressures of real life have backed the hell off for a few days in a row.

Oh, and I know today is April 1st, but I assure you the above post is no joke. No, really!

Preparedness Skills: The Crayon Candle

Howdy muchachos!

Got something little different for you today!

I figured I’d try something more useful than just posting a blog about preparedness. So today, I’m happy to introduce a new category of posts—it’s still about being prepared, but now I’ll actually be explaining practical real-world skills along the way.

I by no means am what you would call an expert—in just about any field you care to pick—and so I figured it would be handy to have sort of an everyman’s guide to being prepared. That’s right, yours truly has officially announced that he is an Average Joe!

So what’s first on the agenda?

Let’s take a look at some of the priorities for when the power goes out or there’s an emergency situation or even—God forbid!—the grid is down or there’s some other large-scale catastrophe. You’re going to need food, water (most importantly), shelter, and a source of heat and light.

I’m sure I’ll get to the other topics at some point, but today I wanted to focus on light and/or heat. What’s the most economical source of heat and light? Fire. Now, in a relatively benign situation—like a temporary power outage caused by a thunderstorm—I would first go for an LED flashlight, or even regular flashlight for that matter. However, sometimes that’s just not possible.

When my wife and I endured the 2004 season of never-ending hurricanes on Florida’s Gold Coast, we quickly ran out of batteries and over the course of the first couple storms somehow never got around to getting more. I know, I know, rookie mistake. However we did have plenty of candles. She likes all the foo-foo scented ones, so the house smelled like lavender and vanilla for a week, but we had light—at least the few times the power flickered out for an hour or so before coming back on.

In this post I want to explore different expedient forms of light in the form of ready-made survival candles. First up is one that I’ve read about, but never decided to test until now: the crayon candle!

First time I heard this I thought to myself, that can’t be right. So here’s how I tested it.

Materials

One can of tuna fish (after lunch, cleaned and dried).
Three different crayons (a broken large generic crayon, a skinny regular Crayola crayon, and a jumbo Crayola—snapped in half courtesy of my youngest son).
A trigger-style lighter.

The Test

First up I tried the generic half-crayon. I needed a way to attach the candle to the bottom of the tuna can. Since this crayon was a broken half with the point mostly intact, I use the lighter to melt the entire tip of the candle, making sure to pool a nice blob of melted wax in the center of the of the can. I immediately turned the crayon over and stuck the base into the melted wax. In a few seconds, the wax hardened and the crayon was secured.

Next I said about lighting the top of the crayon. The melted wax from the tip made a nice little lake of molten wax, concealed by the wrapper. It took about 15 seconds of continuous fire on the crayon to get the paper wrapper to ignite, soaked as it was in the melted wax.

Finally, it did, and the flame grew quickly to match the length of the crayon and then some!

This completely surprised me. As you can see in the picture, the fire put out by the crayon was impressive. It lasted for a few minutes and then snuffed itself out as the wax level dropped too far for the fire to catch up.

Next I tried the skinny Crayola candle. This time, vowing to be prepared for the large flame, I had my stopwatch handy. I followed the same procedure, melting the bottom of the crayon until I had a puddle of wax in the middle of the can and then securing the crayon in place.

This crayon had a rounded top instead of a pointed tip, as it was well used by my kids. I lit this one and it only took about 10 seconds to catch the paper on fire. However, once this crayon caught, I noticed an interesting effect: little bits of wax popped out of the central column of the crayon leaving tiny smoke trails as they fell down inside the tuna can. They didn’t go more than about an inch away from the crayon, but it made an interesting visual effect.

I also heard a little pop every time one of these little pustules jumped off the crayon. I’m not sure if it’s something with this particular crayon—did it roll around with the other crayons and get something stuck to the outside?—or maybe it’s some chemical reaction from the interior of the crayon itself. Either way, it was kind of neat to watch. Once the candle had been going for a few minutes, this popping stopped.

The flame was easily as long as the crayon itself for the first few minutes.

Then it shrunk down to about half the size of the crayon. You can see the rate at which this sucker burned in the time lapse pictures below. All said, it took 15 minutes for this skinny crayon to burn itself out in a puddle of melted wax at the bottom of the tuna can.

5 minutes…

7 minutes…

12 minutes…

13 minutes…

15 minutes…

16 minutes…

The paper wrapper did not disintegrate and stood up all the way until the very end as a charred husk. As the flame extinguished, the husk fell over and cooled.

I then repeated the process with the half jumbo Crayola crayon. Once secured in the middle of the can, I lit the top of this one on fire, which took at least 20 seconds to get going. Definitely something to keep in mind. You’ll want to have a decent flame source to light these things on fire. A lighter, or a long burning stick or something. I don’t know if a match will last long enough to get one to catch. That’ll be the next experiment.

The flame on this crayon was quite impressive! It was at least 4 to 5” high throughout the entire test.

I also decided to try something new and used a bamboo skewer to knock down the pillar of ash and charred paper as the wax melted in the central part of the crayon.

Doing this seemed to keep the flame at a constant height instead of wavering up and down like it did when I let the charred paper remain. It was pretty simple—every few minutes I just knocked down the charred paper, keeping it at a uniform height.

1 minute…

6 minutes…

8 minutes 30 seconds…

This one really burned hot—I could easily feel the heat from it about a foot and a half above the top of the flame.

In a power outage or grid-down situation, this thing would put out quite a bit of light.

The interesting thing happened toward the end: the residue from the other candles began to heat up as the flame from the final candle reached the bottom of the can. The remains of the first two candles then caught on fire, creating a flame that spanned the width of the tuna can.

It wasn’t a very high flame, but the can began to heat significantly and got hot enough I decided to get it off the surface of my oven and put it on a trivet. This continued past the 16 minute mark.

Lesson Learned

Here’s where my Average Joe experience comes in! I have learned something about candles and fire—when you have a lot of wax, you don’t pour water onto it! I grabbed a pair of kitchen tongs and carried the flaming tuna can over to the sink. Every time I jostled it, that flame shot up about a foot high. Finally I grabbed the faucet on the sink, turned on the water and doused the flames. I expected a cloud of smoke, instead I got a cloud of fire.

The tuna can erupted and created a small ball of fire about the size of a basketball that quickly dispersed, after it singed the hair off my hand (about 10 inches away at the end of a pair of kitchen tongs!). No harm no foul, but the kitchen smelled like burnt hair!

I had quite a bit of melted wax on the sink and floor to clean up. No problem there either, a dish rag soaked in hot water did the trick and cleaned up the mess. Pretty funny all around, but I learned a valuable lesson: wax, fire, and water don’t mix.

And hopefully now that you’ve read this post you have too—crayons can be used in an emergency situation as a fire source. Does this mean that I think you should give up buying emergency candles? No. However it’s good to know that should you run out of those, or should you find yourself in a situation where you don’t have candles or LED flashlights or anything else, if you can scrounge around and find some crayons, you have some candles. Remember, a full crayon will last about 20 minutes. Half crayons will last about 10 minutes. Half of a jumbo crayon, will last about 15 minutes, so I’m willing to bet that a full jumbo crayon may last anywhere between 20 and 25 minutes. Also it doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s Crayola or some name brand—they all seem to burn about the same, except for the jumbo sizes.

Considering a box of these things only cost a couple bucks, you’re looking at potentially hours of emergency illumination and heat should the need arise. I don’t know about you, but I think I’m going to add a box of crayons to my emergency kit. Not only does it serve the purpose for providing entertainment for the children, but should the power go out and we get desperate, you can have a candle and draw with it too!

Freehold Friday: News and Cover Reveal!

Howdy muchachos!

I don’t really have the energy to post much today—the little one was up all night (and I mean all night) being sick, which left me with about 3 hours worth of sleep. Despite that, I got up and did my dictation session on the treadmill before getting the older ones off to school so bonus points for me I guess.

Although, now that I look at it, I just gave away part of the surprise I was going to mention. Whatever—I’m tired. I’m working on the sequel to Sic Semper Tyrannis! I know—hot damn, right? Only three chapters into it, but I just finished reading Libby Hawker’s excellent guide to plotting called Take Off Your Pants: Outline your books for faster, better writing (you should have seen the look on Mrs. Richardson’s face when I announced “I took off my pants and plotted”). Y’see, every book I’ve written, I’ve set up the plot in different ways. I keep seeing how others do it and I think, oh, that’s cool, I’ll try that. Then I do, and it turns out to be more work than I thought. Then I lose interest in getting the plot worked and end up pantsing (writing by the seat of my pants a la Stephen King, who just lets the story comet to him). From the reviews of my work, this doesn’t seem to do half bad for me.

That said, I want something repeatable. I couldn’t tell you how I plotted AJE or Apache Dawn—I just know I did it different with each and wasn’t fully satisfied by either method. The last time, with my latest book (more on that in a bit) I tried writing things out on the ol’ whiteboard in my office. This was cool at first, but then I needed to take it with me, which necessitated writing it in notebooks and in my Scrivener file…which got tedious (why didn’t I just do it in Scrivener to begin with?).

But Ms. Hawker’s method…I’m hooked. I’ve been struggling to finish chapter 3 for almost a week now. After reading her book, I sat down, plotted the story from Erik’s perspective (I’ll need to do the same with each major POV character) and within about 10 minutes, I had a layout for his story and a guideline for what to dictate for the next chapter (which I’d been agonizing over for a few days as well!). Outstanding!

So—now you know that while my beta readers pour over Firestorm (the name I’ve settled on for Book 3 of the Wildfire Saga), I’m plowing ahead with AJE 3.

But wait, that’s not all! Before I pass out for a much-needed mid-afternoon nap, I wanted to share with you the other really exciting news: I’ve finalized the cover for Firestorm. Let me know what you think!

 

Freehold Friday: Uh…Monday.

Okay, so it’s not Friday, but here’s a little something I just had to get out there.

I wanted to point out that Hollywood has confirmed what I said about how typically left-leaning folks see us preparedness-minded individuals (you could make the argument that it’s really statist vs. individual but that’s for another time). If you don’t remember, check out this post.

To sum up, I basically said that those who don’t prepare tend to label us as fringe elements, survivalists, or worse (gun nuts). Why? Because the fear the strength and freedom that personal responsibility and individualism grants someone. Being prepared means you’re relying on yourself and neighbors, rather than the state to take care of you in a crisis or emergency (whether immediate like a home invasion, or extended like the aftermath of a hurricane). That gives you power and lessens the power the state holds over you.

Those that worship the state fear the individual.

Case in point—the Oscars. There were a number of decent movies (so I’m told—I proudly admit right now, I haven’t seen any of them except the new Star Wars flick) and one especially that deserved mention: The Martian.

This may be a stretch—even for me—but hear me out. Feel free to laugh at me at the end!

But did this most excellent movie win big? No. Why? Because the Oscars, being an award ceremony for elitists to congratulate themselves in front of us plebes, is a political event. Just go look up the Straight Outta Compton mess and the racism charges and all that nonsense swirling around for the past month or two.

Everyone knows Hollywood stands closer to the left than the right, and I would be willing to bet most preppers stand closer to the right than the left. That immediately puts us at odds.

So why focus on The Martian? Well, two reasons: 1) it’s a story written by an independent author (like me!) that made it to the big leagues. That’s every author’s dream—create something you enjoy, find happiness in the fact that many other people enjoy it, and make some (or a lot) money while you’re at it.

2) The Martian is a survival tale. On Mars. It doesn’t get much cooler than that. It’s all about an individual’s quest to survive in the the worst place known to man, using nothing but his wits and his gear to continue his existence. What more could a prepper ask for?

It was nominated for all kinds of categories but won absolutely nothing. Oh sure, they’ll try and tell you that’s because other movies (or soundtracks or editing—really, they have an award for editing? Come on…) were just better.

Maybe.

But you have to admit, it sure does seem to fit with what I was saying.

Just to compare: Spotlight (winner, Best Picture, released Nov 6, 2015) brought in $59 million since its release.

The Martian (released Oct 2, 2015): $632.8 million.

See? The free market (another target for those anti-prepper types) chose the The Martian hands down. But they (the Academy) know which one is better. Obviously us unwashed masses can’t tell a good movie from trite if it bit us in the ass.

Whatever.

My next step is to buy the book version of The Martian, then buy the movie.

Then I’ll flip Hollyweird the bird and get back to prepping.