Jack Green: Blog

The next posting of this story, Tuesday 10th August, will consist of two chapters, and so will the following posting days, bringing this meandering melodrama to an earlier end than originally planned.

The drip feed of single chapter posting at frequent intervals in order to show the story details on the first page of a screen as often as possible has been outlawed as cruelty to readers by the International Court of Human Writes.

regards
Jack G

If I have manipulated the submission wizard correctly then the first chapter of my latest story, The Waiter's Tale, will appear on Sol Tuesday 13th July.
The schedule of posting the 28 chapters is 4 chapters a week; one each on a Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. 'Little and often', as the actress said to the bishop.

Having read the two previous, very short, stories in the Linkage series, The Young Girl's Story and The Chevalier's Tale, will make this story more intelligible, or at least I hope it will.

The first story I wrote in the Linkage series was The Young Girl's Story, all 4464 words of it .The second story, The Chevalier's Tale, had expanded to 6159 words. The third story, The Waiter's Tale, just completed, has 28 chapters and somewhere near 80,000 words.

The first two stories were written over ten years ago and it has taken that number of years for the third story to be brought forth. The longer a gestation period in mammals the larger the offspring ( Canines 63-65 days; Humans 280 days; Elephants 620-680 days) and The Waiter's Tale is a one ginormous Heffelump of a book. So why all this blether?

Well currently the 28 chapters are being edited by Oldrotorhead, editor supreme, and hopefully I will start posting the story within a week. Even when on holiday, a road trip taking in The Rockies, ORH continues to edit and polish the work of those writers fortunate to have him as editor. In fact he is editor to some of the most popular writers on Sol, the crème de la crème, and I am privileged to be in the same jug as the cream of Sol authors, even though I am more of a clot.

It is some months since posting my last blog, the one that had nothing to do with writing, but that's me. I haven't been idle in the meantime , well not as idle as usually I am -- sloth is my default condition -- and have been working at what I pretentiously refer to as my 'art'. I hope to have the completed draft of the third book in the Linkage series ready for editing and proofing by mid-June.
My editor is Oldrotorhead, who is in great demand for his editorial skills and has many other writers to edit for, so it could be some time before I start posting the story.

In the third book of the series, The Waiter's Tale, the MC is French, which causes some problems as I don't speak French. In fact my mangling of the language during a vive voce exam caused the French female exchange student testing me to throw her hands up in horror and rush from the room in disgust (zut alors!). She must have informed the then President of France, Charles de Gaulle, of my desecration of their beautiful language, which was the reason he blocked the UK from joining the EU during his time in office.

Back in the day when I first joined Sol a feisty French speaking American female by the name of Zine was a frequent poster on the forum. If by chance you are still out there, Zine my lovely, m'aidez.

Regards

Jack G

After posting the completed story '15 Days' -- my sincere thanks to all those who downloaded, voted, commented on the story --I fell into 'the doldrums', my usual post posting mood . However I determined not to wallow in whatever it is I feel after completing a story and eventually set to writing the third book in the Linkage series. After ten chapters I realised I was bored writing the story.

If I am bored writing what will any reader feel when reading my stuff? No prizes for getting the correct answer. So I stopped and took a break from writing and haven't put digit to keyboard since the 18th January. So what have I been doing in the meantime you may ask? I shall tell you, even those who aren't the slightest bit interested, and why indeed should they be.

I have always been interested in military history. I was a member of the Napoleonic Association for many years and played war games; on table top and Play By Mail. In 2000 I bought a computer, discovered Sid Meier's Gettysburg and Antietam and table top war gaming and PBM went into the bin. I went on to discover Mad Minute Games and then Scourge of War -- Take Command 2nd Manassas(TC2M) for the first and the whole gamut of Gettysburg , Antietam ,Chancellorsville, Pipe Creek, Brandy Station and Waterloo for the second.

Last November I upgraded to Windows 10 and nothing other than TC2M will now work. I can't even get the Gettysburg disc to load, but I do still have TC2M and have been playing that since hanging up my quill. I have to admit I am no Jackson, hardly even a Pope on a bad day and frequently have my arse handed to me by the AI. Currently I am facing the Left Wing of the NVA and don't fancy my chances but perhaps the AI might have a off day. Anyway when I have finished the game or have been finished more like, probably by the end of this week, I intend getting back to the third book in the Linkage series. I have some thought that might make the story more interesting.

TC2M runs under Windows 10 with no problem at all yet when I bought it my PC had Windows XP as the OS, in fact all the Scourge of War programs ran OK under XP and Windows 7 but cannot handle Windows 10. How strange is that?

Best regards
Jack G