REP: Blog

FYI regarding my use of 'Over and out'.

When I first started posting the chapters, my radio traffic narrative contained the term 'Over and out' with the second party in the link confirming the end of the transmission by saying 'Out'.

An acquaintance, who was reading the story, informed me he had been in the Signals Corps, and that was improper radio discipline. He said that the convention of 'Over and out' was something dreamed up by Hollywood. Based on his information, I updated the posted Chapters to:

1. Change 'Over and out' to 'Out'.

2. Delete the confirmation by the 2nd person.

I will also be updating the chapters to-be-posted. Nothing was changed in the story. So you won't be missing anything other than no more 'Over and out'.

The Ark, Part 2 is complete and edited; although I am doing my final read through. The story consists of an Introduction, which I strongly suggest you read, and 28 Chapters.

If you have not read Part 1, I suggest you do so for many of Part 2's terms and concepts are based on Part 1.

I will post 2 chapters a week on Tuesday and Friday. I just finished submitting the Introduction and Chapter 1 for posting.


Opening Earth Part 3 is my next major effort. I have an almost complete story that fits into my Universe, so I will finish it in parallel with my work on Part 3.

As you recall, Part 2 ended with Doug on his delayed honeymoon cruise. A number of problems occurred during the cruise and the story ended with:

"Ah, Matt. I don't think we should try to fix this. This was all going to come out sometime, so it will probably be best if we acknowledge the truth of the situation. After all, we have done nothing wrong."

Sometimes, I don't believe how naive I was, back then.


Doug is about to have a large number of problems with Earth's people and with the citizens of the Multiverse.

I'm currently working on Chapters 27 and 28. They are the final 2 chapters and both are over 50% complete.

Chapters 1-20 have been edited, so once everything is complete and edited, I will do a final read through and start posting the story.

The Ark Part 2 is progressing and currently at 25 chapters and over 200K words. I am projecting 30 chapters and about 300K words at completion.

The story is rather complex with around 10 ongoing subplots that are interrelated and presented chronologically.

Continuity checking the subplots and relative timing between subplots will be a major editing effort. I sent the first 5 chapters to my editors today.

I expect the story to be fully written, edited, and ready for posting this January, if all goes well.

It has been a while since I've made a blog post or posted a story. I've received several messages about my not posting new stories.

There are several reasons for my not posting. The primary reason is Part 2 of The Ark has proven to be more difficult to write than I anticipated. A second reason is my creative drive got up and left for a while, but I seem to have found it a couple of weeks ago.

I completed Sauce for the Gander and announced I would be working on The Ark. If I work hard enough and long enough between now and October, I may finish Part 2 of The Ark and be ready to start Opening Earth 3.

I started writing The Ark almost four years ago, posted Part 1 at weekly intervals between Oct 2015 and Mar 2016. I had a few problems in what I posted, so I made a number of cosmetic changes, and had Lazeez replace the existing chapters. After working on other stories, I finally got around to writing the second part of The Ark. I thought it would take 6-8 months to write Part 2 and then I would begin writing OE3.

Things haven't gone as I planned. To start with, Part 2 required more research than I anticipated and the scope of the story increased dramatically. As the scope increased, so did the level of detail and amount of research. If you've read Part 1, you know that the plot was centered on about 12 main characters and Part 1 focused on Jon creating an organization for coping with a natural disaster that would destroy our society and its infrastructure.

Part 2 was intended to address how the central characters and their organization build a new society. I didn't realize how much time and effort would go into writing that half of the story. I had to let my imagination run wild to define the results of the meteoroid shower Part 1 described. I not only had to address the virus killing 95% of Earth's population, but I also had to describe how the meteoroids damaged Earth's surface. What damage might a meteoroid as big as a house do when it hit the surface? How would hundreds of thousands of similar meteoroid strikes with about 70% of those being water strikes affect our weather patterns and damage our infrastructure? What effect would the resulting tsunamis have on the coastline? The largest tsunami wave recorded was over a 1,000 feet high and it was caused by an earthquake. A huge meteoroid landing in the ocean could create an even larger tsunami wave. So how would a 2000 - 3000 foot wave arriving at San Francisco do to the surrounding area.

I'm well into writing Part 2. Part 1's cast was about 12 main characters with a total of about 55 characters mentioned by name. So far, Part 2 has close to 45 main characters and 250 named characters, although most of the 250 are what I call bit players who are mentioned as supporting characters.

Then the writing was slowed down by the technological aspects of the story that I had to research. One of the survivors' primary needs is a fuel source that will allow them to continue using existing vehicles. I had to research several things in that area. First, gasoline degrades with time but how long does that take and how does degraded gasoline affect a vehicle. The same thing for diesel fuel, which I discovered lasts longer than gasoline before it becomes unusable. Second, what is the cracking process that converts crude oil into gasoline and diesel fuel. Would it be viable to put a refinery back into operation or would the survivors need to start making gasohol.

Overall, I think I'm over half way finished with the story and I'm at over 20 chapters. The story has taken on a life of its own and wants to grow. I'm having to rein it in, and will probably end up shutting down Part 2 before the story is really finished. That means I may end up with a Part 3, but not in the near future.

Hopefully, I can find a good break point for The Ark before it goes over 100 chapters. Then I will let my imagination run wild getting Doug and his friends into and out of trouble in OE3.

REP