rlfj: Blog

Götterdämmerung is a translation into German of the Old Norse phrase Ragnarök, which in Norse mythology refers to a prophesied war among the gods that ultimately results in the destruction and renewal of the world. It seemed appropriate as the chapter title. Enjoy!

I had a recent email: “I suggest that you make the combat more even. Think about WW2 and how the Nazis almost were victorious and how the Japanese rolled over the USA and allies for the first year or so. It makes the war more interesting. How about having WestHem have independent squadrons launch raids on Mars at the start.”

Interesting idea, but I am living in the Al Steiner universe. In Greenies, the Martians displayed a major advantage in cyberwarfare when they encrypted their GPS system, a system WestHem created. By the time A Perfect World occurs the Martians can run rampant through any computer system on Earth, military or civilian. It’s easy to win when you can read the other guy’s operation orders.

Additionally, the Nazis were not almost victorious. Yes, they were able to run roughshod over Poland, but then there was a five-month period called the Phony War where they had to rebuild their forces. By late 1942, they were bogged down in Stalingrad, where the Russians broke the German army. As for the Japanese, they were on the retreat after Midway, in June 1942, barely seven months into the war.

I’ve done some checking on turning The Grim Reaper series into printed paperback books. Not going to be happening! There would be two books, the original GR and a combo ASLE/RSC. A standard size GR paperback, with regular fonts and margins, would be about 1,400 pages long. That would be crazy! Even going to a 6x9 size paperback, with a small font and small margins, ends up at almost 800 pages. Such a book would run over $18 per book. Nobody is going to pay that for a paperback when they can get the ebook a lot cheaper.

In a lot of ways, Chapter 31 is a continuation of Chapter 30. I could have written them as a single chapter, but that would have been too long. If you liked 30, you’ll really like 31. Enjoy!

With Chapter 30, the invasion begins. This chapter is a touch short, but we’ll make up for it in 31. Enjoy!

Anybody have any experience publishing printed books? I’m thinking of maybe doing The Grim Reaper and its two companion pieces as paperbacks. I’ve never done that sort of thing, so I am curious whether there would even be a market for it. If you have any experience in publishing printed books, let me know. Thanks.

For the last month or so I have been doing a major edit of my longest story, what some consider my magnum opus, A Fresh Start and its companion piece, A Fresh Start - Epilogue. This is a story that got away from me and ended up at 185 chapters, way more than I ever expected it to. I originally wrote it in the 2011-2014, and since then the spell checkers and grammar checkers have become considerably more sophisticated. It took me about a month to reread and edit the story, and then another week to cut the chapters apart, convert to clean html files, and reload on SOL. Then the result had to be reviewed and reedited. Major project!

Anyway, I just finished this. For the curious, the version you can read on SOL is the XXX version of the story. I also updated the XXX version on bookapy. I have not edited the PG13 version, which can only be found on bookapy. The XXX version sells at roughly a 4:1 rate as compared to the PG13 version, and it would take another month to edit this story. For those who purchased the XXX version on bookapy, you can now download the updated version.

As to my current story, Martian Vengeance, Chapter 29 is now uploaded. WestHem is coming back to Mars. Now it is up to the Martians to respond. Enjoy!

I found some interesting stuff while working on this story. For instance, Mars and WestHem use thermonuclear torpedoes with a 200-megaton yield. In more than one instance, the Greenies mention nuking Denver if WestHem nukes a Martian city. That got me to thinking, just how bad would that be? The largest nuke ever tested on Earth was the 50-megaton Soviet ‘Tsar Bomba’; the largest ever designed was the 100-megaton version. So, what would be the effects of such a big bomb?

The Internet has a multitude of fascinating website. One of them is NUKEMAP, nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/, where you can select the detonation site (New York, Denver, Moscow, wherever) and select a detonation up to 100 megatons. A 100-megaton airburst over Denver would damage or destroy everything from Fort Collins down to Colorado Springs, and from Silverthorne over to Wiggins. 200 megatons would be even worse. Remind me not to be around when anybody starts tossing these things around.

Another useful website was 3D DIAGRAM OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM, in-the-sky.org/solarsystem.php. Enter the date and you can see where the planets will be in their orbits. That way I can see if Mars is near another planet or far away, etc. I tried to be accurate in the story.

Sorry, but SOL rules prevent me from putting the full URL in for the above websites. You can find the sites with what I entered or add https and a colon and a couple of front slashes in front of the address.

Chapter 28 isn’t too long, but it provides some useful background for future chapters. Enjoy!