rlfj: Blog

My upcoming story, probably out by the beginning of the summer, will have a significant portion of the story take place in the United Kingdom. I need some editing assistance. Please respond if you are a current or recently (relatively) retired member of the British military. I am looking for assistance with some military questions as well as with things like British slang. As Henry Higgins said in My Fair Lady, "There even are places where English completely disappears; in America they haven't used it for years." Thanks!

You guys are the greatest! I got a lot of help on this, so everybody can stop sending me info. I got what I needed. Many, many thanks!

Anybody know anything about modern British or American military field hospitals? Would they have a dentist attached? How about a prosthodontist (root canals, reconstructions, etc.)? If you know, let me know. Thanks!

The lightning hit on Janice's business was something I took from my own experience. For quite a few years I was the IT manager at my company, by virtue of the fact that I was the only member of management who had ever seen a computer at the time. I drove to work one morning to find the place in an uproar. The night before a thunderstorm had rolled through and a bolt of lightning had hit the telephone pole in our parking lot. It blew the top six feet off the pole and then got into the telephone lines. Part of the bolt traveled down a line to a nearby building, burning out the line and blowing a hole in the wall of the building. The bolt also went down to the guard shack at the base of the telephone pole and exploded the phone in the shack; parts were blown all over the shack. The worst happened when the main force of the bolt traveled through the lines to the main switchboard, where they blew apart $30,000 worth of switches. When I got there, I found smoke and melted plastic still flowing out of the switch and immediately killed the electric to the building. Hell of a mess!

I am in the early stages of my next story, with maybe half written after a total rewrite of many chapters when one of my technical editors pointed out some issues. I won't be giving out any hints about it, but there is a definite science fiction element to it, something I have never attempted before. Not sure how that is going to work out. It probably won't be published until the summer.

I have updated the version of the story on Bookapy, uploading a version with the typos fixed. I don't know how long it takes to work through their system, so you might want to wait until tomorrow to download your updated version. Many, many thanks to all who bought the book.

The trophy used to kill Bulkely in Chapter 17 was something I saw a lot of back when I was in sales. We would get these gigantic trophies and call them 'unidentified blunt objects', just like on the police shows on television. I used to see carved slabs of granite or Corian that could break a foot if you dropped them, giant bronze eagles that could kill if they fell off the wall, and oversized paperweights with razor sharp edges and needle points. Dangerous objects!

Personally, I could live without the plaques. Some of my fellow salespeople loved them, covering their walls with them. Me, I preferred something more tangible, like vacations. Over the years I earned a couple of cruises, a trip to Vegas, and another to Hawaii. My plaques I stuffed into a box in the closet.

Thanks to all who bought the book and enjoyed it (I hope!) Let me know of any typos and I will fix them. I will upload a corrected final version to Bookapy early next week and post a note in the blog.