rlfj: Blog

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.

I've had a few comments, very few, but more than zero, that Jake Kilbourne isn't a hero. He is killing innocent people! He is killing secretaries and clerks, etc. Yep, he sure is! Back when I started this story, I commented that he wasn't a hero: 'The protagonist is not so much a hero as he is an antihero. This is a complex fellow. (11/26/20)', 'The hero isn't all that heroic. (1/5/21)', and 'The hero isn't a classic hero like Carl Buckman or the Grim Reaper. (1/12/21)' I warned you!

For those who bought the story on Bookapy, if you've been wondering about getting an updated version after I have fixed the typos and other minor errors, good news. According to the Webmaster, if you bought it on Bookapy, you will be able to download an updated version. I plan to upload a final corrected version a few days after I finish publishing the story. I will note this in the blog, and you should be able to download it the next day. I will also upload the corrected version to lulu, but I can't say how long it will take to work through other channels.

For the curious, my editors and I had a vigorous discussion on suppressors, as seen towards the end of this chapter. The consensus was that the suppressor mentioned will work, but only for 2-3 shots. After that, it is worthless. Still, in the right circumstance, that may be all that is necessary.

We are coming to the end. Friday will be the last post for the story, Chapter 18 and an Epilogue.

In any case, it's time for some more murder and mayhem. Enjoy!

I had to give this chapter a lot of thought, for several reasons. First, lots of people start getting sick and dying. I'm not a particularly bloodthirsty individual, but a background in chemistry gives a person a lot of information on making people dead. A second reason was my own history as a chemist.

DMSO is an excellent solvent, with all the issues mentioned. I personally encountered it when, back in the late 1970s, my father asked me to get him some. DMSO was being investigated as a treatment for gout, which he suffered from. I got him a bottle, but I am not sure whether he used it or what he did with it.

In college I was given an assignment to develop a procedure using phase transfer catalysis as a future lab experiment. The technique used sodium cyanide as one of the reagents and was successful. My grad adviser took my process and wrote a paper, with my name on it as well, and submitted it to the Journal of Chemical Education. A few months later we learned it was rejected on the basis that cyanide was much too dangerous for undergrads to use. We really scratched our heads at that. In most chemistry labs cyanide was so common we almost stored it in barrels! It was one of the basic chemicals we used routinely. There are many chemicals much more dangerous than cyanide. Many of those chemicals can be obtained legally or procured without too much difficulty in nature. Snake venom and aconite are two such substances.

Anyway, enjoy!

Things are about to get very nasty at the Balustre Group. It's not full-blown war yet, but it's getting close. Enjoy!