rlfj: Blog

It's time for Travis and Janice to disappear. Or is it Sean and Janice? Jake and Janice? Well, somebody is disappearing! Enjoy!

I had some fun with Chapter 13 describing the problems with elk in Everest. The fictional city and county of Everest, Montana, are southeast of the very real city of Banff, Alberta. My wife and I had the chance to vacation there about 15 years ago. Beautiful place, lots of history. Banff has the interesting distinction of being in the middle of a national park in the Canadian Rockies. As such, it is surrounded by a wide variety of wild critters and no hunting is allowed. The municipal garbage cans are made from armor plating so the bears can't get into them, every few years a jogger or camper becomes lunch for a cougar or a wolf, and most mornings the elk graze the local golf course. If you are playing golf, they're just one more hazard to avoid, and you have to play through when your ball lands in some elk poop. Anyway, we were talking to one of the locals and he told us about the idiot who walked up to an elk and plopped his kid on the elk's back. No, they're not tame. The idiot will probably get the elk horn out of his ass any year now!

I was surprised that only one reader had experience in a military field hospital. The assistance is appreciated, and if anybody else has experience, let me know. Thanks.

Enjoy!

The weapons issue generated a lot of emails. For those wondering about the last blog post, I am perfectly aware that the Ruger Mini 14 fires NATO 5.56. The Mini Thirty is the version that is chambered for Russian 7.62. My ignorance was that when I read 7.62, I didn't realize it was also a Russian round different from NATO 7.62. Personally, the last firearm I used involved a rubber band and a paperclip. Anyway, this discussion is finished.

Assistance is needed. If you are or were a surgical doctor or nurse, I need some help writing an operating room scene for a future story. Even better would be knowledge of surgery in a field hospital setting. Further, while I dearly love the assistance I get from all my readers, please don't respond if you simply watched something on a TV show or dropped out of podiatry school sixty years ago. Many thanks!

When going through the editing process, I send my story to a group of individuals who have experience with the subject being written about. Occasionally the results are amusing. Case in point, the last chapter. Travis grabbed a rifle, a Springfield Arms M1A, the civilian version of the venerable M14. When originally written, I had him grabbing a Ruger Mini 14 chambered in NATO 7.62. Shows what I know! It turns out the Ruger model uses a Russian 7.62 round, which I didn't even know existed! They promptly suggested different weaponry, which I gladly changed to. As always, any fuckups are mine.

I had an interesting email from a reader about the killing in Chapter 8 via peanut oil. It turns out that highly refined peanut oil probably won't cause the anaphylactic response indicated. However, further research shows that raw or unrefined oil certainly will. I simply added the word 'raw' to the killing method. No problem.

Book 2 differs from Book 1 in that in almost all cases the story proceeds chronologically. With very few exceptions, there will be no bouncing back and forth in time. Some people liked it, some people didn't, but it mostly ended with Book 1.

Chapter 10 is relatively short, but that's the way it works out sometimes. Sorry about that. Chapters break as required by what is being covered, not by a minimum word count.