rlfj: Blog

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!

Chapter 27 follows up on the fun and games in Chapter 26 and sets up more action in future chapters. Enjoy!

I love hearing from my readers. I got this great email the other day:

“The trope about the duster using the frozen finger of a relative to get benefits - true. My brother-in-law works for [the] UK foreign office, was in Pakistan. Many people moved to [the] UK to work but in fact retired back to Pakistan after 20 or 30 years; why not if you still have family or property there. You are still entitled to your UK pension; you paid your taxes for it, and it goes a long way out there. Peter's job was to keep an eye on this. Payment required a fingerprint. One guy had a print which was slowly getting smaller over time. Turned out that his son cut it off after his death and kept it frozen!”

It's like I tell my wife, I can’t invent this shit!

I’ve had a couple of complaints about Martian Vengeance. Here’s the most recent sample:

“This story is about the invasion of Mars but spend[s] all the time talking about Martian society.”

My response? Greenies mostly takes place in 2146, and the Martians are nothing more than barely governable vermin who managed to beat WestHem by the skin of their teeth. By the time A Perfect World takes place, it is 2191, and Mars is the premier military, economic, and intellectual superpower in the Solar System. How did they manage that in only 45 years? Martian Justice and Martian Vengeance take place in the decade after Greenies. Even more than the story of the invasions, these stories tell how Mars became that superpower.

All that being said, Chapter 26 gets us back into the space opera business. Roman Gods refers to two specific gods. Ceres was the goddess of agriculture and Ganymede was a Trojan prince who became the cupbearer of the gods. Enjoy!

Mars has some fascinating marital customs. Too bad we don’t have them on Earth! Enjoy!