StarFleet Carl: Blog

Chapter 28 is now in the queue for this Saturday. One of the things I've been doing with this story of an alternate Earth is to try to make it believable. Oh, I know, putting a superhero from another planet automatically puts it into the science fiction category.

Another thing that I've done is try to weave historical events into this, again in a believable way. Something I've found as I've been doing my research on these events is something many of you are going to say I'm crazy for even bringing it up this way, on this blog. I'm doing so simply because of two recent articles that were just published this past week.

One of them had this opening line: "One of the most effective ways ... to shut down an inquiry into misconduct is to say it is all a conspiracy theory."

Another had these opening lines: "Fifty years ago, journalist Gary Allen set out to write a book to prove conservative anti-communists wrong. But while researching, he realized he had not seen the "hidden picture." There indeed was a conspiracy, shielded by a narrative advanced by liberal academia and the mainstream media, both actually in the service of an elite cabal that included Rockefeller, Ford, Morgan, Rothschild, Loeb, Kennedy, and Carnegie."

I think everyone would agree that I've woven quite a number of 'conspiracy theories' into these novels. There are even a couple more of them in Chapter 28. Again, keep in mind that I've come up with everything in these novels on my own, and conducted my own, independent research. Based upon some of the emails I've gotten from you, the readers - and you're an eclectic bunch that's done a lot of stuff in a lot of places around the world DURING the time periods covered by my novels - it really sort of seems like I've hit the proverbial nail on the head and there's a lot of stuff called 'conspiracy theory' I've included that ... isn't theory, it's what really happened.

I specifically used this quote in the story earlier. 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.' Right now, based on my count, I'm up to twenty things I've said, hey, this sounds cool, let me put it in here. I need to figure out to make it work, so let's do some research. Then, as I'm doing my research, I'm going ... Damn! I thought ... but this says ... wait a minute, what? Maybe I'm a little touched in the head, maybe I'm now an incredible conspiracy theorist. Maybe I've found out that a lot of what we've been told not to concern ourselves with is real. Hell if I know. I thought I was making this stuff up all along. It's disturbing to find out that I'm not.

TL:DR - Carl's maybe off his rocker? Or he's found out that a lot of stuff we've been told not to worry about, it's all just conspiracy theory, is the truth. (Not all of them, but way too many for comfort.)

To Chapter 27, anyway. I did give quite a bit of serious consideration to actually having this be the ending chapter for Book Two. In the end, sanity prevailed.

That, and I was actually concerned that not only would those people who are readers here that live near me - and you know who you are - but readers from other states and other countries would come here, seek me down, and chain me to the keyboard. Or worse.

Those of you who are waiting for Saturday are going, huh? Those of you who've read the whole book are going, yeah, that's for damned sure!

Oh, and Chapter 6 for Book Four is starting the rounds with the editors. I made a comment last week about spending hours in research. It hasn't gotten much better, if simply because the world (well, Cal's world, anyway) has gotten a LOT more complicated now that ... well, you'll have to wait for Book Four to find THAT out. (Hey, I've got to put SOME kind of cliffhanger out, right?)

Chapter 26 is in the queue for Saturday morning. I just did a quick re-read of it, to make sure that we'd missed nothing obvious. I'm sitting here going, what is this, Jason Bourne or something? Who wrote this stuff? Oh, yeah, I did.

I was writing a scene last night, and I got to wondering about something. So, I started doing some digging. First question was incredibly quick and easy - simple Duck Duck Go search. What's the exhaust temperature of the main engines on the space shuttle? It's 3300 C. Quick, painless, and easy. Okay, what's the exhaust temperature of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motors (aka the SRBs)?

Three HOURS later, I finally found the answer. It's not on any NASA site that I could find, it's not on Wikipedia, it's just not out there. I FINALLY found it on a site that was comparing the SRB to the Ariane-5 rocket. Mind you, I only needed it for one simple line in the scene I'm writing, but ... dammit, if I write it, it's going to be right!

Oh, and it's 3,600 C, in case anyone wonders. There were multiple websites out there discussing the brightness of the flame, due to the aluminum perchlorate burning, versus standard LOX-LH flames, but only ONE that I could find with an ACTUAL temperature. (I even found a couple complaining that the temperature wasn't out there.) I also now know more about the channels they used to deflect the flames during launch as well and how they were degraded after each launch, and the RS-25 engines of the shuttle were hotter than the F-1 engines of the Saturn V. And now, so do you!

Pretty self-explanatory. All of the chapters of Book Two on SOL are updated. All three file types on Bookapy have been updated. Again, just VERY minor things - spelling errors and such.

I had intended to simply go through and recompile the chapters for Book Two, and then post an updated copy on Bookapy for everyone. Then I started READING my edited files and realized that, while some of them were still fine and needed nothing, most of them needed a few tweaks. So, I've got the first 12 done and uploaded to SOL, and I'll finish the rest this week, so that NEXT weekend, there will be a better copy on Bookapy.

It didn't help matters that I got four leads and had to go show three houses yesterday, either. :)