StarFleet Carl: Blog

As I've mentioned in the past, I live in Oklahoma. Where the Siberian blast comes through without nothing to stop it. Yesterday (Tuesday, Feb 16), we set the record cold ever, since they started keeping records in 1899. Negative 14 F or negative 26 C.

Wind turbines were frozen solid (good thing Cal invented Ice-X), solar panels were covered with snow, and the actual demand on gas pipelines exceeded their capacity. Throw a foot total of snow on that and life here is about like a normal northern winter - except no one here has houses ready for that.

Keep your faucets dripping so they don't freeze. Except that to save power, the electric company was doing rolling blackouts and turned off the power for the water plant. And also managed to screw up and turn off the power for several nursing homes and one of the hospitals, too. But in spite of all that, the Thunder still played their game last night - which ALSO has not set well.

Oh, well - you'd think that with three full days of just me and the dogs, because my wife had to go in Sunday and won't be home until tomorrow (she's Director of Nursing at an Assisted Living - it's not the actual roads, we both drive a Subaru that could handle that, it's all the staff call offs) that'd I'd get a lot of writing done.

Nope! I'm VERY warm natured. And I was WAY too cold to do much except sit and vegetate. Wife will be dressed in two layers of flannel for bed, I'm in gym shorts and that's it. I've been wearing insulated socks, thermal underwear, and another layer on top of that. INSIDE the house. Probably TMI for everyone, but just my ramblings now that the sun is finally out and it's above five degrees outside for the first time since Sunday.

Couple of formatting errors managed to work their way in. I've uploaded replacements that SHOULD fix those, so they're in the queue. Not sure why it thought 'That could have gone better' was the Chapter title and not the first line of the chapter.

Your wait is over Saturday. I took pity on the folks on the other side of the date line. The preface and Chapter One of A True History, Book Three, are in the queue for posting Saturday evening here in the US. (That's 8PM, for those of you who don't know.)

The minor detail that we're expecting about 15" of snow and -10 temperatures here in Oklahoma this weekend may have slightly influenced my decision on throwing this out there half a day early.

Posts will be every TWO weeks, and when it's complete, I'll post it on Bookapy. It's not complete yet.

I've given some serious thought to this. I was originally going to ask for your opinions on which of two choices you'd prefer, but instead, 'I am unanimous in this.' (Points if you get that last reference.)

First, here's the decision.

A True History, Book Three, will be posting on SOL next Sunday morning (US time, so later in the day for you, Australia!). Happy Valentine's Day. Posts will be every TWO WEEKS, on Sunday morning (again, US time). Book Three does NOT have the prologue chapter complete yet, so go read Books One and Two first. (It'll get written, don't worry.)

The full book will be available when it's done on Bookapy. It's not complete yet, and I have zero chance of having it complete by Easter (which was my original plan). That's why you're getting chapters every TWO weeks, not every week.

Now - here's the reasoning.

As everyone who has followed my posts knows, I am full time selling real estate now, having switched from selling cars last year. Interest rates right now are stupidly low (seriously, under 2.5% for a 30-year fixed!). That means people are calling the office looking to buy a house that previously had been renting, because if you can pay $900 a month in rent, you can BUY a $170,000 house.

Anyone on here who's ever done real estate knows that, just because you're not in the office, you're still on your phone, or on your computer at home, trying to find a house for your customer. It's REALLY fun now because in the under $250K price range, we don't have inventory available. There were more houses sold in January than were listed. Since we're also talking 8 counties and over 6,300 square miles in the metro (nearly 16,500 square km), there's a LOT of driving involved.

Reality is what it is. So is realty. :)

Oh, and here's a slightly longer tease.
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That could have gone better.

"What did Elroy tell you about the whole zealot thing?" I asked.

With an almost child-like voice, Hannah said, "Too much?"

Beth smiled. "Yeah, just a little. I think it would have been very possible for me to have gone that way, too." She held her hand out, to help Hannah up.
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The good news is that I'm not dead. I just hurt a lot. Just about two hours work with a chainsaw will do that to you, though. Especially when you're not used to it, and now going, 'Crap, I'm going to be 60 years old in December!' I know a lot of you are older than that. Whose bright idea was it that getting older (albeit refusing to grow up) hurt so damned much?

I suppose you're actually reading this because you really want to know what the status is on Book Three. Me, too! (Oh, wait ...)

In all seriousness, I just had to do a bit (!) of a re-write on the first half of Chapter 11. I was double checking something in Chapter 10, and realized I'd made a mistake similar to the wrong girl mistakes I've made in the past. Except you can't tell Chuck to go relax and chill out in Chapter 10, leaving him behind, and then have him making comments in Chapter 11 when he's not there. Oops!

Here's a short excerpt from the start of Chapter 1 of Book Three, just to tease everyone. I'm still on pace to start posting around the middle to end of this month.

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That could have gone better.
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What, you want MORE? Maybe in my next update! MUAHAHAHAHA!