I got the page proofs for MHI today.  I’m finally able to see what it is going to look like in the Baen format.   I was right, and it isn’t going to be in the 300 page range like it was listed on Amazon. It is going to be fatter. Which is good, because I couldn’t figure out how they were going to squeeze 195,000 words into that many pages. 

Everybody who read the initial version of MHI found it to be a very fast read, but it is actually rather fat. I take it as the ultimate compliment when somebody gets back to me that they finished my book in two or three days. (and in a few cases, in one sitting!) That means that I did my job.

That July 28th release date is getting closer.  MHI is being listed on more bookstore’s pages every day. I even found my first UK listing, which is very cool.  The one original self-published copy listed on Amazon is going for $1,000, which is totally nuts. 

MHI:2 The Rough Draft has been been submitted to Baen, and now all I need you guys to do is buy lots of copies of MHI:1 so I can get this sucker published.

Dead Six is rolling right along, and we’re still on track to have the rough done next month.  This is one of the more original thrillers that I can think of, and it just keeps getting better. We’ve created a deep and plausible world here, and it has gotten to the point that it just kind of keeps creating itself. 

Mike and I did up a character file, where we did a brief sketch of every single named character in the trilogy so far. (and the 3rd book still doesn’t exist at all). It was EPIC. Unlike most thrillers, everybody actually has a plausible motivation, and we tried to make the people as realistic as possible. Somebody once asked Mike if our main characters were “flawed” because supposedly flawed characters are more interesting.  He could honestly reply that one of them is a emotionally damaged alchoholic and the other is a narcissistic criminal scumbag, and we still make it fun.  In the world of Dead Six, the actual good guy does bad things, while the bad guy ends up trying hard to be good. 

On that note, let me digress and put my writer pontification hat on for a minute. I think that thing about flawed characters is a two-edged sword. Owen Zastava Pitt is a popular character, and he does have some flaws,  (sucks with women, clumsy, petty, holds a grudge, opinionated, and stubborn), but they’re all plausible things that any normal person could have. On the other hand, you get into the really flawed territory, and I just can’t bear to read about those characters because it is too painful.   I’m looking at you Stephen King. I really don’t want to listen to the ramblings of a drug-addled, adultering, child-molesting, porn-addicted, drunken, abused, whoring, wimpy idiot for 800 pages. My favorite King book is still Dark Half, not for his standard King cutout main character, but rather because King (probably accidentally) created a heroic supporting character (who wasn’t a drug addicted pederast) in the Sheriff. I know there are others, but King loves creating chracters that I would just never tolerate in real life, and if I couldn’t stand them in real life, why do I want to be in their head for 800 pages? (man… what was that one where the chick was handcuffed to the bed for like 600 pages?) 

My current Grimnoir project is evolving, and I’m extremely pumped about it too.  It is turning out in a very interesting way, kind of an alternative history where Indiana Jones meets Black Mask (the 1930s one, not the Jet Li one) meets Harry Potter only with more guns, samurai, and zeppelins.  I’m having fun with this main character because I get to write somebody in the pulp style of the hardboiled detectives. I’m talking about the kind of square jawed manly man that has a fried egg, black coffee, and a cigarette for breakfast, stuffs a Colt .45 in his coat, saves the dame, and takes out the trash.    All while wearing a fedora. Because men should wear cool HATS.

At least, I think that today is Earth Day. You know how it is, the big holidays always sneak up on you. Well, either way, I’m celebrating. I threw a big can of used motor oil into the garbage and tonight I’m going to make a nice styrafoam bonfire! 

Earth Day is a special time of the year. When self-righteous idiots can go on about how awesomely Green they are, usually while they are doing something that is actually more detrimental than the alternative, all while they pat themselves on the back for being more “aware” than the pathetic ones that want to oppose them, with things like science or logic… Pat yourselves on the back my friends, because we are saving the Earth!

Coming up next, let’s have Cap N’ Trade! Because though the economy may suck, we’ll make is suck even more, because of Global Warming… err… wait, since the Earth has been cooling instead of warming, the boogieman is now known as Climate Change. My bad. And if you disagree, you’re just like a holocaust denier. Unless you’re the Iranian government, because then that is totally cool to deny the holocaust, and we should like totally hang out some time.

Happy Earth Day*! Yay Earth!

*Earth Day 2009 is a Trademark of General Electric – Earth Day is brought to you by GE. Because even though our new Green Technology doesn’t actually work, or is less efficient than existing technology, because it will be mandated by the government, you’ll have no choice but to buy it!  Suckers! (insert manaical laugh here) – GE Management

You all may know me as a writer or gun-monger, but by day, I am an accountant. I don’t post about finance much on my blog, because doing accounting is kind of boring, and watching somebody else doing accounting is worse. But today we will have some math time fun!

There are a lot of really big numbers being thrown around in the news right now, talking about the government spending money. A trillion is a hard number for most people to comprehend. But don’t worry, I’ve seen a bunch of news articles about how the Obamas are cutting a hundred million from the budget. Since this is being heralded as proof of fiscal conservatism, it must be true.

A hundred million? That’s a lot right? Well, the news sure makes it seem like a big deal. So is a 100 Million a lot?

Yes, unless you are the government.

So to illustrate, this is what the numbers look like when you type out all the zeros. Please forgive me if I screw up, because that is a lot of zeros.

Thousand: 1,000.00

Million: 1,000,000.00

Billion: 1,000,000,000.00

Trillion: 1,000,000,000,000.00

Okay, so far, so good. So if we are spending over a trillion dollars that we don’t have all over the last few months, how much is cutting a hundred million from a trillion? Well, that would be a .0001 cut!

To break that down into money units that most normal people would understand, that means that if you had a thousand dollar budget, you would be cutting an entire ten cents! That is a whole DIME!

Think of what you could do with that? Ten cents is like… well… I don’t really know… but it must be a big deal, because Chris Matthews thought it was awesome. You could be all like, hey dude, I just borrowed this thousand bucks from a loan shark, but I totally don’t need this ten cents. Whoo hoo! Now I only borrowed nine hundred nintey nine dollars and nintey cents!  Hey, what is the interest on $999.90? Oh wait, that’s my kids and grandkids problems! Let’s go hang out with Hugo Chavez! Yay!

In related news, the new “bank stress test” is designed so that most banks will automatically fail, that way the government can come in and nationalize them. By any other financial measurement, you count both preffered and common stock. But since the government recently weaseled their way into getting a bunch of preffered (non-voting) stock, that won’t count anymore, so if you want to stay in business, you’ll have to convert that to common (voting) stock, which means… wait for it… the government now gets a seat on your board and gets to boss you around.

If you think the economy sucks now, wait until the government actually starts to run all of our financial institutions…

This just keeps getting better and better.

Here is an article from the Washington Times. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/17/obama-blames-us-guns-in-mexico/

There is some very interesting stuff in there.  For example, Obama is pulling out that figure that 90% of the guns used in Mexican crime come from the US. This has been trotted out several times now by the administration. It seems like this is one of those things where they want to use something over and over until it becomes accepted.

The only problem is that the number is not true at all. It has been proven false, and I’m pretty sure the President’s Teleprompter is aware of this by now. 

If I recall correctly, something like 16% of the guns recovered in Mexico are asked to be traced by serial number by the ATF. Of that 16%, 90% originate in the US. Hence the 90% number that keeps being thrown around.

Okay, so that would actually mean that the majority of weapons are not asked to be traced. Why is that? Well, most of them are obviously not from the US.

I have worked with people who do law enforcement on the border. I’ve seen evidence photos from gun battles. Many of the guns are ChiCom or Eastern block military weapons. Contrary to the news, you can’t pick up grenades, full-auto weapons, or RPGs at a gunshow.

So, if our government already knows this 90% number is false and misleading, why do they feel the need to continue to use it? Could it be that they need to repeat something over and over again in the media until it is accepted as truth? Will the next batch of gun control be based on saving Mexico?

You want to save Mexico? You might want to go after the bigger problem. I’ve also seen pictures of the money. Bales of money. Literal piles of American hundred dollar bills. Big sacks with dollar signs on it. We’re talking friggin’ Donald Trump Lotto. Do you really think that in a country that is in complete chaos that cartels with billions and billions of dollars really need our guns that bad?

Tens of thousands of Mexican Army soldies have gone AWOL and joined the cartels. I’m pretty sure they bring their guns with them. (mostly made in the US, by the way, so I guess that must be our fault too).  We actually trained the Zetas at Fort Bragg, and now they’re the ultimate cartel death squad. I suppose that’s our fault also. 

I have no problem believing that some of our guns are being used in Mexican crime. You know why? Because our border is totally unsecured, and criminals can cross back and forth with near impunity, and they’re operating on our side of the line, they can easily pick up American guns off the black market like other criminals scumbags. Remember, since they have giants sacks of money, picking up a gun from a drug dealer who stole it isn’t a big deal.

My response to this is to crush the criminals like bugs and secure our borders so they can’t operate here so easily. The Obama plan will apparently be to punish people like me and you so we can’t have guns because they might someday fall into the hands of a country that is buying AK47s by the crate from China.

So, even if something like 15% of Mexico’s guns come from us, I’ve got a simple solution. It is a whole lot simpler than trying to regulate us, ban guns, or bring back another stupid ban. Build A FENCE. Last time I looked, we had even actually passed that law, and something like 70% of America was behind the idea, and we still haven’t done it for TWO YEARS.  So instead of building a fence to actually control our border, we can spin it the other way, and say that we’re building the fence to protect poor Mexico from our terrible firearms. It is for the children.

But we can’t build a fence, because we need illegal aliens to be able to roam freely, because they do the jobs Americans won’t do, even though we have the highest unemployment rate in decades, and Americans can’t find jobs.

Man, logic is hard!

Well, anyway, it is coming. Get ready for it. The next batch of gun control will come in the form of international treaties and other assorted BS.  The “90%” press conferences we’re seeing now are the political feelers.

I’m finally back from my Texas trip. I was only there for a few days, and most of that was filled with business meetings and training.

I wish I would have had more time. I know a ton of people in Texas, and was only able to visit one of my friends. If I had another month I still probably wouldn’t have been able to see everybody I know down there. One of these days I’m going to plan on spending a lot more time down there. I need to meet Matt and Johnny Guest. I need to go on a ride along with Lawdog (and I will take copious notes), and I need to just loaf on a porch in Terlingua.

After picking up my piece of crap rental car (more on that later), I was able to go up to Georgetown, where I got a tour of STI. I haven’t been a nefarious arms dealer for nearly half a year now, but I used to do a ton of business with STI, and they were always my favorite bunch to deal with in the business. I got to see how their guns are made, and it is simply awesome. Using giant war machines forged in the fires of Mordor, 1911s are carved from giant blocks of steel, and then polished to perfection. Yeah, I was pretty geeked out.

Then I got to hang out with my buddy, Rabbit, in Hutto. (Go Hippos!). He treated me to a chicken-fried rib-eye steak. He knew that I was only in Texas for a short time, so he needed to feed me something that just screamed Texas, and what better way to do that than to take the very best part of the cow, batter it, fry it, and then smother it in gravy? Yes, it was as good as it sounds.  

Rabbit and his family are good people. Anybody who has built a 16-foot, fully-articulated, Mexican-wrestler puppet, and who then flew it off of a 30 foot cliff while dressed as a lemming has to be pretty damn cool. And no, I didn’t make any of that up.

Then it was back to San Antonio, where I got hopelessly lost. I didn’t know you could put that many different freeways into one area. I’m from Utah. We have one. Anyway, I was caught behind an accident, routed off the freeway, through the city, and onto, what I thought, was the same freeway. Turned out it was a different one, (that still headed in the same direction). But it was cool to drive around San Antonio for awhile, as it is a very pretty town.

The training was good, and that night I went down to the Riverwalk for dinner, where I ate at Boudrouxs and had the best guacamole I’ve ever had. The Riverwalk is the most interesting downtown I’ve seen. You take the stairs down from the street, and then you can walk along the river that flows through San Antonio.  It has atmosphere.

I hit the Tea Party. Like I said in the last post, everyone was friendly, cordial, upbeat, and sick and tired of being treated like mushrooms. Maybe my opinion of Texas has been skewed because I was surrounded by like-minded people, but I’ll keep it that way, thanks.

The Alamo is a lot smaller than I imagined. I hear everybody says that though. It just illustrates how hard the Texans fought, because that is not what I would consider a super defensible fort.

Overall, I loved Texas. I look forward to going back.

The only downside of the trip was the rental. On the rental car, it is almost worthy of its own post. I signed up for a full size car. At 6’6”, I only fit in about half of the compact cars out there. (the Ford Focus is surprisingly roomy), so to be safe, I went up a size. According to the webpage, this size were things like Chevy Impalas or Dodge Chargers. Okay, I was cool with that.

So when I get there, they bring out this absurd looking little pseudo-minivan with great big wheel wells and little square windows. It is a Chevy HHR. Imagine a PT-Cruiser had a bastard love child with a retarded minivan, and the fact this thing exists just shows why Chevy needed bailout money.

If I put the seat back far enough so that I could drive, I couldn’t see out the driver side window. This thing doesn’t just have blind spots. It has blind spots that you could park the USS Enterprise in.  The window is so high up that you can’t comfortably put your arm out it when the window is rolled down, not that you could anyway, since the door locks are pointy things designed to stab you in the elbow if you try. (Rabbit pointed out that Chevy should have went the distance and just sharpened them). I have been in armored fighting vehicles that have better visibility.

Since the whole thing was designed by morons, they also made the speedometer dumb. It is small, and it goes 60 dot dot dot 80. That’s fine, except the speed limit in Texas in 70, and the needle is bigger than the dots, so you know that you are going approximately somewhere between 60 and 80. I was waiting to get pulled over, and the cop would ask “Do you know how fast you were going?” and I could honestly answer, “No, officer, look at this stupid thing!”

When I dropped the cursed HHR back to Enterprise, the young woman there asked me how was the car. I told her that it absolutely sucked. She said, “Blind spots, right?” Apparently I’m not the only one that hated this ridiculous thing.