My daughter is officially a sharp shooter now.

I bought her a Savage Arms Rascal in .22 MONTHS ago. Probably almost a year ago now, long before we got her a BB gun. It was going to be a surprise when we felt she was mature enough to start learning to shoot. And I don’t know what I was thinking, but for some reason I got the ‘swamp people’ alligator camo one… WHY I thought that was a good one for a super girly-girl, I’m not certain.

I -think- I was hoping at the time my son would get into shooting as well, so it’d be something a bit different that they could both shoot.

-sigh-

Instead, about two weeks ago, I took my daughter to the local gun store like we typically do every couple of Saturdays, and as usual, she oohed and aahed over every pink gun in there. And they had a pile of Henry Cricket’s, including a solid pink one that came with case and scope.

They also had a Savage Arms in pink camo, and for some strange reason, I decided to let her pick which one she liked better and bought it.

We came home with the pink Henry Cricket.

Yep, that’s the outfit she wore to the gun store. A pink gun was fitting.

And, apparently since I was on a spontaneity streak, we threw a few things into my range bag and drove 40 minutes to the gun club.

Where we proceeded to shoot exactly four rounds of .22 short. (For some idiotic reason, a year ago I bought an entire case of .22 MiniMag SHORTS thinking they were LONGS…. now they finally have a use. The small noise and recoil is perfect.)

(That’s my shot above the 8, I was aiming at the 8 to see how the sights were.)

Yeah, she shot that with IRON sights because I hadn’t put the scope on yet. And I’m pretty sure she had no idea what I was talking about when I was trying to explain how to use a peep sight.

She pretty much just aimed naturally and dropped the hammer.

I got her first ‘live round’ shot on video! (Because I’m father of the year.)

So.

Here we are.

Our daughter can already out shoot us, I’ve a use for all those .22 shorts, and I’ve a Savage Arms NIB .22 Rascal I need to sell.

All good things.

Taming Prehistoric Artwork

Kind of a frivolous expense, but I’m continuing the tradition of putting cowboy and dinosaur art inside the book.

This is from the magnificently talented Lorin Michki of Drawn Fire Art.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/Lorin21

https://www.facebook.com/drawnfire

Check out his site, he has some awesome artwork. I’ve a copy of his Four Horsemen on my wall in my writing area in the basement.

WWII Sea Monster Book and January Update

(WWII Sea Monster Book is not the official title)

Looks like this will be my next project while I work on putting together the plot and such for West of Prehistoric Book 4. My goal is to finish both of the books by the end of the year… that’s my self imposed deadline.

I feel the need to round out my catalogue of books a bit. I don’t want to be a one trick pony with a single series. I’d like to put a few more irons in the fire, and see what I can come up with. I’d like to ‘diversify’ if you will.

And I’ve had this WWII Sea Monster Book idea bouncing around in my brain for a couple years now. The plot has been written, it just needs to be fleshed out.

I’m pretty excited, and so far I’m a couple thousand words in and it’s looking good.

In other news, I’ve gotten into tropical fish again.

I used to keep them a lot when I was little, although I think I stopped around the time I graduated HS. At one point I had a large blue gill named ‘JJ’ or Jaws Junior that I told my little brother I was going to feed his cat to. I had that one for a long time before letting him go in the river to be free and eat/terrorize swimmers.

This time around, I’ve gotten into a Betta (Siamese Fighting Fish) kick.

I won’t go into the ‘fish serial killer’ time I had with a ‘death tank’ that killed around a dozen fish before I figured out that chemicals had leeched into the rubber seals in the tank and was poisoning the water… long sad story.

I’ve got two different tanks now. One in the kitchen, because my wife and kids rather enjoy it, and one in the basement. The Betta upstairs is named ‘Thor’ and the Betta in the tank beside my writing desk is called ‘Zoolander’.

This is the Mighty Thor. He’s a ‘dragonscale’ betta, and when I told my daughter he needed a dragon name, she came up with Thor. And it stuck. He’s pretty typical of what you get from the pet stores.

This is how Zoolander showed up after being quarantined for two weeks, then overnighted from California to NC. His colors are pale, his fins are clamped, and he has stress streaks down his side.

This is him after a few days of warm water, lots of space, and some relaxation while being spoiled by me. Still not fully recovered, but he’s a stud.

The reason for his name, Zoolander, is because he’s a ‘Steel Blue’ alien betta. And in the movie, ‘Blue Steel’ was Zoolander’s signature look. 😉

Just thought I’d share.

And lastly, ‘Jed’ is home from the fall hunt my wife and I went on. (Write up is linked below)

I Went Hunting With The Wife

Continuing our tradition of naming the dead animals we mount on our walls, our Corsican Ram is named ‘Jed’ because he… looks like one.

And since my wife will only allow ONE animal head upstairs, this one is in my writing nook.

Welcome to the wall, Jed.

11 days late, but I finished Taming Prehistoric.

I actually finished last night, around 11pm. I was pretty tired at that point, so I emailed it to a couple of people and went to bed happy as could be. Then I laid there most of the night, my brain nitpicking every little detail and sentence that could have been written better. -sigh-

It was a long night of success.

And I’m pretty happy with only being 11 days off from my self-imposed deadline of the end of the year. Granted, the last 11 days felt pretty brutal trying to get it done… but it’s done.

But now I’m going to let it simmer for a week or two while I work on something else, then look at it with a fresh set of eyes for a final read through – before handing over to Severed Press.

And yes, I can claim ‘internationally acclaimed’ because I’ve decent reviews from multiple countries now. -wink-

Alright. Book three in the bag for the most part. Time to start the next book… Gotta strike while the iron is hot and the creative juices are flowing.

On a side note, my little brother got me a signed copy of Monster Hunter Bloodlines from Larry Correia for Christmas. Awesome!

It tickles me how he spent more time on the smiling monster face then he did on his actual signature.

Until next time!

Erik.

Happy New Years 2022!

I made it to midnight last night, not bad for a relatively new 39 year old.

Once the kiddos went to bed, we passed the time catching up on Yellowstone. Almost started season 2 of the Witcher, but didn’t quite make it.

Not much to report at the time.

My self-imposed deadline of submitting my third book to the publisher by the end of the year was a fail. I actually ended up not writing for about a week around Christmas… which was the longest period of not writing I’ve done in some time. But after Christmas, I jumped onto the trusty laptop with a vengeance and quickly passed 90,000 words. Not bad since my goal is 105k.

So, I’m a bit disappointed in failing to meet my own goal. But as my lovely wife keeps telling me, trying to put out a book in six months while having a stressful full time job, two high needs kids with autism, three dogs, and a personal battle with being bipolar… well….. it’s a bit much.

But once you get a taste of success, you’ve got to run with it and add more success on top of that success and keep pushing/climbing/pulling yourself until you reach that pinnacle of your objective. I can’t just stop and take a break.

So the struggle continues into the new year to keep publishing entertaining stories for my growing number of readers as quickly as possible without sacrificing quality.

And holy cow guys, speaking of readers… Your number has really grown through 2021.

Because of you, I’ve made enough royalty money on book sales that I’m going to talk to our accountant about starting a business so I can get some tax breaks. And that’s nuts.

Enough of this blog stuff. Time to get back to writing tonight.

I wish you and yours a wonderful new year, may we all make the best of a clean slate.