March 2021 Update Post

Other than the contract being signed on my sequel to the ‘Internationally Reviewed and Loved’ West of Prehistoric, it’s been a fairly uneventful month so far in personal terms.

The only notable exception is that we decided to add another dog to our family. This one is a brindle Bull Mastiff as a surprise gift for my Daughter’s birthday. (Every Princess needs a ferocious slobbery guard dog.)

We pick her up Easter weekend, so expect more pictures to follow next month.

But these are the latest pictures of her, sent from the breeders.

She’s adorable, and the runt of the litter so we are hoping she’ll stay around 100 pounds when fully grown. I know that sounds like a big dog, but our Bear, a English Mastiff, is 180 pounds. So to us, it SEEMS like we are getting a moderate sized dog.

The Wife and I have settled on the name ‘Honey’, because it goes with ‘Bear’ and if we leave it up to our soon to be five year old daughter, it’d be either Glitter Heart or Flower Petal. And I’m not even joking, those are the two names she has picked out when she told us she wanted a pug.

Yes, our daughter wanted a Pug… but we are getting her a Bull Mastiff instead… (Which was her third choice, I think Poodle was her second choice…)

I stole the below picture from Pinterest, but it shows how Pugs and Bull Mastiffs are -kind- of the same… Got the same mushed face at least.

I looked for a pug, honest. The closest puppies I found were outside of Pittsburg, which is over a 7 hour drive for us and that ain’t happening. I told the breeders they needed to jack up their prices since they had the only pug puppies on the entire East Coast.

And it’s kind of fascinating how breeds ebb and flow in popularity. I found a ton of English Mastiff puppies, about an equal number of Labradoodles, and a bunch of pit bull puppies. Scattered in that were other breeds, but I saw only one ad for Labradors. Which is odd, given how popular of a breed they are. And only one ad for Bull Mastiffs, of which only one puppy remained when I contacted them.

So, kind of weird.

In other news, my lovely Wife is about to turn 40. And she still looks super amazing and hot. And I’m so incredibly lucky to have her. She’s gonna be a really hot grandma one day.

This is my phones wallpaper of her, a picture I snuck while she was getting ready for us to go out to eat at the beach.

The whole COVID thing makes enjoying her 40th kind of a pain. Instead of doing a YUGE party like she deserves, we’re gonna be low key instead… by taking her out to eat at her favorite Mexican restaurant. (Who doesn’t even do the embarrassing birthday singing and sombrero anymore!)

And I got her a bunch of ‘Happy 21st Birthday’ plates, cups, tiara, sash, etc so she doesn’t feel so bad about hitting the big Four Oh.

Hope everyone had a fantastic March. Spring is here, let’s ride into it with loving arms, open hearts, and smoking gun barrels.

My Sequel, East of Prehistoric, is green-lit.

“Hither came Jedidiah Huckleberry Smith, the Outlaw, black-haired, sullen-eyed, dual Colt Peacemakers in hand, a cowboy, a revenger, an apeslayer, with gigantic justices and gigantic amusement, to tread the forbidden lands of a lost world underneath his booted feet.” – Robert E Howard, paraphrased from Conan The Barbarian.

Yes, that’s right. Jedidiah Huckleberry Smith is back! The contract has been signed and returned. Woop, woop!

I’m pretty danged excited.

The first book, West of Prehistoric, seems to have been a pretty big hit for a newbie author. I’m sitting at 4.8/5 on Amazon with 44 reviews, and 4.7/5 on Goodreads with 19 reviews. That’s spectacular feedback.

I REALLY hope to replicate that with the sequel as I expand on the lost world I’ve created and the characters that are in it.

As I’ve said before, I think, I plan on four books in this series. West, East, North, and then South. I’ve even managed to make the directional titles work within the books. “First book takes place in the West, second book takes place to the East inside of the Lost World, and so on…”

And I’m really excited as I work on the third one. I’m elevating a couple secondary characters from the first book to main characters, and that’s gonna make things fun. Also, introducing another lost world civilizations is gonna be awesome. I can’t say much more than that without giving away anything. It’s gonna be fantastic. More characters, more revenge, more adventure, more love, more excitement!

So, East of Prehistoric should be out by June. And I’m hoping, if I bust my rear end, that I can get the third book, North of Prehistoric, out by December. That’s a pretty good goal I think.

So far, the fourth book, South of Prehistoric, exists only in a few pages of notes of awesome stuff that needs to happen. And the follow up series that takes place 25-30 years later exists only in my head. But I plan on taking a break and writing some other stuff before I work on the second series for this lost world.

Oh yes, and here is the art that is going into the inside cover of the Sequel. A huge thank you to Adam Mathison-Sward for putting this together for me.

And of course, here is the planned Back Cover script for East of Prehistoric:

After retiring from outlawing, Jedidiah Huckleberry Smith just wanted to be left alone in Wyoming with his guns and regrets.

But then he discovered an entrance to a lost world, a place full of grand adventure, as well as spectacular dangers from both prehistoric dinosaurs and a race of savage apes intent on conquest.

Now, a new fort has been established on the other side, and a strange civilization of humans and dinosaurs have been located. The people are descendants from another time, long trapped in prehistory, and with them a fragile alliance is created.

But will it be enough as Jed faces vengeance from enemies both new and old?

Will his savagery and cunning keep him and his love alive?

Or will they die, on a mountain of fired brass, amidst the guttural bellows of barbaric apes and roars of monstrous dinosaurs?

Jed doesn’t know, but he’s always willing to shoot first and figure out the rest afterwards.

Well, ain’t that just beautiful!

The interior art for the sequel is completed. A major thank you to Adam Mathison-Sward who can be found at: https://www.swarddraws.com/ usually doing Dresdan Files fan art and taking commissions to do totally awesome stuff like the picture below. I highly recommend checking him out.

February Update Post.

This month has flown by.

Writing/Future Books: I got a good bit of writing on the third book done as well as a lot of research/design/thought into a new civilization that is going to make an appearance. Everything is going well though, and it looks like I’m still on target for this to be a four book series. I also elevated a secondary character from the first and second book to main character status in the third, so that’s been an interesting challenge. Luckily, they basically don’t get along with anyone, so it’s been fun to write about ’em.

Current Books: Racked up some more great reviews on Amazon and Goodreads for West of Prehistoric, still rocking a nice 4.7/5 with 37 reviews. I also personally sold about a dozen more signed copies on the forums that I mailed out last week. I’m going to admit it, it you ask me to write something in the cover without clarifying, you’re probably going to get a cheesy 80/90’s movie quote from Starship Troopers, Tremors, or Big Trouble in Little China. That’s just the way I roll and besides, who needs a knife in a nuke fight?

I also got a nice shout out on the Books of Gab group on GAB, where I recently made an account:

That’s pretty cool, and I’m excited for the book to get passed on to his kid. When I wrote the book, I wanted to make sure it was something that my kids could read, so I specifically kept the swearing to a minimum with no F-Bombs and no sex or anything. And so far, I seem to have done a good job. My nephew and son were both 14 when they first read it, and I got their stamp of approvals.

Current Reading: I’m currently reading What Are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO by Mike Lindell…. the MyPillow guy. It’s pretty good so far. My reading this month has dropped off pretty significantly, even though I got a signed hard copy of Gun Runner by Larry Correia and John Brown that is begging me to pick it up. I’m hearing it’s fantastic, so I need to hunker down and get some reading out of the way.

Gun Stuff: I mentioned on the blog I was given a Ruger Bisley Blackhawk in .44 Special by my parents for my birthday back in November. Well, at the time I figured it’d be hard to find ammunition for. Boy, was I was right. Four months later and I still haven’t come across any. But luckily for me, my dad has an awesome dentist who traded him a couple boxes of Blazer JHP for some pistol primers. With any luck, I’ll get out to the range soon and give it a try. I’m pretty excited.

Personal Stuff: Well, I’m about to be 28 days older by the time this month ends. That’s okay. I’ve done a fairly good job of putting those days to work. I wish I had gotten about twice as much writing done though, I feel like the third book is dragging along at a lot slower pace then I originally envisioned. I think I have this whole writing thing backwards… I should get more done during the fall/winter and less done during spring/summer, but it appears to be backwards to how I do it.

Current Political/Social Culture: A few random thoughts…

-There’s gonna be a lot of, “I told you so” to the left for the next four years.

-Also, the left will persecuted you no matter what you say, so you may as well speak the truth.

-‘No – Go Fuck Yourself‘ is not used nearly enough against the left when they demand you conform to their lunacy and immorality.

-My ancestors being compared to current migrants is apples to oranges. My ancestors hacked a life out of the wilderness, building a civilization, while migrants simply crossed a border then demanded the free fruits of my ancestors labor and sacrifice generations later.

-I don’t know how to be ‘less white’ for Coca-Cola, but I do know how to buy more Pepsi. (This is in response to the ‘training’ Coca-Cola did for employees, requiring them to act ‘less white’.)

-If you’re a man who doesn’t own a gun, are you even a man?

The end.

“Talent, on loan from God.”

It’s only been a couple of days, but I already miss Rush Limbaugh.

Of course a lot of people from the left have come out, bashing him. But to be honest, Rush didn’t give a whip about the drive by media and such peoples opinions when he was alive, and he certainly doesn’t now that he’s in Heaven.

And if you can tell the greatness of a man by his enemies, Rush was truly great. We can all aspire to have such enemies as he by the time we expire.

There are millions of us, something like almost 30 million plus, who listened to Rush over the years. And I think we all have stories of how he affected our lives. Stories of how his 3 hour daily radio program brought us hope, brought us comfort, brought us an explanation for things that were beyond our understanding, and did so in an entertaining and easily understood way.

As my dad said yesterday, losing Rush is like losing a family member.

I remember from my earliest years listening to Rush in my dad’s truck while driving around, and later on jobs as I worked Construction through college. And now, as a cubicle monkey, I could read the transcripts of his show on his website during lunch.

In addition to my dad, I think Rush had a lot to do with how I turned out.

Going through college, I was a Criminal Justice Major with a Sociology Minor. The fields tied in nicely together, but where as most of the Criminal Justice professors were moderately conservative, every single one of my Sociology professors were extremely liberal.

Plus college being what college is, I faced a lot of conservative bias and saw the popularity of liberalism. I’ll never forget wearing a shirt that had a picture of a Glock on it that said, “This is my Glock, there are many like it, but this one is mine.” And the girl sitting behind me told me that I shouldn’t wear shirts like that because guns are bad… and we were both in a Criminal Justice class!

So being surrounded by conservative voices, whether it was my dad, or construction co-workers, or Talk Radio, helped offset the pull for liberalism at college. And as Rush used to explain, liberalism is lazy. Liberalism is seeing a problem and instead of figuring out an intellectual solution, you take an emotional stance of, “oh how horrible we must DO something!”

This is what gives the left so much power, because the majority of their voters don’t see the theft of power, the usurpation of freedom and rights, the destruction of Godly traditions and morals… they see a need and they feel emotional about it, and the left taps into that need and weaponizes it for their own goals. Which are, simply put, to consolidate power and crush opposition. (Meanwhile the majority of the right will just whine about unfairness of the left’s tactics without fighting back.)

But conservatism, takes effort. It takes a conscious effort to put aside emotion and focus on results and the morality of how to get them properly with as little as possible interference in people’s lives and freedom’s.

But I digress…

Rush will be missed.

Greatly.

After the death of Walter Williams last Dec, Rush this month, and Thomas Sowell turning 91 this year, the conservative effort is in great need of new young bloods stepping up to take the reins.

I just wish I had 25% of their intellectual power, sadly – I think I’m closer to 15% so I’ll stick to writing books and piddling around on this blog with occasional political and social commentary.

Luckily, Rush will still be with us to some degree. His books are still being published, the EIB network is turning into a museum of Rush, his words, speeches, and radio will still be in print and audio, and the world keeps turning.

I leave you with his wife’s announcement of his passing: