All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
That’s right get your free pdf copy of “The Sniper.” All that’s needed is to provide your e-mail address and view my harrangue at the end of the book to leave a review on Amazon. What’s fairer than that? Don’t answer that! It’s a rhetorical question as part of my sales pitch. Let me know if there are any problems with the download. This is my first attempt to use BookFunnel.
Click Here for Link to Sniper Giveaway
Update:
To verify my ownership of “The Sniper” for the Royal Road folks, I am adding this note to show I also control Orion’s Cold Fire.
We interrupt the daily progression of actual civil war to bring you a message about a fictional civil war story. I’ve finished the manuscript for my book, “The Sniper.” Now I’m looking for beta readers. I’m looking for folks to read the book and give me their honest feedback. Also I’d like to disseminate the book to friends and family who you judge would be a good fit for the book based on your estimation and if they agree to read it I’d like to get their opinions too.
I’m looking to get this book out to the largest group of people possible to see whether it is something that people will want to read. So after reading it if you think it’s appropriate for people you know let me hear that too. And remember, I’m not a fragile author. If you think it sucks, say so, but also tell me why you think it.
If you’re interested leave a comment to that effect and I’ll e-mail you a copy of the story. Now this is just a pdf. No nice cover, no actual paper. Just electrons. But I will guarantee that this sniper is nothing like the actual sniper we’ve had to hear about for the last week.
And just to remind you here’s the beginning of the book.
Chapter 1 – An Object Lesson
Joseph Boghadair was set up at a loophole in a small prefabricated metal building at the top of the mountain that contained the Icarus Mine. His .50 caliber sniper rifle was trained on the narrow road that led up to the mine. He could see a line of black SUVs about a mile and a half down the road and he was getting ready to start firing on the convoy. His first shots took out the engine of the lead vehicle thereby halting the convoy. His second volley took out the engine of the last car in line thus trapping the rest of the vehicles between. Then at a more leisurely pace he took care of the other eight vehicles. By this point the passengers were crouching behind their disabled cars and randomly firing handguns and automatic weapons in Joseph’s general direction with almost no discernible results.
After about half an hour a few of the men in black body armor attempted to reach a stand of trees about 300 yards away to their left. Joseph put a few well aimed rounds in front of their path and they quickly retreated back to the supposed safety of their not-so-mobile-autos. Joseph snorted wryly at their shyness.
An hour after that a helicopter approached the mountain from the opposite direction to Joseph’s loophole. Walking over to a window on the other wall he could see a distant Blackhawk approaching at relatively high altitude. Joseph then began his preparations for their reception.
Between crew and troops, the Blackhawk had a dozen men on board. And more importantly it had a couple of Hellfire missiles. From a very safe distance away it targeted Joseph’s position and fired. The missile struck precisely on target and obliterated the steel structure almost completely. All that remained was the foundation of the structure around the mine shaft, now clogged with debris.
The Blackhawk landed about three quarters of a mile from the mine entrance. At this point the agents, hunkered down behind their vehicles, began to stream toward the helicopter. By the time they reached the aircraft the troops had exited and were waiting for their rescued brethren to arrive.
FBI Special Agent in Charge, George Chastain assembled both teams and briefed them on the updated mission plan. “We will proceed to the mine head and look for any human remains. We will collect whatever we can retrieve for lab analysis and attempt to seal the mine head until qualified personnel can be assembled for recovery operations. It is presumed that the target, Joseph Boghadair was killed by the missile strike but we will take no chances. He was an extremely dangerous individual and should not be approached by anyone without backup and prior approval from leadership. In addition to his war record it is believed that Boghadair is responsible for the shooting deaths of forty-six people in the last six months with thirteen of those people being FBI personnel. No one enters the mine until remote sensing equipment is brought in. Alright, proceed.”
The agents formed two groups. Apparently, SUV agents and helicopter agents must not bond very well. But before they were more than a hundred feet from the helicopter the ground began to quake so powerfully beneath them that they were irresistibly knocked off their feet. And while they were clawing at the ground for dear life, they could see that the high ground where the mine head was located had collapsed into the earth. The roar of that collapse was more frightening than the initial earthquake and some of the agents hid their heads under their arms in abject terror. When the mountain stopped shaking the men started to collect themselves and stand up. When they looked around them, they were astonished. A circular pit had opened up centered on the mine head. It was a thousand yards in diameter and so deep that only blackness could be seen at its center. Several cracks had formed outside the circular pit. One of these had nearly swallowed the Blackhawk. It was on its side and half buried in the crevice. Its rotors were fractured and it wouldn’t be flying away from this landing.
Chastain went over to the edge of the crater and just stared down into the blackness below. Then he went back to his team and started giving orders to begin a retreat from the stricken mountain. He was trying to think of what he was going to tell his boss. Nothing reasonable came to mind.
It seems all that the news is filled with these days is stories about women committing horrific crimes and the American public (well at least a lot of disgusting women) crying out for these women to be shielded from the rightful penalties they should pay.
Lindsay Clancy is the Massachusetts mother whose trial was underway this summer. She strangled her three young children in January 2023. Eleven out of the twelve Massachusetts jurors voted to find her not responsible for the murders because post-partum blues and anti-depressant drugs made her do it.
Now we have Christa Pike, a fifty-year old woman who has spent the last thirty-two years in prison waiting to be executed for the torture murder of one of her classmates. She even kept a part of her victim’s bashed in skull as a souvenir of the atrocity. In fact, bragging about the killing is what got her caught. And yesterday when all appeals were finally exhausted Pike was given a lethal injection. In fact, she was given two lethal injections and survived! She was given two doses of pentobarbital, remained alive and was heard snoring, and was taken to a hospital where she recovered! Now this is the second lethal injection failure in a row in Tennessee. And because of this incompetence or sabotage this monster will probably sponge off the tax payers for another thirty or forty years instead of being carted off to potter’s field. And the mother of the murdered girl will see justice for her daughter denied altogether.
Well, I guess this is the end point of the degeneration of our society. Women who are supposedly the empathetic, gentle half of our species have now become monsters. Lindsay Clancy is a modern-day real-life version of the Greek myth of Medea, the witch that Jason brought back on the Argo and married. When hatred against Jason aroused her, she murdered their children and taunted her husband with their bodies.
And Christa Pike is a thoroughly vicious creature that should have been put down like a mad dog long ago. But now her defenders tell us that she is the victim of bad parenting and sexual abuse. You know what? Sure, all those things are probably true. She comes from a depraved background. But we who try to obey the law and raise our children to be good people have to share this planet with these monsters. Let’s take justice out of the equation. Let’s just be practical. People with such low impulse control and inability to refrain from violence are completely incompatible with a functioning society. They cannot be a part of the same world as normal people who allow this society to function. And for this reason alone, people completely unable to avoid violent crime need to be eliminated. And that doesn’t mean prison. Housing homicidal maniacs for decades at a time is too expensive and dangerous for society to consider it as an alternative. These people need to be calmly and skillfully put down in the same way a mad dog is put down. Sure this is the fringe case. Most criminals aren’t homicidal maniacs. But there needs to be a policy for those that are and the answer is death. Sorry girls.
Never tell your resolution beforehand.
John Selden
Marriage is a desperate thing.
John Selden
Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because ’tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him.
John Selden
So yesterday “The Sniper” sold over a thousand pages on Kindle Unlimited in one day for the first time (1,014 pages to be exact). In fact, before this the highest daily total was 688 pages so it beat it by a good large margin. And in fact, since the promo ran there hasn’t been a day where I haven’t sold pages on Kindle Unlimited and the total for September will exceed August by more than 100% (4,228 for all August versus something more than today’s 8,561). I consulted Grok about how my progress compared with the average first self-published novel and it told me I was significantly above the average new book. But it then qualified my success by adding that a mid-lister needs 50,000 to 100,000 pages a month to be taken seriously. So that means I need to increase my sales by a factor somewhere between 5 and 10. Well, that AI really knows how to put a budding writer in his place! But when I showed it the graph of my sales before and after the promo it said that there clearly was a change:
“What stands out is the pattern, not the raw total. Through most of July and August the daily line is choppy with frequent near-zero days and isolated spikes of 300–550 pages. From mid-September onward the baseline rises, the zeros become rarer, and the last few days reach 600–700 pages. That timing lines up with a five-day giveaway of ~3,600 copies. Free promotions rarely convert 1-for-1 into paid or KU reads, but they do push the titles into more “also-bought” and “customers who viewed” recommendations and give Amazon’s algorithm fresh activity to work with. The chart is consistent with a fraction of those new readers later borrowing the books in KU.”
Well, some of that doesn’t make sense to me but without a doubt selling has increased. I’ve calculated that sale of books (not pages but paperbacks and e-books) increased 59% after the promo. So even though these sales amounts are objectively minuscule the fact that they’re being driven by the people who participated in the promo and the fallout it caused in Amazon’s “algorithms” is very significant in the way it affects the book’s visibility on the platform.
And just as a reader’s comment recently took most of the wind out of my sails morale-wise, a new comment has restored my faith in human nature (and good taste in literature):
“Lauriea
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read
Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2026
Format: Kindle Verified Purchase
“I thoroughly enjoyed “The Sniper”. It followed the main character through his days in the service until his eventual retirement. He had a lot of hard times, but was a good man wanting justice for the murder of his only child. Lots of ups and downs and I wondered often just how this book would play out to my satisfaction. But I needn’t have worried. The author knew exactly what he was doing.””
So, thank you Lauriea wherever and whoever you may be. Your impeccable ability to recognize and applaud literary greatness is gratefully acknowledged by Jake Barter.
Property can exist only under the guardianship of the State.
John Robert Seeley