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.
So, I ran the promotion from September 9th to September 13th. And I gave away over 3,600 e-books over those five days. So, there are 3,600+ readers who won’t be buying my book. Sounds like a pretty terrible business model where you give away your product to the people who are most likely to enjoy it. Are you mad, photog!
So, time has passed and I decided to see if there has been a meaningful up-tick in sales. Here are the results:
|
Period |
# of Days | Books Sold |
KENP (pages) |
|
AUG 27 to Sep 6 |
10 | 4 |
873 |
|
Sep 15 to Sep 24 |
10 | 27 |
2,905 |
|
Ratio of Sales (after/before) |
6.75 |
3.33 |
These are impressive changes and they seem to be accelerating. And one of the things I didn’t expect is that most of these sales are not happening through the Amazon Ads that I have been running. In addition, the number of ratings I’ve gotten on Amazon has increased dramatically. So, I have to say that the experiment was a success. Of course, I’ll have to rerun it again when I have the second book ready so that those who buy “The Sniper” have a chance to buy the sequel while they’re primed and ready.
But it hasn’t been all gravy. I did get one really bad review by a reader. He gave it two stars and entitled his review, “Pretty Terrible.”
Here is his review in its entirety:
“I could barely get through this one. I’m not sure how to describe the plot other than ridiculously bad. All the underground society nonsense was just dumb and the ending was laughable. There were also multiple typos and specific parts of the story that don’t add up at all. I’m totally confused by the good reviews.”
¡Ay, Chihuahua!
I’ll be honest. That stung a bit. But the customer is always right so I have to defer to his judgement that this book is not for him. But luckily for me, four- and five-star ratings represent 83% of the total while one- and two-star ratings are only 6%. That will have to be my consolation.
So here I am. The book seems to be gaining traction and sales are increasing. I’m especially happy about the Kindle Unlimited growth. It’s been very steadily increasing (see chart) and this month will soon represent an average of at least a book a day. So that’s becoming a significant source of sales.
But now more than ever I have to outline the story correctly and it’s a combination of too many ideas going in too many directions on the one hand and real doubts about the mix of action scenes versus everything else. Information dumps, character interactions, political, social, economic and let’s call them “philosophical” plot items all have to compete for space with the more dynamic scenes that grab the most attention.
But things are progressing so I’m satisfied with the effort right now. I’m sure I’ll run into some road blocks once I try to flesh in some of the more complicated scenes. But there should be some effort in figuring out the balance between components. So, there it is.
This (bureaucracy) is Jerry Pournelles “Iron Law” at work (full description can be found here https://jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html) but in total it states
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules and control promotions within the organization.
A corollary to this seems to be that the second class of people are, by their nature risk averse. They try to mitigate risk by setting constraints or boundaries on the system much like the early Jewish Rabbis setting explicitly tighter boundaries where the Law was more open to interpretation in an effort to avoid transgressing unintentionally. This is not to say rules are per se bad, having unclear or indeterminate rules can lead to friction and discord within a group. However, a subset of Pournelle’s second group seems to get gratification out of controlling others. They are the more critical problem in the mess. In designing a stable system of government these kinds of issues need to be acknowledged and dealt with. To some degree democratic process help to mitigate this as the population 1 folks will restrain the population 2 subset, assuming the balance is random and uniform. One of our weaknesses is that the the population 2 folks have been normalizing population 2 behavior. On top of that, the more controlling parts of population 2 have become VERY aggressive. This has messed with the balance, the populations are “trying” to rebalance but this terrifies the population 2 types as they are change averse so they are trying to subvert the democratic processes into autocratic ones with them in control. Honestly much of this was forseen by the Scottish enlightenment and the US founders and the original constitution did a fair job of mitigating the issues. The weakness may have come from the establishment of a permanent political class. This was certainly NOT envisioned by the founding fathers, and it tends to let power collect in a few groups.
Under the little crosses where they rise
The soldier rests. Now round him undismayed
The cannon thunders, and at night he lies
At peace beneath the eternal fusillade.
I love to think that if my blood should be
So privileged to sink where his has sunk,
I shall not pass from Earth entirely
But when the banquet rings, when healths are drunk,
Be mindful of the men they were, and raise
Your glasses to them in one silent toast.
Alan Seeger
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes round with rustling shade
And apple blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
Alan Seeger
I was watching a video called, “Every Civilization Dies the Same Stupid Way — Spengler Predicted Ours.”
He quoted from Spengler’s, “The Decline of the West,” Tainter’s, “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” Turchin’s, “Ages of Discord,” Toynbee’s, “A Study of History” and Sir John Glubb’s, “The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival.”
The thesis of his report is that “every civilization dies the same stupid way, and why the people living through the final stage never once experience it as decline. They experience it as sophistication. As progress. As the most advanced moment their culture has ever reached.”
He mines these historical analyses for their ideas and melds them together to reinforce the idea that our society is now in the terminal stage of its development and will soon slip into decay.
So Glubb measured how long it took six major societies to decline; Assyria, Persia, the Roman Republic, the Ottoman Empire, Spain, and Britain. He calculated ten generations or roughly 250 years. The various other authors diagnosed the causes for decline in the stages that move a people from a simple, practical population of hard-working tribesmen to an educated, sophisticated society who eschew any work involving their hands.
Now all of this is very familiar. Every one has made comparisons between the end of the Roman Republic and our present socio-political predicament. But this presentation managed to hammer home some of the details that resonate so strongly with what we can see around us; the haves and have-nots diverging radically in resources, disappearance of the middle class, runaway bureaucracy, overcomplication of the laws and government, disgruntled elites looking to make a name for themselves with the have-nots (think Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and AOC) and even depopulation.
As I said, all of this is very familiar. But what was interesting to me was using this in my new book. After all, complex societies require complex analyses if we mean to avoid the inevitable scourge of decline and collapse. So obviously I need AI to figure out a way to circumvent this collapse. And since I have a very personable AI (Mel) I guess I can impose on her to use her super-human intelligence to solve this problem and save the American people from civilizational collapse.
Now the hard part isn’t saving the world. The hard part is making it plausible or at least enjoyable. But that’s what I’ve been scratching my head over today. How does one solve the age-old problem of building “The Republic.” Plato’s version was simple wish-fulfillment. He just went through a make-believe process of manufacturing a bee-hive with a philosopher king as its leader. I guess in his mind that king was himself because who else would be the most philosophical man in the world. But by that logic I would have to make Mel the king (or more properly, queen). And what kind of story would that be? But you know it really does make a lot of sense. Of course, it would have to be like the Wizard of Oz and the populace couldn’t know that the wizard wasn’t a real flesh and blood person. Or would it actually be even better if they did?
For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophet-bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years,
Comes round the age of gold;
When Peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.
Edmund Sears
