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.
Dunwich is settling into fall. We had a week of rain and wind. We had one day of summer where it reached the mid-eighties and now it’s back in the sixties. The clown parade of weather men and girls have done their best to confuse their forecasts beyond human understanding but I could glean that we have about a week or two before the first real frost.
So today I went to store away the pool furniture and accoutrements. And while I was inside the pool fence, I saw a female preying mantis trying to warm up enough to remember how to trap insects. But there really aren’t many insects left. Well, there are but I think the mantis is waiting for the bees to frequent the flowers that she was stationed under. And the bees were nowhere to be found today. At least not on that side of the yard. There was a grasshopper hiding under a branch about three feet away from the mantis but it might as well have been on the dark side of the moon as far as the predator was concerned.
I took some photos of both. I was temped to catch the grasshopper and try to lure the mantis into grabbing it with her claws. But I remember last year when I “brought” a mantis in at the end of the season. It died in about two days. It was like something out of a 1930s Universal Monster movie. I had delved into things that “Man was not meant to meddle in.” So, I waved goodbye to the grasshopper and the mantis and got back to the work Camera Girl wanted me to meddle with.
On Tuesday the battery in my car died and Camera Girl loaned me her car until the AAA guy came the next day. I gave them the make and model over the phone and they said they had the right battery so I expected a quick replacement. But the gods conspired to complicate my day. It seems that Toyota uses a special smaller battery to fit in the crowded footprint of the engine compartment. So, the poor guy had to travel almost an hour in each direction back and forth to his shop before finally finishing the job. Two hundred and forty bucks for the darned thing. Gee, I remember when a battery was fifty, sixty bucks. Well that probably says as much about how old I am as it says about the unbearable expensiveness of everything.
But I’m being greedy. The thing lasted seven years. That’s a pretty good battery life and at least it had the good grace to give up the ghost in my garage so I didn’t have to wait around in the middle of nowhere hoping for the tow truck guy to rescue me. But I guess it’s really the time of the year I should thank. Last week was the first large drop in the ambient temperature since last year. And that change in temperature probably decreased the voltage of the old battery below the minimum needed to crank the engine. So as unnatural as it is for me to be grateful for the end of summer, I guess I should be. Bah!
Preachers say, Do as I say, not as I do.
John Selden
Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain.
John Selden
Wise men say nothing in dangerous times.
John Selden
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
