29 October 1969: The First Internet Message Was Sent– then the network crashed
That’s called foreshadowing. The message was supposed to be L-O-G-I-N, but after the L-O the system crashed. It was going from a lab at UCLA to one at Stanford. It’s interesting that the internet came about as computing faced a crossroads in development: whether to have large, centralized computers or smaller and more, decentralized ones. […]
90 years later: Black Tuesday–What If It Hadn’t Happened?
Tuesday, 29 October 1929. The day that changed the world. Ushered in the Great Depression which would end with World War II. What if it hadn’t occurred? What if history was changed on that day? And on other 29 Octobers throughout history? What if Sir Walter Raleigh wasn’t executed on 29 October 1618? What if […]
How To Prepare For and Survive Wildfires
Wildfires are a very nasty natural disaster– not that any of them are good. They are deadly, move fast and are unpredictable. We had one here in East TN a few years ago that killed 14, hurt many more and destroyed a number of residences. I recently drove through the area and in most places, […]
The Unit Meets Warehouse 13
Based at The Ranch, just outside of Area 51, the Nightstalkers are the elite Special Operations unit that takes care of the things that go bump in the night. They ‘correct’ the mistakes of scientists. They are our last defense against self-annihilation. They’re also a little bit crazy, a little bit mad, and a long […]
Preparing for NanoWrimo?
November is when many writers go into hyper speed and participate in Nanowrimo. It stands for National Novel Writing Month. It doesn’t mean you have to write a novel in a month, but it’s a way of helping people set goals and encourage each other to write. Pretty much every month has been like that […]
Who Polices the World of Covert Operations? Free today
What is the unit that polices the ranks of elite, covert units? Stops operatives who are too dangerous for the police and, more importantly, know too many secrets to ever be brought to trial? That was the idea behind the Cellar. The first book in this series, Bodyguard of Lies, is free today (10/23). Lost […]
Who Dares Wins: Special Operations Strategies for Success– free today
For today, 10/21, only, this book is free on Kindle. I took what we did in Special Operations and built templates that anyone can use for themselves or their organization. Special Operations Forces are the most elite and flexible units in the world. Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Rangers, Nightstalkers, Special Operations Wing: these are the […]
I Used To Wonder Once We Went Wheels Up, What If . . .
We got our code word to conduct our war time assigned mission? We ran lots of training exercises in Special Forces. I don’t believe we were ever alerted at 9:00 AM on a Monday. It was usually odd hours on odds days. Occasionally the alert was real: something that had to be done. But we […]
Which is more important: Honor or Loyalty?
Many people consider the two the same, but I don’t. One is inward oriented, the other outward. At West Point we had to memorize quite a bit of ‘trivia’ otherwise known as Plebe Poop, which is self-explanatory. One bothered me a lot: In 60 major battles of the Civil War, West Pointers commanded both sides […]
The Demon Core!
The Demon Core was one of the original nuclear cores at Los Alamos In The Rift I use that real core in a story about breaking through into a parallel world. Which, oddly, they’re now working on just up the road from where I live at Oak Ridge. So maybe we will need the Nightstalkers!
First Two Book in Green Beret Series Free Today
Eyes of the Hammer and Dragon Sim-13 are free today and tomorrow, 10/6 and 10/7. These are my first two books published, written a while ago, but the action and the political forces are as relevant as ever. Dragon Sim-13 is backdropped against the Tianenman Square riots but now we have the Hong Kong riots. […]
Bonding over the Bicameral Mind- and a free book
When my wife and I met one of the first things that attracted us to each other was that our bookshelves held many of the same titles. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind was one of those. Not an easy tome and it requires several readings to grok. The mind […]
62 Kindle Unlimited Titles on one page
I went through and tagged all of my titles that are part of Kindle Unlimited. On my fiction page alone, there are 62 titles. Which means you can sample my works if you are enrolled in that program. The red bar at the top indicate enrollment. I think this is a great program for voracious […]
New York City might have ended up called New Paris or San Antonio
Most have heard of New Amsterdam, the iteration of New York City before it became called just that. However, what I didn’t know, even having grown up there, was that if not for some twists of fate, ended up being New Paris. Or even San Antonio when an early explorer christened the river the Rio […]