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Text of the page (random words):
mass murderer before he could actually murder anyone unfortunately one of the marines was seriously wounded in the incident although both french and us authorities are saying that his injuries are not life threatening prayers for him and his family are nonetheless outbound the terrorist by the way is a moroccan national with a very arabic sounding name that i won t sully the blog with by posting it here makes me wonder if the administration will try to pass this off as yet another incident of workplace violence nonetheless good on ya devil dogs semper fi oorah edit update okay it looks like the initial reports were wrong there were three americans one air force one army reserves or national guard and one civilian still my remarks about them fighting like hounds from hell stands good on ya yanks good on ya leave a comment lifeblood august 2 2015 august 2 2015 raptor uncategorized charlie rasczak swore he d never go back to mars but desperate times call for desperate measures so when the man he hates more than anything else in the solar system makes him a job offer he d have to be crazy to refuse the private investigator finds himself on the first liner back to the formerly red planet the job seems simple enough at first but rasczak soon discovers that the stakes are far higher than he could have ever imagined with fanatical terrorists on one side trigger happy contractors on the other and a paranoid corporate oligarch breathing down his neck every step of the way rasczak quickly finds himself alone and outgunned too bad for them because when he s alone and outgunned charlie rasczak is in his element but with the lifeblood of mars itself at stake he ll need to be remember that project i ve mentioned in the last few posts it s live lifeblood my first real short story is now available for amazon kindle you can purchase it either by clicking on either the link in the post or on the picture of the cover in the sidebar it s a quick read and at only 0 99 a real bargain if you ll forgive me tooting my own horn i gotta be honest with you i m still in shock a little bit i ve been dreaming of this day for years and years and now that it s here i find it to be awesome and exciting yet a bit anticlimactic at the same time eh guess now i have to write another one i do have one request well one more request anyways if you do buy it please leave a review on amazon and please be honest don t just give me a 5 star review because you like me or my blog or you feel happy sorry for me though if you want to leave a 5 star review because you think it s the bestest most awesomest thing you ve ever read i certainly won t complain thanks for sticking with me everyone i hope you enjoy lifeblood there will be more coming don t worry edit oh one thing i forgot to mention if you don t have a kindle device you can download the kindle app to your smartphone or the kindle reader to your pc both are free until next time peace raptor leave a comment why give indie a try july 30 2015 july 30 2015 raptor uncategorized i ve tried explaining to some folks why i ve decided to go the indie route with my work but sarah a hoyt lays it out far better than i ve been able to mad genius club i didn t forget my post day i forgot what day today is this is partly because i m still feeling like every day is sunday after we finished the heavy part of the house and partly because today is a wee bit crazy we just took a load of hazardous waste paint mostly to the local facility and we re now getting ready to go to the eye doctor which is actually a good thing i think we ll all agree it will be better if i can write without squinting at the screen and confusing os and es also i have the hugo voting to do i ve got my country s 500th anniversary to plan my wedding to arrange my wife to murder and guilder to frame for it i m swamped so what can i do that is useful to you on short notice well recently i had the opportunity to discuss indie view original post 670 more words leave a comment artists like to eat july 19 2015 raptor uncategorized before i get into the meat of this post a little background information is necessary i finished my novel yes i know finally you can pick your jaws up off the floor only took how many years eight nine regardless i finally finished it or at least the first draft i m editing it slowly and eventually plan on self publishing it once i get it cleaned up proofed get some alpha readers to look at it etc and so forth that ll probably take a couple of months in the meantime i ve cranked out a short science fiction story that i m revising and plan on publishing once i get it all cleaned up that should only take another 2 weeks or so my initial plan with the short which i m calling lifeblood was to self publish it via kindle direct publishing for 0 99 since i thought i d only make a pittance selling it to a magazine while i d earn 70 royalties from amazon that plan hit a snag when i actually did some research and ran the numbers turns out that i d make a great deal more selling it to a magazine than i d first anticipated at least 3 4 times more and in order to qualify for kdp s 70 royalty program you have to price your work between 2 99 and 9 99 a 13 000 ish word short story is not imo worth 2 99 especially not a first story from a brand new author i d earn kdp s standard 35 royalty rate if i publish the story for 0 99 but that s still half of what i d anticipated long story short i realized that i d almost certainly earn more money by selling the story to a magazine rather than publishing it myself on kdp which was the opposite of what i d been expecting so my question became do i want to earn more money all at once but a couple months down the road and if a magazine buys my story at all or earn less money and spread over a long time but starting much sooner and with a guarantee that it will actually happen i voiced this question to a family member about a week ago hoping to get some advice or at least an opinion instead the response i got was but if writing really is your passion you shouldn t be doing it for money right or something to that effect it was a couple days ago and i m running light on sleep blame a neurotic dog who misses his mommy and heavy on caffiene but the point made was that since i love to write getting paid to do so should not be a concern the statement wasn t made with malice but rather out of honest ignorance and with genuine curiosity and i agree with the statement to a point writing is my passion because i love to do it and love being creative and not because i want to be able to sleep on a pile of hundred dollar bills though i admit that would be nice but at the same time virtually every artist does ultimately want to get paid for their work i think my family member s remark was born from the fact that our society has come to romanticize and probably over romanticize the starving artist and for the life of me i can t figure out why what s romantic about having to chose between paying a month s rent and buying another week s worth of ramen noodles to put in your otherwise empty pantry or as in my case having to still live with your parents long after the rest of your college friends have found real jobs and at the very least moved into their own apartments and before y all jump on my case yes i know that old maxim art requires sacrifice and i agree with it it gfmeans dedicating time and energy to your craft even when you fervently want to be doing something else there are days when i desperately want to go to the shooting range for example or go to the movies or watch a dvd but don t because i know that i need to make progress on my novel and or lifeblood incidentally i haven t been to the range in months in fact it s been so long that i m not sure i remember what burnt powder smells like art requires time and effort and passion and artists who invest those three things into the creation of something new and wonderful should be lauded and respected but at the same time artists shouldn t be criticized or shunned for wanting to be rewarded for their time effort and passion don t get me wrong i ll be the first to call out an author since that s the field i know best who turns out nothing but dreck and to hell with quality because all that matters to them is a paycheck i do that because they re obviously not investing any meaningful time effort or passion into their product they don t care about their audience just their audience s money a real artist wants their work to inspire their audience or at least make them happy for a brief shining moment but the unfortunate truth is that an audience s happiness alone won t put a roof over an artist s head or food on their table so getting payed for their work is for good or bad a necessity yet our society doesn t seem to understand that and certain segments of society seem to reject that notion outright that any artist who receives compensation for their work isn t really an artist i m mainly referring to those hard core hipsters who only listen to indie musicians who self publish their own albums and immediately reject those same musicians when they sell out by accepting a contracts from a mainstream recording studio i have a reality check for those hipsters pretty much any indie artist who has the opportunity to sell out and go mainstream is going to take it they re going to take it because it means they ll be able to focus more of their energy into creating their art rather than worrying about how they re going to be able to afford to do so the indie garage band won t have to worry about having to pay for professional studio time to record their album or buying dozens hundreds of blank cds to burn copies of that album their record label will take care of all that now the self published author won t have to worry about how many print on demand copies to purchase or how she s going to be able to afford them or how much to charge for them or how to market and sell them her publishing house will take care of that i ve heard those hard core hipsters point to the great masters like michelangelo da vinci mozart beethoven etc in defense of their position again reality check they all got paid for their work and payed rather handsomely at that and what s more some of their works weren t even their own ideas michelangelo for instance didn t just walk into the sistine chapel one day look up at the roof and think to himself i want to paint that no the catholic church came to him and said we want you to paint the roof of the sistine chapel this is what we want it to look like this is the deadline we re assigning you and this is how much we re going to pay you will you take the job and part of the reason michelangelo said yes was probably because he needed the money a true artist pursues his craft because they thrive on expressing their creativity every chance s he gets but at the same time we generally prefer to sleep indoors and on a bed rather than outside on the cold hard dirt which is why we like to get paid we re not being greedy or selling out we just want to be able to survive by doing what we love we like to eat same as you also in case you re wondering i ultimately decided to publish lifeblood on kdp i d rather not wait several months to maybe get paid especially since i m still between jobs at the moment i ll let y all know when it finally goes live probably in about 2 to 3 weeks or so 6 comments what s left to celebrate july 4 2015 july 4 2015 raptor uncategorized as you ve probably surmised from yesterday s post i ve been in something of a funk for the last few weeks watching my country the land that i love seemingly tear itself apart and being unable to do anything about it pushed me to the brink of despair i was ready to give up on it on america on liberty because nobody cared anymore those who seek to tear it down to reshape it into a perverse and twisted social utopia are running roughshod over the constitution because almost nobody can be bothered to lift a finger to stop them and the few who try are mercilessly trampled into dust i confess i actually woke up this morning thinking why bother what is there that s left to celebrate then i stumbled across this quotation from a letter written by john adams to his wife upon the second continental congress adoption of the declaration of independence you will think me transported with enthusiasm but i am not i am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this declaration and support and defend these states yet through all the gloom i can see the rays of ravishing light and glory i can see that the end is more than worth all the means that posterity will triumph in that day s transaction even though we should rue it which i trust in god we shall not reading that it dawned om me that adams and likewise the rest of our founding fathers knew that the fight for liberty did not end with the signing of the declaration nor would it end if yes if not when the colonies succeeded in freeing themselves from the overpowering yoke of british tyranny and expelling the redcoats from their shores no they knew that the struggle would be ongoing and eternal that there will always be those who seek to extinguish the sacred flame of liberty from both beyond and within our borders but at the same time they knew that they must persevere in their quest as must the succeeding generations because the price of liberty no matter how great would always be worth the cost and at the same time i realized that america is not just a country and it is not just a people it is an idea it is the idea that liberty and justice exist for all people period the end full stop end of discussion not for white property owners or for former slaves or for the rich or for the poor or for homosexuals or for heterosexuals or for the elite or for this specific religion or for the oppressed group of the month no liberty and justice for all people for all time it is the idea that a person any person can walk down any street in any neighborhood in any city in any state in this nation and be judged by their peers not by color or creed or by anything else except the content of their character or the lack thereof it is the idea that we are born into this world as equals but where we go from there is determined only by our own goals dreams and aspirations and how much of our own blood sweat and tears we are willing to shed in order to accomplish them it is the idea that we are measured not by how hard our lives are but by how hard we work to build a better lives for ourselves and our children and if that idea is not worth celebrating if that idea is not worth fighting for then i don t know what is and looking at the social media outlets the same one that i was ready to give up on and unplug from i discovered something that i should have known all along that i am far from the only one who feels that way america is not perfect i will be the first to adm...