rlfj: Blog

A disturbing email came to me the other day: “I like your writing. Saying that, I started reading your new Grim Reaper story. I went back and started to read Book 2. Then I remember that part where you called Trump a racist and a sexual predator.” I keep saying this, but many people just don’t get it. Here’s my response: “Thanks. You have no idea what I think. Are you going to complain that a fictional character thinks that? Do you only read fiction that agrees with your politics? So very limiting.”

Everybody seemed to like the new slogan of RSC: If We Can’t Make Money Solving Your Problem, We Can Make Money Prolonging It! Despair.com (a wonderful company) has a similar poster: If You’re Not A Part Of The Solution, There’s Good Money To Be Made In Prolonging The Problem!

This all reminds me of my misspent youth in the 70s as a chemist. At the time, Dupont had a corporate slogan of ‘Better Living Through Chemistry!’ My company, a lab division of ITT, had an employee contest for a new slogan. We were an extremely jaded group and totally burned out. The runaway winner was ‘Better Cancer Through Chemistry!’ The contest was immediately shut down.

Chapter 6 is a short chapter. Sorry about that, but chapter size is not a function of word count. It is a function of story segmentation. The next chapter is about something different. That’s just the way it works. In any case, enjoy!

Some formatting problems with chapter 3 and 4. I have recoded them and uploaded them for immediate posting, but it will probably still take some time.

The cruise comes to an end, and we learn something about Grim’s new job. Should be interesting.

One of my editors, Old Rotorhead, turned out to have law enforcement experience in Tennessee. He was able to help me writing about the issues Grim will be having in his consulting job in Bethel Hollow.

Enjoy!

And so we begin! For those new to the story, you simply won’t understand it without reading the two earlier stories in the series, The Grim Reaper and Adventures in Southern Law Enforcement. Reaper Security Consulting begins immediately after the end of ASLE.

In case you were wondering, there really are police consultants. They range from giant multinational firms down to single person firms who do one single thing. Let’s see how Grim does at it.

In any case, enjoy!

When I wrote this section I knew I was pushing the limits on what could possibly happen. If one of my advisers or editors said, “That’s impossible.”, I would go in a different direction. If they said, “That’s unlikely.”, I might not. These last few chapters I pushed the limit on unlikely. “The jumps would probably have been made from American Air Force planes.” “Ammo is rarely issued except on the ground.” “The jumpmaster usually does it this way.” Etc., etc., etc. Probably, rarely, usually - that means there is a small but finite chance of something occurring. I pushed the limits all the way around!

I’ve gotten a lot of information on how Carl can beat the case against him. I also got a lot of info on how the general has overstepped his bounds in a legal sense. There was some interesting legal information on who has jurisdiction and authority at various points. There were huge numbers of people reporting they knew family or friends who had been railroaded on something or other at some point.

For those who wanted Carl to stay in the Army, fight the charges, win, and go on to ever greater glory - sorry, that would never have happened. Leaving aside the fact that nobody actually wanted this mess to go to trial, even ultimate vindication would have ended Carl’s career. As he commented, he was marched off in handcuffs in front of his men. When a promotion board sits, they are examining officers they have never met or heard of. Negatives far outweigh the positives. The first thing they do is look for reasons not to promote somebody, and only then do they look for reasons to promote somebody. Alexander the Great couldn’t be promoted after an episode like this. Carl would have spent the remainder of his career as a captain, never having done his R&D stint or going to CGS, and assigned as Assistant Housing Officer at an army reserve base in Nome, Alaska, until he either resigned, was passed over enough times to get chucked out of the Army, or drank himself to death. Better to go out this way. So ends Carl’s short but illustrious career, not so much with a bang as with a whimper.

And so ends Book 4. What new fields are there for Carl Buckman to conquer? Or will he just spend the rest of his life goofing off? That would be pretty easy to write about, since my wife says all I ever do is goof off! Write what you know about!

I got a lot of emails about Chapter 59. There were several specific themes to the responses. One subset of reader wanted Carl to arrange violent paybacks to everyone involved (Hawkins, the sergeant, Fairfax, etc.) Sorry, not going to happen. We’ll meet some of these people again, down the road, both the good guys and the bad. Besides, if he wanted to do something to them, he’d do it himself, not hire killers. Another subset wanted him to sue everybody and make this all public and bring down the military. Again, not going to happen. If you haven’t figured it by now, whatever Carl personally feels, he’s not going to the press or push for court martials. The whole reason he did what he did with killing the four narcos was to get his men back without anybody knowing they were there, and trials negate that. A third group thinks that Special Operations and the CIA are about to recruit him. Why, I can’t imagine, since as far as they’re concerned, he is nothing but a busted-up company-grade officer who is good at the stock market.

Perhaps the most interesting subset was a group of readers who haven’t figured out where the story is coming from or heading to. By this, I mean the readers who want Carl to behave radically different. He’s been given a chance to go back in time, and he needs to do everything differently! He should have a new wife (preferably a supermodel or something of the sort), stay in the army and become a super Ninja general or something, along with being wealthier than Midas. Why go back and do the same thing over again (remarry the obviously imperfect Marilyn)? This group says that the entire point of the story should be escapist fiction, and over the top is better.

I never looked at this project as simply escapist fiction. Why go back in time and find and marry Marilyn again? Maybe he simply loves his wife! The escapist part is the fact that he has money now. Other than meeting her again, almost everything he’s done to this point has been different. I’m not changing my plans for this group of readers. There are plenty of do-over stories like that out there already.

On a different matter, there was a question about whether nurses wear wrist watches (which I have one of the nurses in 59 doing.) The reason was, don’t they have to take them off all the time for sterile purposes? Good question. I googled this & the answer was that most nurses wear a wristwatch, but make sure it’s waterproof and really cheap, in case it gets yucked upon. Some wear them upside down on their lapels, but that seems more English than American. I’m leaving the scene as is. Good question, though!

In any case, we are taking a break from Carl Buckman and returning to Grim Reaper for a few weeks. Enjoy!

A couple of things to blog about with this chapter. First off, a couple of readers have complained I have had Carl do the impossible. No officer would have ever have jumped his paratroopers from airplanes they had never trained on; Wilcox, Donovan, & Buckman would have all stood their ground and refused; Hawkins would have been court-martialed on the spot, etc. I have pushed the story too far.

Well, maybe yes, maybe no. It was curious that when I was having some military people review this portion of the story this really didn’t come up too much. Pretty much everybody agreed that there were plenty of idiot generals who would think nothing of ordering a drop like this, as well as the upcoming events. More than a few military people wrote about when they were in the military, and they remembered some REMF (Rear Echelon Mother Fucker) screwing things up royally and then trying to cover it all up. Quite a few said they remembered dangerous and impossible orders they got where they just had to suck it up and do it anyway. They all agreed that I was pushing the envelope, and that a good hanging party should be in the future for all involved.

Curiously, only two readers commented that Carl has now committed murder, and one reader hopes he goes to jail. (Boy, talk about a party-pooper!) We’ll have to see about that. Chapters 58 and 59 are all about the cover-up.

A second item to discuss is the title of the chapter - The Anabasis of Xenophon. For the readers who don’t know military history, let me give a quick rundown. Following the Peloponnesian War there were large numbers of unemployed Greek mercenaries on the Mediterranean arms market, highly employable heavy infantry. Approximately 10,000 Greek soldiers were hired in 401 BC by Cyrus the Younger of Persia, a rival to his brother Artaxerxes II for the Persian throne. After marching 1,000+ miles into what is now Iraq, Cyrus managed to get killed in battle, leaving his mercenaries trapped in the middle of Persia. The Persians, no fans of the Greeks following their losses in the Greco-Persian Wars years before, managed to kill off most of the Greek officer corps. The Greeks, now led by Xenophon, marched 400 miles to Trebizond on the Black Sea, pretty much fighting all the way and living off the land. From there they sailed home.

Back home, Xenophon wrote a book, the Anabasis, about the entire trip. Technically, in Greek, anabasis means ‘march from the sea’ and would only cover the first half of the trip. The katabasis or ‘march to the sea’ is the return trip. The book earned Xenophon fame through the ages and ranks with Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War among ancient histories. Ultimately it showed the hollowness of the Persian Empire and was one of the reasons that Alexander the Great figured he could conquer Persia.