So, my 1911 Colt build

(Yes, this has nothing to do with writing, but when your hobby becomes your job, you need a new hobby!)

A couple of years ago, I started thinking about building a 1911 colt. Why? Well, I've always liked them, always wanted a decent one, and figured this would be a good way to get a decent one at a good price.

Yes, I can hear some of you laughing.

But I've done all my own gun-smithing for years now, and I've built a rifle or six, done the 80 percent lower thing and custom modified a few things along the way (all legal of course). I'd seen you could get 80 percent frames on 1911's, and yes, I'd heard that it is not at all easy to build one yourself. So I figured I'd give it a shot.

The frame I got some time ago. The unfinished frame that is. All the drilling stuff was easy and I got around to that eventually. Last year I borrowed a friend's mill to cut the side rails - that took over an hour, because I must have measured it a dozen times before I cut it. I only had the one frame after all, and I sure didn't want to ruin it. A distinct possibility as I hadn't even run a mill in like thirty years, and his was a rather old and rather primitive one (by today's standards). So, finally it was all done. The frame that is, now all I needed where the parts!

Guess what are no longer cheap, even if you can find them? Yup, 1911 parts kits. With everyone wanting to make guns that the state doesn't know that you have, sales boomed and prices went up. One guy at a gun show even had the balls to tell me: You're paying extra so the government doesn't know you have that gun! Hey, the government already knows I have guns! I don't think they're going to care about one more. Honestly, it is cheaper to buy a 1911 now than to buy the parts for one! Assuming of course you can even find them from someone other than con artists at gun shows.

But eventually I found a place online that had a decent kit, at a good price. The only problem was, it was back-ordered from here to eternity. But what the hell, right? So I ordered it, threw the frame in the safe, and forgot all about it. That was last year, over six months ago. (or was it nine? I forget).

Well guess what showed up this last Saturday? Yup! The parts kit. So I broke out the book I had bought a while back on building 1911's from scratch (I'm doing a series 70 btw, the gun doesn't need yet another safety) and started to review. It turns out that all of the caution on the milling paid off, the slide is a perfect fit. I thought I'd end up with a loose fit, or a tight fit, but nope. Got that one right at least.

Next I'm looking at the grip safety. Yeah, that's gonna need a lot of grinding to make that even begin to fit. The frame comes back too far. Then of course I'll have to lap it to make it smooth. But at least it seems to fit fine in all other aspects.

So, if I can find the time, I'll probably have that finished in about a week. I'm thinking with any luck, I might be done with this project before winter. I'm not looking forward to fitting the barrel; I've heard a lot of horror stories about that. Hopefully, as I bought the barrel and the slide from the same place, they'll match up properly. But I did buy this for the challenge of doing it, and being able to say that I did it, once it's complete.

The new book has gone live

It should be up on Amazon now. Here's the link:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XJ7B785

Just got the cover, won't be too much longer now.

Off to the Betas...

So I sent the manuscript off to my beta readers to review. I approved the concept sketch for the cover. Now I'm gonna have a drink and go collapse on the couch. Still kinda sick.
Not sure what I'll do tomorrow. Thursday or Friday I'll do a grammar edit, I suspect over the weekend I'll hear from my beta readers.
Maybe I'll do some plot work on POI #8 while I'm on the couch relaxing tonight. I need to get kicking on that here real soon. I wanted to put that out next month. Don't know if I can hit that target now, as this book took longer than expected, but why not try, right?

Being Sick Sucks

So, got sick late Thursday, but got the 1st draft done Friday. Got most of the first re-write done over the weekend, but it's not finished yet. A lot of Sunday and most all of today has been in bed.
Hoping tonight I can get back on the the re-write so I can finish that and send out to my beta readers.
Cover has been commissioned, but I see the terms have changed slightly, so not sure how soon the turn around will be now. But with being sick, I'm already a bit further delayed than expected. So not sure it will matter.

For those of you into audiobooks, book one of the Hammer Commission series is now available in audio format on audible / ACX:
The Hammer Commission, Book 1

Book 3 should be out by month's end (Book 2 is already out).

Also, Portals of Infinity, #3 is currently in audio production. I'm hopeful we'll see that one next month.

So the first draft is done

And I'm getting sick :-P
The re-write is going to be fun...

Just an update

So, for those who are curious, I'm hoping to finish the first draft of book 2: Present Tense either tomorrow, or Saturday. Then I'll do the first re-write, after that I'll send it off to my Beta readers and start work on the next novel. I'd like to publish it by the 10th, but we will have to see how that goes, it will depend on how long the subsequent re-writes and edits take.

The next novel in the que is POI #8, however I may write the first few chapters of 'Days of Future Past #3, Future Tense,' before I start on that. Primarily so I'll be able to get back into that world faster when I go to write that book, which will be after POI #8 comes out. Right now I'm cruising along at 4 to 5 thousand words a day (which is still less than I'd like to be doing, but it's a good number), so if I spent a few days on Future Tense, I could get 20K words down on it fairly quickly.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I have an aggressive publishing schedule this year, I want to put out six novels, and several short stories as well. I have a lot I want to write about, in the series that are already underway, and if I can keep myself going at my current pace, or better, I think I should be able to do all of that. Present Tense did present a few problems, not the least because of a seasonal funk that I'm sometimes subject to in the winter, but also because the world is a different and new one that I'm writing in, and sometimes certain things have to be developed, often things the reader never even sees, because if the foundation isn't solid the house will fall down and sink into the swamp.

I'm hoping to do several cons this year. I'll be at Liberty Con in Chatanooga (end of June), BLFC in Reno (start of June), another I can't remember the name of in Modesto (August), and possibly some more. I want to try and start selling at some of these, and see what that does for me overall. I also want to try and make it to NY this year to visit family, but we'll have to see how that all goes. If I can combine it with a business trip, for a con or something, then it would be a lot easier to do. Because time off is going to be at a premium this year (see above about aggressive publishing schedule) so on a lot of things, if it isn't directly work related, it's not getting done.

So please, tell your friends about me, get them to buy all my books and call Hollywood and tell them they need to option me for a movie or three. Because I could use a little time off! :-)

First person, or Third Person?

So, thinking of starting work again on the third book in the COS trilogy, this would be the book to follow Interregnum. The big question is, third person, or first person?
The first two books have been told in first person, but book three jumps around to several different viewpoints (and back again) throughout the book. Because it doesn't just follow Raj around, it also follows several other characters from other books in the 'world'.

So if I did it as 1st person, there would be a lot of head jumping, and I don't know how well it would work. If I do it as third person, it will be the first book in that 'world' system done as a third person.

So, comments?

Advertising someone else...

An artist that I know online is putting out a comic that I've been following for a while now.
I actually like it, the story is a little strange, but it's consistent and I enjoy the art.
I'm also very curious as to where this story is going to go, because it really has some interesting twists and turns.

So if you want to check it out:
http://boneitis.deviantart.com/art/False-Start-Issue-1-Cover-301931368

I'd put up a twitter link to the artist (@Boneitis) but I'm not on Twitter. They're also on FA, for those of you who go there.

Portals of Infinity Audiobooks, more coming soon!

Okay, so today I just did the deal with a new voice actor to do book #3 of the Portals of Infinity series. I'm not sure how long it will take for them to do it, right now we're thinking about two months as this is their first audiobook, and not only do they have to get the procedures down, they also have to learn the process of getting the files in the proper format for ACX (which is actually pretty involved).

I'm very happy about this, and they are too. They like the series and they want to do -all- of the remaining books in it. As they have a lot of fans from other work they've done, I'm hopeful that this means the audio books will see really good sales fairly quickly (as we get them out) so he will be more than happy to keep working on them.

Dusty Rhodes (Dustykatt) is the guy who will be doing them. We actually go way back, and when I heard he was looking for a book series to do, I asked him to do it. I'm really happy he's into it, the demo he gave me was really good and I liked it. I very much want to see the whole series done in audio, and I'm hopeful now that it will get done. It won't happen over night of course, at five more books (with another one coming) it will probably take a year to get them all done. But at least the process is going again.

Now the world can see what Governor Brown's neglect looks like

For his entire time in office, Governor Brown of California has neglected state infrastructure, especially as it applies to water resources. I actually think it's something of a fetish for him, along with his ability to fail at pretty damn near everything he does, other than run for office and play political games (i.e. tell lies). When he was attorney general for the State of California, he used his powers and the 'anti-global warming laws' to shut down many major projects, because curing concrete gives off CO2. So he used his power to do a lot of destruction.

And now we're seeing the price. One of the biggest dams in the world is about to fail. It already destroyed the spillway, because no one bothered to take care of it, and when they last did maintenance on it, they did a shoddy second rate job. Then the idiots who run the dam shut the spillway OFF for several critical days, and well now the water is flowing over the 'emergency spillway'. That's a fancy title for 'the top of the dam'. Now true, in the particular area, it was made to be the first place for the dam to breech if the water went up too high. But still, it's not supposed to be used except as a last ditch 'we hope we don't all die' kind of thing.

You see the problem is, the ground beneath that 'spillway' really isn't made to withstand the kind of flows it is now seeing and guess what? There is now a hole in the dam.

They finally opened up the spillway to the max, something the idiots in charge should have done days ago. But these people don't know math and they don't know science, and they could NOT understand that if water is coming in faster than it is going out, the water level will go up, not down. Honestly, they didn't understand that. I'm not kidding. They didn't.

Seriously, they couldn't figure that out.

If the emergency spillway fails, that means the top ten or twenty feet of the ENTIRE lake will suddenly flow out, all at once, unimpeded. What does that mean?

Well it means that Oroville will be scoured clean from the face of the earth. It means that the secondary dam will be destroyed. It means that the Feather River will massively overflow its banks. Same for the Sacramento river, so Yuba City will see serious damage, the Capitol will flood, and probably a few bridges (like I-80 and maybe I-5) will be washed away. It will do billions of dollars worth of damage (it's already done tens of millions of dollars worth of damage)and probably thousands dead. All because Moonbeam is too damn incompetent to do his job. Same for the rest of the democrats in office.

If only we'd elected responsible adults to office here in California. But responsible adults are not what the people of California want.

We have a huge storm coming in a few days. And then there is the huge snowpack that will melt come spring. If they manage to save the dam tomorrow, that is no guarantee that they will save it again next weekend.