A Regency Era Timeline, 1801 with Graphics

As with the other timeline posts, there are so many graphics, and WordPress just doesn’t format tables very well, so I need to direct you to the website for this.

1801 however is now up with nearly 100 graphics.

Read Full Post »

Regency Era Thoughts on Free Lending services

A couple days ago this was my post at the bottom of where I reported on 4 things. But I had so little feedback and continue to see writers (not authors) of blogs who post on the unfairness of it all, that I decided to give my thoughts more precedence. The writers with no skin in the game are complaining that this one service was brought down. A service that benefited 15,000 members. Maybe all of those members were not pirates, but it then depends on how you define piracy. If these members, once they discovered that having bought one book, never had to buy another and could go to the site and get books for free, then they were piratical. The writers never see that side of things in their blog posts. They continue to harp that authors abused the process to bring the site down.

That though is not the case. They notified the creator, who may have been too sick to respond quick enough, but the loop hole by which these members who were not friends with each could abuse it showed that the site was a road prone to piracy of copyright work and that is something that the Internet self polices. Here taking the site down is one thing that the Internet did right.

Notes on LendInk, and the free lending of eBooks

I have another friend who found on Facebook that some one in Canada was giving out her books for free. That just does not seem right and with a great deal of effort, Facebook took the site down. Facebook is slow to admit that their system allows the creating of illegal and bogus material of any sort, since of course all you have to do is click a few buttons and type what you want about anything.

I hope all my readers know that I am selling the Brooklyn Bridge for $1400 dollars US if you send it to my Paypal account here…

But seriously, the question of copyright comes up. And then there is LendInk which may have started as a good idea, but it is a corruptible idea surely through no fault of the founder, but of many of the users. The last few days I have seen posts by relatively intelligent writers who have of course, no skin in the game, saying that it is a travesty that LendInk has been put to bed.

That is not so, and I will explain me (Like Ricky in I Love Lucy)

In the days when a book was a book. You may remember it, it was not but a very few years ago. You would pay your $7.99 or whatever and read the book. You had one copy, and then you would have a friend, someone you knew, someone you had talked to more than once for 3.87 seconds. And so you knew what books they might like as well.

Well, you being done with a book, you would offer to lend them a book, or even, should you be rich enough in soul and pocket, give them the book.

I think all authors (and I know I take on a lot when I include all authors) are quite fine with such a model. Then we have LendInk (and other sharing services. I name LendInk since there is a great deal of Internet bits and bytes about it right now), and while the concept may seem alright, I think again most authors have a problem with it. (See I switched things there a little) And that is what LendInk does/did.

They used the idea that we authors had given our okay to lend out the eBooks because, well Amazon made it a condition of offering the book at a reasonable price to readers. So we really had NO CHOICE. Did I say that loud enough for all involved in the controversy. Let me say it again. AMAZON GAVE US NO CHOICE if we were to sell a book to you so that a reader could afford it. Want to sell a book for below $10.00 then you have to allow it to be leant for free.

But then we all believe that you still can lend one of our books that you purchase to your friends. Your friends. People you know for more than 3.87 seconds. People who are really your friends and not those who follow you on Twitter, or friended you meaninglessly on Facebook just to make your little circle bigger.

Quibbling over the definition of friend in the “Social Network” age is meaningless for just as people do know what is good and what is not good, readers will know what a friend is.

So an anonymous site were you let people you have never met know that you bought 5 books for your Kindle and thus can now lend them. You can then borrow from people you have never met, 5 books that you do not have to pay for, and that the author who spent hundreds of hours writing will not get paid for. That is the fallacy of LendInk and similar services. It takes the lending to a friend out of lending and does indeed make this as piracy. A reader only has to have 1 book purchased and then they can put that up to lend and borrow again without ever buying another book.

Is that fair? Whatever business you are in, is that fair? Would these bloggers, presumably being paid through advertising on their blogs like it if the advertisers got together and compared notes and said, that since they placed one ad, they now had the right to swap their ad from site A to the bloggers site, with the person who had bought ads on the bloggers site, and then never pay again? Of course not. But the bloggers who are defending the now defunct site don’t care if a writer gets no money and won’t be able to eat. The blogger will get money and be able to eat and eat more since they can get free reading material at pirating sites. LendInk may not have started out that way, but it is easily abused that way.

But lest you think I am heartless and should deny you reading literature, even great literature, for if the free bottom feeders can’t even afford $.99 for a great many books, they can often get books for free each and every day around the net that authors are giving away. But there is Project Gutenberg that had scores of volunteers who typed word by word the original manuscripts of out of copyright MASTERPIECES and CLASSICS. They have so many books available for free, that a newborn living to a hundred would die before finishing that FREE library.

Read Full Post »

A Regency Era Timeline 1801 in progress

Timeline

Each time I start a year, I have already compiled a list, months ago with about 6000 entered of what happened from 1788 to 1837. My first step now (It took several trials to get this down to a science) is to cut out the specific year I will work on and paste it into its own spreadsheet to work with. When I worked on the entire spreadsheet, sometimes inserting a line, with all the graphics I had begun to place, took a long time. Working on each year alone, is a lot faster.

With the year separated out, I now turn to my book sources,

The Timetables of History by Grun and Stein

Chronology of CULTURE by Paxton and Fairfield

What Happened When by Carruth.

, History of the World. A beautiful Dorling Kindersley book.

I now and diligently look through each of these to find entries that I did not come across on the internet, and other printed lists. It is possible that there are places that have more listings for each year. I have not found them. And when you go to the Timelines at the Regency Assembly Press page, there you will see all the graphical references as well. Something that I did not find anywhere else.

Here is the start of 1801:

Year	Month Day	Event
1801	Jan 1	Giuseppi Piazzi (d.1826), Italian astronomer, discovered an asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. He believed it to be a planet and named it Ceres (goddess of the harvest).
1801	Jan 11	Domenico Cimarosa (51), Italian composer (Matrimonio segreto), died.
1801	Jan 20	US Secretary of State John Marshall was nominated by President Adams to be chief justice. He was sworn in on Feb. 4, 1801. Marshall effectively created the legal framework within which free markets in goods and services could establish themselves.
1801	Jan 28	Francis Barber (ca. 1735 – 1801), the Jamaican manservant of Samuel Johnson (1752-1784), died at the Staffordshire General Infirmary.
1801	Jan	Toussaint Louverture, ignoring the commands of Napoleon Bonaparte, overran Spanish Santo Domingo, where slavery persisted.
1801	January	January: Emma Hamilton gives birth to the illegitimate daughter of Lord Nelson.
1801	January	January: the Act of Union with Ireland creates the United Kingdom.
1801	Feb 4	John Marshall was sworn in as chief justice of the United States.
1801	Feb 7	John Rylands, merchant, philanthropist, was born in England.
1801	Feb 17	The House of Representatives broke an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, electing Jefferson president. Burr became vice president. When George Washington announced that he would retire from office, he set the stage for the nation’s first two-party presidential campaign.
1801	Feb 17	Thomas Jefferson won the White House vowing to get rid of all federal taxes. He was supported by a new coalition of anti-Federalists that was the ancestor of the Democratic Party. In 2003 Jules Witcover authored “Party of the People: A History of the Democrats.”
1801	Feb 21	John Henry Newman, was born. He was the Protestant vicar who converted to Catholicism and became a Roman Catholic Cardinal. He authored “Dream of Gerontius.”
1801	Feb 27	The District of Columbia was placed under the jurisdiction of Congress.
1801	Feb 28	Motiejus Valancius, Lithuanian educator, historian, writer and bishop, was born in Nasrenai in the Kretinga region. He died May 29, 1875, in Kaunas. His portrait is on the 2-litas note.
1801	February	February: The government of William Pitt collapses over the issue of Catholic emancipation. Pitt had made veiled promises of emancipation in order to secure the Act of Union, but George III would not support it, and Pitt resigned.
1801	February	February: The Treaty of Lunéville, between France and the Holy Roman Empire, is signed, giving France control up to the Rhine and the French client republics in Italy and the Netherlands. Britian is now the sole nation fighting against France.
1801	14-Mar	Prime Minister of Great Britain: Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth
1801	Mar 3	1st US Jewish Governor, David Emanuel, took office in Georgia.
1801	Mar 4	Thomas Jefferson became the first President to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C. (1801-1809). James Madison became secretary of state. In his inaugural address Jefferson said: “Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; the minority possesses their equal right, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression.”
1801	Mar 10	Britain conducted its first census in order to find out how many men were available for conscription.
1801	Mar 11	Paul I (46), Czar of Russia (1796-1801), was strangled in his bedroom in St. Petersburg ending 4 years of insane rule. His son Alexander I Pavlovich (23) succeeded him.
1801	Mar 14	Christian Friedrich Penzel (63), composer, died.
1801	Mar 21	Andrea Lucchesi (59), composer, died.
1801	Mar 24	Aleksandr P. Romanov became emperor of Russia.
1801	Mar 25	Anthony Ziesenis (69), architect, sculptor (Camper), died.
1801	March	March: England conducts its first census.
1801	March	March: Henry Addington becomes Prime Minister.
1801	March	March: The London Stock Exchange is founded.
1801	March	March: Thomas Jefferson becomes the third President of the United States.
1801	March	March: Tsar Paul I of Russia is assassinated. He is succedded by Tsar Alexander I.
1801	Apr 2	The British navy defeated the Danish at the Battle of Copenhagen.
1801	Apr 8	Soldiers rioted in Bucharest and killed 128 Jews.
1801	Apr 11	Johann von Schiller’s “Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans),” premieres in Leipzig.
1801	Apr 12	Josef Franz Karl Lanner, Austrian composer, violist, was born.
1801	Apr 21	Saudi Arabs led Sunni raids into Karbala, Iraq, killing about 5,000 people.
1801	Apr 24	The 1st performance of Joseph Haydn’s oratorio “Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons).”
1801	Apr 28	Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury and a leading social reformer of the Victorian Age, was born in England. Shaftesbury labored to establish schools, to abolish the use of small children as chimney sweeps, and to wipe out child prostitution. He was a vocal opponent of slavery but had little respect for the United States’ President Abraham Lincoln and thought the South should be permitted to secede from the Union.
1801	April	April: At the Battle of Copenhagen, Lord Nelson deals a death blow to the League of Armed Neutrality (Russia, Denmark, Sweden, and Prussia) with his destruction of the Danish fleet. When he returns to England in June, he is elevated to a viscount.
1801	April	April: The U.S. Library of Congress is founded.
1801	May 6	British Lt. Thomas Cochrane, commander of the 14-gun sloop HMS Speedy, engaged and captured the 32-gun Spanish frigate El Gamo. The climactic battle in Patrick O’Brian’s novel “Master and Commander” is based on the Speedy’s fight with El Gamo. Cochrane was later elected to Parliament, pointed out corruption and was arrested on trumped up charges. After that he served as the first commander of Chile’s navy, then Brazil’s navy and the Greek navy before returning to England. In 2000 Robert Harvey authored “Cochrane: The Life and Exploits of a Fighting Captain.”
1801	May 14	The Pasha of Tripoli symbolically declared war on the US by cutting down the glagstaff in front of the US Consulate, after learning that Pres. Jefferson had refused to pay a renewed tribute of $225,000.
1801	May 16	William Henry Seward was born. He was later Gov. of New York and the American Sec. of State from 1861-1869. Under Pres. Lincoln he purchased Alaska for the United States at 2 cents per acre.
1801	Jun 1	Mormon leader Brigham Young (d.1877), the second president of the Mormon Church, was born in Whitingham, Vt.
1801	Jun 10	The North African state of Tripoli declared war on the United States in a dispute over safe passage of merchant vessels through the Mediterranean. Tripoli declared war on the U.S. for refusing to pay tribute.
1801	Jun 14	Former American Revolutionary War General Benedict Arnold died in London.
1801	Jun 29	Frederic Bastiat (d.1850), French free-market economist, was born in Bayonne. “The state is the great fictitious entity in which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.”
1801	June	June: Cairo falls to British troops.
1801	Jul 3	Johann Nepomuk Went (56), composer, died.
1801	Jul 5	David G. Farragut (d.1870), American naval hero, was born in Knoxville, Tenn.
1801	Jul 7	A new constitution, drafted by a committee appointed by Toussaint Louverture (L’Ouverture), went into effect and declared the independence of Hispaniola. The constitution made him governor general for life with near absolute powers.
1801	Jul 16	Pope Pius VII and 1st consul Napoleon signed a concord.
1801	Jul 17	The U.S. fleet arrived in Tripoli after Pasha Yusuf Karamanli declared war for being refused tribute.
1801	Aug 1	The American schooner Enterprise captured the Barbary cruiser Tripoli.
1801	Aug 6	A 9-day revival began at the Cane Ridge Presbyterian Church in Bourbon County, Kentucky. Some 20,000 people showed up for the revival called by Rev. Barton W. Stone. 3 evangelistic Christian groups grew out of the meeting.
1801	August	August: The West India Docks open after a two-year design and construction project by William Jessop. Built on the Isle of Dogs, they are the first large wet docks built in the Port of London, and can accommodate 600 ships.
1801	Oct 6	Napoleon Bonaparte imposed a new constitution on Holland.
1801	Oct 23	Gustav Albert Lortzing, composer, was born.
1801	Oct 23	Johann Gottlieb Naumann (60), German composer, died.
1801	October	October: The Treaty of London is signed, a preliminary peace treaty ending the war between France and Britain.
1801	Nov 3	Karl Baedeker (d.1859), German publisher, was born. He became well known for travel guides. His 1835 “Travel on the Rhine” is widely considered as the 1st modern guidebook.
1801	Nov 3	Vincenzo Bellini, Italian opera composer (La Sonnambula, Norma), was born.
1801	Nov 9	Carl Philipp Stamitz, composer, died.
1801	Nov 9	Gail Borden (d.1874), inventor of condensed milk, was born in New York.
1801	Nov 10	Samuel Gridley Howe (d.1876), educator of the blind, was born. He was the husband of Julia Ward Howe, author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
1801	Nov 10	Kentucky banned dueling.
1801	Nov 16	The 1st edition of New York Evening Post was published. Alexander Hamilton helped found the paper and served as editor.
1801	Dec 24	Richard Trevithick, inventor of the steam locomotive, completed a road test of his 1st “traveling engine” in Camborne, England.
1801	December	December: Richard Trevithick builds and demonstrates the first steam-powered road locomotive.
1801		Another Act of Union joins the Kingdom of Ireland to England and Scotland, and the Union Flag sees the addition of the diagonal red cross.
1801		Architects Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine publish the Recueil de décorations intérieures, a compilation of drawings of contemporary design that will set the standard for the Empire style of interior decoration that spreads throughout Europe.
1801		Beethoven completes the “Moonlight Sonata” (Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Opus 27).
1801		English horse racing at Goodwood is introduced by Charles Lennox, Duke of Richmond.
1801		Lord Elgin, with permission of the Turkish government that controls Athens, begins the removal of sculptured portions of the Parthenon, a task that takes five years to complete.
1801		Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda is publlished.
1801		The first census is held.
1801		The Union Jack becomes the new flag of the United Kingdom in 1801, incorporating the Cross of St. George (England), the Cross of St. Andrew (Scotland), and the Cross of St. Patrick (Ireland).
1801		Robert Trevithick demonstrates a steam locomotive.
1801		Britain is rising as an industrial power. The average life expectancy is around 40. A fictional “better-off” family will be described as drinking water that has a cow taste because it is taken from a brook from which cows drink. Meat is rare. Dental care is poor. The family eats with wooden spoons. Candles are rarely used because they cost too much. The father “visited the city once, but the travel cost him a week’s wages… The children sleep two to a bed on straw mattresses on the floor.”
1801		Britain makes Ireland part of a single British kingdom. Parliament in Dublin is abolished. The Anglican Church is to be recognized as the official church in Ireland. No Catholics are to be allowed to hold public office.
1801		Napoleon of France has defeated Austria. In the treaty of Lunéville, Austria renounces claims to the Holy Roman Empire.
1801		Rembrandt Peale painted his brother’s portrait: “Rubens Peale with Geranium.”
1801		Francois Rene de Chateaubriand (1768-1848), French writer, authored his novel “Atala” following a trip to the US.
1801		Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet, wrote to Sir Humphrey Davy a letter in which he says: “I seem to sink in upon myself in a ruin, like a Column of Sand, informed and animated only by a Whirl-Blast of the Dessert.” Coleridge had become addicted to opium in this year.
1801		Beethoven composed Op. 25 Serenade for flute, Violin and Viola.
1801		Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, took the 2,500 year-old bas-reliefs from the Parthenon while he served as the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. 17 figures and 56 panels were put on display at the British Museum in 1816. Around 1939 the marbles were subjected to a botched scouring operation that damaged 40% of the collection. Elgin had hired Giovanni Lusieri, an Italian artist from the court of the King of Naples, to oversee the Parthenon project.
1801		Thomas Jefferson began a set of proper rules for the Senate when he wrote: ” No one is to disturb another in his speech by hissing, coughing, spitting, speaking, or whispering to another.”
1801		Elder John Leland, a Baptist minister, helped commission a 1,235-pound wheel of Cheshire cheese as a gift of gratitude for Thomas Jefferson’s steadfast support of religious liberties.
1801		The London Stock Exchange formed. British government debt was the only security traded and this remained so until 1822.
1801		French artist Girodet depicted Ossian, the mythical 3rd century blind Scottish poet, before the story was exposed as a fraud.
1801		In France Napoleon opened the Louvre to the public.
1801		Napoleon’s army in Egypt surrendered to Turkish and English forces. The French civilian toll topped 25 of 150, while the military toll topped 25,000 over the 3-year expedition.
1801		Friedrich von Hardenberg (b.1772), German poet (Novalis), died. He was later known as the father of German romantic nationalism.
1801		In Mexico La Iglesia de Nuestra Senora del Refugio was a Franciscan-style mission church built in the border town of Guerrero Viejo.
1801		South Ossetia was absorbed into the Russian Empire along with Georgia.
1801-1806		Alexandre Dumas (d.1870) covered these years of French history in an 1869 serialized novel printed in the journal, “The Universal Monitor.” In the 1980s Claude Schopp, a retired French lecturer, discovered the epic novel on microfilm. He got it published under the title “Le Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine,” and in 2005 it became a top ten seller.
1801-1835		John Marshall (1755-1835) was chief justice of the US Supreme Court. In 1996 Charles F. Hobson wrote “The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Law” and Jean Edward Smith wrote “John Marshall: Definer of a Nation.”
1801-1848		Thomas Cole, English born US painter. He and Asher B. Durand became fathers of the Hudson River School of painting and founded the National Academy of Design.
1801-1864		Caroline Matilda Stansbury Kirkland, American author: “Like other spurious things, fastidiousness is often inconsistent with itself, the coarsest things are done, and the cruelest things said by the most fastidious people.”
1801-1866		Jane Welsh Carlyle, English writer: “In spite of the honestest efforts to annihilate my ‘I-ity,’ or merge it in what the world doubtless considers my better half (historian Thomas Carlyle), I still find myself a self-subsisting and alas! self-seeking ME.”
1801-1921		A single Parliament legislated all the British Isles. A history of the archipelago was written in 2000 by Norman Davies: “The Isles.”

2 Peas in a Pod Excerpt

I continue with more of Chapter One for the new book to be released in the next few weeks: Two Peas in a Pod .

Two brothers that were so close in appearance that only a handful have ever been able to tell them apart. The Earl of Kent, Percival Francis Michael Coldwell is only older than his brother, Peregrine Maxim Frederick Coldwell by 17 minutes. They may have looked as each other, but that masked how they were truthfully quite opposite to one another.

For Percy, his personality was one that he was quite comfortable with and more than happy to let Perry be of a serious nature. At least until he met Veronica Hamilton, the daughter of the Baron Hamilton of Leith. She was only interested in a man who was serious.

Once more, Peregrine is obliged to help his older brother by taking his place, that the Earl may woo the young lady who has captured his heart. That is, until there is one who captures Peregrine’s heart too.

Chapter 1 Continued

Finally out of his camp seat, Percival checked to make sure he had his own coat on. They had once been playing their little trick on the Countess, their mother while growing up and made the mistake of not checking. It had gone terribly wrong after that. Raising the tent flap, he called for a runner, and then sent the man to fetch a doctor. After such a day, though, there were not many available. Peregrine, had to take his poorly bandaged self to a doctor. Where he was turned over to an assistant to have his wound cleaned, sewn, and bandaged.

Percival went to attend his own men, something that Peregrine had been urging, Not only as a brother giving advice, but as a superior officer telling his subordinate what to do. Percival often chose to ignore orders from Peregrine, when he thought that he could. He was the elder, and the Earl.

Peregrine had been reminded of that enough when little things stood between them. Percival had not thought to play that particular card when it was something of importance. Not as yet. Peregrine had no illusions that one day his brother would go too far and make an issue of his titled rank. That would be a bad day for the brothers. They may not have been dissimilar in appearance, but they certainly were most dissimilar in spirit.

Wellington, some few days later had summoned Peregrine to his quarters, once they had moved the force back to somewhere quieter. Battlefields were no place to have encampments. Peregrine knew that Napoleon had once again been thrown from power and was even then having his disposition decided. Probably not back to Elba. He had been apprehended, or had turned himself over. News was not exact in the army. “Recovered well?” Wellington asked. Peregrine had to have the arm in a sling for a week. Colonel Askew was all concerned how he had gotten wounded, when during the fighting he did not remember his second coming under attack.

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“Good. I will not mince words with you. I should desire that you refrain from this game of yours in my presence in future. You are more valuable to me then as a commander of a company. Askew goes home and you will be Colonel for the nonce until you return. I have many company commanders and if your brother needed a moment to find such courage, give him a swift kick next time. I do not have enough men to command my battalions and regiments. I will say, though, that when I need something done, I but yell for Coldwell and have more than I needed done, even if I do not know which one you are.” The Duke smiled.

“Sorry sir. I won’t let it happen again,” Peregrine said.

“I expect you will. I will talk to the Earl also, for what you do with others mostly does not concern me. I do not expect we shall have another fight. But it is time to put such actions aside, don’t you think?” Peregrine nodded. He did, but Percival would have been an ill choice to lead the troops that day. Even though he had done well on others.

“Yes sir. I agree. If Napoleon is truly caught, won’t we all be going home soon?”

A forced laugh came out, “I had thought that the fighting was done once before. We shall see. If we do go home, what of you? Are you planning to remain a soldier?”

Peregrine said, “I think I will resign my commission, sir. I have had much of soldiering, and think I should do better elsewhere.”

“Yes, you are the one who did graduate University, and your brother will be happy, no doubt, to sit in Lords and sleep the day away.”

Peregrine smiled in response to the Duke’s observation. Wellington was being funny with a small amount of truth to it. “I expect you are correct, your grace.”

“Out of here. Call me that in London, but not in my camp.” The Duke look irritated but he dismissed Peregrine readily enough. Peregrine really had not thought about the future beyond thanking the creator that the war was over. That it had seemed over. He did not like the chance of dying, nor of killing over much. No, he was not fond of that part of it all. He did like living after the battle. And Peregrine knew that directing where men should be was a skill he had. But it was a skill no man should excel at. Being a very good butcher of other men was not something to be very proud of.

* * *

Percival thought that London hadn’t changed. He had left the army ahead of Peregrine and the carriage was taking him to Coldwell House, the home he now owned on Bedford Square. He would stay in Town for a few weeks before he left for the country and see to the estate.

That was a euphemism for him that meant to do nothing. He had a man of business that saw to such things. He had a factor that ran the estate, and had done so while he was off fighting. The manor in Chartham, Kent Park, was the largest for miles around, and close enough to Canterbury that there was some civilization nearby. One long day of travel from Town, or two should he want to make his way at a leisurely pace. He was going to choose the latter. He looked forward to seeing the estate and doing nothing. A great deal of nothing. He would have to put up with his sister Penelope, but she was so young, that she would not be a bother.

Percival shook his head even as the arrived in Bedford Square. Penelope was supposed to be of an age and leave the schoolroom that season. He was sure Peregrine had mentioned it. Perry had a head for such twaddle. She could not be a woman grown. Percival distinctly remembered her as a spindly little child. It had been four years since they had seen one another, but surely she would not have grown overmuch.

Four years ago he was the same size, in height at least. He might have gained a stone or near two, since then. The fourth Company’s mess never lacked for good victuals. Well sometimes it did, but when well supplied, they had the best of many things that other companies and regiments did not. He was a Grenadier Guard Captain. He had to maintain a certain level of style, also as Earl people expected him to be of a certain status. Percival was sure that even Wellington was envious of the table that he could lay.

Upstart India robber was new come to his wealth and so didn’t appreciate the finer things. He would, but Percival was the ninth Earl and had a certain level of decorum to maintain. Arriving at the house, he found the butler awaiting him. The man and the entire staff, though many were new as the house had only a caretaker while he was on the continent. “Ah, Williams, everything seen to? You were able to come and put all to rights?”

“Yes my lord. We have been able to hire all the staff that Coldwell House requires per your instructions…”

“Hmm, do you still have those. Perry wrote them and I just glanced at them, having so much to do to prepare to leave France when I was told I could leave. I suppose it would be well if I reviewed them fully. Cook…” Percival said quickly. “Did you bring Cook with you. I should like something familiar to eat. Or is Cook at Kent Park? No I am sure I told Perry to instruct you to bring Cook with you.”

Williams said, “Yes my lord. Cook is here and when we received your note that you should arrive today, she began preparing many of your favorites. Master Peregrine also suggested we hire a chef just for London, and that they train with Cook so that they would learn your favorites. I have done so and hope you shall approve of my decisions…”

Percival waved his hand, “Of course, of course I trust you implicitly man. Why you know more about running our houses then I do, now best you let me meet the staff, what, you have them assembled, already?” Percival said as he walked into the foyer and saw them all there. “You see, you know more than I…”

Percival saw a mix of servants that he knew and some who must have been new. Two maids, he had never seen before and they were just the right age for flirtation and sport should he be so inclined. He smiled to himself at that thought. There had been any number of opportunities in Portugal, Spain and France for that sort of activity, but now that he was in London, unless he wanted a barque of frailty, he would have to go to one of the houses, or find some other doxie. There were not going to be any women of quality crossing his path for such fun.

He remembered that he had been very cozy with two women at Kent Park. Briefly he wondered what had become of them since he had gone to fight. Peregrine never would have done something like that with the servants, not that it had stopped the man from pursuing the ladies of quality that had shadowed the army. Peregrine seemed to always have some woman eating out of his hand. But he did not seem to bed those willing to jump in and spend a night relieving their tensions and enjoying one’s company. His younger brother was a fool, all too often. Percival was sure of that.

Percival found that Cook was indeed in true form and after a very sumptuous meal, he was ready to retire. It had lulled him as well as the day’s travel. In any case, he had no reason to stay up late. Nor rise early. He was perfectly able and meant to enjoy the luxury of sleep. Seeing how fetching the maids were, he wondered if he should try and have one join him that night, but his own lassitude prevented that. Besides he had a fortnight, he thought, to pursue that interest.

The following day, rising as late as he thought he could get away with it, Percival composed letters and then took his card to the few places he knew that he must call. Some he sent the boy, damned if he could remember the boys name, but there was always a boy about to run errands. One thing he had to do, was assure himself that Dorset was not in town. Percival did not relish encountering his sister, and as it was not yet the Season, it was highly possible that she was not. Priscilla, especially married and a Marchioness, would be a stickler for the rules of society.

As Dorset had a very nice country estate, she should be there. Percival shivered with the thought of a reunion with his elder sister. She was so pushy. Not at all like sweet Penelope. A young biddable girl, woman, now. Well they would be reunited shortly. Other matters he was concerned with was his taking leave from the regiment, which would be permanent. The army would no longer need so many Captains, and certainly not an Earl who had done his bit. No, Horse Guards was going to see him ride off into the night, never to be heard from again. He would of course sell his commission. Why let that money go to waste. He vaguely wondered, now that the war was over, what kind of man would want to buy it. Would it be a fire eater, or some young lieutenant wanting to move up?

He returned to Coldwell House and found that no letters had been returned yet, and no cards showing that anyone knew he was home. He could not blame any friends from society, though few would be in town. They, as his sister, would all be at the ends of the country, enjoying the last of fall before winter came. Before they flocked back to Town.

Another day thus came to an end, but now he had his rest and could start approximating Town hours. He was able to stay up till the clock struck two, catching a glimpse of one of the maids on the backstairs in her night gown with dressing coat over it. Yes, there was a flirtation there. One that led to the rest of the night being full of just the best type of exercises.

Notes on Editing

Not to say I don’t like editing, but I don’t like editing. It takes a lot of hours and it interrupts what I was thinking of creatively on the new work. It is also the place I am right now. Using Thesauri, (more than one) the OED which if you are a writer, and write in English (any form of English) you do need. Forget anyone’s else’s dictionary like Webster’s. You need an OED.

So I sit with my manuscript printed out and go page by page, line by line and make corrections. Think about words. Decide if I need a new paragraph. I have a few things I keep developing in the process PP-new paragraph, SP-check spelling, TH-check for a different word choice, OED-check to see if the word is historically accurate.

I did this in 9 point type, two columns to a page to give me a book life feel and save on paper. That didn’t work so now I am trying printed out with 1 inch margins, double spacing and 14 or 16 point type so my eyes don’t blur too much. I am getting old and will need bifocals soon I think.

Notes on LendInk, and the free lending of eBooks

I have another friend who found on Facebook that some one in Canada was giving out her books for free. That just does not seem right and with a great deal of effort, Facebook took the site down. Facebook is slow to admit that their system allows the creating of illegal and bogus material of any sort, since of course all you have to do is click a few buttons and type what you want about anything.

I hope all my readers know that I am selling the Brooklyn Bridge for $1400 dollars US if you send it to my Paypal account here…

But seriously, the question of copyright comes up. And then there is LendInk which may have started as a good idea, but it is a corruptible idea surely through no fault of the founder, but of many of the users. The last few days I have seen posts by relatively intelligent writers who have of course, no skin in the game, saying that it is a travesty that LendInk has been put to bed.

That is not so, and I will explain me (Like Ricky in I Love Lucy)

In the days when a book was a book. You may remember it, it was not but a very few years ago. You would pay your $7.99 or whatever and read the book. You had one copy, and then you would have a friend, someone you knew, someone you had talked to more than once for 3.87 seconds. And so you knew what books they might like as well.

Well, you being done with a book, you would offer to lend them a book, or even, should you be rich enough in soul and pocket, give them the book.

I think all authors (and I know I take on a lot when I include all authors) are quite fine with such a model. Then we have LendInk (and other sharing services. I name LendInk since there is a great deal of Internet bits and bytes about it right now), and while the concept may seem alright, I think again most authors have a problem with it. (See I switched things there a little) And that is what LendInk does/did.

They used the idea that we authors had given our okay to lend out the eBooks because, well Amazon made it a condition of offering the book at a reasonable price to readers. So we really had NO CHOICE. Did I say that loud enough for all involved in the controversy. Let me say it again. AMAZON GAVE US NO CHOICE if we were to sell a book to you so that a reader could afford it. Want to sell a book for below $10.00 then you have to allow it to be leant for free.

But then we all believe that you still can lend one of our books that you purchase to your friends. Your friends. People you know for more than 3.87 seconds. People who are really your friends and not those who follow you on Twitter, or friended you meaninglessly on Facebook just to make your little circle bigger.

Quibbling over the definition of friend in the “Social Network” age is meaningless for just as people do know what is good and what is not good, readers will know what a friend is.

So that means that we authors (most of us) encourage you to buy our books and then when you have fallen in love with our wordcraft, and are gushing to your friends and meet up with them, go ahead and lend out the book to your friend. Touch Kindles and transfer the eBook. Giving away a book to someone on a website you never met before so you can get a book from someone else you do not know, is not the lending analogy we agreed too with Amazon.

So an anonymous site where you let people you have never met know that you bought 5 books for your Kindle and thus can now lend them. You can then borrow from people you have never met, 5 books that you do not have to pay for, and that the author who spent hundreds of hours writing will not get paid for. That is the fallacy of LendInk and similar services. It takes the lending to a friend out of lending and does indeed make this as piracy. A reader only has to have 1 book purchased and then they can put that up to lend and borrow again without ever buying another book.

Is that fair? Whatever business you are in, is that fair? Would these bloggers, presumably being paid through advertising on their blogs like it if the advertisers got together and compared notes and said, that since they placed one ad, they now had the right to swap their ad from site A to the bloggers site, with the person who had bought ads on the bloggers site, and then never pay again? Of course not. But the bloggers who are defending the now defunct site don’t care if a writer gets no money and won’t be able to eat. The blogger will get money and be able to eat and eat more since they can get free reading material at pirating sites. LendInk may not have started out that way, but it is easily abused that way.

But lest you think I am heartless and should deny you reading literature, even great literature, for if the free bottom feeders can’t even afford $.99 for a great many books, they can often get books for free each and every day around the net that authors are giving away. But there is Project Gutenberg that had scores of volunteers who typed word by word the original manuscripts of out of copyright MASTERPIECES and CLASSICS. They have so many books available for free, that a newborn living to a hundred would die before finishing that FREE library.

Read Full Post »

Hoveria Finsihed 500+ pages

Milestone day

I finished another first draft, Book 2 in the KoTohLan saga, dealing with the second kingdom of the seven kingdom empire to be visited, Hoveria. 150,781 words, putting the word count for 2011 at over 50,000 words. Time for another writing challenge.

The finish was a little difficult as I broke the last chapter to give us three perspectives on the action, the last being how our hero sees things and prepares for the next segment. Giving out rewards, tieing up some lose ends, putting in place somethings for the next book. All in all a good way to handle things.

Here is the beginning of chapter 5:

5) Calm Returns

The Coterie was gathering, Ferdinand reflected, at least the members in Karn were doing so. Tonight they met at the Emporia, which was not absurd or suspicious. Cortier was basking in the glow of the win by Magnus. Great banners had been hung at the walls of the emporia and throughout the Cortier Precinct men walked about not only with the Imperial badge that Magnus had started to wear so many years before, but also, a Cortier badge that had been made to look like a game stone. That badge was the Magnus Thistle badge.

His fans had started to wear it some years ago before he had even won the first tourney seed, but lately, especially after Magnus had won the tourney, tens of thousands began to wear it. Someone in the Sarbentine house sold them and the money went to a private account. The traders of Cortier were able to tell. The Sarbentine had given Joss a loan recently, large, but not outrageous. Enough so that he might think to go back to them for more. An action surely to stay his hand from shutting them down. An event the Emperor had not yet taken to begin.

One day though, the Emperor might do so. Others had done so, and then had seen themselves lose their lives very quickly after. None of the Emperors who had meddled in a trading House, or reneged on a debt had lasted a year. Except one. And he had done his best to correct the excess not of his government but of the trading houses. The people were so far behind him, near two thousand years before, that the trading houses had adopted new rules to govern themselves and it had been many years since any of the imperial trading houses had thought to bend those rules.

Joss had waited a few days then thought he should summon his new Imperial Master to the palace and talk to him. Duke Franklin said he had intended to be civil, but Ferdinand could only report to the Imperial Messenger that Magnus had disappeared the day after the tournament had ended. They had a feast for him, and he had been out to drink with friends and supporters, but when they looked in his room, he had gone. Ferdinand had been given a letter to have published in the two games papers, and he told the messenger that day’s paper should surely report on it. How Magnus had left and gone to the edges of the Empire as was the duty of the Imperial Master. His plan to search out generals and see if they wished his advice.

He however did not tell Ferdinand where he went, and all could see by the letter that he had not mentioned where he was going precisely. Magnus had suggested word should go out in the one letter he really did leave, for Ferdinand, so Ferdinand had just created a second letter that suggested it was written by Magnus. It all worked well, but Duke Franklin told his brother, the General, that the Emperor was not amused when the messenger returned with the news and the games paper where he saw the letter printed. It nearly said what Magnus had told him at the end of the tourney. It did not suggest that Magnus left for he feared for his life at Joss’ hands, or would accept the insult of a small home, when Imperial Masters had almost always been given great palaces.

Ferdinand still did not feel it was time to bring back to the house any man who had family, or the families that he had sent off. The audacity of Magnus Thistle to win the game, and to humiliate the Emperor to the tune of ten thousand gold was still too fresh. Master Ross, the man who had needed the Emperor to cover such a wager, had disappeared. Arch Priest Saul, assured them all that Joss had not picked him up and killed the man. He had left hurriedly the day he had lost the Imperial championship.

Balis had said to Saul that all was not done with the man, but that the gods were putting him outside the reach of the Emperor just then. Saul had no other news then that. Amree had come to many in Cortier and gave them comforting thoughts of their loved ones and that they were safe. It was reassuring. She had come to the dreams of the men of Cortier the night that Magnus had won the tourney. Old John, Chief Bili and Colonel Paks all said they had a visitation and discussion with Fring, though. Old John was told to go to his son and send him from the Emporia to help Magnus. The other two were told to make it so that Magnus and John both could leave if he so chose and that should information come back to Cortier of his wherabouts, that they should remember it but not tell Ferdinand, for old oaths he had given would cause him conflict.”

Fring was probably laughing but it was so. His oaths to the Coteries were superseded by his oaths to Magnus. But he had known those people for years. One was the father of his wife. How did he hide from them any knowledge of where Magnus was or had gone. His lieutenants were right that they could keep track of Magnus If they had such word and need not share at all with him. That would certainly solve such a problem. Again a solution that surely tickled the god of jests, tricks, and that which was humorous.

The Overlord of Haltoria would not attend. He was old now and soon one of Laurene’s brothers would take over. Three of them, all equally capable, but he did not think that all wanted the responsibility. Especially as they now would have more duties then their father thought he would have when they were born. As Ferdinand was married to Laurene, he too could be nominated for such a position, but he was very happy running his emporia and trading house. That Laurene was the daughter of the Overlord had recently been made known to Duke Mikal and Duke Beacons. Duke Franklin knew but he was told once more at the same time as the other Royal Dukes so that he could feign surprise at the revelation.

The Camorian representative also would not attend. General Zacharia Carter was in Camoria attending to the needs of his position as Council Leader. His son, a quarter finalist in the Imperial had returned to Camoria, as had his daughter, the wife of Duke Mikal Korman, the Emperor’s right hand. Mother Carla had come to them all to say that development had proved unexpected. At first Ferdinand thought it was a bad idea. But the Goddess Nuln wished it.

Then Ferdinand had found that the girl despised her husband and was in no danger of falling in love with him. Further, when Magnus was brought to teach the son, Ferdinand saw the gods hands in that gesture. Just as he had guided Magnus for all those years, perhaps that was the plan of the Gods, to have Magnus befriend the boy who was the son of a monster. Or also to provide a poetic end to the Royal Duke. Mikal had killed Magnus’ parents and one of his true uncles. If and when that happened, it would make for a legend and strangely enough, many Emperors had legends. It was something that the gods seemed to like to arrange.

Students of history would note that there were more than ten emperors who had nothing much to them, sons of heroic men, just to be caretakers of the empire. Men who should have known to live in peaceful time was something to be relished. Those men took effort to fabricate such legends for themselves. Debunked in the generations that came after them. Probably again at the hands of the Gods guiding historians and theologians to do so. Thus there were those with heroic legends and those with legends making them cast even more evil then they probably had been.

In other news, it is time then to choose the next project. I am at nearly 30% of all my writing being Regency related, and have spent a great deal of time lately doing Fantasy. So with a goal of trying to put out 4 regencies a year, or 40% of the books I write being Regency now, I think that is the next task.

Elsewhere, two nights ago the Packers won their playoff game. Now to fight the Bears for a trip to the SuperBowl. That would be nice. I also finished reading the first Lord Darcy mystery courtesy of Project Gutenberg . Not quite the background I was looking for to compliment a story I am thinking about in the Steam and Thunder universe, but a start.

Read Full Post »

Hoveria reaches 200 pages

The grind continues and has now passed the milestone of 200 pages in the second part of the KoTohLan series, the work our hero Magnus Thistle is doing in Hoveria.

Reaching 200 pages in this, the exact amount I have written in all books for the year is 1,268,235 and for Hoveria 60,000+

I posted the first part of the first chapter a few days back so perhaps now would be good to post the first part of the second chapter

2) Welcome Home

“She’s here, that is wonderful and who is that next to her. I vaguely remember some little boy that looked like that at her wedding. But this is no little boy, she has brought a man home with her!” The general came down the stairs, slower then Celeste remembered he would walk down them before she had left her family to become a novice. He was grayer, but she had seen that the previous year when he came to her wedding. She had not noticed that he was slower, but he was past sixty now. It was inevitable she supposed and she caught back a sob as she realized she had missed many years of the love and affection that her parents could have given her by being away.

Perhaps wanting to be a sister of Nuln had been more of a curse then a blessing. Indeed sometimes and for other reasons it had been so. A curse to wed the monster that was Joran’s father and a blessing to be his stepmother.

Joran though looked happy. He had a wonderful time as they travelled on the road away from Karn and probably Duke Mikal as well. Adam had him at his side almost the entire time that they travelled, with his two cousins who were the first family members he had ever met, he seemed like he was the most joyous he had ever been.

Now a little more than year since his mother had died and he had not missed a day of smiling since they had left the capitol of Karnexia. Weeks had sometimes gone by where he did not smile at all.

“Do you remember your bow to the Vote-Holder?” Celeste asked. Her father was also called the General, or Council Leader, though a new election for Vote Holders and council leadership would surely be underway now that the Imperial was finished. Riders would have returned quicker than the column that Celeste had travelled with, telling the news that no one of Camoria, had won the Imperial Tournament, but also that General Adam had come in third.

After each Imperial the election of Vote-Holders took place and then from those election to the Council of Seven and its leadership. A position that General Zacharia had held for nearly five years since the last election. He had been a Vote-Holder for nearly ten years. Celeste did not wonder if he were too old for another term. Her father guarded a secret that she now knew and worried about. A secret that he was bound to keep and one that would cause him to seek a third term as Vote Holder and then do his best to remain at the head of the council of seven.

She caught another sob in her throat for the secret worried her greatly. Where was Magnus and what was he doing. He told her to come home to Lartes and Camoria, but he did not say where he was going. He did not even say if he would write or try and reach her. She might have believed he would for he knew where she was. Perhaps she had understood that he was going to do so. But neither she nor Adam remembered that he had said he would do so, and Celeste had quizzed Adam a great deal about what he knew about Magnus.

Her brohter didn’t know enough. Joran was happy, and Celeste was glad to be back with her family and home. But she was miserable as well. Her lover was in danger, more than she was, and she had no idea if he were safe or not.

“Bettia, look at our girl all grown up and beautiful as ever. Almost as beautiful as you my love when you were that age,” the general smiled to hint that he was teasing. “But there is something wrong. We must make that better while she is here with us. Now I shall take Joran for a time and show him the house though I do not think he will stay with us long. And you take our daughter and see if she remembers where the kitchen is. Perhaps she can brew you some tea and you can talk. It must have been a long trip on the road with Adam, his family, the other Ko masters, there fans and the regiment.” The general hardly paused for a breath.

“Yes dear, I shall do that. Remember that the traders guild is coming later to discuss the elections, before lunch,” Her mother had found purpose in keeping track of all his appointments and commitments.

“Come young man and tell me if you like this room here, or might want to spend time at the barracks with the other young cadets. You are the right age to begin your officer training. I do have a feeling about you, you know…” The general took Joran by the shoulder and led him away.

Bettia did the same with Celeste, “Well now that you are home, I do not see any reason to let you go running off again. Camoria has need of its daughters just as much as its sons. And you should know that the general is serious about having the Korman scion train in our army. Strange move that Duke Mikal would allow him to come to us. It places some stones in front of the Krache, but with the abundance of stones against us, your husband has to know that it is but a few years before we will be fighting the barbarians across the passes. I should not be surprised if one of your brothers does not find the proof that it is the Krache that has been stirring them up all this time as well.”

Her mother led her to the kitchen where three ladies were working, “I can fill the pot for tea myself, Olanes. Do you remember my daughter? Olanes is head cook here. This is a light group for her, for when the councillors are in town, or the house is full of guest we have five times as many helpers.” The kitchen was huge. Much bigger than she remembered, but then she had lived in the Vote-Holders hall but a couple years before she had left to become a novice.

“Oh the Chief Lady need not make water for tea. I put a kettle on the minute the guards tramped into the hall with the precious chick. And all her favorites for dinner tonight, too, provided your mother remembers them correct after these years and your tastes are still what they were when you was a child. Now my dear, do you still like the chicken with the rich brown sauce? Over rice from Haltoria? Costs are dear for that, with the trouble on the roads of course, but we have several bags of rice from when times were good,” the cook said.

“Oh, I do of course if it is no trouble, but if things are dear, I have money to help. I, I also like more vegetables now with my dinner. I think much more than when I was a child,” Celeste said. Her mother seeing that the water was hot, was looking for a teapot, for Celeste remembered her mother had several nicely painted ceramic ones, and then Bettia found them and chose one to pour the water into over her tea leafs. She had several tins of different quality and flavored leafs on a little shelf that she reached for.

“You dear, did not like any vegetables with your dinner when you were a child. Nor did any of your brothers or sisters except Mara. Such an angel.” Bettia laughed. “I say the same about you when I am alone with one of your sisters. I thought now that you are a mother you would see that it is a little fun to do so. No other child to think of. Your letters have been sparse to come by since you married.”

Celeste realized she was remiss and shook her head. “I am sorry.”

Then while this endeavor has been going on I thought of another plot for a future book. It just fell right into the world of my Steam and Thunder duology. It seemed to fall inline with a story for the children of our heros and the title of Shot and Tiaras came to mind. I have the plot thought out and it may be the work that follows this, though I have spent a great deal of time writing fantasy in 2010. It is a romance set in my fantasy world with the political, socio and economic background that would carry from all the changes of the first two books. Perhaps then the romance will set it apart.

I wrote recently of some of my downloads from Project Gutenberg . I have an online book catalog and a program on the mac I use as well. For years I cataloged books starting with dBase, which those who really know computing will remember. It’s last iteration that I used was in Filemaker but since I have begun to use Bruji’s Bookpedia. I am at a loss though if now the downloads of public domain works, like that of GA Henty which I have wanted for years, is something I put into the Catalog. Books that are just files here on the computer

The Gratitude Log

1. Men of a Certain Age—This is me. I am a man of a certain age, nearing fifty. Some of the shenanigans these guy get into is not what i get into, but issues of health, relationships and other items they cover I can relate too.
2. Project Gutenberg—I remember when this project had less than a hundred works and I found it. But reading them then on the computer was something that did not keep my interest for long. It took these many years and devices for better reading of the works electronically to make this truly be a valued resource. One thing, when i was doing research, having a searchable PDF copy of one of the transcribed works was invaluable.
3. Bruji’s Bookpedia—Having over 6000 books (now many damaged by rats) a cataloging system is a necessity. This one does almost all that I need so I can easily recommend it and say that it is a valuable resource.
4. G.A. Henty— The writer of boys fiction. Historical fiction, they are works that I have always wanted and with Project Gutenberg, it looks like I can add to my collection and find some very inexpensive (free) reads.
5. Little Fuzzy— I wrote a whole blog about this a few days ago. Now it is time to put in the Gratitude Log because i am thankful I have read it.

Read Full Post »

4200 Pages and Little Fuzzy

Crossed another milestone in the year end milestones. The 4000 pages record has now been bumped out to over 4200 pages. With probably another 5 pages to go today finished up 1,260,809 words. What will be the next milestone before the end of the year?

As I achieved this victory, I was looking at Apple’s iBookstore and found a wealth of books that Project Gutenberg had transcribed. Little did I think I would find one of my favorites there, and one that I had been thinking of rereading. Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper which should still be under copyright. It is not 75 years since publication, though Piper did kill himself in the sixties.

I wrote a review for it at LibraryThing in my copy of the Fuzzy Papers

http://www.librarything.com/work/178808/book/37839520

This is a dual book combining Little Fuzzy and Fuzzy Sapiens, and though I have read it several times, my memory, specifically is a little fuzzy. Charming, heart-warming are keywords that I can attribute to these tales. It deals with our human expansion to the stars and our encountering those little green martians we have always expected. Accept they are not what we have thought.

That have not always been there in their UFO’s spying on us, or are part of a xenocidal race that wants our extinction. If anything man wants to see the end of the alien. Perhaps bleeding heart liberals would be the thought of the defender of the Fuzzy, but Piper writes of Fuzzy in such a way as to make then an endearing race. Part little child, part puppy dog, if my memory is correct.

The conflict is that if there are alien intelligences out there, who owns that world. We have seen Cherryh look at this from a distance in Downbelow Station, and the same with Weber in On Basilisk Station, but those books were not focused on the thought of someone speaking up for that Alien’s rights and ensuring that they are protected. That is the plot line here. We have a company world that wants to exploit the world, we have a native intelligence that needs to be defended working within the system, but unable to articulate for themselves their defense. Hence a really great set of books that led to two additional authors writing books about them, and then years after Piper’s death, a third tome being unearthed and published.

Here are 4 pictures of this work from the Internet

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ ​

Downloading the manuscript onto my iPhone, I was thus able reread this work that has stuck with me for more than 30 years once more, my copies of the books in the series are in storage. It took an hour here, and another there and went pretty quickly. The screen size of the iPhone only allowing 3 or 4 sentences per page.

In comparing my review to the reread the book is dated and the editing, while the subject matter does reflect science fiction of he sixties, a great deal of time is spent on the subject of sapience in the creatures, who are more cat like then puppy-dog like. Perhaps Piper had a kitten at the time he wrote the book. The conflict is there, and there are heartwarming scenes. Point of view changes too drastically sometimes. And some character could be better fleshed out. Once the action shifts to the courtroom and the scientists, we become victims of the sixties and their exploration of things that had not been worked on before.

A great deal of the court room drama is over the scientists definition of sapience, which had been discussed when our lovable aliens had first been met. Now as a forty year old instead of in my teens so much closer to when the book was first written, I see the technical mistakes as well as see that the scenes could have been better worked on. To heighten the drama there are red herrings and these probably need some more interaction, or build up so that the areas that are thick with science can be reduced.

We love these Fuzzies and though I know having read this many times that the Fuzzies have to be regarded as sentient, there should be more drama showing that it is not going to be a homerun. More doubt, less assurance. That would sharpen it.

Yet still a great way to spend a few hours with a book nearly fifty years old and a story though dated, still brings tears to my eyes and a giant smile at all the right times.

Read Full Post »