this is an unpaid political comment and is completely my own opinion from across the Pacific

The Democrats need to just forget about Impeaching Trump – it is a stupidly bad tactical mistake.
Here are my reasons:

1: A third of the country distrusts the Democrats already and will see any Impeachment – regardless of evidence simply as a case political sour grapes, grandstanding, petty vindictiveness and witch hunting.

2: The third of the population that support neither Democrats nor Republicans will see as probably politically driven sour grapes further eroding any belief the Democrats as being moderates and reasonable people – regardless of the evidence presented.

3: the third of the population who support Trump are just going to get angrier with the Democrats which only further inflame the situation and further deepen the cracks in US society.

4: Impeaching him will turn him from a buffoon into a martyr – regardless of the evidence. I can’t think of anything more likely to help the next Republican President get elected than an Impeachment Witch Hunt.

It would be far better tactically and for the long term benefits of the US for the Democrats to simply clench their fists and keep their mouths shut and let President Trump disappear into ignominy take the wind out of the right’s sails. Simply ignoring him from now on is a much better choice of action. Sure – if there are genuine criminal things that he or any of his administration can be charged with that’s okay but Impeachment is just too political to be of any benefit whatsoever.

Unfortunately I think the Democrat members of Congress will let their ego’s and pride get in the way of what is best for the United States.

Finally! I am sorry it took so long all you “real” book readers out there.

Same $17.95 US price as the previous 2 titles

I have started doing my own edit of book 5 and then will feed that to the proper editor as I go: looking at a late February release – maybe
Book 6 is progressing – I may extend things to a seventh book – I am not sure yet. If I do it will be a bit sporadic with jumps forward in time as Arturo works to build a new spaceship – we’ll see – I don’t really have enough storyline for a whole book yet… but we’ll see
Hopefully this year will better for all of you than last year!
Peter

I have had frequent requests for maps. this is the one I use – it is pretty good for Roman stuff:

https://imperium.ahlfeldt.se

I have deliberately chosen to largely use the Roman names for places – sometimes simplified as I feel that is something Arturo would do, as well as change the endless repetitious names – Caesereas, Castras, Iscas, etc etc etc plus the ludicrous long titles of some places – Arturo would definitely go for simple and individual names.

While Sailing East (Book 5) sits and I cogitate over it, just so you don’t think I’m doing nothing, I’ve thrown 10k words into book 6 – given that it got the lion’s share of what I’d written before splitting book 5 into 5 and 6, it means that it is half way or more written already… maybe… I’m finding the section I planned to add to the beginning to replace what became Sailing East (book 5) is growing in length, indeed it becoming much longer than I originally planned.

Hmmm… we’ll see how it goes in next few weeks.

On another note – Happy Xmas to all of you. I am not a Christian but I don’t subscribe to this Happy Holiday crap. Sorry. Stupid, irrational rubbish. The holidays set for the period around the 25th of December are an inheritance from Christianity. No other faith celebrates then. It is ridiculous to change it to Happy Holidays when the only reason for the holiday is the Christian celebration of this day. The holiday is Christmas… sorry that’s where it comes from and that is what it is. I don’t believe in the Christian Mythos myself but that is irrelevant.

You can imagine what what happy if they tried to change Ramadan to Happy Fasting Month…….

Same thing – moronic. Sorry but it is.

So happy Xmas. 🙂

For those of you who like your Alternate History here is a collection of short stories that includes a story by yours truly… don’t know what the other stories are like yet – going to read it tomorrow but my story is ok – wish I could have had twice the space though. I might come back to it in the future.

You will be pleased to know that I have finished the 1st draft of book 5 – Sailing East. And yes it will be the next book published. The vote was overwhelming for that to be next.

I am not happy with a couple of sections but I am letting it sit for a few weeks before I go back and look at the sections I am not happy with. Hopefully it can go to the editor late January or early February.

I should have the paperback version of Rolling South available early next week.

Okay – I have officially written a best seller!!!

All right – it is a very small market but all the same!

Thank you everybody who bought a copy.

I took a screen shot for posterity but here is the link to the Amazon page as of this moment (5:50 am Aus Eastern Standard Time)

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-Alternate-History-Science-Fiction/zgbs/books/16275/ref=zg_bs_pg_1?_encoding=UTF8&pg=1

and my permanent record…

Ok people. I have been aiming for a book out every three months but with dividing book 5 into two and 2/3 of what I’d already written going into Book 6, I am running behind a bit with this series. On the other hand, I do have other things I could publish instead.

So the question for today is: what do you want me to publish next?

Choice 1 – you wait till I have finished writing Book 5, get it edited etc etc etc and finally get it published – On the normal timings that would not be till March perhaps Early April … depending

Choice 2 – Publish the first book of a different series – the one I have nearly ready is about a young fellow doing his PHD on the Mycenaean take over of Minoan Crete . When walking to get his car after leaving a Sci-Fi convention he stumbles over an old guy in strange clothes that he assumes is a geriatric cosplayer who’s been mugged. In the end he takes the fellow home (his parents are away) patches the guy up. The chap speaks something that sounds sort of like Greek.

The old guy starts speaking in broken English but then decides he can’t follow half of what is being said because he doesn’t understand what a lot of English word mean. Like cell phone… what is a phone and why does it need to be in a cell?

So he waves his hand at our brave lad and says he’s cast a spell on our lad so that he can understand languages and shortly after our hero is talking in the Greeky sort of language of the old guy who claims to be a sorcerer from a different Earth. Having recovered from his ordeal he gets our hero to help him get back to his Earth

Being able to understand languages makes his PHD much easier to finish and then later on our hero gains the ability to do magic as well. He gets paranoid about showing off his abilities for fear of Government action both his own and other governments and the possible threats to his family and friends that would ensue.

Of course things don’t go quite as easily as he expects and in the end he uses his abilities to save Los Angeles from nuclear bomb armed terrorists who are streaming the event live so they can harangue America while waiting for their bomb to explode…


Anyway there is a lot more stuff in there but you get the idea.
So what is the popular vote?

Wait for however long it is for Book 5 (Book 6 should not take so long to finish as it is nearly half written) or put out the Sorcerer book in say February and then the Book 5 in May giving me more time to edit it and smooth it out.

So – what is your vote?

Should have the final edit back tomorrow or Thursday so hopefully the final draft will be done and I’ll get the book out over the weekend. Yes!

In the meantime here is the cover