One of the early visitors to my web page asked if I was going to have advertising on the page or pages. He also asked if I had a business model for my new enterprise. It was a good question. I thought about advertising, but not for very long. I do not want pop-ups or bars on the page. I have a great fear that some night I shall look up at the stars and see a slogan glittering in the sky. I fear it is only a matter of time before rolls of toilet paper have an endless stream of printed messages. We will have cars that are driverless, but capable of sending endless messages to a captive audience. I decided to pass on the advertising idea.

As far as business models are concerned, the answer to that question is no, I do not have a model. At my age, I am tap dancing on banana peels. The model I do have is getting up tomorrow morning. I am always happy to start a new day.

Maybe there really is a model in this effort, but it is not a business model. I started out working as a newspaper man before I had any intention of becoming one as a career. In fact, I never thought of it as a career. It was a job. It paid a wage, though usually a very meager wage. The work was interesting.

Not long after I started working on a weekly newspaper, I developed the idea that it would be a good idea to own my own paper.  In time, I considered owning my own magazine. After that, it was a publishing house. I failed dismally at numerous attempts to make it happen.

Now, in my dotage, I find that it is all coming together. This little web adventure becomes my publishing empire. I have finally closed the circle. There is still no money. On the other hand, I am not losing money.

The only plan I have is to do the best work I can and put it up for the public to see and maybe read. I shall work hard to publicize the web page. That way, I am promoting all my books with the same effort as promoting one. If I am successful at building the number of people visiting the site, then perhaps something good will happen. I would, for example, consider all offers for film rights to any part of my work. If a film sale happened, then we could say that I have a great business model. I also have a ticket for tonight’s lottery.

 

A new world I created

 The Sword of Loran is a simple story wrapped up in the creation of a new world that now exists in a different dimension.  It is a story that is as old as the oldest mountains in my real world. There is intrigue and greed. There are brave men and beautiful women. Problems are created by schemers and masters of intrigue. Problems are solved, sometimes, with the applied use of three feet of cold steel.

In this world, there is a religion that is still not at a mature stage. The religion makes heavy use of mysticism, but at the same, is very much invested in science. As the story developed, I could see that someday, the circle would be completed. We would have mysticism moving to science and then science to mysticism. What are the differences between scientists of today and the priests of old?

Then there is Xanfolo, the hero of the story. He is a brave man, a proud man, and a man destined to reach great heights. That is obviously true because he is the captain of the only Montian battle-carrier.

The battle-carrier is a gigantic balloon. It is many stories high, and the top is flat and capable of holding weapons and men ready for battle. Mostly, the battles are to be fought high in the sky. There is a problem, though. The major threat is posed by the Barbos who hide on the ground far below the carrier.

Xanfolo is captain of the Montian army, and by law, he must marry the princess who will become queen of Montia when her mother dies. The captain of the army then becomes the Consort. The captain is always a product of the people. Xanfolo is the son of a “flower-girl” and his father is unknown. At the age of twelve, he was taken from an orphanage and made a soldier. Over the years that followed, he rose in rank. There is no doubt that he is a commoner. The queen that rules at the time of this story is married to a man who is supposed to be the captain of the army and Consort, but for some reason, he has been permanently assigned to a distant outpost.  Xanfolo is the captain, though not yet Consort.

We add to this mix the fact that the six city-states have formed a League of Cities. This came about after several small wars that evolved into what was called The War of Assassins. The ranks of the royals were depleted. The League was given limited powers. Each city contributed two delegates. The chair rotated periodically. The city that had the chair had an extra vote which served as a tie-breaker. There were frequent complaints that the delegates took too much power away from the city rulers.

The assassins had done their work. The royal houses were weak. Harg had a king, but he seldom ruled. Harg was really under the control of Kinsa. There were organizations of craft workers, and there was an organization of “gray” people who believed that there had once been seven cities, and the seventh city was named Loran. The Priesthood thought that was blasphemy. The seventh city idea was an old myth. Some people believed that Loran had been the only city, and the six cities now did not come into being until Loran somehow disappeared.

Throughout this story, there is much talk about honor. Maybe it is true that in most dimensions, when honor is most talked about, it is indeed a rare commodity. Honor is like gold. It is hard to find, and once found, equally as hard to keep.

A Book That Is a Prison of Novels

 This story has quite a large number of women who had an impact on the life of Ace Mathews, the main character in the story. Most of the story is centered around the relationship between Ace and Maggie. Because of Ace, Maggie leans how to fly and she becomes a leading American female pilot. She inherits her father’s business and uses it to go into the aircraft business. Instead of building airplanes, she develops a market for buying and leasing planes.

Most of the women in the story really do deserve their own novel. There is Miss Castor, the woman who runs the orphanage where Ace spent his first sixteen years of life. Miss Castor never married. She spent years taking care of her sick mother. There was a brief period when it looked like she might marry. There was a history teacher at the local high school. He was also a poet who was working on a series of poems about the Civil War. His name was Mr. Mathews. Mr. Mathews was fond of calling on Miss Castor on Sunday afternoons. They would sit on the front porch and drink lemonade while he read his latest Civil War poem to her. When the Spanish-American War came along, he volunteered and went to Cuba where he died of food poisoning.

Then, there is Daisy, the wife of the man named Farmer. One day, a righteous horse kicked Farmer in the head and killed him. Daisy sold the farm and moved to Chicago. There’s a story, for certain.

Maria is a mature Cuban woman who is in business. She brought in rum from Cuba during the years of prohibition. People did not go blind from drinking her rum. She had stiff competition from an organization if Miami. She did know how to keep the alligators fat and happy.

Rochelle was a young, French woman who was a close friend of Ace. She was a photographer who was working hard to become an artist with the camera. She made a portrait of Ace. She sold it to a magazine. This was the first time the French police could see the face of a man they knew was moving diamonds to Amsterdam by flying over their heads. Rochelle left Ace for a man named Armand. He promised to make the photo into an expensive art print. He did so, and Maggie bought one of the prints.

Then, there was June. She was the wife of a man named Virgil. He had been a mechanic who serviced Ace’s squad in World War I. June and Virgil lived on a farm in Georgia which Ace had purchased for them. June was fond of the farm, but Virgil had an itch to take his mechanical skills to Daytona down in Florida. Ace used the farm as a refueling point on his travels at that time between the northeast and Miami. He had used the same system in France where he had farmers willing to let him use their pastures as landing strips for refueling.

We must make note of the Countess. She called herself a countess and so did other powerful people in Paris. She was a Vietnamese woman who was married to a man who would have been a count in other times past. He had business interests in Hanoi, and he stayed in Hanoi. The countess lived in Paris. She had interests in Paris. What a woman named Lady did not teach Ace about women, the countess did. Lady was a stripper in a circus tent show. She was a close friend of Ace when he was being billed as “The Dare Devil Boy Aviator.”

Without these women Ace would not be Ace. Each of these women surely deserves her own novel.

There never was a man named Ace Mathews. That is true in real life, and just as true in this fictional account. In the story, Ace’s real name is Delmar. His last name was printed in above the birth certificate line for father. No father had been crossed out and the name, Mathews printed above.
He became Ace Mathews when he was flying a Model B Wright airplane and touring with a circus. He was billed as a dare devil boy aviator. Europe was in a terrible war. Men who were able to shoot down five enemy planes were heroes and called aces. The name Ace looked better on a circus poster than Delmar.
Some years later, Ace did become an ace. In the last weeks of World War I, he shot down five German planes. He would go on to become an ace again in the Spanish Civil War. He shot down four Italian planes and one German. The last was an ME 109. British intelligence was interested. During the air battle for Britain, Ace did it again. He was credited with five kills and probably more. In this fight, he was not known as Ace Mathews. His new name was Archibald McFetters, and he was a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
When Ace shot down his fifth German plane on the last day of World War I, other German planes swarmed in and shot him down. He crashed in no-man’s-land, the nose of the plane partly buried in a tree stump and the tail sticking up in the air. German soldiers on the ground fired at the tail. A black American soldier named Joe Washington had watched the aerial battle from his position in a trench. He thought the pilot might have survived the crash. He leaped from the trench and dashed to the plane. He knew the Germans were firing at him.
He pulled Ace from the plane and dragged him into a nearby shell hole. Ace had a deep gash on the left side of his face. Both of his legs were broken. Joe patched up the wound on Ace’s face, but there was nothing that could be done about the legs.
The two men remained in the hole until the armistice went into effect at 11 a.m. Both men knew the war was supposed to stop at that time. While they waited, they talked. Ace was surprised to see a black man at the front. Joe told him that he was a member of the 369th Regiment, an American regiment composed of Negro troops. The regiment had been turned over to the French, and was not under American command.
Joe told Ace that he was going to try to stay in France after the war. Ace told Joe that he did not really care where he was as long as he was flying. As it turned out, Ace stayed in France after the war because it took a long time for his legs to mend. Joe was shipped home. He did return to France, however, because his sister, Cassie, had connections. Cassie was a dedicated member of the Communist Party. It was essential that she leave the United States. The Party officials in Paris arranged for the brother and sister to come to Paris where they got jobs as a cook and as a bartender.
Joe and Ace were reunited and a great friendship grew even stronger. Cassie, from the start, feared and hated Ace. Maybe her name was short for Cassandra?