Alas, Las Vegas, book two, chapter one

For those who read the first book, "Alas, Las Vegas" and, for any reason, don't want to buy part two, or want to see if part two is worth buying, or too eager to wait for part two, here is chapter one of part two.  Enjoy.

ALAS, LAS VEGAS, Part II

by Susan Gregersen & Rebecca Reynolds

Copyright - Susan Gregersen, May 2016

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

The Aftermath of Destruction

Mark stared in horror as the last of the bodies in the ravine quivered and were still. He wanted to gag but he couldn't move. He was vaguely aware that the wind was shifting but his overloaded brain couldn't process what to do about it. Out of the corner of his mind he heard someone hollering and then realized they were yelling at HIM.

Sam's lips were moving but the words Mark heard seemed to be coming from far away, like from the other end of a tunnel. Then the words blasted out of Sam's mouth into Mark's face. “MARK!” he hollered. He jerked Mark's arm and dragged him away from the catapult. “Come on! We gotta GO!”

Shaking his head he turned and ran after the marshal to the horses. Their loaders hadn't obeyed the order to head back to town. They were waiting on their horses' backs holding the reins for Mark and Sam's horses. In seconds all four men were mounted and riding hard for town.

As the horses' hooves pounded down the street of town toward the marshal's office people peered out windows to see if it was safe to come out yet. The door of a house opened and a man stepped out with a child. Sam hollered for him to get back inside, and he did, pulling the child back with him.

When they reached the marshal's office they flung the door open and led the horses inside. “This way,” Sam said, panting.

“Okay, marshal,” they said and led the horses into the empty cell. The prisoner in the second cell stood, too dumbfounded to speak. “Oh look, our jailbird has nothing to say, for a change,” Sam said. The prisoner had watched the goings-on earlier when they had carefully taken the backpacks containing the jars of death from the other cell, and he had made several verbal observations that served to annoy Mark and the marshal.

Mark dropped his horses' reins and ran to the bathroom. He heaved over the toilet but couldn't bring anything up. After a minute he washed his face and stumbled out and flung himself onto a chair. The men who had loaded the catapults between shots were in the cell with the horses, calming them and wiping them with towels. They were hot after their mad dash back to town and disturbed about being inside the marshal's office, and they danced around on the tile floor.

Sam stood looking through the window of the door. He was watching the flagpole in front of the building. He shuddered and put his hands over his face. The prisoner had walked over to the door of his cell and stood quietly holding the bars, looking from one man to the other. Mark met the man's eyes for a moment, then closed his with a wince.

The bodies of roughly 50 people appeared before his closed eyes. They lay scattered among the rocks and brush on the sand at odd angles, vomit covering their faces and clothes. Some clung to each other. Mark choked on a sob. He knew the leaders, and probably most of the others, were evil and had committed heinous deeds as they marched toward their town. But he didn't know how many others were just along because they had no where else to be.

He told himself that they could have left the group at any time, after the killing and ransacking at Mesquite, and their horrible deeds at the Newstead ranch. The memory of little Abby Newstead's screams still shrieked through his head. He realized they needed to go back and bury her and her parents, and look for her brother.

“How will we know when it's safe to go out?” one of the loaders asked as he came out of the cell. He tossed a handful of towels onto a bench and sat next to them. His haunted eyes stared at a spot on the wall next to the clock. The battery-operated clock was the only sound in the room for a few minutes as it's hands went tick....tick....tick. Everyone's eyes were drawn to it.

Sam looked out the window, peering as far as he could see each direction. He hoped to spot a bird or a cat or anything moving. THUD!!! Something hit the window and the marshal jumped back. Everyone in the room was startled. Mark jumped out of his chair and walked over to stand next to Sam. A bird laid on the sidewalk in front of the door.

“Hard to say,” Sam said quietly. “That bird might have hit the window any other day, too. It happens.” He kept studying everything around. Faces looked back from the windows of the few homes within sight of the marshal's office. He returned a few waves that people gave him when they saw him watching.

“Every day of the week I can look out and see some kind of critter. Cat, bird, chipmunk, something. Nothing is moving out there,” he said.

“The wind isn't blowing straight this direction any more. It's blowing more to the south now. That could put the people out at Pahranagat Lake at risk, but this stuff may dissipate before it hurts anyone. Didn't Carol and Anna say there were already birds pecking at carcasses when they came across that wreck? They thought it hadn't been very long.”

“Yes,” Mark said solemnly. “But they had no way of knowing how long it had been. Half an hour? Two hours? Four hours? We really don't know how long this stuff stays deadly.” Sam nodded in agreement.

“Deadly? That stuff in the jars was deadly?” the prisoner asked in a rising voice. “You left that stuff next to me all night...and it was DEADLY???” He paced his cell and then stopped at the front again and stared at them.

“It was just for a few hours, jailbird,” Mark retorted. “And other than an earthquake coming along, they were as safe as having a baby's bottle in the next cell.”

“You haven't shown much regard for other people's lives up till now. Why should we show regard for yours?” Sam asked.

The prisoner stared at him for a minute, then looked down. He walked back over and sat on his cot. He looked at his hands, then brushed some dirt off one arm. He picked at his fingernails, then stretched his legs out and studied them. He stood up and stepped onto his cot gingerly and looked out the small window up near the top of the wall. “Nothing out there either,” he said. Everyone ignored him.

“You got anything for me to eat today?” he asked. Sam just grumbled. Mark walked over to the filing cabinet and picked up a partially eaten strip of crackers and handed them to the man through the bars. “Thanks,” the prisoner said, “You want some?” Mark shook his head and returned to his chair. His stomach still churned.

“Jailbird, eat those quieter,” Sam said.

“Okay, okay,” the prisoner said. He went and sat on the cot with his back to the room and ate the crackers.

“There!” Sam said. His head swiveled against the glass as he watched something. “A bird. A raven, I think. It's circling behind some trees at the park and he keeps going out of sight.” All four men crowded at the window and watched.

“The air up there must be good. Or it doesn't affect birds,” one of the loaders said.

“I don't know. In the old days miners would use birds, canaries mostly, to check for bad air in the mines. The bird would be lowered in a cage, and it would die if there were dangerous gases or not enough oxygen in the mine. Then the miners knew it wasn't safe to go in,” Mark said. “But I have no idea if that applies to this sort of stuff.”

“So what do we do? Eventually one of us just goes outside to see if it's safe?” the other loader asked.

“Oh, GROSSSSS!” wailed the prisoner as he waved his hand by his face. One of the horses had to pee and was doing it's job on the floor of the other cell. When he finished peeing his tail lifted. “Oh, MAN, it gets WORSE???” he hollered as the horse pooped. It made a “Splat” sound as it hit the floor. The other men snickered, then covered their noses.

“Ugh! I'm not sure which is worse! I might just take my chances out there now!” Mark said, coughing. Suddenly he broke into guffaws and the other men joined him. Except for the prisoner, who stared at them mournfully. Mark wiped his eyes. He was on such emotional overload that all he could do now was laugh. It had been a terrible day.

“I have an idea!” the prisoner said. He bolted to his feet and stood by the cell door. “Send ME out there. Anything is better than this.”

At one time Sam had contemplated all kinds of ways to get rid of this thorn in his cell. He'd even thought of sending the prisoner to deliver the jars to the evil gang, but knew he couldn't do it. This man had more the signs of someone who was more bored than bad. It didn't excuse the things he had been part of, such as raiding the Spooner house, where Richard Spooner was killed, and kidnapping Carol and planning to ransom her. But he seemed like more of a follower than a leader. He might have some redeeming features but Sam didn't trust him yet.

Sam walked over and stood on the outside of the bars studying the young man. The man squirmed under the inspection but finally brought his eyes up and looked straight into Sam's eyes.

“Son, you have no idea. We don't either, except that this is something extremely deadly. We just watched 50 people die and it wasn't pretty,” Sam told him. “And it could be right outside that door.”

He shrugged. “It might not be, either. Besides....my Mom always said I'm too ornery to die.” He gave a small, dry laugh.

Sam wasn't amused. His eyes bored into the prisoner's. “What's in it for you. If you live....then what?”

“I dunno. You make me a deputy?” he joked. Then his eyes dropped and he stepped back from the bars. “I assumed I would die. I don't know what there is for me out there if I live. I never wanted to be a bad guy, I just didn't know how to be anything else,” he said. Then he straightened up. “I'm not asking for violins playing here. Just telling it how it is.”

Everyone watched Sam as he paced the room. He walked back to the door and peered out the window. The raven was gone, and so were some of the people who had been watching through the windows. He figured people were getting bored and finding things to do.

“What about liability?” one of the loaders asked.

“Liability for WHAT? Either I die or I don't. If I die.... that's that,” the prisoner pointed out.

“Well, is is constitutionally acceptable to do this?” Sam mused.

“Oh jeez, what country are we even still part of?” he yelled through the bars. “Just let me do this. Let me give back. My cousin killed that man, in a house I can almost see out the window in my cell. He would have done terrible things to that little girl, too. And the woman we caught in the desert. I hate myself for being with him. Dang it all, let me do this. If I die, then we're even. If I live....” he sobbed, “just put me back in here, in my cell.”

Mark walked over and stood next to Sam. “What if he runs off?”

“Just shoot me then,” the prisoner said.

Sam walked back to the door, pleading quietly for some kind of critter to be out there running around. But there was nothing. He understood the young man's argument but still couldn't stand the thought of sending him out to his death. He glanced at the clock. More than an hour had passed since they came racing into the office. He sighed.

“Okay, jailbird,” Sam said quietly. “You really want to do this?” The young man nodded. He was quiet but his eyes were clear as he looked at Sam. Slowly Sam walked over and pulled the keys from his belt. He put the key in the lock and stood there. Then he turned the key and pulled back the door of the cell. The prisoner walked out and stood next to the marshal.

Sam felt old as he reached out a hand and put it on the young man's shoulder. “Son...on behalf of the town and myself, thank you. It's a brave thing you're doing.” The prisoner started to smile and open his mouth to make a smart remark but Sam stopped him. “I want you to know that if this goes bad, if you die, I'm truly sorry.” Sam's voice hung heavy with sorrow.

Unable to speak, the young man just nodded his head. He followed Sam over to the door. Everyone gathered around him. “If you feel funny, hold your breath and run back. We'll yank the door open,” Mark said. Again the young man nodded.

Taking a deep breath he said, “I'm ready.” The others quietly wished him good luck.

Sam reached for the door knob but Mark laid a hand on his arm. “Let me,” he said. He looked at the prisoner. “Count of three?” They both took deep breaths, then Mark said, “One....two....THREE” and yanked the door open. As soon as the prisoner's body cleared the door he slammed it back shut. They instinctively stepped away from the door for a moment, then crowded around the window.

“Be safe, Jailbird,” Sam whispered. The young man took a few steps, then looked back hesitantly. It looked like he had been holding his breath. Now he raised and arm in a silent wave and opened his mouth and took a breath. He looked away and took a few more steps.

He stopped and stiffened. His arms started quivering and he fell to the ground. The men inside yelled in horror. After a few seconds there was no motion outdoors. Everyone stared at each other in shock, then back out at the body on the ground. Before they could react the body sat up and rolled over. He gave a big grin and a thumbs up and called “Gotcha!”

Mark yanked the door open and ran out and started hitting on the young man. Not hard, but enough to vent his frustration. The others walked up and pulled the young man to his feet.

“I should put you back in that cell for doing that to us!” Sam growled at him. Then he slapped him on the back and said, “But I'm sure glad you were just faking it!”

“Well, in a way, I wasn't. I was so scared that I started shaking. It was easier to think about something funny, so....” He stood there rubbing his arms.

“Someone go ring the church bell so everyone knows they can come out,” Sam directed.

“Can I go back to my cell now?” the prisoner asked. Sam looked at him incredulously. He added, “I don't have anywhere else to go.”

 

 

 

(End of chapter one)

Susan's note:
I'm sorry there isn't anything more yet about Randy on the ship.
My daughter, Rebecca, is writing that part.  It's not as much of a 'cliff-hanger'.
Obviously, Randy is alive and will be finding out what his situation is
and trying to escape.

Food Self-Sufficiency: Reality Check

This book began as a prospective magazine article.  After submitting it I was told they liked the article but they sent it back to me and asked me to expand on it and to include sources for things like where to buy canning jars.  I had recently published a handful of books, mainly prepper fiction, and I got to thinking....why not expand the article into a booklet.  My "booklet" ended up being 68 pages, which seemed respectable enough to be published. 

I wrote this book because in the world of preppers and prepper forums and prepper magazines and prepper books, there was this mentality that a person could just go along in life and that if the "SHTF" there was an easy way out:  Just plant a garden and maybe get a few hens for eggs". 

Anyone who has started a garden from raw land knows there is a lot more involved than just turning the dirt over and poking some seeds in it.  But these dreamer-type preppers couldn't be convinced that there was much to it at all. After all, everyone used to have a garden, it can't be that complicated. 

Never mind that it takes months for those seeds to produce a harvest!  And never mind that if you get a BIG harvest you need a way to preserve it.  And if the "SHTF" you're going to want a BIG harvest!  So I'd ask "how are you going to preserve it?"  Most would say "I'd can it".  Then I'd ask how many jars they had.  Most would say "a few dozen", some said "none yet", and some didn't even have a canner.  They said it shouldn't be hard to borrow one.  But they might be surprised, and I know that if the SHTF they aren't likely to find anyone willing to give them jars.  Plus there's canning lids to think about!

Same with "get a few hens".  How are they going to feed them if the SHTF?  I know they're picturing these happy little hens free-ranging around their yard, happily going back to the coop to lay a pretty little egg, then back out for more foraging.  There's always table scraps that can be thrown to them, since chickens are good garbage disposals!  But!

What happens when winter comes and there's nothing to forage for?  Funny how most people never had an answer for that.  They just got vague.  And it's really important to know this stuff when planning to move to the country, or to put in a garden or get chickens or other animals.  My book isn't all about gloom and doom, it's real life information that should be a "must have" on everyone's homestead or prepper book shelf. 

I have to admit I didn't have a very good attitude when I started writing this book.  I was about at my limit with "fairy-tale preppers", and I had to tame it down a bit when it came time to edit the book.  I had hoped to reach people with some numbers based on reality so at least they knew what they were getting in to.  It's great when someone wants to become more self-sufficient, but blocking out reality is not going to do them any favors down the road.

The cover photo was taken in my garden.  That's a decorative windmill from Harbor Freight, and the pine trees outside our garden fence, at dusk.

 

To see the book on Amazon:

 

Food Self-Sufficiency: Reality Check

 

 



Poverty Prepping: How to Stock up for Tomorrow when you can't afford to eat Today

I wrote this book with a friend in mind.  Her husband had been out of work most of the previous two years and was currently traveling out of state for work.  We met, along with a couple of other ladies from our neighborhood, to talk about prepping and food storage, and to share ideas.  After a lovely few hours of chat and tea and cookies, I headed home.

During the night I was mulling it around in my head.  Being among the financially-challenged segment of society I knew what it was like to barely keep food on the table, let alone have some put back for 'later'.  She, like us, worked hard to grow a garden in our hostile climate of northwestern Montana, and also had a few laying hens like us.  Her husband hunted but that's a deer a year, maybe two or more some years, depending on whether we have "B" tags in a given year.

Like many people I tried to buy extra when things were on sale.  I figured the price per pound on things like bags of flour, sugar, and rice and bought what was cheapest per pound.  I used to think the 25-lb. bags were always cheaper, but that isn't so.  If I had a dollar or two left I bought cheap bottles of spices, like cinnamon or garlic powder, thinking that if nothing else, they might be valuable trade items.

At the same time I had my friend on my mind, one of my sons had moved to his own place in town and he didn't have much food on hand and didn't see any reason to.  After all, he lived in town now and worked at a grocery store, so he figured he could just buy what he needed as he went along.  The first time that practice became a 'hardship' for him was when it was his day off and he didn't want to have to leave his house and go get food!  The weather was crummy and he just wanted to stay in, but he didn't have anything, not even crackers, that he could much on!  Yes, I was a bit smug, I admit that!

Of course I used this as a spring board to preach to him the wisdom of keeping at least a few staples in the house.  The next time I visited him we went and got crackers and pop tarts and a few other things and filled a small plastic crate.  For a while I reminded him to rotate them out, but then life went on and got busy and I bet the food in that crate is a few years old now!  I'm sure the pop tarts are still fine....  Ha ha!

So anyway.... I woke up the next morning after thinking about her and thinking about my son, and I started writing the book that would become "Poverty Prepping".  I had tons of things I wanted to say but the difficult thing was organizing my thoughts and putting them into a book that would make sense.  I knew the ideas would seem simplistic to many people, but I also knew a lot of people who would appreciate it and "get it".  And I was right.

For months after the book was published I got emails every day from people thanking me for the book, and that it helped turn on the light for them, regarding how to get started.  Just getting started seemed to be a stumbling block for many people.  Despite all the criticism from people that it was full of "no brainer ideas" or that the foods I suggest a person store were all the wrong things (junk food if necessary, just to have something for a few days or a couple weeks, which wouldn't totally ruin someone's health.), the praise for the book far surpassed the negative comments.  The book sold more than 20,000 copies in the first 6 months. 

I started the poverty prepping blog ( Poverty Prepping Blog ) as a place to expand on the information and ideas in the book.  I wanted to provide a no-cost place where people could learn more about prepping when you don't have a lot of money to buy the fancy long-term food storage items, and where people could ask questions or leave comments.  Literally hundreds of people have written to me in the few years the book has been published, and sometimes it's been hard to answer everyone in a timely manner, but I've appreciated every email.  I've made a few new friends along the way too.

The cover photo was taken at a small country grocery store near our house.

 

To see the book on Amazon:

 

Poverty Prepping

 

Tale of Two Preppers

One of my hobbies is reading other people's blogs about their lives.  I like to seek out blogs for people who have lives very different from mine.  So I search for people in cities, or in other geographical areas, mainly in the United States.

I came across the blog of a man in New York City.  He was married but they had no children.  They lived in a high-rise apartment building.  I wondered if life in New York City would be like they show in the movies, and in this case, it did turn out to be similar.

This man's world revolved around the people and shops within a few blocks of his own, plus those around the building where he worked, about 20 blocks from his apartment.  The only time they traveled was when they took the train to visit relatives.  They didn't keep food in their apartment and often he commented about having to run out to get something because he was hungry.  Fortunately for him, some places were open very late. 

I left a comment on his blog a few times and asked what they do if a bad storm takes out the electricity and at first he denied such a thing had ever happened.  When I pressed it and asked about some of the snow storms that struck there over the years and many were without power, he said it had not happened to them, but he had a few co-workers that had gone without electricity for a few days.  He didn't know what they did about it.  Some took time off work and others just complained a lot.

Then I asked if he had thought of stocking up a few things in their apartment in case a bad storm did take down their electricity and he insisted it probably would never happen and that it would be silly to buy food just to store in the cupboard.  He said that it would go stale, and how would he know it would be fit to eat if something did happen.

I didn't think we were getting anywhere but then one day he made a post about buying a box of crackers to keep in the cupboard.  He said it was because he was tired of getting home with his take-out and not finding crackers with his soup.  Then he made the comment "and besides.... you just never know what might happen".  He put a smiley there and I can't help but think it was directed to me. 

Meanwhile, I was browsing in my brain for ideas for another prepper fiction book and I thought about him and his wife.  I let myself imagine what could happen if a bad event happened, but I decided not to leave them totally unprepared.  Just to spite him (in jest, of course) I had his wife discover prepping first, and I had him only get on board after hearing a couple of other guys talking at work.

When the 'event' happened in this book they at least had a few supplies and a little bit of knowledge.  I had them hole up in their building and then make their way out of the city.  Most of the things that happened to them as they traveled among debris of a devastated city were things I had not planned.  They just wrote their way out of my fingers and I elaborated on them. 

Near the end of the book a character named "Marty" appeared, and by the end of the book I had written several side plots in my mind for this character.  I hope someday to write at least two more books involving Marty and what he does, and also including things from his past to explain more of what makes him who he is.  Marty has gotten a favorable response from readers who have also suggested writing another book with him as the main character.

I considered a sequel centered around what happened next for "Jeff" and "Jeannie" but it seemed too tame.  I prefer to have my characters on the move and facing the unexpected.

When it came time to pick a title I was drumming my fingers and mulling it over, trying to think of a good title for a story about two preppers, and "A Tale of Two Preppers" jumped into my mind.  At first I wanted to save the title for a possible other book I could write that might work off the basic storyline of the classic book titled "A Tale of Two Cities".  But when no other title seemed as good I went with this one just so I could get the story out there.  I initially posted it as a free prepper story on a prepping forum, before it became a published book.

The cover photo was taken from a bridge over the Chicago River in Chicago near Union Station.  I was on a layover between trains on the way home from the cross-country bicycle trip that inspired my first book, "The Long Ride Home".  Later when I needed a 'city picture' for the cover the pictures from Chicago were best suited for it. 

 

To see the book on Amazon:

A Tale of Two Preppers

 

 

The Rally Point

This book was written after "The Long Ride Home" but takes place during the same time.  "The Long Ride Home" follows 'Sue', who is basically me, riding my bicycle across the country after an EMP, trying to get home in a country that is just starting to realize things have changed...maybe forever.  "The Rally Point follows my husband, kids, and grandkids during the same event, as my husband prepares for everyone to arrive, and the kids and grandkids bug out to our homsestead. 

At the time I wrote this book all of the kids lived within 75 miles of our place in NW Montana.  All but one had moved to "the city" (Kalispell) to get jobs.  One had been lucky enough to get a job at a golf course.  He was 20 years old and still living in our home at that time.  Now he's married and lives in a small town 18 miles from us. 

This son, who went by the name of 'John' in the book, didn't need to "bug out" because he was already at our home.  I needed some adventures to write into the book for him, so I initially planned to have him go after one or more of his siblings that needed help to get to our place.  Then I thought about him being on the volunteer fire department and Search & Rescue and decided to put a couple of scenes in where he was called out in that capacity, in a SHTF scenario.  One of those scenes, the chemical truck accident, still brings tears to my eyes when I read it.  I suppose an author shouldn't admit that about their own work! 

Another son went by the name 'Charlie' in the book.  He, too, wasn't married, so I wrote in a girl that he meets as he bugs out and brings along.  I tried to keep the characters close to the real kids in what they liked, how they lived, and what jobs they had.  'Charlie' is an anime fan and collects swords, and I made the girl half-Japanese, and had him carrying a Katana on his back, which the real-life young man would do. 

When I started talking to the family about this book I told them to think of what names they would like to be called in the book.  Those that didn't provide a name ended up being called by their middle names.  The kids and grandkids were excited about the book and I talked with each of them about what they pictured if they had to bug out to our place.  It was a good learning experience for them to think of it as a real situation and plan it out.  Some almost hung over my shoulder to see what I wrote about them, others wanted to wait until I was done to read it. 

My husband chose the name "Walter".  He's a funny and somewhat crotchedy.... like the Jeff Dunham ventriloquist dummy by that name.  It was Mr. Dunham's early years when he first "got big" and he was less vulgar.  So if you look him up now to see who I'm referring to, you might find newer content with more bad words.  Still funny though.  Anyway, we had a name for him now.  If our place was as organized as I wrote it to be in the book, it might be true that my husband could actually find the things to make chili and other things I had him doing in the book!  But alas, every time I get something organized I have to dig for something else and usually make a bigger mess. 

The kids that had horses in the book, have those horses in real life.  The ones with bicycles or other things, have those in real life.  I wanted this to be something they could actually do if a bad event ever really did happen.  I also worked some of their personalities into their characters.  At least, the way "mom" sees it!  If they're like I was when I was their age, they probably hear me talk about them and wonder who I'm talking about! 

One of the hardest things was trying to get the timeline to be similar to the "Long Ride Home" book.  Obviously it would take Sue pretty long to ride a bicycle from central Mississippi to northwest Montana.  But it would only take a couple days at most for the kids and grandkids to make it their short distances to our house.  I had to work with passage of time issues, and as a new writer I felt like I had a bumpy journey there.  This was only my second book.  At the time I never thought of it as something I would publish for sale.  It was going to go up alongside the other book on the preparedness forum I belonged to.  So I didn't feel as much pressure to be 'professional' as I wrote it.

I like how I tied the ending of both books together in each one.  Sue arrived at the cabin and was surrounded by family in the yard at the end of both books.  Sue and the traveling companions she had ended up with had happened across a wrecked Pepsi truck and salvaged several cases of pop.  In "Rally Point" Charlie and the girl had happened across a Frito-Lays delivery truck with a mortally wounded driver and salvaged several bags of chips.  I thought that was a nice touch.  Most preppers have stored up foods essential for survival, and some are very serious about nutrition.  But what a lot of us will really miss is the junk food.  Pop, candy bars, and chips.  We can make cookies, cakes, and pies.  But a can of pepsi, a Hershey bar, and a bag of corn chips will be gold after a year into a real SHTF situation.  Though I could be wrong.  We might all just be glad to still be ALIVE at that point.

When I can sink my mind into my stories and BE my characters I do my best writing.  It's not just thinking about what I would do in their case, it becomes me doing that.  I had to find a middle ground of being my characters, and yet letting them be their characters.  How do they think and act?  What would they say?  How do they treat each other?  Those are the things that would bring the individual to life.  I wanted the kids to like how I presented them.  I wanted them to like the dialogue I placed in their mouths.

I feel like I really captured some of their personalities.  Rose would be the worrier making sure her brother, Charlie, really did get out of town, because Charlie, being who he is in real life, would be the one who would not leave town until he made sure the other siblings were all on their way.  And at the cabin when Aemelia's son was standing at the table while they made pancakes and without turning she asked him what he had in his mouth, the boy swallowed the dried huckleberry (like a wild blueberry) and said "nothing", while thinking "Mothers!  How do they know this stuff"!  I thought that was very telling.  My kids might be 'other people' that I would barely recognize when they're away from me and around their friends, but they still have certain things to their personalities that they are defined by in their behaviors.  It was easy to write some of those things into the book. 

As I wrote the accounts of their fictional journeys up to our house in a world whose civilization and order was rapidly deteriorating I tried to put in adventures and challenges for them to deal with.  I tried to use their actual talents, skills, and hobbies to create their book characters.

I toyed with a third book to tie the first two together and complete things, but I couldn't think up enough action for it.  They would all be "bugged in" at the homestead and it would basically be every day life of gardening, preserving food, cutting firewood, making sure we were all safe in our remote neighborhood.  There could be scenes of outsiders trying to come in among us, or accidents or grizzly bears (it IS grizzly bear country up there!), but it still didn't seem exciting to me.  I have found it easier to write books that have people on the move.  I may still write the book, but I have a lot of others in line that I would like to write first.  Some are sequels to my other prepper fiction books.

Another thing that makes it hard to think about the third book is that the life situation has changed for nearly all of the kids.  'John' is married now.  Joyce has moved to another nearby town and has two more children.  Rose is married to Alan now and they have two sons.  It would be hard to leave those people out but they don't have a place in the book either.  I could do it, but I'd have to get in the right mind set to not include these wonderful additions to our family.  I could have 'John' meet his future wife in the third book, but I can't pop those four other grandchildren (belonging to two different daughters) into the book unless it covers a long period of time.  And maybe I think too hard? 

I could not think of a title for this book. A  friend in Canada named it "The Montana Homestead" when we put it on the preparedness forum.  But when we published it we wracked our brains for a more fitting title.  We finally settled on "The Rally Point", which I don't think really tells the reader much about the story they're about to read.  Maybe someone will come up with a really good title someday that just fits right in with the story.  Usually the title for a book I'm writing just settles in my brain and makes itself at home, but not this one.

Here's the original cover for the kindle version.  I'm not sure why it's fuzzy.  I copied and pasted it from Amazon.

 

Here's the cover for the print version of the book:

Here's the link if you would like to look at the book on amazon.com,

or to buy the book:

 

The Rally Point: Bugging Home

The Long Ride Home

I wrote this book in the spring of 2010.  I was on a train traveling from Montana to Hammond, Louisiana to meet a friend who lived in Michigan.  My bicycle was boxed and in the baggage car.  My husband was a bit worried about what would happen if there was some kind of disaster or unrest while I was so far across the country from home and family.  It was a time of economic troubles here in the United States as well as in parts of Europe.  There was concern that Greece would collapse, and that it would lead to a domino effect and cause other countries to follow.

As the train rolled across the northern plains I started imagining the route I would take if I had to point my bicycle straight for home.  I pulled out my little notebook laptop computer and started to make a rough version of the story.  The friend I was meeting was actually a male bicycling companion.  He would turn 70 on this ride.  I was 49.  I was a married woman with husband, kids, and grandkids, and I already knew that my urgent quest to get home to my family was going to be a key point of the book.  I wondered what readers would think if I was riding with a man, even though he was a married man.  His wife knew, as my husband knew, that there wouldn't be any fooling around.  We were friends and bicyclists, nothing more.

I didn't want readers to be side-tracked by having the married female lead character traveling with a man who wasn't her husband.  So I changed my real-life friend, Bob, to Jackie.  I picked the name Jackie after one of my best friends from where I used to live in Kentucky.  Jackie wasn't a bicycle enthusiast but she was adventurous and supportive. 

So I had to decide what event would send 'Sue' on the road toward home, instead of toward Michigan where Bob/Jackie lived, and I decided to use an EMP.  I'd been reading books by Jerry D. Young, the prepper author, and I had learned a little about EMPs and what how that author pictured people responding to situations like that. 

Now I had my event, and I had to pick a likely place for my characters to be when it happened.  I picked Jackson because the train was stopped there and I was taking a break outside, pacing alongside the train to get the blood circulating in my legs after all the sitting.  It was late March and still cold in the north, and as the train headed south this was the first stop where I'd gone outside and it was warm enough to not need a jacket.  When I got back to my seat and the train pulled out of the station I opened my computer and typed Jackson in as the city where the story would begin. 

I spent a lot of time staring out the window of the train and planning out some of the events I wanted to have happen in the story, and only had a few pages typed when I got off the train in Hammond, Louisiana.  We got off the train around 1:30 in the afternoon and retrieved our bicycles from baggage.  We had to put our bicycles together and load the bags onto them. It was beautiful there!  Flowers were already in bloom.  We had to ride through residential areas to get to the highway north.

 Although it was almost 3:00 when we rode out of Hammond we still pedaled 52 miles to a state park in Mississippi, where we camped.  It was pretty dark when we got there. 

The first couple nights I didn't work much on the computer but I wrote scenes in my head while we pedaled, and thought about what could happen if the story was really happening.  We bicycled over to Natchez and started up the Natchez Trace trail.  I worked out scenes in my head while we pedaled during the day, and in the evening I worked on writing them on my little computer.  Sometimes I'd jot down notes during the day or even type them onto the computer.  I told my husband about the book when we talked on the phone, and I started emailing it to him as I wrote it.  We used WIFI at places like McDonald's or public libraries. 

I had traveled over the countrysidein the book many times over my life, and I had a pretty good idea of what my character would encounter.  One of the big ones in my mind was the Ohio River and the Mississippi River.  I mulled over the possibilities and thought any river crossing was going to be hairy if any kind of crisis scenario was happening.  I could have had her head straight west and make one crossing over the Mississippi, but then she would have had to continue across southern Missouri or have to cross the Missouri River farther north.  She would have had to stay south and west of the Missouri River, which would have sent her up through Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming to get back to Montana.

The other possibility was to send her straight north through Illinois and Wisconsin, where she could turn west above Minneapolis and follow Hwy 2 across the lightly-populated northern plains.  I'm a native of Wisconsin and I've traveled that route across the north between Montana and Wisconsin so many times I could do it in my sleep, to visit my parents (who are now both deceased) and my sister (who still lives in Wisconsin).  I felt a bit more familiar with it, and decided I liked the thought of the empty north country.  It's the route I would have chosen if it were me in real life.

Sometimes when I'm writing, things write them selves out of my fingers that I didn't see coming.  I didn't know she was going to meet up with that couple and that he would give her a ride across the river.  So I ended up unexpectedly changing the route.  That might seem like an odd thought but it has happened a lot when I'm deeply focused on my writing.  All of a sudden I'm wondering where the idea for a scene I just wrote came from!  lol  That was one of them.  Another was when she came across Tommy at his grandparents house.  I had no idea I was going to create a little boy to end up accompanying her, and I had to suddenly think "what would I do?  How would I keep us safe and fed?" 

I didn't know when I rode over that hill (as the character of the book) that I was going to find dead bodies, a crying woman, and small children.  It just kind of wrote itself.  Some of the more lame scenes, like when a sheriff questioned her in the street of a small town, were scenes where I was forcing myself to write in more action and interaction and it felt forced.  It didn't flow the same and I couldn't find a way to make it flow better.  People sometimes worry about the length of a book, and I argue that quality trumps quantity.  But I did feel the need to fluff this one out more so it would be a little longer or at least have more things happen.  Those 'extra' fluff scenes were written after I got home and had lost the 'feel' of the road.  The reader might not be able to tell the difference but I could. 

I could feel my heart thumping on some of those scenes when I was so deeply immersed in my writing.  I was laying in my tent in a strange woods typing away on my notebook computer and before long I would have myself thinking I really was on a race for home during tumultuous times!  That atmosphere lent itself well to the emotion I tried to lace into the book.

One of the scenes near the end involved a Pepsi truck that had gone off the road and was on it's side over the bank of the hill.  In real life I had come across such a scene in gloomy weather when sleet was coming down.  No one was pillaging it but people were standing around it.  That memory popped into my head when I had my characters going over Marias Pass (south border of Glacier National Park), and I thought how fun it would be to just take cases and cases of pepsi products!  So I had my characters do that. 

I've always felt like the story wrapped up and ended too quickly.  Some day I might reread the book and see if I can flesh that out a little more.  But for now, when I read the book, I just want to get on my bicycle and go on another cross-country ride!  Instead of thinking of plot additions I find myself pulling out the road atlas and the calendar and dreaming.

Bob and I had planned to pedal all the way up to Michigan but as we neared the Kentucky state line we ran in to winter again.  Campgrounds were closed and the weather cooled off enough to be uncomfortable.  Bob decided to head for home, and I turned around and pedaled back down across Tennessee and into Mississippi again.  I was heading back to Jackson by a different route of county and state highways, to see more scenery.  It took about five days to ride back down there. Most nights there wasn't a campground near where I stopped, so I 'stealth' camped in the woods out of sight of the road. 

There are two of my stealth-camping spots.  The first one was cropped and used for the cover of the kindle book.

 

 

A lot of things in the book were based on real-life experiences along my journey.  I rode through a lot of little towns and people weren't quite sure what to make of me.  Most people were really nice and were interested and asked questions.  At campgrounds people at nearby sites often brought me food.  They'd share their dinner, or bag up some fruit or sandwiches and bring it over as I was about to ride off in the morning. They never seemed quite sure whether someone on something "healthy" like a cross-country bicycle trip would actually eat junk food.  Sometimes they'd hint or outright ask, and hesitantly offer me cookies or brownies or something.  When you're on a ride like that you're going to burn off everything you could shove in your mouth that day, so all food is fair game!  The only struggle was trying to reach out politely to take the junk food, rather than grabbing it and hugging it to my chest. 

 

But I also I had people holler at me from passing cars and pick-up trucks, usually crude comments, and I had to pick different routes and cross the road to avoid trouble a few times.  There was an element of danger being alone and obviously not local, riding through rural countryside.  I felt heightened emotions sometimes, especially a couple of times when I ended up riding after dark to get to a safer place to camp.  I used those emotions to describe how "Sue" was feeling in the book.  Those five days alone were really helpful in giving life to Sue's character. 

 

It only seems fitting that near Yazoo, Mississippi I got caught in a series of thunderstorms and tornadoes.  I holed up on a hillside a couple miles outside of town in pouring rain, with my ground cloth over me and my bicycle.  It was thundering and hailing and I was sure a tornado would come over the hill any minute.  I called 911 and a deputy came out and talked to me.  He didn't have a way to haul me and my bicycle but he told me if I rode back two miles and turned right, there was a little motel there where I could stay the night.

 

That was a long two miles of riding in that terrible thunderstorm but I made it just as it was getting dark.  I got a room and took my bicycle right into the room. Fortunately I pack in garbage bags inside my bicycle bags, so my gear was dry.  The clothes I was wearing were the only thing soaked.  This evening I wrote the scene where Sue comes across the woman with the children, who's husband had been killed in a shoot-out along the road.  This is where the story takes a shift.

 

In real life, one of the motel maids and her boyfriend gave me a ride into Jackson the next morning and dropped me and my bicycle off at the train station.  I bought a ticket and boxed up my bicycle and a few hours later I was on the train riding past Yazoo and the storm damage from the tornadoes that roared through while I slept in my motel room.  I felt safe and foreign after 3 weeks on a bicycle.  In the book, Sue and the woman took the pick-up truck belonging to the dead bad guys who had shot the woman's husband.  She was in a truck then, making better time and somewhat safer than she had been on a bicycle. 

 

I surprised myself when I shifted gears and had her in a truck.  I spent some time thinking about whether I wanted to do that; to take her off the bicycle and put her in a truck.  It's kind of like I am in real life.  I'm out there, enjoying the adventure, but when it's time to point it for home, I just want to get there.  That's what happened to Sue.  She ended up in a truck with that woman and her kids, and the little boy Sue had picked up along the way, making hasty time toward home.  There were still adventures and mishaps, but you can feel the story shift to a 'hurry up and get home' feeling. 

 

Some adventures did pop up in those last pages of the book, which I hope leaves the reader satisfied that they had excitement clear up to the end.  The last pages of the book were written after I was safely home.  For a while the real journey and the book were kind of rolled together in my mind, since I had lived both along the way.  I knew what was real and what wasn't, but I couldn't shake the feeling of how LUCKY I was when I got off the train in Whitefish, Montana and my smiling husband was there to greet me.  And it felt all the more precious to see my kids and grandkids again. 

 

That led to the writing of the sequel, "The Rally Point", which followed the story of my husband, and our kids and grandkids, as they bugged out up to our house after the same EMP that occurred in "The Long Ride Home".  The kids had enjoyed my story and wanted me to write theirs.  But...that's another story and therefore will be another blog post!  :)

 

 

The cover of the kindle version of the book.



 





The cover of the print version.

 

 

If you would like to look at the book on Amazon the link is:

The Long Ride Home

 

If you would like to read the actual blog from my real-life trip, which did not include an EMP but did include tornadoes, among other things, this is the link:

Gypsy Sue on a bike

 

I use the  name "Gypsy Sue" a lot because I'm a wanderer who is into adventure and the journey, and not always the destination.

 

I hope you've enjoyed reading a bit of history and back-story to this book.  Please feel free to leave comments or questions below.

Thank you!

 

Susan

My goal with this blog

My goal with this blog is to tell the story of my writing.  I'm going to write about each of my books, not what the books are about, per se, but about my life while I wrote that book, what I was thinking that helped me create the plot for each book, or the basic theme if it was a non-fiction book.  Where I was when I worked on the book, which is interesting in some cases such as "The Long Ride Home". I was on a cross-country bicycle trip in real life with my netbook computer in the handlebar bag of my bicycle.  Some books or parts of books were written on back-country camping trips, or while visiting relatives across the country. 

I want to share what made me write certain scenes the way I did, or who different characters might have been based on.  I hope to help readers see what made me 'tick' while I worked on my books.  

It will also give people an opportunity to ask questions about an individual book, or just to talk about what they liked or didn't like. or any other input.

Thank you!
Susan