robert.admin – Page 207 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

March 3, 2013

The Club Dumas (Review)

The Club Dumas, by Arturo Perez-Reverte, is the second of my 3M reviews. Last week, if you’ll remember, we looked at the original, The Three Musketeers. Now we look at this author’s amazing spin on it. I remember watching The Maltese Falcon and being shocked (and delighted) at what a cad Sam Spade (a.k.a Humphrey Bogart) was (including having the sign painter scrape his partner’s name off their practice’s door before his body was even cold). But Lucas Corso goes above and beyond. He’s a ratty book-obtainer, some one you might employ if you wanted a hard-to-get copy of a […]

March 3, 2013

Time flies

I was getting ready for ops, trying to clean and prep up. Everything seems doable now and I’m hoping for a session next week. In getting ready, I happened to look at my last crew sheet. I generally list the day and month correctly at the top, but change the year to something like 1951 or so, just keeping in character. But it struck me – “Feb 19”? I knew it couldn’t be this February, but last February? Really? Looks like, as noted HERE. I guess that’s why it needed so much cleaning. Where did that year of excuses go? […]

February 28, 2013

OpsLog – LM&O – 2/27/2013

Slow night at the club, so slow night on the railroad. Some folks are at their kids baseball games, some are sick, some taking care of invalids. We’ve got enough to staff up and run a lot of things so we do. Had a turnout fail into Wierton, which because of the alignment of the track took out all of Track 2 on my double main section, everything from there to Pittsburgh. This is a good track to run by Martin Yard on so its loss was felt. Marked on my screen that the track was out of service, and then, […]

February 27, 2013

Ten Questions (DOG EAR)

This is the follow-up edition to Thomas Lucas’ blog hop. He proposed ten questions to help curious readers get to know me. Also, he asked to provide links to five authors’ blogs that I know. Since I am a recluse in the finest Hemingway tradition, I could come up with two. They will follow the important things (which are about me). So here are my answers to these questions ten: 1: What is the working title of your book? Indigo 2: Where did the idea come from for the book? The story is an adventure tale of crows. One […]

February 25, 2013

Guest Blog: Alan Kierstead

Introductions have that double-edged feel to them. Is this person worth taking the time to get to know? Are they like a well-decorated cake that you cut into and find that beautiful icing was lovingly laid atop a well-formed pile of spam? Perhaps they’re a rusty old chest filled with gems? You could always get a rusty chest filled with an iced-spam cake. I suppose it’s the mystery that makes introductions fun. So, let me introduce myself. I’m Alan Kierstead, a not-always-well-oiled writing, chess-playing, racquetball-slamming, basketball-shooting, kid-raising machine. Sometimes I’m the iced-spam cake. I’d like to think there are a […]

February 24, 2013

The Three Musketeers (Review)

This is the perfect story. It’s a foundation to the storytelling we know, crafting it so well that most stories of our era still don’t come close. Our tale begins in the classic sense; the young boy comes to town (in this case, Paris) to win fame, fortune and position. He’s young, he’s brash, and he’s mounted on a remarkable yellow nag. And he’s already encountered a dark stranger on the road (that sinister Man from Meung) who buffeted him, abused him, broke his father’s sword and stole his letter of introduction. And that sinister agent was in the company […]

February 21, 2013

No excuse

So what was the blue minivan thinking? The driver must have seen my bike well over to the right side of the road but still in front of him. I’m wearing a bright yellow shirt and an orange safety vest – I’m so bright, you can see me through your eyelids. A right turn lane opens, which I center down. So what was going on in that suburban-fluff, middle-class-distracted, attentioned-deprived brain of yours that you think that pulling ALONG SIDE me and then slowly merging INTO ME was a good idea? Why not just stay behind me – I’m doing […]

February 16, 2013

Blog Hopper (DOG EAR)

Welcome to all those who fell down Thomas Lucas’ rabbit hole. I’m Robert Raymond, an Orlando writer, and I’ve had two books of historic fiction published. Fire and Bronze is the romantic story of Princess Elisha’s struggle to found Carthage, a tale full of sailing and sex and swords. And Early Retyrement is a time-travel novel with a twist (mainly that my chrononaut doesn’t know the history of when he’s fallen or any technological tricks to assent to heroic greatness). Both are available in my link at the bottom of this page. I’m also shopping Indigo, a mid-air collision of Jonathan […]

February 16, 2013

Aircraft of World War 1 (Review)

This is not so much a review of a book as much as a review of a sliver of my life. When I was a kid, I had a full-freaking-infatuation with World War One aircraft. I drew them. I hung the models from my ceilings. I bought all the toys. I read the comic book Enemy Ace. I played Dogfight and, later, Richthofen’s War to death. I saw the play Billy Bishop goes to War. And I read every pulp novel I could find about the fliers, the planes, and their war. Sometime in the middle of all that, my […]

February 16, 2013

OpsLog – P&WV – 2/16/2013

It’s interesting to deal with the diffenence in dispatching speeds I find on different layouts. At the club, I’ve found myself writing something like 80-90 train warrents in two hours and change. Today, on Tom Wilson’s Pittsburgh & West Virgina (a beautiful coal and blast furnace route), I slipped out 31 in four hours. Not that it’s a bad thing. At the club, I’m like an air traffic controller, constantly kicking out order after order. With each one, I hold my breath, wondering if I’m going to kill anyone (like this time ). But sometimes slower is better. I actully had […]