John – Page 4 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

October 11, 2025

Starter Villain (Review)

veryone has that dream that a rich uncle you barely knew you had dies and leaves you with something. Well, Charlie is a sad little guy, a booted business reporter turned substitute teacher, living in his late father’s house until his siblings from an earlier marriage can get him turfed. All he wants to do is buy and run the pub his dad enjoyed so much but without any credit, he’s sunk. But then his uncle dies. And it turns out his uncle is … a villain. Not just a bad guy but a Bond-class villain. The whole thing – […]

January 12, 2026

OpsLog – VSW – 1/8/2026

convention was held in Cocoa this weekend – Protorails. While I couldn’t attend (I had a train show to manage in Deland over the weekend) I picked up a dispatcher request for two railroads hosting sessions for the con, both on the same day. So the first was the Virginia Southwestern, John Wilke’s fabulous coal hauler. And since it’s a dual line with shared trackage, I was able to weasel a second free pass for Zeus H, a young dispatcher I’ve sessioned with in the past. The only problem here was that he got stuck in the Amsterdam snow disaster […]

March 8, 2026

When the Moon Hits your Eye (Review)

ong time John Scalzi fan, from Old Man’s War to Redshirts to Starter Villain. So when my best friend (and fellow Scalzi fan) told me about this book, I had to immediately say… “What?” Okay, so stay with me. One day, for reasons not given or even hinted, the moon changes… to cheese. It is first noticed in various museums and lunar rock storage areas, where now all they have are lumps of cheese. But it is quickly noticed in the sky – so as not to throw off the tides and wreck havoc, the moon is much bigger (since the mass of cheese […]