Raymond – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

May 3, 2020

Fire and Bronze (Review)

kay, I might be a little biased on this. After all, I literally wrote the book. But I’ll do my best to give you an honest assessment. Fire and Bronze is the story of Princess Elisha of Tyre (a city on an island that used to be off Lebanon (as for why it no longer is, refer to my own Early Retirement)). At a young age her father the king passes and she ends up in a power struggle against her brother for the throne of Tyre (and her very survival). She opposes him with her own power faction, noble […]

October 22, 2020

Are you Robert Raymond? (DOG EAR)

ould you possibly hope to be the world-adventurer, man about town, writer, game designer, rocket engineer? Review the list below and score your points (1 for each thing you’ve done). Then look to the bottom to see if you are Robert Raymond. 1) Flown an airship? 2) Ridden a bike 60 miles in one go? 3) Lived in foreign country for several years? 4) Written a novel picked up by an agent and publisher, and placed on bookstore shelves? 5) Read thousands of books? (The list for the last decade is HERE) 6) Dispatched a complex model railroad? 7) Written […]

January 19, 2023

The End of the Blogatorium (DOG EAR)

ough Sunday night. Went to the clubhouse to help unload modules (even though I’m still in the mask-for-safety aspect of post-covid). Came home. Wrote a blog detailing the show. And then, while it was still in draft status, I poked around. My updates were showing some issues and it told me I needed to upgrade my PHP. I clicked the UPDATE button. It should have been marked APOCALYPSE. It said it would take a minute. Twenty minutes later, the site was still in maintenance mode. I closed that browser and opened another. I was told my site suffered a critical […]

October 20, 2024

OpsLog – TBL – 10/19/2024

nice summer day on the Tuscarora – an aspect we’ll mention a bit later. Greg and I were thinking of a two-man run but got enough interest to bump it up to six. Of course, I got there two hours early and set up in thirty minutes (why do I do this (because I’m usually freaking before ops, I’d wager)). But the guys all came out and were ready to run. I spent some of the down time explaining to the new guys how it worked (yes, this isn’t simply a tiny 2×4 foot train layout). But of course, they’d […]

December 19, 2024

Better never than late (DOG EAR)

hose who know me know that the 2024 election didn’t go as I’d hoped it would. My thoughts on this are my own, and if you don’t understand, well, you probably can’t handle the truth. But a week before the general election, I got a weird email from the site (nice to know the contact link still works – nobody ever writes). Anyway, from way out in Culver’s Country, Wisconsin, someone wrote me via my site in all caps. It was a complaint, crabbing that I owned this domain and they needed if for another Robert Raymond who was running […]

February 24, 2025

A Yank in Bomber Command (Review)

his one came to me as a birthday present from my dear wife. Normally she doesn’t try this sort of things – given the number of books I’ve read (I’ve reviewed hundreds on this website), she doesn’t risk it. But this one stood out for obvious reasons. It is the historic recount of an American who started out as an ambulance driver in France and ended up enlisting in the Royal Air Force. Hailing from far-away, different-world Kansas City, the fellow had to start the lengthy process of becoming a Lancaster Bomber pilot in command, involving months of effort. And […]