Oswald Bastable

writes, in his “spare” time.  Very well worth a read!

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21 Responses to Oswald Bastable

  1. Oswald Bastable says:

    Not much spare time at the moment, but I’m picking away at another one.

    Just about to drop into Ecuador with a Ranger battalion right now.

  2. Oswald Bastable says:

    I figured that!

    I have slowed down a bit as I’m having to invent a whole new way of combat, involving the use of anti- gravity harness. In our world and most future ones, troops taking huge leaps through the air would be clay targets, but in the asymmetrical warfare role, against primitives they are very effective. Especially in the Amazon, where they can leap up trees to scout ahead and take potshots.

    • KG says:

      I’m a firm believer in a bucket of Instant Sunshine™
      :twisted:

      • Oswald Bastable says:

        Ah, but the bad natives are mixed in with the good natives and there is the bananna crop to consider, otherwise I would burn them out with the ships lasers.

        Never fear, the book ends in Space Opera style, with bigger, badder weapons than mere nukes flying about!

    • An anti-gravity harness all by itself is a bad idea. What you want is a tunable gravity harness, so you can fall out of your dropship much faster than gravity would normally propel you, only to come screeching to a feather-float speed about twenty feet from the ground. Quick descent / very soft landing is the ideal ticket.

      Good to hear that you’re writing again, Wayne.

      • Oswald Bastable says:

        That is exactly what we have. Drop fast, land soft. The harness can work on auto, or for better trained troops, under their control. Can also be used in conjunction with a chute, so you can glide further, by reducing the pull of gravity. Hard to drop in stealthily when you have a 150,000 ton ship just a couple of kś overhead. :mrgreen:

  3. Ronbo says:

    Oswald, I salute your excellent work in the literary field :!:

    I’m working on a film noir type murder mystery set here in Seattle where an innocent soldier in military intelligence is framed by an ambitious young counter-intelligence FBI agent for spying for the Russians during the Cold War in the 1980s.

    The guy loses everything. The wife commits suicide. The eldest son becomes a drug addict and dies of an overdose. The daughter, who is a child when this happens and gets raised by an aunt, is a “daddy girl” who believes him innocent and stays in contact with her old man during his 30 year prison sentence.

    When the protagonist is finally released in 2011 he returns to his native city of Seattle to find the young FBI agent who framed him in the 1980s has become the U.S. Attorney for the Northwest.

    ….and not only that – he lives only five blocks from the protagonist :!: This leads to many recons of his enemy’s house and even to one face to face meeting with the former FBI agent, now a powerful U.S. Attorney and friend of Obama, who has forgotten him over the years.

    The protagonist takes a trip to Las Vegas to meet an old cellmate friend from federal prison who was a Mafia hit man and now retired from “The Business.” He tells him about his plan for revenge knowing he can completely trust the old criminal because he hates the FBI and Justice Department as well. Plus the fact they watched one another’s back in prison and were like brothers.

    At some point the conservation in Vegas comes around to a choice of weapons. The old Mafia man knows a man who knows an underground gun dealer who has an untraceable silenced small caliber pistol.

    The protagonist meets the gun dealer and buys the deadly assassination weapon and special custom made ammunition.

    He drives back to Seattle with a gun in the trunk and revenge on his mind… :shock:

    • KG says:

      :twisted: I hope he’s successful Ronbo.

      • Ronbo says:

        I have a feeling he will be…and then the fun starts in the rainy, dark and foggy Seattle. The G-Men have their prime suspect, but can they prove he did it :?:

        BTW, this story does have a basis in reality – a high federal official was murdered in his basement/work room late at night near where I live. This happened years ago…2011?

        Anyhow, the prime suspect was a businessman who had been ruined by this guy when he was an FBI agent. The gun was abandoned at the murder scene with no prints, of course. The FBI was able somehow to trace it back to Las Vegas, but there the trail ended.

        The businessman lived alone and didn’t have an alibi for the night in question, as did dozens of other suspects who hated this guy. The FBI could prove the prime suspect made a trip to Las Vegas the year before, however, this proved to be a cold trail.

        So four years later the prime suspect lives on his houseboat in Lake Washington with its excellent view of downtown Seattle – and is said to be living happily with a young wife and on a second fortune lawfully gained by – you guess it! – building houseboats on Lake Washington.

        I just love a story with a happy ending. :mrgreen:

  4. Darin says:

    I’m gonna have to get reading again,sounds like I’m missing the boat :grin:

    Also spotted this interesting title-
    http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/10566

    :shock:

    • Ronbo says:

      When I worked at the National Security Agency back in the 1970s, we used to joke that some day the government would plant a microchip in the butts of those with the Top Secret NSA clearance to authorize access to the buildings and offices :!: :shock:

      It looks like the future has arrived. :mrgreen:

      • Darin says:

        Posted in the wrong thread,oh well,that’s what happens when I’m half asleep :oops:

        People used to laugh at the mention of the mark of the beast,most aren’t laughing now :shock:

  5. Flashman says:

    Well done to all creative writers.

    I’m about halfway though a three year project involving a very average girl’s survival situation in a global pandemic (think Ebola’s virulence genetically modded to rabies).

    What started as a 10 chapter drabble, and now runs to ten times that….ballpark estimate 750,000 words in total. Coolest and most engaging creative project of my entire life.

    I started creative writing as a teenager. In the 1960’s on a school night in Rhodesia there wasn’t much doing otherwise…ha! Never lost the habit, and spent a long part of my working life writing management and research reports, so the skill never rusted. (You see what I did there?) Now, with retirement running into my headlights I plan on kicking CW up a notch. Punchline: it’s so easy to publish online…however whether people actually want to pay to read one’s rubbish is another story http://falfn.com/CrusaderRabbit/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_cry.gif

  6. Brown says:

    Who said nothing good ever came out of Featherston?