What does seventy seven pence buy you?

Not only am I a sucker for a bargain, I'm keen to make every penny last.  Few can disagree that stuff has become way more expensive in the last few years, pretty much globally.  We're all struggling to some extent with the fiscal cost of living crisis that is seemingly everywhere these days.  So taking a random amount, sparked by an interaction with Amazon, I'm going to examine the purchasing power of £0.77, which equates to just over a dollar in the US.

Over here you can buy enough sweet potatoes to make a tasty and nutritious side for a meal with some left over for seventy seven pence.  You might be able to buy a few carrots but anything more substantial - forget it.  And I'm talking about Asda here - it would be Walmart in the US, who for a time owned Asda - hardly the most expensive store.

Buying someone a coffee for this mount is unlikely.  Even the greasiest of greasy spoon cafes doling out the cheapest of instant would want at least a pound for a coffee.  A cup of tea should be do-able - it's just a tea bag, boiling water (not just hot, Americans please note) and a dash of milk with sugar to taste if you must (I haven't for nearly forty years).  One of those fancy coffees from Starbucks, well you'll need to multiply the £0.77 by a fair amount.

You may be able to buy a fair few items on eBay for less than £0.77 if you get lucky with bidding, but postage will eradicate that.  Ali Express and Temu might be options, but there will still be postage.

What about ten times £0.77?  For nearly £8 you can certainly buy one of those fancy coffees, choose your venue carefully you can buy two so you can have a coffee with a friend.  The online stores have plenty available in this range - I've bought strings, capos, other guitar paraphernalia for under £8 including P & P in the last year, so definitely do-able.  But such purchases are not representative of the costs we now all face.

So, to help with your cost of living crisis I've lowered the eBook cost of my books, all ten, to £0.77 each, which equates to $1.04 in the US at the current exchange rate Amazon is using.  Or, for £7.70 you can buy all ten books.  Your biggest problem is affording the coffees you'll want to drink while reading the books.  I can't solve every fiscal problem!

Is the Journeymen coming true? Pt 4

 The Journeymen is fiction, a figment of my imagination, but elements of it provide some sort of explanation for events around us.  Let's take a fanciful look at some of the real people in real life and speculate where they should fit in with the Journeyman concept.  I'll start with the UK first, apologies to North American readers, you may have to Google some of these characters.

The Royal Family, the late Queen, the current King and the future King(s).  Absolutely the epitome of Colonists and protected, you might say insulated, from real life.  In the Journeymen story their sole purpose is to preserve and provide the DNA needed for the home planet.  In Journeymen II: Days of Reckoning this provides food for thought at the epilogue.

Now lets take a look at recent Prime Ministers of the UK, and to be fair we've had a few in a short term.  Let's start with David Cameron, a shoo-in for a Journeyman by most measures.  Privileged background, over-promoted to way beyond his natural capability in my opinion, he's the perfect example of someone who overtook better qualified candidates which, in my books, is one of the hallmarks of a Journeyman.

His successor, Theresa May, would appear to be more likely to be an IB.  That shouldn't be a surprise because although Prime Minister is one of the highest political positions, as we've experienced it's also one of the most fragile ones, too.  May was succeeded by Boris Johnson who has and had the aura of a Journeyman and definitely promoted above his ability.  His sense of entitlement would be consistent with the group.

I'm afraid my jury of one is out on Liz Truss.  Over-promoted? Absolutely.  Sense of entitlement?  In spades.  Journeyman?  Possibly, but I suspect she is an over-ambitious IB who got the top job over Rishi Sunak in major part because the group who voted her in is notoriously prejudiced.  Sunak, I suspect, is an ambitious IB who probably chose the wrong time to make his bid.

What about Keir Starmer? His father was a tool-maker, by the way.  I feel Starmer is pure IB.

The point is that the position of Prime Minister, powerful a position it is, is held by people guided by senior Civil Servants and hundreds of years of precedent.  Those senior Civil Servants not only exert enormous influence on the PM but crucially provide the continuity for the Journeyman project.  The Senior Civil Servants are the puppeteers, not the puppets.  Many, probably not all, will be Journeymen.

What about the US?  Are there any Colonists in the US?  Officially not in power, the Constitution was clear on that, but the US has long been a safe haven for people who would qualify as Colonists - exiled Kings, for example.  The UK might have an example or two living there now, although the bloodline might not be pure Colonist anymore.

The current President would appear to be a perfect candidate as a Journeyman, fulfilling the role but I suspect he has the ambition to be a Colonist.  Unfortunately, the way my story is written, you can't just 'become' a Colonist.

What about other World leaders?  Putin, for example?  Possibly Journeyman, possibly a Son.  Although he appears more interested in consolidating his own power, he could either be using force to promote the project or to disrupt it.  To make your mind up you will need to read both Journeymen books, and even then I would probably have to agree to disagree.

To end this short series of discussions on the background to the Journeymen I'd like to reiterate it is fiction, made up by me.  I'm not suggesting it is 'really real', or that my evaluation of where the characters above should sit in the fictional hierarchy should be taken as fact.  Far from it, but if you immerse yourself in the story then you may well find yourself looking at bosses, colleagues and politicians and wondering where they fit in the scheme of things.

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Follow me on Twitter: @RayASullivan

email me at raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com

Check out my comedic ramblings as Throngsman on www.newsbiscuit.com

     

   

 

Is the Journeymen coming true? Pt 3

 So, we have a well established process where the Journeymen have positions at the upper echelons of all the important areas of life, across the globe.  Communist, Fascist, moderate, whatever - every nation has links.  Think of the Freemasons but on steroids.

Their only, if long term, plan is to get Colonist DNA back to the home planet, a project just over four thousand years in the making.  Technology had to be pushed, cajoled, directed towards ultimately producing a society capable of isolating and storing DNA, producing rocket propulsion systems capable of travelling beyond our solar system, storage mechanisms for the DNA capable of preserving the material on what would be a multi-generational journey.

Now look at the technological developments since the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the harnessing of propulsion systems, rockets, the space race.  Consider the development of X-Rays which while providing amazing discoveries for the human race was also critical for the discovery of the double helix and ultimately the Human Genome project.  That project can be viewed as the ultimate service to mankind or could be cynically be seen as a way to filter out all non-Colonist DNA while identifying Sons and IBs.

And look at the acceleration of space technology since the Moon missions stalled, and the individuals involved.  What if Musk and Besos are senior Journeymen?  Fits the bill.  Or one or both are IBs groomed to do the Journeymen bidding?  Also possible.  Either way, both men (and many others not as high profile) are pushing the Journeyman project, if it exists, forward faster than ever.

Take a look around your workplace, no matter what it makes, does or facilitates.  Could it be a cog in the Journeymen project?  Are those in leadership roles following the Journeyman style?  Who in the organisation might be Sons?  Who can you set aside as an interbred?  Unless you work with Royalty or some other country figurehead you probably don't work with Colonists, although not all remained at the top.  Coups and all that.  There's probably a few Frenchmen and women of Colonist background whose ancestors dodged the guillotine, but almost certainly the gene pool is contaminated by now.

Do you see how I've moved from discussing a fictional idea, kind of conspiracy theory, to discussing it as a real thing?  I made up the story about the planet a long, long way away and the backstory about the last four thousand years.  There is almost certainly no Journeymen, Colonists and IBs.  The Sons are an artistic diversion, admittedly.  But there is a compelling element about it that kind of explains some of the crazy stuff happening in the world today that could be explained away by the Journeymen.

In the next post I'll try to wrap these ramblings up into some kind of coherence - no promises, though.

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In the US Bronze is on a countdown promotion starting Sunday 14th September at $0.99 for the eBook, rising to $1.99 on the 17th September before reverting to the full price of $2.99 on the 20th September.  All promotions commence at 8:00 am PDT on the stated days.

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Follow me on Twitter: @RayASullivan

email me at raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com

Check out my comedic ramblings as Throngsman on www.newsbiscuit.com

     

   

 

Is the Journeymen coming true? Pt 2

 When the 'modern' Journeymen arrived on Earth they found that their forebears had indeed settled, and had used their superior knowledge and technology to become the leaders of what we now think of the ancient world.  All those superior civilisations run by kings and pharaohs were created by the original Journeymen.  Sure, they had played around with the locals, diluting their alien gene pool, but had also managed to keep enough of that pool untainted.

The new Journeymen, stranded on Earth with no viable means to return in the immediate future, undertook to create a system that protected the original Journeymen, helped to preserve their lineage and steer technology to create a system to get the genetic material back to the home planet, a process that would ultimately take thousands of years.

To complicate matters, on the comet journey tensions had run high between one genetic faction led by Arlgon and the commanders of the mission, which created a rift that spanned the generations that travelled together and continues to this day.  To keep the various Journeymen varieties identifiable the new Journeymen called the original Journeymen 'Colonists', the breakaway faction the 'Sons of Arlgon', usually shortened to the 'Sons', leaving themselves to be just the 'Journeymen'.  There is a fourth relevant group to consider that should have been just the original human species, but as mentioned above, the Colonists liked to play home and away, hence all human DNA is in part alien.  They are the majority of the population, considered disposable by the Journeymen, almost certainly includes you and me and are called 'Interbreds', or IBs.

From the off the Journeymen strove to move into positions of influence, supporting but not challenging the Colonists.  Slowly they manoeuvred to make the Colonists more ceremonial than active players and occupied senior positions to direct policy.  Think in terms of the current King of England and the senior Civil Servants.  Not all the senior Civil Servants are likely to be Journeymen, just enough to ensure that particular ship is steered the way they want.  And not all Journeymen are in the Civil Service - they spread out across all important branches of modern day living from controlling the media, to running the universities, to managing tech companies, to anything that helps meet their prime objective to get Colonist DNA to the home planet.

Not every Journeyman is high ranking and not every high ranking Journeyman is the best candidate for the role they occupy - ever been beaten to a job of a lifetime by someone who is technically inferior to you?  Welcome to the unfair world of the Journeymen.

And the Sons?  After all these years they are still the natural enemies of the Journeymen.  They care not one jot for the Journeymen task and truth be told, they give a damn about this planet.

In the next part I'll explain how the modern world can be explained by the Journeyman story.

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In the US Bronze is on a countdown promotion starting Sunday 14th September at $0.99 for the eBook, rising to $1.99 on the 17th September before reverting to the full price of $2.99 on the 20th September.  All promotions commence at 8:00 am PDT on the stated days.

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Follow me on Twitter: @RayASullivan

email me at raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com

Check out my comedic ramblings as Throngsman on www.newsbiscuit.com

     

   

 

Is The Journeymen coming true? Part 1

 A long time ago I wrote The Journeymen.  Some years later I wrote the sequel, Journeymen II Day of Reckoning.  I've toyed on several occasions to write the third and final part of that story, but in many ways it looks like it's being written for me in real time.

First, a reminder of the main story that starts on a planet in another solar system a long, long way away.  It is home to a society that that has developed superior technology not once but at least twice.  A previous society virtually wrote off the current society in a planet-wide war that saw a phenomenal proportion of the planet wiped out and the society reduced to what we would regard as the Dark Ages.  We meet the society many millennium later, repaired, restored and bound by a common will to co-exist under a set of guiding principles.

For the population of the planet life is good.  There's a problem they have been shielded from, though.  The war that destroyed their earlier civilisation also destroyed a significant amount of the ancient DNA that had evolved to create their lineage and the surviving DNA and gene pool wasn't as diverse as needed to build the healthy population they needed.  Slowly, the gene pool was diminishing faster than Natural Selection could improve it.  They could see a future, admittedly many generations away, where the gene pool would decrease to the point that the population would die out.

Fortunately for them, but not for us, they learned of a planet far away where the earlier, more technologically sophisticated population had visited and believed there was a possibility that the missing elements from their gene pool might still exist there.  They mounted an expedition on a comet that passed their planet and the planet we call Earth on a two thousand year cycle and make preparations to hitch a multi-generational ride to travel to the far-away planet to find out if the genes they were missing was still around and uncontaminated and to find a way to bring it back - clearly the comet was a one-way ticket.  

There's a lot more to this background story, and it's intertwined with events in a modern-day Earth.  In the next instalment I'll introduce you to the Journeymen themselves.

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In the US Bronze is on a countdown promotion starting Sunday 14th September at $0.99 for the eBook, rising to $1.99 on the 17th September before reverting to the full price of $2.99 on the 20th September.  All promotions commence at 8:00 am PDT on the stated days.

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Follow me on Twitter: @RayASullivan

email me at raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com

Check out my comedic ramblings as Throngsman on www.newsbiscuit.com

     

   

 

Bronze is on Countdown

 

In the US Bronze is on a countdown deal with Amazon.  Since yesterday it has been priced as $0.99, which ramps up to $1,99 on the 17th and stays at that price point until the 20th, when it reverts to its normal price.  Sorry UK, Canada, Australia and all the other locations where people buy my books I think I can only run one location countdown per enrolment period.  I'll choose a different location next period.

If you're interested in dipping into Bronze before you invest a quarter of the price of a coffee the first two chapters are available on this blog.  Thanks to fat fingers I accidently posted the second chapter a few days ago, the after that the first so make sure you read them in the right order!  Links are to the right.

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In the US Bronze is on a countdown promotion starting Sunday 14th September at $0.99 for the eBook, rising to $1.99 on the 17th September before reverting to the full price of $2.99 on the 20th September.  All promotions commence at 8:00 am PDT on the stated days.

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Follow me on Twitter: @RayASullivan

email me at raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com

Check out my comedic ramblings as Throngsman on www.newsbiscuit.com