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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15906558504125850982020-01-24T02:17:17.538-06:00Lou Cadle Booksthe only real Lou Cadle web pageLou Cadlehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-48056670507086629162020-01-23T12:52:00.003-06:002020-01-23T12:52:55.151-06:00Book AvailabilityFor a time, my ebooks are only available at Amazon. It's a purely financial decision. I apologize to fans at Barnes and Noble and iBooks, but I do have to pay my bills! I'll probably go back to having books everywhere again, but for now, it's much easier to have all my eggs in this one basket.

Thank you for your understanding.Lou Cadlehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-45404890012450220632019-07-26T12:36:00.002-05:002019-07-26T12:36:20.071-05:00The story of GrayThis is the tale of how Gray was written, and when, and how it came to be in your hands.

I had ceased teaching university in 2004 partly because teaching writing was messing up my ability to write. Or, let's back up 10 years before that: after a moderately successful decade in publishing stories, poetry, and slick magazine articles, teaching had slowed me down for the following decade. But I missed writing, so very much. Teaching was also becoming boring after a decade of it (most jobs get boring after 2 years, so this was actually a win!), and it was always far too much work (I often only worked ¾ time, yet I worked 60-hour weeks and made far too little money and often had no health insurance), so I said "My house is paid off. I have some money saved. Let's go back to writing, Lou, which is still the only real passion that's lasted you a lifetime."

I wrote three books in my first year off. A pen name book (no longer for sale) was one of them. A non-fiction book (which I never published or marketed) was one. And Gray was one. I'd been reading about the topic of the type of disaster itself, as reading NF science is one of my hobbies. I'd always thought that disaster novels and movies had gotten something wrong. Often, in real life, disasters come without warning, and if there is no more electricity, no more communications, the people suffering in the midst of it don't have the slightest idea what was going on. Before the year 1900, no human would have ever known about the when of an impending disaster or the how or why of it! (Read the terrific books Isaac's Storm or Krakatoa to get an idea of how disasters played out before 1900.) I wanted to write about that—a limited viewpoint of one person, a confused person who didn't know anything about the disaster, and whose struggle for survival was so demanding that she could seldom spare a thought to wonder over it.

Gray was a single long book, complete by the end of 2005. I tried to get a agents interested in it and in the pen name book, but I got no nibbles at all on either. The few who bothered writing back said of Gray, in their professional wisdom (cough, cough), "No one reads post-apocalyptic books any more."

I was mightily confused at that comment, for I certainly still loved the genre, but I moved on in my writing. I outlined a book I still like the idea of, a mainstream novel about a woman whose husband died young, who with her insurance payout decides to foster troubled teen girls on a small farm/homestead she had always wanted (or at least thought she wanted). It's funny at points as things go wrong, and poignant at points. I did write a lot of it, but then I thought, "They won't want this one either," and let it sit unfinished. (I think I still have it somewhere, but I couldn't swear to that.)

After my three and a half books were written, I didn't go back to work teaching. I liked being away from it too much. I found a way to live on the cheap (and I do mean cheap—it cost me $4000 US/year to survive, and that was without food stamps or any other assistance) by selling my house, and while I wrote some short stories and poems for the next seven years, and even some outlines for novels, I burned it all in campfires. Wasn't worth the trouble of marketing it, I figured. Agents didn't find my work appealing, and agents were the barrier to my communicating with publishers. And short work simply doesn't pay much, so you may as well burn it in the campfire as send it out into the world. Financially, you'll come out ahead by using your lighter.

Then I settled down to a life you'd call more "normal." More settled, certainly. More electricity to run the computer, and daily internet access after years without. So I started writing novels again, first a draft of my family history novel, and then my disaster novels. Again, I ran into the agent brick wall with all that. I was beyond frustrated. I had great publishing credentials. I'd had stories in top fiction magazines. I had writing awards, so I knew I couldn't totally suck as a writer in everyone's opinion. Good magazines had written me once upon a time, asking if I had any stories for them, so I was sure I wasn't deluded about my skill as a teller of fictional tales. I'm still not sure why agents didn't like my stuff. (Had you still been able to approach publishers directly, as you could when I was young, I suspect I would have sold my books, but those days were long gone by 2012).

But by this time, I didn't have to burn my work and give up writing again, or give it up for good. Now there was the Kindle, and my dear friend Shelley said, "You can do this. Self publishing can work." There was Howey and Konrath and Hocking and others proving it would work danged well, in fact. Still, I hesitated (in retrospect, too long!) But I took the plunge with my old pen name book and with the disaster novels, planning to follow up with whichever genre of book sold best. And very quickly, total strangers around the world started buying my disaster ebooks. So cool! I wanted to hug every one of them. :D I even got a few pieces of fan mail! Lifelong writing dreams were finally coming true, and nobody was in my way. I was my own publisher, reaching readers directly, and learning how to run a business.

People in the know said, "Good start, but you need a series now." I didn't have a series idea, but I'd been re-reading Gray with thoughts of publishing it next, and I thought, "I have a lot more to say about these characters." So I took the long novel—which was somewhat different, and ended soon after Coral finding Benjamin and them deciding to leave his house when something bad happened there—and I rewrote what I had and then continued the tale, making sure each book had a climax and came to a resting place that completed a section in a satisfying way. One of the books of the series gave me a bit of trouble and took seven months to complete, but I worked at it to get it just how I wanted it.

And the series found its readers. Fans wrote me daily. I got offers for traditional publication of it and for audio publication. It was great—and overwhelming some days, for my email inbox was stuffed full every morning, needed to be combed through, the offers needing to be vetted, and at times I despaired of carving out more time to write!

Gray continues to be my most popular work. Podium Publishing picked it up as audio book, with a professional approach to me when I'd gotten past those overly busy days. They did a great job with it, and I was given a wonderful narrator, Lauren Fortgang. I've moved on from Gray, to other books and series, but it continues to excite and move readers all around the world, and I'm still as grateful as I was in 2015 to every single one of you who bought, read and enjoyed it.

And while Amazon has its problems sometimes managing its self-publishing platform, I'm also grateful to them, for had they not taken the risk of developing the e-reader, losing money hand over fist on it initially, and had they not opened up publishing in ways that didn't demand that writers schmooze agents to get through to publishers (who all live in the same place and all look and think alike, which is not necessarily how most readers think), you'd have never read Gray. I'd have never been a full-time writer. We wouldn't have countless numbers of wonderful novels by other people were it not for Amazon leading the way with the Kindle and letting novelists be their own publishers, be their own agents, and free themselves of the NYC system that wasn't working for most writers or many readers.

Mostly, though, the gratitude I have—and which I never forget, not for a day—is aimed at my readers. Without you, I'm still a frustrated person living well below the poverty line and burning my stories in campfires. So thank you for reading.
Lou Cadlehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-46499648707671292972019-06-12T12:01:00.001-05:002019-06-12T12:01:33.819-05:00Congratulations to my books designer for an awardDeranged Doctor Designs, my book cover designer for most of my books, has always done a terrific job. In May, they won the e-book Cover Design Award for Code Name: Beatriz.

I can't claim more than .01% of this award (I did describe the book to them, so that's why I claim even that much!) so I'm not bragging on me, but on them. They've always been a delight to work with, and I've recommended them to several writer friends.

Congratulations to the design team there.

Lou Cadlehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-26576295120256186542019-05-16T23:25:00.001-05:002019-05-16T23:25:43.110-05:00Howdy all!I'm still terribly busy with the house, yard, and ridiculously large vegetable garden. (Me to self, passing the plant display at Lowe's: "you already have 31 tomato plants. You do not need another tomato plant!")

The shed is painted, and various other projects were finished. And then it was on to getting chipped wood from tree companies to 1) spread around the garden paths and 2) use to kill grass and weeds. I finally got this pile moved, but there'll be more coming later this year.

I planted my vegetable garden and annual flowers that I grew from seed indoors, and I replaced what perennials didn't survive the sub-zero week we had last winter. I weed around the whole place twice a week. When I take a breath and stand back and look, I realize how much I've accomplished in a year. But mostly, I don't have time to stop to admire; I simply put my head down and work. Hot weather is coming soon, and I won't be able to take six-hour work days out there when it's hot. By July, I'll be preserving the bounty of the veg garden.

At least I hope it's a bounty!

I moved back to where I grew up in large part to be around the people in my family who are getting older, wanting to spend time with them while I still could. The last remaining person of my maternal grandparents' generation just broke her hip--and that often leads to pneumonia and the end, particularly at the age she is. We had just had a wonderful lunch together last month, and I was able to give her a copy of my large print paperback of Storm that I had done in large part for her. I quizzed her about the old days and my great-grandparents, and she had wonderful tales to tell. I do love stories of days gone by.

That's it! I wanted y'all to know what I've been up to and that I'm still in the land of the living. And come autumn, I'll be in the land of the writing again.Lou Cadlehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-53078274723981526132019-04-01T09:06:00.001-05:002019-04-01T09:06:12.149-05:00Writing UpdateIn three months of 2019, I've written 93000 words. That's the good news part of a good-news-bad-news story.

The bad news? A lot of it was not on the new post-apocalyptic series. What was written in that is something of a mess. So while I'd hoped to have a book in April or May, I can see that's not going to happen.

Furthermore, personal goals are going to keep me from the computer the next month or so, and did to an extent the past month. While I've written a lot about self-sufficiency and being off the grid, I can only claim to have experienced being off the grid, 100% solar, and surviving on something like $300/month (which I suppose means you aren't terribly dependent on the outside world, but I never figured a way out of needing propane for my refrigerator or food from the store in that situation or objects that I owned that I am in no way capable of manufacturing on my own. (See The Toaster Project.)

So now I'm working toward having less reliance on the mass food distribution network, starting with growing most of my own vegetables, expanding to fruit in future years, fishing more and more for the plate, and after that finding local sources for eggs, cheese and meat if I can. (I can't have a dairy cow where I live but I can have hens, though hens make no economic sense at all at this scale.) I've been busy in March building infrastructure for the garden. I have terrible clay soil, as many of us do, so I've been on a mission to improve it using no-till methods. (Worms, I have lots of. Spiders, check. Fungi, I have. I think it's pretty healthy and fertile soil except for the fact that it turns to concrete when it dries out.) I spent one day building a fence, and another day spreading two tons of compost I had delivered over the cardboard-mulch start I made last autumn. I started over 500 veg plants indoors with a grow light and greenhouse window (I won't say that window is why I bought this house, but it sure didn't hurt!) I've harvested two salads so far--spinach and lettuce. Peas are up, turnips are up, chard and bok choi are up, and onions and leeks are growing happily larger. I've set up trellising, wrestling with the clay soil to get posts sunk deeply. And so on. I'm having a blast, but it does take most of my time. I'm out there six hours some days and too exhausted to do much at all at the end of the work day.

Scraping paint on the shed. It's not crooked, the photographer is

The good news is, once this "build and repair the infrastructure" phase is over, there will be plenty of days where I only need an hour of work outdoors, so I can get back to the writing.

I love writing, and I'm at no risk of stopping doing it. It's simply on the back burner for now. I'm only checking my business email once a week, as well. I'll let you know when there's progress on a book that's worth reporting on.

Thanks, as ever, for being fans and friends and for enjoying my books.Lou Cadlehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-24758026169109223102019-03-15T15:31:00.001-05:002019-03-15T15:31:39.486-05:00My apologies!I just now realized that something went wrong with my notifications on comments to the blog. People made comments and they were never moderated because I was only getting some notifications. I'm terribly embarrassed about this! If you took the trouble to come here, read, and speak to me, I really wanted to say something back.

Computers and the internet--both a blessing and a bane, aren't they? When they mess up, you can end up being rude to the very last people that you'd want to be rude to! I am so sorry.Lou Cadlehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-3969911431196755102019-02-17T07:49:00.000-06:002019-03-03T10:49:34.243-06:00Endless problems with my books being stolenIt's hard to learn to be a decent enough writer that strangers will want to buy your books. It takes at least a decade of sacrifice, working a normal day job while writing when you can fit it in, taking courses, reading craft books, joining critique groups, and spending your time and money on that. Even then, working a second unpaid job for a decade to build your writing chops, there's no guarantee you'll hit the right combination of luck, timing, and technology that allows you to sell enough books to pay the mortgage and eat. It took me almost 30 years to find that lucky moment.

A lot of writers--some whose names you might know--make less than $10,000/year once they find their luck. I'm doing a bit better than that, but I still make less than an assistant manager at a McDonald's makes (and she has health insurance.)

I sacrificed for years to learn and improve my craft. I didn't go on vacations--I wrote. I didn't buy new cars--I wrote. I didn't buy new clothes--I went to thrift shops, and I wrote. I've been without health insurance for half my adult life--because if I worked a day job part-time for a few years here and there instead of full-time, I could write more.

Nonetheless, every lowlife criminal in the world thinks it's fine to steal from me. They sit there on their $1500 iPhones (I can afford no cell phone, BTW) and cavalierly steal my books in various ways. More than one person has stolen my IDENTITY. There are "lou cadle" websites in other countries that are not, I assure you, me or approved by me or in any way related to me. They are just scams and thefts.

And so my income keeps decreasing as piracy, illegal sharing, and theft of my professional identity carves away at what little money I'm making.

There is no legal recourse to this, as some of the thieves are in China or Russia or India. Even if a writer does spend thousands of dollars on investigators and attorneys to track down the piracy site owners and tell them to cease and desist, they'll pop right up with another website 24 hours later. So we writers just eat the losses and grow more and more disheartened.

What tears my ass about this is not that there are evil people in the world who would steal: that I figured out when I was a child. What really bothers me is not the pirate but the reader, that for an ebook I've spent maybe 500 hours of damned hard work on, I'm asking you to pay less than you pay for a cup of coffee. Less than most of you pay for a day of cell phone service. A quarter of what you might pay at the movies (and my book will last you for many more hours of entertainment than would a movie, unless you are a big fan of When Yukong Moved The Mountain and Shoah). Less than what you pay for a candy bar or soda pop at that movie. And yet for some, that's not nearly a low enough price, so they steal from me.

Things that are not stealing: using Kindle Unlimited. Using Overdrive at your public library. Paying at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Google Play or iTunes for a book. (There are even legitimately free books at some of those places, a free price approved by the author.) Things that are stealing: file sharing and reading a whole series and then returning all the books for a refund. (That doesn't hurt Amazon or Apple one bit. It hurts only writers, and you eventually, for they will remove your account if you do it very often.)

Tell everyone you know, please. Stealing a book, or downloading books from piracy sites, or sharing DRM-stripped KU files is EXACTLY like breaking into someone's home, stealing their wallet, and setting on fire their cherished mementos of a life. Is that last an exaggeration? No. I've given my life to writing, so when you steal my books, you don't just steal my wallet. You steal the years of work and sacrifice from me. A book thief might have been vacationing in the Caribbean 15 years ago, but I was eating generic corn flakes and getting up at 4:30 to practice writing before I got on the bus to get to work.

Theft is what book piracy is, and that's all it is. Bad people will keep doing it, of course, for that is what bad people do. They commit crimes and do not care at all who they hurt. It's the nature of sociopathy.

But everyone with any moral center should recognize their crime for what it is and stop committing it.

Thank you.

- LouLou Cadlehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-7686485425377340672019-01-31T19:00:00.004-06:002019-02-03T08:57:37.681-06:00My World War II thriller is outCode Name Beatriz is out!.

"Wireless agents have a six-week life expectancy after they parachute into France."

Antonia, devastated by what the war has taken from her, is numb to the warning, and willing to die working with the Resistance in France...until a special operation brings her face to face with a Canadian man who makes her want to live again. When the operation goes terribly wrong and the Nazis capture him, what will she risk to free him?

Click HERE for link to Amazon page.

For some time I've been fascinated with the female SOE agents of World War II, Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan, Violette Szabo, and all the heroic women who parachuted into France to help fight the Nazis on the ground. What heroes they were! I hope here I've done them justice with my fictional Antonia, an agent code named Beatriz.

Other links will be coming as the book appears at other sites. Thank you for reading.Lou Cadlehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-65324503955497659482019-01-27T03:30:00.000-06:002019-01-27T03:30:02.066-06:00Living more mindfullyExcuse the rare personal post!

I move too fast. I want to move more slowly, with spaces for breathing between all I do.

While I'm not a Buddhist, I've read about their concept of mindfulness. You do one thing at a time, and you attend to it. In so doing, you learn more. You relax more. You enjoy chores you used to rush through because you are there, in the moment, fully present, your hands immersed in warm dishwashing water, noticing how that actually feels good (rather than mentally cursing the chore, as we so often do.)

How did I get to the decidedly unmindful place I am right now? Five years ago, when I lived in the motor home in the deserts and woods of Arizona, I was fully mindful. I was utterly relaxed. Most days were blissful. I was so at peace that birds came right up to me and sang along with me when I sat outdoors, sang and played the guitar. I'm a million miles from there today.

The problem starts with the business of being a full-time author. Amazon's algorithms favored books that came out every 3 months back in 2016. This year, you'd better be releasing one per month to get that monster's approval and have any chance of being discovered by readers who don't yet know your work.

Truth: I can't write a good book in a month. I can't write one, revise one, edit one, proofread one, run it through more than one pro proofreader in two months, even, and be happy with the result. I don't even count the hours--years sometimes--of research that goes into all of my books. (I like learning, so it's not a burden, and it's hard to convince myself to track it or count it as work, though it is.)

I could write two pretty good, pretty error-free books per year, I think. I can't do that and remain a full-time author, of course. Amazon's rules won't let me. So the choice is between better books and paying my bills this way.

This rush then extends its ugly claws out into other realms. That kind of productivity, plus the necessity of paying attention to whatever "innovations" Amazon is up to this month that affects authors requires a lot of social time online with other authors so I can stay abreast of this gossip. Authors do each other small favors, and those take time. The online time starts to pull at you, as it will (social media is terribly addictive), and if there is anything less mindful than staring at a screen and feeling irritated a lot, I can't imagine what that might be. (Perhaps being forced to listen to jackhammer all day comes close.)

And soon, eight hours per day is taken up, just as with any office job. (Except I have to work Saturday and Sunday as well. I almost never take a day off. That wears on a person.) And so there's not enough time to mow the lawn, clean the house, or make really good scratch meals as I'd wish. (I'm a good cook--seems like a skill I'm wasting most days.) I end up in real in-person conversations that I wish would end so I could go back to whatever is next on my list. In another mental state, I might really enjoy those conversations.

I bought a new house last year, and the yard was a mess, and there were several broken things, and my personal to-do list has been long. I've nearly worked my way through it, and am on to the "improvements" list now, but instead of enjoying this work--and I could, under other circumstances--I'm still in a rush-rush-rush mode. It doesn't make the job get done any better, and it makes me resentful while I'm doing it. Truth is, there are tasks I enjoy like scraping paint and pulling weeds that relax me to a deep level, if I'm only able to commit to a solid two to four hours at them and do them carefully and with attention and without a rigid goal that starts out "I have to...." Weeding or sanding can be like a meditation. But not if I'm trying to rush through the list to go back to check my sales because I'm running an ad and then checking emails and dealing with the day's pile of them again.

I should be loving my life. I should be thrilled at living the dream of being a full-time writer. But I don't and I'm not. I sigh far too much. I enjoy the small moments far too little.

And I know the answer to this discontent. It's to slow the heck down. :D I want a to-do list with three things on it, not three dozen, every day. I want to stop and smell the roses--or the paint, or the compost, or the red peppers frying up in the pan. I want to plunge my hands into a sink of hot sudsy water, look out the kitchen window at the birds and squirrels, and just stand there for a full minute, feeling and seeing what I'm feeling and seeing.

I know most of us feel this way during our working years. I'm not special in that sense. What's rare about me is that I get to be one of the 6,000 or so people making a living as a writer, a position I'm well aware 500,000 other writers covet deeply and would think me mad for risking by slowing down this year.

I'll have a book coming out soon. And I'm writing another. But instead of rushing it to publication to sate the maw of Amazon, when I'm done, I'll put it aside and let it rest for a month before picking it up for revision. I'll enjoy the process more. It'll be a better book for that rest. I'm not going to release five or six or seven books this year (my totals for the last three years). I'm going to release three--and one was actually written last year. Next year, maybe that'll only be two books released. Odds are, my business will crash as a result.

I am so happy I have readers, and I write for them as well as for me. But I don't think I'm doing any of us a favor by rushing as I have been. I often ask myself, why is Gray so much more popular than everything else I write. These books come from the same mind, the same fingers. Gray was released one book every six months and the editing and release came NINE YEARS after I first wrote it. I think that's the answer, in part. I took more time. I revised more mindfully. I had down time during which I did other things mindfully, which made me a more balanced person when I returned to writing the book.

That's my theory, at least. If I'm wrong, at least by slowing down and paying attention to the world, I'll be doing myself some good, if not anyone else or my books. I won't feel as if I'm living in a bubble, locked in a wrestling match with Amazon, with the world an irksome distraction, which is how I feel most days now. I will eat better, rest better, feel better.

The birds might even come near again. And that would be lovely.

Lou Cadlehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-15942262062392257012019-01-17T04:30:00.000-06:002019-01-17T04:30:02.308-06:00Review of 2018 + plan for 2019It was a busy December of catching up with tasks I'd wanted to do for some time or should have done years ago, but I caught up and am proud of what that means. Soon there will be an omnibus edition of Books 1-2-3 in both the Oil Apocalypse series and the Dawn of Mammals series. (I'd do a five-book collection, but Amazon's rules about pricing makes that impossible.) They'll be out within a few weeks.

My newest novel is a World War II Spy thrilled, called Code Name Beatriz. It too will be out within a few weeks.

Because I have an older relative with vision problems, I know about the need for more large print books, so I've had Storm reformatted and made into a large print paperback. As soon as the cover is re-done for that, it'll be out too.

And finally, I revised and found a cover for a novel based on the life of my great-grandmother as a child. Her mother was so poor, she had to give her to an orphanage around the year 1900. I just released that under the pen name Rosellyn Sparks. Its name is The Long Road to Home. I drafted this in 2011, and my relatives have wanted to read it for some time, so this falls under "it's about time!" from their perspective. :D

That's a lot that came to fruition and was caught up on all at once.

I moved 1500 miles in 2018, and I bought a house for the first time in years, so the fact I got four books published last year is something of a miracle. Two were Lou Cadle novels, and one was a fantasy under the pen name LC Bard.

And now I'm in the middle of writing the 31st book I've written (I've not published all of them) in a new post-apocalyptic series. It should be out in May if all goes well. Lou Cadlehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-14539722233835103942019-01-09T10:56:00.000-06:002019-01-09T10:56:06.634-06:00to sign up to my mailing listTo sign up to get news on new releases, visit this website on a browser. On the right-hand side of the page, there's a short form. You can unsubscribe at any time.

It's that simple! I only send announcements about new releases, and I never sell or share your email address with anyone else at all. (I never did, even before the EU law changes. Lots of writers share them with Facebook. I never trusted FB as far as I could throw Zuck's vast team of lawyers!)

You can also sign up at Bookbub or via Amazon's +follow function (though Amazon's doesn't always work.)

Thank you for reading.

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 Lou Cadlehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-19942270714546680222019-01-06T09:02:00.000-06:002019-01-06T09:02:06.853-06:00Repost: Oil Apocalypse Blogs #2A continuing series. I answer more questions about the books and the research behind them.

What is the scariest aspect of the end of oil?

In my opinion? Food. Our just-in-time food delivery system depends entirely on petroleum. Starving people may not remain pleasant people, especially not when they live in the concentrations of today's urban centers. England's little glitch back 10 years ago that resulted in the "nine meals from anarchy" talk gave us a hint of what may well happen at the start of such an event.

Daniel Chase photo via Wikimedia. Before Hurricane Sandy

But food delivery isn't the only facet of the food system that requires petroleum. Tractors and other farm machinery, tractor tires, insecticides, fertilizers...all require petroleum. Indeed, it was the industrial revolution and petroleum products as applied to farming that resulted in crop yields that caused the world population to explode from 500 million to over 7 billion in just a couple hundred years.

We need to pause from time to time and think about that. 500 million people is probably the carrying capacity of the earth absent petroleum. That is, this lovely, diverse, rare planet can support/feed only a half a billion homo sapiens. So when oil is gone, there will be at least 7 billion extra starving people (probably 15 billion or more by the time it happens, though drought or disease may have killed several billion first because we have other potential problems that stem from overpopulation).

So imagine: Fertile land and deer and fish for half a billion, with 15 billion clamoring for food. You can see what's going to happen. People are going to starve to death...but a few will not do it quietly and politely, darn them. They will kill you to get your food, and if your food is gone, some will kill you to use you as food.

I'm working toward food self-sufficiency myself, and if a lot of people do this--including urban gardeners, who can use abandoned lots, roof gardens, median strips, and much more--that will mitigate the problem. Kudos to those who are doing just that. But of course, sufficient people will not do the work, and certain arid places (Phoenix, Las Vegas) are not in climates where that much food can be grown, and we'll end up in a bad situation at some future point.

I don't think I'll live to see it, honestly, but if I had grandkids, I would be working to teach them how to grow their own food and fish--that's for sure.

A foreign war triggers the end of oil in your books. But don't Iran and Saudi Arabia get along really well?

Not according to what I read. I read several foreign policy papers (rather boring research for me, I confess), and of all the local neighbors who might attack Saudi Arabia for its oil in the future, Iran seemed the most likely. Again, I can't guess at a date, but one day, surely current tensions will come to that. Its impact on oil exports? That I would not begin to try and predict in the real world. Worst case scenario for the reader more than likely, is Russia backing Iran (as they likely would) and winning and gaining control over the Saudi Arabian oil fields. The British/US invasion of Iraq was ill-considered and wasteful and got us almost no oil. Our entering this hypothetical Iran-Saudi war, if Russia is a major player, to protect our access to Saudi oil? Absolutely necessary. It'll probably be couched in some typical lie to appease the masses--WMDs or religion or "evil" leaders or whatever--but it will be entirely about oil and, if we want to keep living as we do, if we want to keep eating, not so much a choice as an imperative.

However, much more of the US's oil comes from Canada than from the Middle East at this point, so in our real world, this wouldn't be so much of a crisis.

more next weekLou Cadlehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-53372777080516313522018-12-30T08:56:00.000-06:002018-12-30T08:56:03.700-06:00Repost: Oil Apocalypse Blogs #1As I begin to blog about the topics that I've researched and that led me to situate this novel series at the end of petroleum, I hardly know where to begin.It was a three-year research process to come to the series, and some of my reading goes back to my university undergrad days.

I'll start the series with answering general questions friends and readers have already asked me and imaginary questions that other people might ask in the future.

Do you believe that oil is coming to an end?

Without a doubt.

It's a finite resource. The world population increases daily by almost a quarter of a million people, India and China, the most populous nations, become bigger users of fossil fuels every day, and it takes tens of millions of years for new oil to be made via geological processes. So yes, absolutely, it's coming to an end. I don't need to "believe" it, no more than I need to "believe" in gravity or molybdenum or the planet Mercury. Oil will run out.

But I've read in the newspaper there is plenty. Don't you believe the official measures of available oil and predictions of how long it will last?

Not for a second. These figures come from the oil industry itself (remember, the folks you brought you Deep Horizon and the Exxon Valdez?), which is fixated on short-term profit, not the long-term health of civilization, and from the same governments who have lied about far too much for my entire life. Obviously none is to be trusted and all have their own vested economic interests that make lying advantageous to them. They aren't wholly on my side and have plenty of incentive to lie, so I don't believe them.

So who do you believe?

Sorry, but I have no one reliable to offer you in exchange for those unreliable sources. I've read every peak oil/post oil book there is out there, watched all the documentaries, read hundreds of blog posts by everyone from social scientists to actuaries to economists to "recovering oil executives," to the Grand Archdruid, to back-to-the-earth small organic farmers who use horses and hoes instead of tractors, and there is so much panic-mongering and so many unlikely claims, so many crazy cults that don't allow dissent or questions if you wish to clarify the source of their claims, it's hard to know whom to believe. So I don't believe any of them either. (lol.)

Sure, that's because some are clearly nutty, but also because the most rational and well-read of them are predicting details about a future that is unpredictable. I don't know the future, and they don't know. Some (not much) new oil could be discovered. New technologies might emerge to get oil out of tar sands more efficiently, though for now it takes more energy to extract it than it gives in return. (same is true of corn-based ethanol.) Nobody knows the shape of the future, and while someone out there (probably a few gas executives and intelligence agencies) is certain how much gasoline is truly left to be pumped up, they aren't sharing that info.

We do all know this: oil is a finite resource and more than half that ever was has already been burned.

Wikimedia. Oil production and use. Hubbert's Peak in action to 2003

When will oil entirely run out?

Not a clue. After I'm dead and gone, no doubt, and probably before 100 years beyond that has passed, but other than that, without someone first telling us the truth about how much there is, I would not hazard a guess. (Okay, I did hazard a guess in writing this novel series, but Slashed is set about a generation from now, and that seems far too soon for us living in the real, non-fictional world. I didn't want the world unrecognizable, so I chose that time frame and a world political arrangement that had the US dependent on one foreign source that gets shut off in an instant. Artistic license.)

more to come next weekLou Cadlehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-39332673179539069322018-12-23T08:36:00.000-06:002018-12-23T08:36:05.368-06:00Repost: some of what I read as research for the Oil Apocalypse series

1) Anything I could find on small ground-unit tactics, including parts of the US Army field manuals and after-action reports from Australian, US, and British ground troops going back to the 1950s. In a few cases, the reports had a few lines about what it felt like to be there and vivid descriptions that helped me imagine (though I've never been in combat myself) what that might be like. Many thanks to those authors.

2) I admit that I'm no expert on weapons (I've fired a half-dozen, but that's about it), so online manuals and discussions have helped me appear (I hope) something other than a fool on the topic. Friends help, and I'll continue to use my friends for just that purpose as I write the rest of the series. A big thank you goes out to them for this help.

3) Though it's a subtle part of the setting at first, there is a warming trend in the deserts of the southwest US right now and I've extrapolated worse in the near future setting of my novels so that the snow level is higher, the mid-altitudes hotter, and the animal populations are shifting. I've read paleoclimatology edited for the non-professional reader, including The West Without Water, Ingram and Malamud-Roan. I've read climate change books that focus specifically on Arizona and New Mexico, including the beautifully written A Great Aridness by William DeBuys. I revisited some of the ruins of Sinagua and Hohokam people in Arizona where drought and heat drove them away from their home (and which also drove other cultural changes that led to the abandonment of many Indian cities in the 1400s in the southwestern US.) Brian Fagan's books on water and climate and the history of human civilization provided some additional help. As the series progresses, it becomes more of a cli-fi series.

4) Over the past three years, I've read probably everything written for the general audience on peak oil since 1990, including many blogs and debates in comments, ones from the wackdoodle (and the topic seems to attract some of that!) to the sober. I've interviewed a petroleum engineer, viewed every documentary movie on the topic I could find, and if I've missed a single popular book, I'd be shocked. (Thanks to the public library and the concept of free inter-library loans for much of this.) For a quick overview, I might suggest (though it is not without its problems) the film A Crude Awakening.

5) Wikipedia has become a sine qua non for most authors. I probably look at some page there five times a day. WokFI is just one page I looked at one day (for a scene that lasts barely 25 words), but hardly an hour passes that I don't look up something like that. I remember the days when you had to drive to the library and look in books and Periodical Indexes and ask reference librarians (who are terrific people) and call around to find friends of friends of friends in order to find such facts. I donate every year (often twice!) to Wikimedia Foundation because they save me a lot of time and effort.

People tell me I spend too much time and effort on research, but as a reader of novels, I like to think the author is telling me truth about the real world rather than nonsense, and so to me it's a worthwhile use of my time. Besides, I like learning, so it's no chore.Lou Cadlehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-18128136090577403372018-12-16T05:51:00.000-06:002018-12-16T05:51:14.583-06:00Simple tech ain't so simpleMy new series is going to be set long after the apocalypse, and the world (or at least continent) as we know it will have fallen back to a 17th or 16th century world. Wheels, for instance, will be carved, wooden, and "tires" will be of salvaged metal strips. Someone has to do the salvage work. Someone has to carve the wheels.

Not that there will be gasoline engines to pull the contraptions the wheels are on, mind you. Horses or people! Or people just drag the plow or ard themselves, roped into it, rather than like this guy who apparently has some deer-dalmation hybrid pulling his. (Egypt. interesting place. 😏)

My book is partly set in a wooden windmill, where grain is ground for the community. I've been educating myself on the history of windmills, and how complex they grew with people adapting them using nothing but quite simple tools. Lubricated by bee's wax, these machines sawed wood, ground grain, made Holland habitable, made paint, and all sorts of other items for use or trade. I enjoyed musing about the innovations, who came up with them, how long it took to get it "right," and the sort of person who could innovate. Honestly, it took me a week of studying them to figure out the basics!

Consider the design of a millstone, carved by a stone carver or millwright by hand. They must have started with just two stones, millennia ago, and came to this point.The more you think about the design--and read up a little on it--you see what an astonishing bit of technology the design is. It grind the grain, it pushes the grain out, and it doesn't pulverize the grain. The stones are further apart near the center and closer at the edge. The design controls the movement of the grain (eventually down into a hopper.) Most rotate about 2 times per second. Here's one design, but most look something like this.

I'm reading widely, not quite knowing what will be of use. And some of this is based on TV shows I watched years ago, like "Life After People," where they explained how the buildings, bridges, and monuments of our culture will fall apart quickly in the absence of our keeping them up (and having the petroleum to do so). Articles I've been bookmarking for over a year might apply--like the "fruit walls of the 16th century" article I found that shows how to grow fruit by using the heat-storing capacity of southern-facing clay or brick walls to create a warmer microclimate that ripens the fruit sooner and allows you to grow figs in Montreal. (I may not need this, but it's the sort of thing I bookmark and may or may not use.)

My writing process is, as I do this research, it starts to come together for me, characters begin to pop into my mind (Who does the windsmith interact with most often? What is her role in the community? What kind of person could carve millstones for a living?) I simultaneously gain the knowledge I need to make details correct and (I hope) vivid and get to know my cast of characters. When it feels ripe I begin to outline a series or book, though I also have self-imposed deadlines, so it darned well better ripen up on time! :D

Jan 1, I plan to type the words "Chapter 1" and get going on the new series. It's a little unusual for indie post-apocalyptic, as the apocalypse will be rather far in the past, but there are similarities in how it's a survival adventure, and new sort of apocalyptic events will spring up for the characters to deal with. As a minor point, climate change may have been nasty for the Oil Apocalypse characters, but when it changes back for their descendants to a colder world, a new kind of climate change will be just as difficult to adapt to. There are other problems they'll face, but I won't spoil it for you. It's coming in 2019.

Lou Cadlehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-29183614913276718662018-12-09T06:18:00.000-06:002018-12-09T06:18:06.587-06:00Gardening -- thoughts and resourcesI have become obsessed with vegetable and fruit gardening again. This is not the first time in my life, but it has become a more interesting hobby/obsession lately because of the context of post-apocalyptic thinking.

I have a third of an acre lot, and this is close to how much land one person needs to survive on if using intensive planting techniques. I bought my new house in a tiny village where I'm allowed to have hens (and I looked at homes in the country, where I could have had goats, a milk cow, or raised any animal I wished), and that could add to my ability to survive without visiting a grocery store. With a patch of grain grown for the hens, and discards from the veg garden to supplement what they'd find pecking around the yard, I could keep a healthy half-dozen hens. For now, though, I'm focused on expanding the food-producing area of my yard.

I lived in Oregon's Willamette Valley once, and if you don't know of it, it's a perfect gardening locale. I had grape arbors, an apple tree, and a veg garden behind a chicken-wire fence. There were also local small farms that had inexpensive fresh produce as well and pick-your-own strawberry fields. Wild blackberry bushes were all over the place, and it was easy to get as many as you could want for no money. It was a lush, beautiful place, and it seldom froze or got over 90F there. I didn't realize how lucky I was!

In Arizona, I grew mostly tomatoes in containers, had to wrap them with netting or rabbits would eat the flowers, they were so desperate for food, and grew them from seed (plant seeds around Feb 1, water every day, harvest by May. Voila.)

Where I am now, it's a four-season place, and while with a small hoop row cover, you could harvest greens an extra four months of the year, usually May through October are the months for harvesting (or "cropping," if you're living elsewhere). I'm still fighting rabbits, not to mention the bugs that eat the brassicas, but I'm already growing a wider variety of food: tomatoes, peppers, chard, squash, and bok choi comprised my first spring planting. Next year, there will be a good deal more and seven varieties of tomatoes, not just two. Also, I learned some lessons I'll apply next year. And I've grabbed some trellises at yard sales for a dollar here and there that will help me maximize my use of space.

Right now, I'm making leaf mold and piling up various compostable items I can find on two new raised 8 x 4 beds. The idea is, over the winter, the organic bits will compost some more, and in spring I'll add a mix of top soil, peat (or equivalent), well rotted cow manure, and perhaps a bag of commercial compost to the top of each bed, plant into it, cover it with a final layer of more saved leaves from this autumn that act as both mulch and compost, and grow. Every year for the next several, as that base layer shrinks down with composting and the worms having at it, I'll add more organic material.

Here's a video that shows the sort of thing I'm talking about:

And if you want, you don't even need to build the sides of your no-dig "lasagna" bed (though that's carpentry anyone can manage--four boards, twelve screws, and done), but just do it over your grass lawn or weedy lawn and get to planting. Don't walk on it ever (so keep it fairly narrow, probably 4 feet, so you can reach to the middle), and you have a productive soil from year one that only gets better as you add to it.

One of the great things about this system is the soil is so loose, you don't need anything more than a trowel and your hands to harvest. Watch my current favorite youtube gardener, Patrick at One Yard Revolution, harvest his potatoes for soup this year.

I have a set-up for seed-starting so I can harvest earlier (I should be getting lettuce, bok choi, and spinach by the end of April, weather permitting), and keep accumulating weird containers to start seeds in. (toilet paper tubes for plants that hate to be transplanted, for instance, and I can't go to a potluck but that I'm rescuing the plastic top off the disposable cake dish). Best of all, I'm enjoying the learning, planning,and even the work a lot! Now, talk to me when it's 95 degrees F out there and I have to mow, and I'll complain all day long. But for now, I'm having a fun time, and I'm reading books like this about the science of gardening advice.

I hope to never actually need to survive off my own yard, and I'm not ever going to be willing to shoot strangers over them stealing a few potatoes, but perhaps one day I'll be in such dire financial straits I need the back yard garden in order to eat sufficient food to stay alive. The way the world is going, that doesn't seem like a silly thought any more. I'm getting the system in place, and living through my failures while I have the energy and initial cash to start it up. It's not super-pricey, mind you, but the first heirloom seeds before you begin to save them, the first tools, the bit of lumber, and a few bags of compost before your own pile is large enough to provide all you need will set you back around a dollar per every square gardening foot that first year. After that, if you save seeds, you need to spend almost nothing.

If you don't garden, you may not know what you're missing! Start small, with a 7-gallon container or grow bag for a cherry tomato plant, or new potatoes if you don't like tomatoes, and see if you don't think the small effort was worth what you'll be eating as a result.Lou Cadlehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-357990012479252732018-12-02T08:11:00.000-06:002018-12-02T14:13:47.030-06:00Trying to imagine it's 1902Before my family kills me for being so slow about this, I'm currently working on the finishing touches to a family history novel I wrote originally in 1911, based on the life of my great-grandmother Nellie. I've been promising it to my family for a while, and this holiday season, they will finally get it.

SPOILERS BELOW. If you want to read this book, don't read the blog post.

Nellie was born a bastard, as they said back when, of a 17-year-old girl and the farm worker 18-year-old boy, son of a merchant, who was working the farm kitty-cornered on the plat map to my great-great-grandfather's farm. This boy went on to be a merchant himself, owning a clothing store in Chicago until he died. His last name had come down through oral history, and only a bizarre bit of luck in my genealogical research let me know who his family was: he was recorded twice in a single census, in town and on the farm. (Anyone who does genealogical research will know what an incredible stroke of luck this was!)

not the orphanage...but built at a similar time.

Nellie's mom, Clara, went on to move to Indiana, where an older man married her despite the out-of-wedlock child, and she had two more girls by him, and he died. Her poverty grew dire, and quickly. It was a time of transition for America, when the good farming land was mostly claimed by oldest brothers, when steam engines were harvesting the crops and fewer farm workers were needed, when city factories were calling to displaced children of farms with their hard, filthy, and dangerous jobs, and when the working class was trying to find its place.

With women having no rights, really--not the right to own property in some states or to vote or to ask for equal pay or to divorce a man who beat them--Clara was in a deteriorating situation. While some of her brothers had money, none of them stepped up to help her or her other sisters with money problems. One of them, possibly ill with tuberculosis, visited with her daughter Florence and left her with Clara. I have no idea what their arrangement was--did Clara agree to take on this extra mouth to feed? Or did the sister sneak off in the night? No idea.

But it was the straw that broke Clara. She drove all four of the girls to the local orphanage and signed over her parental rights. It was their only shot at surviving.

Carrie Nation in Ann Arbor 1902. Wikimedia Commons

As always, I researched for this book extensively, and the story on orphanages of the turn of the 19th-20th century is fascinating. Fully half of the children there were like Nellie--not orphaned at all, but arriving on the edge of starvation. Their living parents, fighting for jobs in the shifting economy (from agrarian to industrial) felt they had no other choice. They were lucky there was any social service system, I suppose, for there was no food stamps or governmental assistance. All this fell on the private sector, on benefactors, on good orphanage administration finding ways to get merchant-class citizens to donate.

There were terrible orphanages, ruled by child gangs. There were terrible orphanages, where the children continued to starve and were beaten. And there was the one in Indianapolis (which still survives as a child-aid organization!) which was by all accounts, pretty well done.

Nellie was a pretty girl, with dark hair and strong eyebrows, and she was snatched up by a farm couple from a neighboring county and taken away, as an indentured servant. Again, the experience of orphan indentured servants varied around the turn of the century. Most of them were worked half to death.

Nellie was incredibly fortunate. The couple who picked her out was a lovely pair, with three teenage sons, a well-run farm, and only lacking a girl to help out Ma in keeping everyone fed and clothed. Nellie filled that roll. She was not raped or beaten or starved or forced to sleep in the barn, as many of the indentured orphans may have been. She did not have any need to run away from her indentured life, as many of them did.

an indoor bike track, 1902. Whoda thunk?

But she was under contract, not a slave but still very much controlled under the law. And that's all I tell you (except you can guess she survived, because here I am, writing about her!) The book takes us through her time in the orphanage only, right up to when the farm couple took her out the front door and into an unknown future.

In editing this, I'm appreciative of people who write historical fiction for a living. It's not easy! Just one example: I was editing the book and saw the word "toothbrush." Luckily, I thought to question it. Did people own toothbrushes in 1900, the year this is set?

As it ends up, no. Toothbrushes were not commercially available until the 1930s. People might have used a twig, or they might have used baking soda and a square of cloth to clean their teeth. And it would be said 'clean the teeth,' not 'brush the teeth.'

Heavens knows how many similar errors I've missed! I knew not to have a lot of cars driving around. I've been to historic museums of the Midwest to look at household items like kitchen items, pocketbooks, and clothing. I researched extensively Indianapolis's street car system, fares, and how people bought food. I've read dozens of newspapers from Nellie's childhood years at a historical archive in Indiana. Studying the ads helped put me in mind of what life had been like then. But even though I do all this careful work, it's the little details, like a toothbrush (or not) that are sure to trip me up.

I know a few of my regular readers will like this book, but mostly, it's for my family, my fictional account of what Nellie must have felt like and experienced after her mother dropped her off at the orphanage that spring day. She was 11, the eldest. Children were different then, with more responsibilities in a home or farm. What might she have felt? What comforts would she have clung to? Would she love or hate her mother, or both?

I can't know, but I guessed, as novelists do. The book should be out approximately the end of the year.Lou Cadlehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-30800989032164725592018-10-11T05:26:00.001-05:002018-10-11T05:26:29.052-05:00Final Oil Apocalypse book is outOil Apocalypse 5, Desolated, is now available.

A new threat. Join Sierra and Dev as they struggle to survive in a hotter, drier world when a new enemy arrives with promises that ring false, even to desperate ears.

Here are the links

Amazon
Apple/iTunes
Barnes and Noble
Google Play
Kobo
Lou Cadlehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-64888270953857465132018-10-01T14:57:00.001-05:002018-10-01T14:57:15.059-05:00Disaster moviesSometimes, I review disaster movies.

Click on this link to see several reviews, including some that you may have for free via Amazon Prime or Netflix. I suspect there are one or two you've never heard of, and if you're a fan of such movies, you have some new wishlist items!

http://www.loucadle.com/search/label/moviesLou Cadlehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-89963397133140927292018-09-21T05:23:00.000-05:002018-10-01T14:48:40.379-05:00How to follow news about my new releasesThe best way to be informed of when my next book is coming out is to sign up for my mailing list here on this page, in the form to the right.→

After you fill in the form, you should get an email asking you to confirm. If you do not get that, check your spam folder, where it sometimes ends up. Label it "not spam" and continue.

I have always handled my mailing list this way, and I pledge to continue to:

I will never send you newsy notes that clog up your inbox, just the information you signed up to get: new release notices

I will never EVER sell or give the mailing list to anyone, for any reason. Most authors give it to Facebook to advertise their books to similar people. But I wouldn't want that information shared about me, and I will not do that to you. Not ever. I won't be budged on this!

Other options are to follow me as an author on Bookbub, or click +follow on Amazon, if you use it to buy your books. If you're at Barnes and Noble, Kobo, or Apple/iBooks, there is a link in the back of my books that allows you to sign up for a notification when I upload a new book. Or, you can follow this blog, which is chattier than my newsletter mailing, and you'll see when I am nearing a new release and when the book is available for pre-order.

And some people just remember their favorite authors or bookmark their author page at Amazon and check every few months to see if there is anything new. Myself, I'm a bit too confused to remember to do that, so I admire people who can keep that many mental balls in the air. (I seem to be limited to about three objects in my mental juggling! 😉)

Thanks for reading my books. It has been the thrill of a lifetime to have fans interested in my fiction, to know people believe in my characters as much as I do, and to hear when you've stayed up all night finishing a book.

Lou Cadlehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-17642775149246042782018-09-09T19:27:00.000-05:002018-09-09T19:27:04.075-05:00Oil Apocalypse 5 is coming!First, a big welcome to my new fans!

I'm revising Desolated, the fifth and last installment of the Oil Apocalypse series. I so like these characters and, as always, when I have to leave them it's like moving away from dear friends. I'm aiming for an October 10 release.

If you haven't read the series yet, you have until October to catch up.

In the near future, the delivery of petroleum to the US ends because of a foreign war, and the residents of one neighborhood in the hills of Arizona are better equipped than most to survive the collapse of civilization that follows hard on its heels.

But are they prepared enough? Twenty-five years after the end of oil, how many more years are they going to be able to nurse along these clothes and tools? The unpainted houses are leaking--though as there is no rain, this isn't the biggest trouble. That comes in the person of mounted horsemen with weapons too great to withstand.
Lou Cadlehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-4187010497558466192018-09-06T07:30:00.000-05:002018-09-06T07:30:10.419-05:00Gray I on sale + new bookHi! Gray 1 is on sale now, and through the 12th of September, for .99 US everywhere--all countries, and all vendors.

Amazon
Google Play
iBooks/Apple
Barnes and Noble
Kobo

Also, I've written "The End" on the first draft of Oil Apocalypse 5, the final installment in that series. Now I have to revise it, edit it, proofread it, and then my pro proofreader will work on it. It should be out by October 10 or so, with a pre-order period on Amazon and Google Play for sure (the other places, I've never tried a pre-order, so I won't promise you that until I see how it works!)

Thanks for reading and enjoying my books.Lou Cadlehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-78585227621693080322018-08-23T15:01:00.000-05:002018-09-16T11:42:16.081-05:00Links to Lou Cadle author pagesEvery place that sells e- and audio books has most of my books for sale now.

Because I have so many for sale, rather than linking each one individually, here are the links for my author page or an author search. Depending on if they carry audiobooks or not, there should be somewhere between 18 and 22 titles for sale.

The links are:

Amazon

Apple/iBooks

Barnes and Noble

Google Play

Kobo

Walmart

Lou Cadlehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-88429230650472762212018-08-20T12:05:00.000-05:002018-08-20T12:05:13.636-05:00Oil Apocalypse 5 updateThe book is going great. It's so much fun to be back with Dev and Sierra and the gang.

Between that and getting onto Google Play (and figuring that interface out!) I'm super-busy, so I'm keeping it brief today.

And the garden in bearing like crazy. One day of tomatoes (I do like them, and I can make a sauce when it gets even crazier, which it will):

Lou Cadlehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590655850412585098.post-72324486509064434112018-08-10T12:49:00.001-05:002018-08-10T12:49:21.378-05:00Starting on Oil Apocalypse 5Anyone on my mailing list knows this already, but Monday I'm starting on Oil Apocalypse 5, the final book in that series. I don't yet know a title, but I'll decide by Monday.

If all goes well, it could be out as early as October 8-15.

I have a rough outline for it, and I was a bit shocked to realize how many characters I've created. "How am I going to finish off all those stories?" I wondered. But I think I can fit it all in.

It'll be busy keeping up my house, garden, and drafting a novel inside a month, so I won't post here often, just an update every 10 days to tell you if the book is coming along quickly or not.

Thanks for reading! (pic is of #4's cover--I don't have the cover for #5 yet! Can't order it until I have a title.)

Lou Cadlehttp://email@example.com


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Outward Bound, Forest School and Wilderness Days.
We have 'Outward Bound Days' where we discover the hills and fields in the surrounding area and attend our Forest school. We may also visit the beach or go on long walks. We pride ourselves on our outdoor experiences and have our own forest school.
What is so special about our Outward Bound days is that the children get to explore their outdoor environment, become familiar with nature and use natural resources. Outdoor learning and Forest schools come from the Scandinavian education system and is about children building self esteem and independence through exploring and experiencing the natural world. We explore a mixture of skills such as team building activities of building shelters, knot tying, hunting for mini beasts, making mud sculptures and using tools.
Sessions are well planned around the individual needs of the children attending this group.
Learning outside supports the holistic
development of the child.
Health and Fitness
Increased Emotional Well Being
Social Development
Skills and Development
Gaining Knowledge & Understanding
Individualised Learning
Curriculum Links – Outdoor learning and Forest school supports many areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework, National Curriculum, World Wide curriculum and the Every Child Matters agenda.
Forest School Gallery
We're very proud of our Forest School, here are a few pictures of children having fun! If your child attends our Forest school days they will need to be dropped off in the Forest school wear. This will consist of lots of layers, waterproof trousers, jackets and suitable footwear.

subset: commoncrawl


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AboutInnocent yet Guilty ~ Vampiress Miyoko
Hello! I'm JBabealina! I'm Really Quiet. I'm very protective of my little sister and my friends. I am a very caring person. I love reading. I love to write stories, poems, and songs.
I heart Music. I play the piano. I heart art.
My little sister is Yoru-kekkan_night-vein24.
My older brother is Scawn.
P.s. If you have been to my Miyoko-Hime account, It's not me anymore. It was hacked. I can't get on there anymore. JBabealina is my new account.