Greg Camp

Edward Bulwer-Lytton had his character, Cardinal Richelieu, declare that the pen is mightier than the sword. But the Beach Boys added, in "Student Demonstration Time," that the writing utensil is no match for a gun. All of them are tools, as are books and songs, and effective use requires knowledge and practice. Thus, submitted for your approval, dear fellow authors, is a guide to firearms. The subject can be daunting, and many in the creative arts-Hollywood executives come to mind-make elementary errors. The information provided herein will save you from that embarrassment, allowing you to engage in gun play and other ballistic mayhem in your stories with wild abandon, while still hitting your rhetorical targets.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn. The opening line of Chaucer's poem is one that every person who lives by a skill understands. The particular craft that concerns the speaker is personified as Love, one that he is told that he has lost the taste for, as a sick man loses the sense of sweet and bitter things. But by the act of devotion in writing about what he is shown, he hopes to enter into Love's service. For the contemporary reader, the text is offered in both the original Middle English and in the modern version of the language, along with a guide to our understanding of how Chaucer would have pronounced his own words. This short work illustrates Chaucer's humor and presents an approachable example of a visio or dream vision and Medieval allegory. It is ideal for students starting out on a journey through the period's literature as well as for anyone wanting to enjoy a tale of squabbling characters yearning to win the affection of a noble lady.

Henry Dowland is a Confederate vetern, scarred by war and grieving the murder of his family at the hands of Sherman's soldiers. While fleeing his demons, he rescues a boy, Joe, from the Willis gang, a band of outlaws running liquor to the workers on the Transcontinental Railroad. Joe reminds Dowland of himself, a lost soul searching for home. But what good can two rootless wanderers do for each other? More than watching each other's back, that is, and that might have to be enough. Caught between the Willises and the Great Salt Lake, Dowland and Joe have to fight their way clear to saving a town. . . And themselves.

E pluribus unum, words that served as this nation's motto for much of our history-out of many, one. And yet today, as the map of U. S. House seats after the 2014 election shows, we feel more divided than we have in a long time. Whether we have marriage, religion, privacy, or speech in mind, the illusory promise of safety has seduced many in our nation to believe that greater controls will bring greater security. As with other rights, so with guns. In many ways, gun rights are symbolic of all the others. A leader who genuinely trusts the people with firearms is someone more inclined to accept that power flows from the people to the government, not the other way. But with Republicans and Democrats less and less willing to share common ground on essential liberties, rights are divided among the special interests believed to value them piece by piece until each one is easier to reduce, restrict, and ultimately remove. The purpose of this book is to get gun owners and others sympathetic to the cause of rights to see past partisan squabbling to the deeper truth that as Benjamin Franklin observed at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, "We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." Each one, teach one, or the rights we value will fade into a forgotten past.

Ordered out on a scientific expedition, Captain Thomas Cochrane of the Centauri Royal Navy would rather fight pirates instead of hunting floating slime in the atmosphere of a gas giant. But his enemy and former superior, Captain Shelley, is hatching plots against him, and his admiral wants him safely away. Natural philosopher, Bertrand Lile, struggles to balance his duties to Tom, his friend and captain, and to Concordia, a society of secrets, some that may tear apart the Centauri Empire. What he discovers on the mission will force him to choose between force and friendship, between the world he knows and the world he hopes to build. In this second book of the Concordia Series, old certainties fall away, comrades turn to betrayal, and the foundations of everything Tom and Bertrand have believed in get shaken. They must risk everything on one gamble for a future they can only glimpse. No matter what they desire, if they want peace, they have to prepare for war.

Every schoolchild learns that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren were the first human beings to walk on the Moon on the 20th of July 1969. But what if they were not the first? In the year 2037, Robert Smith knows a secret, a plot hidden in plain sight on the face of the Moon with roots going back to the Cold War. If he cannot stop what has been set in motion, the balance of powers on Earth will be thrown into chaos. The fate of two worlds hanging by slender threads, Smith must pull in Patricia Denning, a mining engineer, and Jacob Goldfarb, a Lunar politician, to his plans. Whether drawing breath in the vacuum of space, drawing out schemes to save the Earth and Moon, or drawing together in human connection, the answer lies in a draft of moonlight.

Five years in the Centauri Royal Navy has earned Lieutenant Thomas Cochrane the disapproval of his superiors. And when his captain dies in an accident that Tom is unable to prevent, the young officer finds himself without a posting and without a future. Unless he can make a destiny of his own. Bertrand Lile spends his days in the shadows, obeying the orders of a clandestine society while harboring his own secret, his belief that a distant enemy is weaving its tentacles into the heart of the Centauri Empire. But his time to prove this is running short. This first book in the Concordia Series starts the friendship of Tom and Bertrand set against a culture satisfied with its own traditions. Caught between pirates who want to kill them and their supposed comrades who could end their careers, they seek to save their worlds that do not yet know of the looming dangers. And they find that no matter what the destination, the journey has no easy road.