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Fantastic website: http://www.baptismsite.com. All about the location where Christians believe (rightly, IMO) that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. Jordan made it into a national park and the UN declared it a world heritage site, so Connor can visit it. He'll be coming from Israel, so I still need to research the logistics. Too bad the Jordan River no longer runs by there (the river shrunk and its route changed over 2000 years).

Thank you, njc. The reason I say buy and hold is that I don't like trading in and out of stocks. Like most, I'm not good at it. A better term might be set it and forget it. That's why most of my money is in index funds. I also got bitten there, too. Moved some money into Vanguard's S&P 500 index fund two weeks ago as part of rebalancing my portfolio in preparation for rising interest rates. It got clobbered, too, along with most of the market.

Currency fluctuations are going to be my biggest headache over the next 15+ years. When I moved to the US twenty years ago, the Canadian dollar was worth only $0.60 US. At that rate, I could have retired back in Canada very quickly. Unfortunately, the CDN dollar eventually became worth even more than the US dollar. It fell back to $0.70 US just as I was moving back. It's gone up 10% in one year, so my US disability is worth that much less than it was in 2016.

Although house prices are out of reach for me in Calgary (and they're obscene in Vancouver and Toronto), I may buy a mobile home here eventually. TBD.

I use Vanguard high dividend index funds for most of the money, but wanted specific stocks as well to buy and hold long term.

My retirement account is getting killed by the looming trade war. I bought Boeing the day before Trump announced the first tariffs. Down 12% since then. I console myself with the fact that no one ever went broke buying their stock. Of course that used to be true of GE, too.

Note to self: Seabrass says to be sure to give the archangels flaws and the possibility of failure.

You did indeed. Thank you. I just received a mountain of regular reviews from Andrew Hixson for the beginning of v3. He loved the two opening chapters, including the one spread over three different time periods that introduces Joseph and Apollo at two ages each, and introduces God and Admiral St. James's ghost. He didn't like the Great Collapse of Civilization at all. Thought it was filler. It's probably because it comes too early in the story (K's complaint), but the Galaxinet articles have to occur in a certain order among the early chapters, and I'm keeping all three until my reviewers beat me to death. Dr. Ess rocks! Nor did he like Apollo's opening chapter in the gym fighting Kobayashi. Not sure what was wrong with that one.

Do cheetahs roar?

If you have a moment, can you please check out my Archangel Syndrome post on the last page of my Galaxy Tales thread. I'd be interested to know what you think of my way to put some distance between the story and God.

Thanks
Dirk

K, did you mean that I should just name the voices Archangel? Giving them distinct names eliminates the problem of who is conversing with Apollo/Joseph in chapters where they appear together. I've had reviewers tell me that it confuses them because they expected God to be talking to both in those chapters, which is understandable but breaks POV.

v4 notes
What about this? A new mental illness, called Archangel Syndrome, regularly appears among the galaxy's ruling elite in which the afflicted hear archangels promising galactic peace. It's believed to be caused by too much inbreeding among ruling families. The real cause is Dr. Jorge B. Francis messing with the past. There is, of course, no known cure. The afflicted are encouraged to resist the archangels. Apollo naturally assumes he has the condition and keeps the archangel a secret since it could get him killed by his family, who subscribe to the motto "Only the mentally fit shall rule!" Joseph first hears an archangel (and his dead grandmother) at age four, before he knows about the syndrome. They encourage him to keep it a secret. When he does finally hear about the syndrome, he decides, based on his Christian background, that it's not really an illness, just God trying to save the galaxy. Apollo will hear the Archangel Gabriel and Joseph will hear the Archangel Michael. Dr. Francis will need technology to pull this off, otherwise he would have to impersonate all of the archangels and dead characters himself, around the clock. That's a better job for a computer. Hence the AI that serves as a galactic news anchor.

Since there is no useful link between Aussie from the prologue and the news anchor AI, I'll probably remove Aussie from the story completely, which eliminates the nonsense from the prologue and some of the excessive violence. Sorry, Janet. I just need a name for the AI. It should either suggest a link to the archangels (e.g., Angel) and/or a link to Dr. Francis (e.g., Francis).

Anyone have a better name?

Hmm. There's a wrinkle related to taking God out of my Galaxy Tales books. Young Joseph and young Apollo both know who the Christian God is (for Apollo, it's through his mother, a Christian), and hearing a voice claiming to be God is not uncommon depending on your type of mental illness and the severity of it. Naturally, prophets of old also heard God. That meant I had an actual mystery: Are the boys really hearing God or is it all in their imagination?

But what reader is going to suspend disbelief when two potentially ill cousins both start hearing Saint Michael the Archangel, albeit starting at different times in their lives? Doesn't work. Even with two different archangels, it seems highly unlikely that two mentally ill boys growing up light years apart in entirely different societies would both start hearing archangels when there are so many other major biblical characters to choose from (e.g., Adam, Moses, David, etc.). Theoretically, Apollo could hear a Roman god, but that breaks the story completely, and I'm targeting a Christian audience.

One possibility is that Joseph and Apollo are in contact over Galaxinet from a young age, and Joseph (who is older) mentions St. Michael because that's who he's secretly hearing, and then Apollo starts to hear an archangel, too, but maybe a different one. That would allow me to use a simple, catchy series title like War of the Archangels or something similar. I don't know how to pull it off, though, since chapter one (their first appearance) is already complicated with a fast forward through three time periods, four ages for the boys, and the introduction of the supernatural being(s) for both. I had a bitch of a time making all of that understandable. Now throw in a war of words in the interstellar Royals Forum when the reader barely knows who they are, how they're related, and what age they are relative to each other while they're arguing.

Thoughts?

Technically, that's just editing in the text window, even though you deleted text. There is a separate menu option to completely delete a chapter. I believe it's under the Content tab of the Publish Wizard. I almost never do that, preferring to make the old chapter inactive and adding a new chapter with the same chapter number, but with an incremented version number. Only the owner of the portfolio can then see the inactive chapters (and their reviews), whereas your readers only see the active chapters. Although editing the text requires no additional points, the chapter also doesn't reappear on the home pages of everyone on the site. Adding a new chapter with an incremented version number requires points and makes the new chapter reappear on everyone's home page.