Privateers for the Crown #1 The Graduation of Ensign Dance Hollydon

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Privateers for the Crown  #1  The Graduation of Ensign Dance Hollydon is the first installment of a new project of mine. It is a serial, science fiction, ebook series that Star Wars devotees will recognize easily.

Ensign Dance Hollydon was a brand new graduate of the Naval Academy of the Crown Commonwealth of Margra. She hadn't, however, accepted her first post-graduation assignment yet. She had greater aspirations than being another anonymous newbie on one of the Crown's massive starships. She wanted something more exciting and challenging than that. Things looked bleak for her to get her way until she was recruited by Navy Intelligence for a dangerous and life-changing assignment. She became the Navy envoy on one of the privateer vessels employed to harass the enemy: The Stella Avalon. She jumped at the chance and was even more excited about her assignment when she found out her Captain was Tok Barmer, the most notorious Crown privateer of them all. 
The story is 10,300 words long and can be easily read in one sitting. 

One other important feature of the story is that it is FREE!
It is a Google Doc and can be viewed and downloaded at this link:CLICK HERE FOR YOUR FREE EBOOK


This book is rate R and is intended for the personal enjoyment of adult science fiction / romance readers sixteen years of age and older. It contains mature adult situations that are sexual in nature. It also contains adult science fiction violence and profanity. All characters depicted in adult situations are written to be at least eighteen years of age and older.

©2019 Darrell T. Grob    All rights reserved.

Any similarities with any persons or entities, living or dead, fictitious or real, is strictly coincidental.

Cover designed by Darrell T. Grob with images that are, to the best of his efforts, determined to be in the public domain.

My Beliefs

No one is as powerful as someone who is motivated beyond reason to succeed.

A Prius is just as fast as a Ferrari in city traffic.

How much power and control you could gain is not as important as what you do with the power and control you already have.

First and foremost, each individual has a responsibility to positively impact their own personal sphere of influence. Only after mastering that does one move on to somebody elses.

Knowledge for its own sake is worthwhile, but application begets wisdom.

Sometimes the best thing to say or do is nothing.

Progress sometimes takes a long, boring time, sometimes quickly but manageable, and sometimes in cataclysmic suddenness; you need to know the difference.

The price of progress is the pain of change. - Hopkins

You don't have to hit me upside the head with a baseball bat too many times for me to figure out I don't like getting hit upside the head with baseball bat.

The biggest disrupters of life are 'more' and 'less', or in other words abundance and scarcity. Static is, by nature, stable but stagnant. More or less of anything: money, time, opportunity, labor, resources, people, ideas, products, anything -- disrupts the status quo and causes upheaval and causation, either negative or positive and sometimes both at the same time.

An apology without genuine repentance (that is with regret, remorse, resolve to change one's behavior) is just a fancy way of asking for a life-mulligan.

The Four Ps: Propose, Plan, Prepare, Produce.

The Three Cs: PersistenCy, ConsistenCy, FrequenCy

Dreams, wishes, and hopes are only lofty ideas, beautiful, desirable clouds. Goals have a numerical significance that can be followed and measured, and they always lead to results.

Rumor mongering, insult slinging, and personal ridicule are tactics of those who do not have a sound understanding of what they believe. They are the last resort of intellectually weak-minded people. And to use them first is a sign of intellectual and emotional immaturity.

The only absolute truth in Earthly human existence is simple arithmetic. 2 + 2 always equals 4. But more complex thought, including advanced mathematics, is open to personal interpretation and opinions. 

Talk is cheap. Accomplishment is priceless.

The New ACTIVE Living Experience

#skipperdarrell

I don't know about where you live, but out here in Denver there's a boom in apartment and condo construction. It seems that a lot of so-called “55+ Active Living Communities” are being built. We took a tour of one with Lisa's older sister who is of an age (70) that she is starting to think about that kind of arrangement. We discovered that for a butt-load of money each month for rent ($3,500.00) and a $150,000.00 entry fee (I am not kidding) residents got a two-bedroom apartment, a dining room that only serves dinners a couple of evenings a week (and they have to be paid for out of pocket), and some of the typical elderly activity rooms, such as a card and jigsaw puzzle room.

That was it. 

It was very nice, but there was no medical care or even access to doctors and nurses. There was no shuttle bus to the nearest Safeway store. There were no meals except for one or two special weekly meals. Mind-numbing Muzak played over the building's sound system at that perfect volume to not jostle anyone's being. In many ways, it was no different than living in any other apartment except for the hype and the big price tag. It was a lovely place to get old, at least for the generation prior to mine.

It did get me thinking that my generation is going to cause quite a kerfuffle when we retire. We're not going to be quiet and calm. We're not going to be sedated and wait for our great exit from this terrestrial realm. Nope, nope, nope, and nope. We second-wave baby boomers didn't listen to quiet and soothing music. We were raised on The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and a million other really loud bands. And we ARE active. We never enjoyed just sitting around unless we were stoned out of our minds listening to Dark Side of the Moon or Wish You Were Here.

Active living to us is more than walking around the hallways of a retirement center. We're going to revive and relive our college dormitory, fraternity and sorority days. We're going to party like we always have. Instead of a pinochle room, we want foosball, pinball, poker, pool and a big screen TV with an endless supply of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. To make things even more fun, our generation is going to turn these retirement centers into no-tell-motels. (Strip Bingo, anyone?)

There will be banging on my apartment door. (Knock, knock, knock) “Mister Grob, this is Cheryl from the front desk again.”

I open the door. “Hi, Cheryl. What's up?”

“It's the music again.” Cheryl has made this speech before. “You have to watch it, Mr. Grob. Miss Jensen is complaining again.”

“Am I playing it too loud?” I ask.

“No, it's not that,” replied Cheryl, “but she'd really like it if you'd play something other than Little Feat or The Doobie Brothers for awhile. She likes it when you play AC/DC.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, “especially You Shook Me All Night Long.” I start laughing because according to common knowledge, Miss Jensen does, in fact, like to be shook all night long.”

Cheryl hears a woman's voice from inside my apartment. “Darrell, baby, come back to bed.”

I said, “Cheryl if there's nothing else, my wife is calling me. I'm … you know … busy.” And she left.

Yes, 55+ Active Living Centers are here and they're going to proliferate. But I don't think the developers of these pleasure palaces are going to know what's going to hit them when my generation starts populating them. We spell 'ACTIVE' like this: A C D C S E X. Oh, and pot is legal our here. That will add an interesting dynamic.