Making Progress

Are we done with The Great Salvation of 1976? We think we're done with The Great Salvation of 1976. 

In the meantime, we got The Great Nuclear War of 1975 MS back. We have contacted the formatting and cover design people.

Here's the back cover (rough):

The Great Nuclear War of 1975.

In a Different 1975…

Superpower relations breakdown and a nuclear war all but annihilates the Soviet Union and devastates the United States.

100 million Americans are dead

After Washington is destroyed, a smalltown judge delivers the oath of office to Vice President Rockefeller.

Surviving American forces on land, sea and in the air await orders from the new president.

Americans across the nation climb out of the rubble looking for a homeland that no longer exists.

In surviving capitals across the globe, governments ponder the implication of a world without superpowers.

Thoughts? Remarks? 

Below, a deleted scene:

Matt heard the trucks again. He turned around and saw a police cruiser, lights flashing, and a jeep coming up the highway from Pennsylvania. Behind that was a line of trucks. Matt stood off to the shoulder and watched the convoy pass. Four soldiers sat in the jeep, M-16s in their laps. A half dozen trucks packed with West Virginia coal motored past. It was the third such convoy he’d seen that day and not the last.

He walked on.

Matt stayed in St Clairsville for three days digging latrines and graves in exchange for housing in an elementary school and a couple of meals a day. He even bought some venison jerky from a hunter with cash he’d packed back in Rhode Island and all but forgotten about since the autumn.

‘The president says we’re supposed to use cash,’ the hunter insisted.

‘Glad I kept it,’ Matt replied as he peeled off a ten and handed to the Hunter.

Matt counted the mile markers as he walked west along Interstate 70. At mile seven a Federal truck convoy heading west drove past. At nine a civilian pickup drove up alongside. ‘This is Franklin up here. Where you headed?’

‘Not Franklin,’ Matt said.

‘That’s all I needed to hear.’ He pointed west. ‘You can get some help at the state camp up in Zanesville.’

‘Thanks.’

At mile twelve he passed a large group of people coming east. The mixed group of men women and children all looked about like Matt did dressed in a mélange of loose fitting clothes. Several carried rifles. He walked over to them and waved. ‘Where you folks headed?’

A man with a bushy beard and prematurely graying black hair said, ‘Pittsburgh. I don’t suppose it’s still there.’

‘Nu-uh,’ Matt shook his head, ‘I been through it.’

‘Where you headed?’

‘Indiana. know anything about it?

‘We came from Toledo.’

‘What’s in Pittsburgh for you?’

‘We’re not going to Pittsburgh. Heading for West Virginia to find work. Coal mines.’

‘Yeah, I saw some of that.’

‘What’s in Indiana?’

‘Family.’ Matt nodded up the road, ‘What’s it like up in Toledo?’

‘About like Pittsburgh it sounds like. No one gave us much trouble. There’s a lot of us, though. Don’t know how a lone man like you will do. We saw plenty of police and army, though.’

‘Okay.’

‘Well good luck.’