Available at Amazon May 30

I've been checking Amazon each day in anticipation that  Bug Out: The Complete Plan for Escaping a Catastrophic Disaster Before It's Too Late would at any time be listed as "in stock" and available to ship.  As I posted here earlier this week, I received my shipment of author's copies from the publisher's warehouse on Monday.  Maybe I was being too impatient, but I thought Amazon would be shipping books sometime this week.  Today the Amazon page for the book was just updated to state that it will be in stock May 30, which is Sunday.  I know a lot my readers here have pre-ordered the book and I hate to see you kept waiting to receive it, but at least I know it won't be much longer.

And those of you who have been promised review copies will be getting those soon too, but it will likely be sometime next week before they are shipped.

In the meantime, the book is available in electronic format right now in Amazon's Kindle store.  If you don't have a Kindle reading device, you can download the free Kindle for PC (or Mac) application.  I've been using this for awhile on my laptop, as a friend sent me a wealth of out-of-print sailing and adventure books that were scanned to PDF files.  I intend to buy the smaller, Kindle 2 reader at some point as well.  While I don't think it will ever replace paper books, it will be a useful way to carry an extensive library of references and cruising guides in a compact and lightweight space when I start sailing again.  One of these smaller units could even fit in a bug-out bag, and used sparingly, the battery would last a long time without a recharge.  The Kindle version of Bug Out is here:

Bug Out: The Complete Plan for Escaping a Catastrophic Disaster Before It's Too Late

What's the Truth About the BP Oil Spill?

 
Here in south Mississippi and other areas along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, this on-going nightmare of gushing oil spewing unchecked into the waters of our very backyard is on nearly everyone's mind.  It's especially hard-hitting to me, as a person who has kayaked and camped along hundreds of miles of this coast from Louisiana to Key West and sailed thousands of coastal and offshore miles upon these waters.

For awhile, I tried to keep hoping that the problem would be quickly resolved and fears of a worst-case scenario would prove unfounded.  Now it's becoming more evident every day that this is a disaster of far greater magnitude than BP, the government and most of the media would have us believe.   So just how bad is it, and how bad can it possibly get?  What will the long-term effects be?

I've been asked by a couple of magazine editors that I write for to report on the impacts in my local area - along the Mississippi coast - and I wrote one early piece for SAIL magazine a couple of weeks ago when oil slicks were expected to wash ashore on Mississippi's pristine barrier islands.  At that time the oil remained offshore though, and was pushed west by strong winds to where it is now inundating the fragile marshlands of south Louisiana.  Here in the Mississippi area, it's too early to tell what's going to happen, but one thing's for sure, if the new efforts being made tonight and tomorrow fail to plug up the leaks, and some other successful solution doesn't come through soon after, life as we know it along the Gulf of Mexico could be changed forever.

A massive die-off of marine life is almost certain, what is uncertain is how far-reaching that die-off will be and how it will affect every other thing both natural and man-made along the shores of the Gulf.  Some of the scenarios presented by the scientists that study such things are grim indeed.  Survival Acres blog has been providing thoughts on these predictions and warnings and posting links to a variety of articles detailing them.  Some of these may seem far-fetched, but then again, we are in unknown territory here with such an unprecedented event.   Could something as unexpected as a massive oil well blowout like this precipitate a massive exodus from an entire region of the United States?  To ponder some of these possibilities, check out this post and some of the embedded links:  The Dead Zone

Bug Out Has Arrived!

The big brown truck just pulled up about an hour ago and delivered two cases of my new book - my official "author's copies" of  Bug Out: The Complete Plan for Escaping a Catastrophic Disaster Before It's Too Late

What a rush - seeing an idea I had just over a year ago now transformed into a finished product!  Writing a book is a lot like another passion of mine - building boats.  In many ways it's similar to transforming a pile of wood and jugs of epoxy into an almost living, floating vessel.  With the boat, if I did my job, I'll have a useful vehicle to take me out on the water in safety and style.  As for the book - well, I can only hope that it will prove useful to you, the reader.  Time will tell as it makes it's way to you via the bookstores and places like Amazon.  My reason for writing it in the first place was to share the knowledge I've gained during all the time I've "wasted" messing around outdoors on trails, backroads, rivers, lakes and coastlines.  This is not my first book, but certainly one of the most exciting writing projects I've embarked on.

Those of you who have been promised review copies will be getting them as soon as books arrive at my publicist's office in California, and she gets them labeled and shipped out.  I spoke with her today and they have not made it there yet, as the printer's warehouse is closer to Mississippi than the West Coast.

You can still pre-order the book at Amazon (above link) and get the low price guarantee of $10.17 (compared to the retail of $14.95), now with the assurance that the book has actually been printed (see photo above!) and that you won't have to wait long to get one.