{"id":2794,"date":"2022-03-05T08:44:41","date_gmt":"2022-03-05T16:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/?p=2794"},"modified":"2023-08-12T05:32:05","modified_gmt":"2023-08-12T13:32:05","slug":"a-14000-year-old-murder-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/2022\/03\/05\/a-14000-year-old-murder-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"A 14,000-Year-Old Murder Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Dry-Falls-Dry900.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2795\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Talk about an exotic setting for a mystery! The desert cliff shown here was once a waterfall three hundred times the size of Niagara that roared with the entire volume of the mile-wide Columbia River. This rampart is just one of two great circular cataracts that existed in Eastern Washington during the Ice Age. Part of the second can be seen to the right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">People who lived here must have been in awe of its thunderous roar. Native Americans of a long-forgotten tribe had only recently crossed from Siberia into North America. And where there are people, can murder lurk far behind?<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Dry-Falls-Wet900.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2796\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My latest novel, Megaflood, is set against this 14,000-year-old backdrop. And as if that weren&#8217;t dramatic enough, the Ice Age animals that lived alongside the people were equally stupendous. Giant pachyderms came in three sizes: huge (the Wooly Mammoth), colossal (the Mastodon), and titanic (the Columbian Mammoth), the last of which made an elephant look like a pup. And that\u2019s not to mention the Giant Ground Sloth and the Short-Faced Bear, which were elephant-sized as well. Let\u2019s see, did I leave out anybody? Oh. Yeah. How about ravenous Cave Lions and Sabertooth Cats? Me-YOW!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"313\" src=\"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Ice-Age-Flood-Map900-e1646498591855.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2797\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was my task as author to bring all this astonishing science and history into focus while telling the tale of two young people, outcasts in this foreboding landscape due to their forbidden love. Fleeing a wrathful chieftain, they plunged straight into even greater danger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is one of my most ambitious books to date, weaving an intricate path from modern archeologists exhuming a body from a cranberry bog in Chinook, Washington, to an ancient saga where heroic characters move through a world of sweeping beauty and face perilous threats, all in true-to-life detail. <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/LandingPageMegaflood.html\" target=\"_blank\">Megaflood<\/a>&nbsp;is available for pre-order and will be released on May 1, 2022. So, if a mystery\/romance\/action\/adventure story suits your reading preferences, why not click over to Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, Apple Books or other outlets and&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/LandingPageMegaflood.html\" target=\"_blank\">reserve<\/a>&nbsp;your copy today? At $3.99, it\u2019s $1 off the list price. You won\u2019t be charged until the book ships, and you\u2019ll be among the first to get it. Furthermore, by pre-ordering, you\u2019ll help me make the day-of-release book sales more impressive to Amazon\u2019s computers, which in turn will cause them to show the book to more potential customers. Thanks for your help, and I hope you enjoy the story!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Love and betrayal in a time of epic floods. <a href=\"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/2022\/03\/05\/a-14000-year-old-murder-mystery\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2794"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2890,"href":"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794\/revisions\/2890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}