{"id":433,"date":"2011-07-23T05:09:15","date_gmt":"2011-07-23T13:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/?p=433"},"modified":"2011-07-23T05:09:15","modified_gmt":"2011-07-23T13:09:15","slug":"dinosaur-wars-2-under-re-construction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/23\/dinosaur-wars-2-under-re-construction\/","title":{"rendered":"Dinosaur Wars 2 under re-construction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Counterattack<\/a>Because of increasing interest in my Dinosaur Wars series of stories, I recently began an extensive rewrite of the second book, Dinosaur Wars: Counterattack, to make it ready for release as an ebook. If you’ve already read the paper copy don’t worry, I’m not really changing the story. I’m just cinching it up a bit to make it read faster and hotter.<\/p>\n

Every writer improves with age, just like fine wine or the value of a comic book. So, given my complete faith that the Dinosaur Wars stories have the potential to hit the big time, I think it’s worth the trouble of hammering on the prose and making DW2, as I call it, really sing.<\/p>\n

Like I wrote on this blog before, there are a couple of changes that just have to be made to keep the story abreast of the current and ever-changing state of the science of paleontology. Just like with DW1 before it, I’m renaming the nasty carnivores. The megaraptor is dead! Again! As I explained before, paleontologists have uncovered new skeletal material that suggests the old interpretation of the animal as a member of the maniraptor group, which includes velociraptors and other fierce creatures, was wrong. In fact, some have even suggested that the big hooked claws they’ve dug up were on the animals’ hands, not feet.<\/p>\n

That’s too much confusion in the scientific world for me to continue feeling comfortable about starring the creatures in my books. The new replacement, on the other hand, is a pretty nasty beast itself: utahraptor. New fossils of this animal have confirmed that it is a larger relative of velociraptor, which comes off rather wimpy by comparison to utahraptor, which got up to about racehorse size. Yikes!<\/p>\n

Another change is the inclusion of a couple short scenes were Saurgon gets a starring role. Saurgon is a much more complex villain than I’d portrayed in the original editions of DW1 and DW2. He’s shaping up as I revise him, into a more dangerous and a much more insidious bad guy. If you’ve read the new DW1 Earthfall then you probably recognize him as the commander of the death beam from the moon, Gar’s arch rival for control of the armies of the Kra, and humanity’s worst enemy. Stay tuned. He’s got a new role as High Priest of the Cult of Wealth and a new costume: a glittering suit of armor plumed with golden feathers, not to mention that he’s become a blond, aryan supremacist kind of creature. He’s a real trouble maker, sharing traits with the great villains of all time including Darth Vader and James Bond’s nemesis, Goldfinger.<\/p>\n

More changes are in the offing, so stay tuned. I should have the new edition done sometime in the next couple of months and I hope to release it as an ebook in the mid to late fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m right in the middle of the process of revising the second book of the Dinosaur Wars series, Counterattack, to make it ready to appear in ebook format this fall. As if the story wasn’t already loaded with action, adventure, and romance, I’ve decided to crank up the heat a little more. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,59],"tags":[35,66,53,47],"class_list":["post-433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dinosaur-country","category-real-science","tag-dinosaur-wars","tag-ebook","tag-mystery","tag-utahraptor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":437,"href":"https:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions\/437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomas-hopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}