"Yamato-Class No. 111 - IJN Kii" fiction

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CmdrKeen
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Joined: Mon Feb 06, 2012 5:34 am

"Yamato-Class No. 111 - IJN Kii" fiction

Post by CmdrKeen »

Since it's a fiction e-book this seemed like the best place to post.

My new fiction book "Yamato-Class No. 111 - IJN Kii" is live in the Amazon Kindle Store and has been enrolled in KDP Select.
As such, it will be available as a free download for five days, from 12-21 to 12-25, as a promotional offer.
I am unfamiliar with Amazon's Kindle 'free offer' specifics, and apologize that I can only point to the actual location of the e-book on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H21NUKC.
A 'real paper' book is planned for a little later on sometime next year.
Also, I do not know if it is available at all Amazon locations worldwide including Japan or not, but would assume it is.

In brief; it is a war romance set in WWII, or the Pacific War, and it does not glorify war, nor does it vilify Americans or Japanese.
I don't want to unintentionally give out any spoilers, so I'm not sure what would be saying too much.
But I can say it describes how two allegedly unfinished BBs, Yamato-class Hull Number 111, which was to have been named IJN Kii, and Iowa-class Hull Number BB-66, which was to have been named USS Kentucky, were actually finished and end up meeting each other in a knock-down drag-out battle to the finish.

The Amazon web page gives this brief excerpt from the story:
"La Palma is an unstable mountain waiting to fall, perched high above the Atlantic and standing right at the edge of a tipping point. Ready to let go at any moment. We are here to give it a nudge."
—Captain Takada, Commanding Officer of IJN Kii.

IJN Kii's code name is 'Kyubi-no-kitsune', Japanese for 'Nine-Tail Fox', an allusion to Captain Takada's crafty bag of tricks in eluding a global USN dragnet out to hunt him and his 'nine-tailed' (9) 18.1-inch gun Yamato-class battleship down before he can complete his top secret mission.

The Dedication was written by Richard 'Dick' Landgraff, who gave me technical advice, but any errors of omission or technical mistakes are my own for which I take full responsibility.

The last page is a big 'thank you' to a few people who also helped me out, and Dick Landgraff's picture and bio is also in there.

So it'll be there, if you think you or someone you know might be looking for a free read during the winter holiday shopping season.

Thank you. :D
CmdrKeen
Junior Member
Posts: 16
Joined: Mon Feb 06, 2012 5:34 am

Re: "Yamato-Class No. 111 - IJN Kii" fiction

Post by CmdrKeen »

Starting tomorrow, 'Yamato-Class No. 111 - IJN Kii' will be available as a free promo download for 5 days at this link;
http://www.amazon.com/Yamato-Class-No-1 ... ss+No.+111

Another new book I co-authored with Yumiko Ichihara, 'Deep Snow - Narrow Path', will also be available as a free promotional download for 5 days starting tomorrow;
http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Snow-Narrow- ... arrow+Path

An earlier book, 'The Racing Angelettes', will be available as a free promo download from about 12-27 to 1-1-14;
http://www.amazon.com/The-Racing-Angele ... Angelettes

Thank you.
CmdrKeen
Junior Member
Posts: 16
Joined: Mon Feb 06, 2012 5:34 am

Re: "Yamato-Class No. 111 - IJN Kii" fiction

Post by CmdrKeen »

As Author of the book, I rewrote the rather tame promotional blurb that appears on the book's Amazon Kindle page to read as follows:
((begin))
'Yamato-Class No. 111 – IJN Kii'

"La Palma is an unstable mountain waiting to fall, perched high above the Atlantic and standing right at the edge of a tipping point. Ready to let go at any moment. We are here to give it a nudge."
—Captain Takada, Commanding Officer of IJN Kii.

As C.O.of IJN Kii, Rear Admiral Takada's top secret mission is to bombard and trigger the collapse of Isla de La Palma's entire western slope. If he succeeds, a solid block of almost 500 cubic kilometers of rock will break loose and descend in one chunk at nearly free-fall speed into oceanic waters almost 4,000 meters deep, and create a giant ripple of water 45 kilometers wide and rising 1,500 meters into the sky.
Fanning out, this ripple will fade to invisibility as it crosses the Atlantic at the speed of a rocket, only to slow and rise again and become the genesis of a cluster of 450 foot mega-tsunamis striking America's East Coast from Maine to Florida.

Whatever of America's sea and air power isn't clustered around Japan, is hugging the Eastern Seaboard in anticipation of a more direct attack by IJN Kii, and therefore out of position.
The only ship anywheres near the vicinity is Iowa-class battleship USS Kentucky, initially sent to the Canary Islands on a mission of gunboat diplomacy to scare off a Soviet Russia attempt to gain a naval base foothold there, and just on its way back from Tenarife Island a few miles to the east of La Palma.
Totally mystified, the initial suspense of Captain Graysmark, C.O. of USS Kentucky, is complete, as his Kingfisher scout plane returns with photos of IJN Kii firing a broadside at the west coast of La Palma.
He cannot possibly imagine why the Japanese battlewagon is bombarding that island. There's nothing there of any military significance. It's just a Spanish resort, and a haven for wild canary birds.
Then one of his men produces a slide rule and a note pad, and says, "Ah, sir, I think you should take a look at this—" and starts crunching the numbers.
If the island collapses, it will be the end of America as a global super-power for the next 10 years, and the complete reversal and loss of WWII.

The modified Zeros were Captain Takada's innovation. Their landing gear and carrier arresting apparatus had been removed, for a considerable weight savings and performance increase. They could be splashed down in the sea and recovered by the stern derrick, and flushed out and reused again and again. The mission would not last forever, and there would not be enough time for corrosion to take effect before its conclusion.

Author Roland Cheney was a Naval Air Rework Facility Helicopter and Aircraft Sheetmetal Mechanic, and puts his two decades of professional expertise to work in crafting this action-packed and finely honed story of a final desperate mission by the Imperial Japanese Navy to turn the war around and drag victory out of the jaws of defeat.
((end of promotional text))
CmdrKeen
Junior Member
Posts: 16
Joined: Mon Feb 06, 2012 5:34 am

Re: "Yamato-Class No. 111 - IJN Kii" fiction

Post by CmdrKeen »

Here's an update on the real situation with La Palma;
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/strong-q ... low_122013

Okay first of all please excuse the dumb website name, and I personally don't like it being implied or suggested to me that I'm some kind of a freak chimera cross between a sheep and a 'peeple', I don't normally go there, and I only link there b/c of the La Palma volcanic article about renewed concerns and warnings of its eventual collapse.

Secondly, the reason I'm posting is the article's thrust, which is that Isla de La Palma in the Canary Islands is mentioned in a secondary link here;
http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~ward/papers/La_Palma_grl.pdf
as being in danger of a sympathetic collapse, if the new volcanic island at the souther tip of adjacent El Hierro island just a few miles to the south decides to throw a conniption fit.

I've seen any number of 'terrorists steal nuke' stories and pc games, and admired a few of them myself, but that's just not where I was at mentally when I decided on the plot device of 'Yamato-Class IJN Kii' making attempt to shake up La Palma.

I just wanted to point out with this post that the danger of La Palma collapsing and wiping out the Eastern Seaboard of America is -to make a long story short- very real, and that's the foundation of my IJN Kii BB yarn.

Some may argue, "Well, you know, that island is 26 miles across north to south, and you can't honestly expect anyone to actually believe that a puny 800 foot BB is going to do anything to a lump of rock that big and inert."

Well, actually, it's not 'inert'. It's an unstable mass a mile above sea level with the second or third steepest slope of any island in the Atlantic and composed of a shaky mix of trapped water and older volcanic eruption accretion layers.
That makes for an unstable island in imminent danger of collapse all by itself without any help from artificial means whatsover.
I don't think the locals would be terribly impressed with such an argument that it's all 'inert mass' if they suddenly saw 18.1-inch shells from a Yamato-class bombardment raining down on their tidepools in an attempt to trigger a catastrophic collapse.
I mean, apart from the ecological concerns, they would probably voice an opinion that you shouldn't go doing something like that, because of the reports of what's going to spontaneously happen someday anyway all by itself, and possibly one day soon with the harmonic input tremors from nearby El Hierro's active baby volcano.
As the old expression goes; 'it only takes one infant volcano to ruin your whole day'.
All of which simply serves to illustrate what I wanted to point out in this post, that far from being a lame plot, the idea of triggering a collapse of La Palma's western slopes is based on the very real living nightmares of increasing numbers of geologists, military strategists, and politicians, not to mention a few east coast Americans and La Palma denizens that someday it's going to happen for real.
And if you learned of a bunch of Japanese sailors shaking things up over there with 18.1-inch monster artillery shells, and if you were anywheres near an east coast US beach at the time, I doubt you'd just go back to what you were doing; you'd probably want to find some flimsy excuse for taking a nice pointless day trip a minimum of 20 to 40 miles inland.
Sweet dreams everyone.
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