Mark Arbour

I will do my best.

He has, and that was a lucky coincidence for the story, that Nelson learned of the French fleet's location there (in real life) from an American merchant. I try not to trample too hard on history as I weave Granger into it.

That truly is the ultimate lesson: when your kids grow up to be just like you.

Action comes in many shapes and sizes. So to speak. :-)

Yes, oh clairvoyant one! ;-) Seriously, getting Granger to the Nile has been the prime focus of this whole book. It is the centerpiece.

Of that I am truly glad. You'll notice I got it posted just before 4:20. :-)

I think that Will and Brad both bait each other. Will had to know that having a sexual playground would set Brad free. I think that when Brad told Jeanine, in addition to the gossip aspect of things, he was genuinely looking for support for his position. He was probably hoping that Jeanine and Stef and the rest of them would agree with him that a sex room was ridiculous for a 15 year old and that would convince him he was right. He wanted validation, and he probably got it.

Thank you! Brad and Will probably will always have an up and down relationship. They're just too good at pissing each other off. I think that JP's resignation is a symptom of his future plans. He knows that his intense career as a researcher won't last forever, and he's setting up his next step, which is to get involved with Claremont Tech.

I read your review and pretty much nodded all the way through. I'm not as hard on Brad as you are, but that's because I'm thinking back on all the good things he's done. The primary cause he's worked on has been the Mission, and he's done well with that.

I think JP has been great to her, and she has been very good to him as well. I think that line sums it up. I don't fault JP for not having that conversation with her prior to this. The two of them clearly had an understanding, and there was no reason to deal with it, or to rock the boat. I would imagine that from JP's perspective, if he would have offered Isidore a divorce, she might have been offended, assuming that he wanted one, etc. So there is clearly a catlyst now causing things to change, and in fact, there's probably more than one.

Jason, you are too funny. I think that if Stef planned his own wedding, it may require it's own book.

I think that when Brad is being manipulative, his focus is on the end result, and the emotional consequences don't factor in all that much. He's like the general who orders the charge, knowing that many won't make it past that first trench. What redeems him, I think, is that in hindsight, he gets the pain that was caused, again, much like the general who inspects the carnage on the field afterward. I agree with you on Will, too. He's making progress, and learning to control his temper.

Fire all your editors! "Coke" should be capitalized unless Will was going to get a line to snort We'll go on the assumption he wasn't, and perhaps all of us are just on the cutting edge, dropping the capital "C" to show that Coke is not a specific soda, but a genre synonymous with soda. I think that Brad and Will are two of those people who so easily push each others' buttons that they have a hard time not doing it. Two people who are remarkably good at figuring out everyone else, but when they turn to each other, they're clueless. And to a degree, I think that Stef, Brad, and Will all have a moderating influence on each other, and are the ones most likely to make each other look in the mirror. Well, and add JP to that list. I could clearly see in my mind JP explaining things to Stef in a factual manner that completely infuriated Stef.

Good observation. I think it is typical of Will to fight like crazy when he feels embattled, and if he feels that Brad and Stef are teaming up to cause him problems, that's bound to get ugly.

That is a really good point about JP, and this probably shook him up quite a bit. His whole orderly way of life is at risk.

LOL. Coffee is the root of all evil. I don't drink it. Would turn me into Satan. I like Isidore as a character, since she is flawed, and does have these times where she shows them. Her treatment of Brad and Will have been pretty reprehensible, but she has done a lot of good.

There's a definite double-standard with both Stef and Brad toward Will. I'll bet that in Stef and Brad's mind, the sex room was one of those salacious pieces of information that is both juicy and controversial. I wonder if Brad really thought about how this might fuck Jeanine and Will up? I'll bet he was caught up in the momentary excitment of the 'scandal' and included Jeanine for that reason. That is actually, IMHO, a real endorsement of how well Jeanine is doing..that Brad doesn't see telling her about Will's sex room as a risk.

Alright, this definitely counts as a cliffhanger. I stand before you, totally busted. :-) I think that Jeanine and Will are doing pretty well. If you think about it, she didn't flip out on him, she just got a little outraged, and she calmed down pretty damn fast about it. I think it actually shows them doing better. She told him that him having a sex room bothered her (in her way) and then didn't dwell on it, she moved on. The Jeanine of "Paternity" would have hounded and bothered him about it for the entire trip.

Either that, or security was not all that tight about Granger's sailing orders. I would think that with John Company being a conflicted bureaucracy, news would flow through it in a porous fashion. As they were administering the island, they would have known of the replacement of Bertie, and may probably have known that Granger was going to escort him. What they probably would not know is that Granger was going via Cape Horn. Still, news could have gotten to the Caribbean and then to Chile probably faster than Granger could have rounded the Horn and arrived there.

July 19, 1798 Aboukir Bay Granger was normally so good at hiding his rage, but he was having a hard time doing it in this situation. “No wonder you don’t want a British officer aboard your ship, Captain.” Granger’s tone was cold and harsh, so much that Jacobs wore a worried expression. “You once wore a uniform quite similar to mine.” “That is true,” Erasmus Travers said with a sneer. “Like most of my countrymen, I was once British, but threw off

Thank you, and I'm glad you enjoyed this lovely city. I think your comments are spot on.

No breaking away for a few chapters. Hang in there!

August 3, 2001 I stood on the pavement, watching my dad’s Gulfstream taxi toward the FBO. I was trying to be relaxed and calm, but I was having a hard time with that. Kai picked up on my mood, which didn’t surprise me. The past few days had been magical, and we had become totally tuned in to each other. It was like we knew what the other person was thinking. I always thought that would bother me, to have someone know me that well, but amazingly enough, I was enjoying it. “Dude,

I think that if JJ starts carrying around purses, that crosses a line where he loses a lot of his masculinity. Maybe I'm just too old to appreciate the male purse movement. Maybe I'm not aware of the male purse movement. Is there a male purse movement? Do guys in California all carry designer handbags now? Do straight guys do that? I'm trying to visualize Darius with a man-purse, and it's not working. Convince me I'm wrong.

That was interesting, funny, and disturbing, all at the same time.