From the Author:
Thanks HJMoosejaw and Johnymac for the write up and I'm glad you both enjoyed the book! This has been a wild and crazy ride for me. I have been working as a retreat/prepping consultant for a few years and was pretty frustrated with some of the bad information I had been reading in multiple survival/prepping books. I never expected the book to take off like it did. Without any marketing (or even a website at the time) my book has been listed in the TOP TEN BESTSELLERS LIST on Amazon (Dystopian and Post Apocalyptic genres) since the second week it was released.
To start out with, I am always happy to see honest reviews with constructive criticisms.
Per Johnymac "Grammatically do not expect a James Lee Burke novel here" I couldn't agree more with you Johny. When I finished the book, I was working on a budget... as in free, so I couldn't afford a professional editor and asked a friend of mine to edit it. It turned out to be a learning mistake. It looked good to me and I figured I was probably only going to sell maybe 200 books the first month anyways. Then surprise, out of nowhere I sell over 3,000 copies and my book jumps into the top ten on Amazon. I had to scramble and pay a little extra to get a professional editor to rush my book, but she should be done with it by the end of the month. I will be releasing a second edition(professionally edited) hopefully in early January. If anyone here has read the book, and found issue with the editing, PM me with your address and I'll send you an autographed copy free of charge when they come in.
Per Johnymac "the lack of patrols by the hero & his posse at the BOL" IMHO, there are pros and cons to patrols, situation depending. Moving patrols in a SHTF situation may be warranted depending on your location, topography, and size of the area you are defending or guarding. I prefer multiple hidden LP/OP locations and watchtowers overlooking the entire property and letting the enemy come to you (fall into a trap). Patrols draw attention from their movement regardless of how skilled they are and any attackers worth their salt will certainly target the patrols first making them sitting ducks. Now that being said, stationary/hidden recon is the best scenario for the property in the book but patrols may work better in your area. If a retreat property is located in flat topography where an elevated LP/OP is not available, or if covering a very large area, then patrols are definitely a must. There are other instances where patrols are needed, but I'm trying to keep this as short as possible. That is my humble opinion on the subject, and value anyone's input as being a true survivor demands that you stay flexible and open to all ideas and constantly evolve your thought processes.
Per Johnymac: "the amount of money that they and others had sunk into their BOL. Most folks would not have the money to do what they did to make their BOL the palace that it was. Just saying..." Johnymac, I couldn't agree more with you here as well. I had wanted to have my book fully focused on helping people on a budget. In my opinion, that is a severely undeserved area of survival literature with a lot of really bad advice floating out there. i.e. "Bugging In" in suburbia or some city apartment is NOT AN OPTION in a "complete collapse" situation. Another terrible idea are the "I'm going to live in the forest" people. As a former Survival Instructor in the Air Force and having spent a full month in the mountains with no food, I can assure you one thing... 99.9 percent of those Rambo forest dwellers won't last the first winter, guaranteed. Again, I would have liked my book to be solely devoted to those with minimal finances but I also had some considerations in regards to my experience building advanced retreat locations that I wanted to discuss and put out there. So I wrote my book to try and cover all the different scenarios from the city person with no prior preps, to the farmer with some skills and some minor preps, and lastly considerations for a fully stocked retreat.
Johnymac, please don't take what I wrote as a rebuttal or complaint. I sincerely appreciate your inputs and would love to discuss them some more if you'd like PM me. Lastly, I see you are an Administrator here. I mentioned earlier that I am releasing a second edition soon and I am looking for review snippets from prepping related businesses that I can put on the updated front and back cover of my book. A review snippet from "UnchainedPreppers.com" on the front or back cover of my book would be great. As I am selling over 100 books a day now, it would probably be mutually beneficial and help get your forum name out there as well. Let me know.
God Bless,
Jonathan Hollerman
GridDownSurvival.com
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615885926/ref=s9_psimh_gw_p14_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0Z1JRG3W3VE710FEXWCE&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1630083502&pf_rd_i=507846