I find myself checking the site way too often, hoping for the next chapter. Enjoying it a great deal.

Thanks for the chapter. I'm interested to see if the two groups will be getting into skirmishes later, if all the second group just dies or if they come crying back to Tim. Solid chapter all in all. Nice to see some new relationships and get the group back to having to survive off the land instead of having the nice safe pods.

I love that you've come back to this (I only found it 8 months late) Where The Maiasaurs Roam has always been one of favourite stories of yours. Very keen to read more.

(posted from the Item Information Page)

Chapter 4 was a delight, thanks for releasing it today Eric!

Enjoyed both the (temporary?) base building all the character developments

I love your writing.  Fun and sexy.  Hope to see more soon.

(posted from Chapter 4)

Couple of questions about this that I am curious about.

1) Why didn’t you jump back to the TimeTrippers and go over how they may be solving/rescuing the crew?
I understand why you didn’t go to the travel pod but that’s a possibility to include.
2) If the group split, is it possible to view the story from their side from the point they separated? I am sure they all died but how would but something to write and possibly give you possibilities for new events.
3) What kind of stone were the cliff side made of? Could adapt a potential “market† or trading situation for between the groups.
4) Is there any pregnancy situations planned for anybody besides Tim? It doesn’t seem possible that he is the only one on two trips that gets women pregnant.
5) Why did you specifically choose 150 Million years rather then something further or sooner?

You left off at the creation of the mattress and the sex scene.

Did you have anything started for the next chapter?

Elessar wrote:

Couple of questions about this that I am curious about.

1) Why didn’t you jump back to the TimeTrippers and go over how they may be solving/rescuing the crew?
I understand why you didn’t go to the travel pod but that’s a possibility to include.

Because there is actually nothing for TTI to solve.  The cause of the accident is already known.  Rescue merely requires figuring out exactly what time point the team went back to, and sending a pod to get them.  In other words, there's no story to tell there.  Seeing TTI again will be the end of the tale.

2) If the group split, is it possible to view the story from their side from the point they separated? I am sure they all died but how would but something to write and possibly give you possibilities for new events.

Do I ever tell stories from the point of view of characters I don't like?

3) What kind of stone were the cliff side made of? Could adapt a potential “market�  or trading situation for between the groups.

First... it's... "rock".  There's nothing particularly special about it.
Second... what would the other group do with a bunch of rock?  If they thought that such a thing was actually useful, they wouldn't have gone off looking for a completely different environment.

4) Is there any pregnancy situations planned for anybody besides Tim? It doesn’t seem possible that he is the only one on two trips that gets women pregnant.

A quick (and highly non-exhaustive) web search suggests that it takes roughly 80 attempts (that is, fuck sessions) to get pregnant.  Aly and Steven had sex once during the first trip.  It is perfectly conceivable that Kevin and Jane didn't reach that number (or that he or she was less fertile than average.)

Tim had two partners, that we know he had sex with regularly.  He was the most likely one to cause pregnancy on the first trip.

As to the second trip... they've been stranded for like two months or so.  Do I have pregnancy plans?  No, because I have very little in the way of plans for this story, or I'd be writing it much faster.

5) Why did you specifically choose 150 Million years rather then something further or sooner?

Why not?  I had to pick something...  Is there a reason I shouldn't have picked 150mya?

150mya is the end of the Jurassic era.  It was far enough away from the original story so that I had absolutely no concerns about continuity errors with the dinosaurs or the environment.  (Continuity errors with reality are reality's fault.  My story gets it right.  Reality, as we know, is all fucked up.)

Just be glad I chose not to call the book Jurassic World.  :-P

You left off at the creation of the mattress and the sex scene.

Um... yes, I did.  And?

Did you have anything started for the next chapter?

Did you see something over in the Writing Status thread that said, "Where the Brontosaurs Roam, Chapter 5, has been started." ?  No?  Probably haven't started the next chapter, then...

Eric Storm

Didn’t expect such a lengthy reply.

Did you have any expectations of how long/if at all the rescue would take? This would give myself/others/ you a time frame on problems, issues that could arise during the wait.

They will be there long enough that, for the purposes of plot problems, you can just assume they're there permanently.  (They're NOT, but without explaining the planned plot, this is as specific as I can be.)

Eric Storm

Elessar wrote:

Didn’t expect such a lengthy reply.

You gave me a numbered set of questions.  How else would you expect me to answer them?

Eric Storm

I never did understand if Tim’s family is actually dead or managed to survive somehow.(We don’t know the full design of the pod so who knows)

I guess what I would do, is jump to the other groups view for 1-2 chapters until they die off and as the last dying thought it jumps back to Tim, except it’s a few weeks later. They end up having another natural disaster that kills 1-2 people. This disaster results in an unplanned pregnancy from someone besides Tim.

Elessar wrote:

I never did understand if Tim’s family is actually dead or managed to survive somehow.(We don’t know the full design of the pod so who knows)

I guess what I would do, is jump to the other groups view for 1-2 chapters until they die off and as the last dying thought it jumps back to Tim, except it’s a few weeks later. They end up having another natural disaster that kills 1-2 people. This disaster results in an unplanned pregnancy from someone besides Tim.

o.O

1. The exact fate of the travel pod isn't supposed to be known by you.  If it was, I'd have had the characters discover more information.  Only I and a couple reviewers know the actual fate of the travel pod.

2. Did I not just say that I do not write stories from the point of view of characters I don't like?

3. They just had two weeks or so of unrelenting rain, and you want me to just drop another ND on them.  Kind of pushing the bounds of credibility here.

4. How the hell does an ND cause a pregnancy?  Either I've been misled about the birds and the bees, or this requires sex, not earthquakes...

5. Nothing like one plot device after another.  You know what you made zero mention of in your suggestions?

DINOSAURS.

You know, kind of the whole point of the trip, and the book?

Eric Storm

1: fair
2: fair
3: Not really pushing them to be honest, we get hundreds of earthquakes a day here in Hawaii. Not saying it has to be a huge ND.

4: Tim mentions that both times he got together with both his wives, it was initiated in a ND. Now I get that he is already active with someone but could still make it work.

5: Made no mention of 🦖 cause honestly, I don’t know the first thing about 99% of the ones you mentioned, even after reading your descriptions, I still don’t remember them at all.

My way of thinking was simply, knowing a direction or having some background information would help give a better idea of a story line.

Elessar wrote:

3: Not really pushing them to be honest, we get hundreds of earthquakes a day here in Hawaii. Not saying it has to be a huge ND.

And how many of those are actually "natural disasters"?  An "occurrence" doesn't make for a disaster.  An earthquake you barely feel is not a disaster of any kind.  A "disaster" is, by definition, severe.  You suggested one severe enough to kill people.  I'm pretty sure that Hawaii's daily earthquakes are not killing people with any frequency.

4: Tim mentions that both times he got together with both his wives, it was initiated in a ND. Now I get that he is already active with someone but could still make it work.

No, he did not.  He mentioned that it was raining.  Yes, he and Sloan first had sex during a hurricane, however, the night he and Lynn got close was just a thunderstorm.

5: Made no mention of 🦖 cause honestly, I don’t know the first thing about 99% of the ones you mentioned, even after reading your descriptions, I still don’t remember them at all.

Not sure why that would have been necessary.  You know that there are "big herbivores", "little herbivores", "big carnivores", and "little carnivores"...  If you had an idea that corresponded to one of those four groups, I could fill in a specific dinosaur to the idea myself.  (Assuming the idea was workable, of course.)

Eric Storm

As a for-instance for giving story ideas without specific dinosaurs being mentioned:

One idea I've been toying with is a "dino-chicken".  That is, a dinosaur they could gather eggs from on a daily basis.

Chickens lay eggs, one a day, until they have a clutch.  A clutch (to a chicken) is like a dozen eggs.  So, if you keep stealing their eggs every day, they keep laying them.  So, theoretically, a small dinosaur could be the same way.  (Big dinosaurs would be more likely to lay their clutch all at once.)

Even I don't know which dinosaur I'd use for this idea, if I use it... so knowing the dinosaurs is not necessary for presenting ideas.  I can figure that part out.

Eric Storm

Well--since everything tastes like chicken (Except chicken) this idea makes sense. I have enjoyed your writing about Dinosaurs and Tim is a great leading character. Hope you are moved in this story line soon

Invent a dinosaur--cluckasaurus

ChiefRock wrote:

Well--since everything tastes like chicken (Except chicken) this idea makes sense. I have enjoyed your writing about Dinosaurs and Tim is a great leading character. Hope you are moved in this story line soon

The first book already determined that dinosaurs taste like duck.

:-P

And I don't need to invent a dinosaur: there are two or three on my list already that fall into that chicken size, or thereabouts.  I just have to claim that that particular dinosaur acts like a chicken.  (Something that would be extremely hard to dispute scientifically...)

Eric Storm

The analog World hit me the last couple of month, so a late answer to "no interrest"
I liked WMR but can not say anything about WBR. I hope to read somtime aboute the fate off Tim
(and more than the comments in this thread)

Is there specific interest in the time frame of their POSSIBLE rescue? Like, if we skipped 3-4 weeks or 2 months, would that damage the time line of a rescue in the argument that there is one. Since we don’t know if there is or isn’t then I can’t ask if it will damage the story.

Also, do YOU have a general area of the world they might be? No this doesn’t help all that much but would give ME a better general idea of what possible events may be able to happen outside of a serious rain storm which could be a dozen areas.

My thought if they are near what would today be Florida, historically (as far as I found) it has always been warmer which would invite more possible storms? We also don’t know the time of year specifically to deduce that they can’t have a few extra storms.

I was thinking if a bird type is large enough, it could take someone from the crew and they would have to mount a rescue to get the person back. This could lead to them finding something crazy but fantastic, be it part of another pod(not theirs), or a mineral not found until millions of years later that is rare but useful.

I checked some details and read about the “Savanna† theory that could be kind of a cool twist, since it isn’t official either way. How you could adapt that to 150 million years, is beyond me.

Elessar wrote:

Is there specific interest in the time frame of their POSSIBLE rescue? Like, if we skipped 3-4 weeks or 2 months, would that damage the time line of a rescue in the argument that there is one. Since we don’t know if there is or isn’t then I can’t ask if it will damage the story.

I don't understand the question being asked.

I cannot tell you the time frame of rescue without serious spoilers for the remainder of the story.  Would it "damage" the story somehow if we skipped a couple months of story time?  If it did, then I wouldn't use the idea, whatever it was.  If the idea was good enough, I'd simply modify the story to make the idea work.

Also, do YOU have a general area of the world they might be? No this doesn’t help all that much but would give ME a better general idea of what possible events may be able to happen outside of a serious rain storm which could be a dozen areas.

My thought if they are near what would today be Florida, historically (as far as I found) it has always been warmer which would invite more possible storms? We also don’t know the time of year specifically to deduce that they can’t have a few extra storms.

Encyclopedia Britannica wrote:

Fossils of warm-adapted plants are found up to 60° N and 60° S paleolatitude, suggesting an expanded tropical zone. In higher paleolatitudes, ferns and other frost-sensitive plants indicate that there was a less severe temperature difference between the Equator and the poles than exists today.

For reference, Juneau, Alaska, sits at 58.4º N. Latitude.

In other words, it makes very little difference where they are, as the temperature was fairly uniform, planet-wide (or at least on the parts of the planet with land).  For the record, they're somewhere in what will become Southeastern Canada. 

Seasons were also not really a "thing" back then, due to the arrangement of land masses.  Yes, it got a little colder in the winter, but not the way it does now.  Fully one-half of the planet had no land in it at all, which allowed for ready mixing of the atmosphere, distributing warmth more efficiently.  Again, for the record, I picture the story as being in late summer/early fall.

As to being in/near Florida:  They would have to grow gills.  Map of the Earth, 150mya  Note also the lack of a large body of water next to where Georgia would be... not going to get hurricanes.  (PLEASE NOTE: I have found no consistency whatsoever on the maps of paleo-Earth.  I have chosen this map because it's easy for me to get to and because it shows a wide range of time periods, plus I can screw around with the globe to amuse myself.  (Hint:  Click with your right mouse button, and you can drag the globe left and right.  Then, when you go to rotate it, it will "orbit" the center of the screen.  Yes, silly.  I'm easily amused, leave me alone.  :-P))

Elessar wrote:

I was thinking if a bird type is large enough, it could take someone from the crew and they would have to mount a rescue to get the person back. This could lead to them finding something crazy but fantastic, be it part of another pod(not theirs), or a mineral not found until millions of years later that is rare but useful.

Birds of the Late Jurassic were the size of pheasants.  Not really gonna be carrying off too many people, unless it was an entire flock of them...

The pterosaurs of the time did have 8-foot wingspans, which sounds huge, but is smaller than that of the albatross.  Can you envision being kidnapped by an albatross?

I checked some details and read about the “Savanna�  theory that could be kind of a cool twist, since it isn’t official either way. How you could adapt that to 150 million years, is beyond me.

First, thank you so much for making me go and find information about what you're talking about, rather than explaining yourself here.  If you're referring to the "Savanna Theory of Happiness", the bit I read about it suggests that it affects intelligent people far less than unintelligent people, and I'm writing about a group of PhD's and geniuses.  I don't think this particular phenomenon (do-dooo-do-do-do!) would be in play. 

(So that no one ELSE has to look it up, the theory suggests that happiness is based not only on your current circumstances, but on what the consequences of your current circumstances would have been to our prehistoric ancestors.  Thus, something like being solitary - which would have been a seriously problematic situation to our ancestors - makes you even more unhappy.)

Eric Storm

Well if you could jump ahead a few days or weeks or even more, you could develop different scenario's faster because time has changed faster. Another dinosaur attack, finding different types of minerals, finding a hot spring, some sort of major change that is plausible.(You said to many natural disasters was unlikely so it could just be something as simple as them going on a trip and encountering a dinosaur, running away from it and then getting trapped in a landslide without their tools? Doesn't have to be all of the main group either.

Thank you for clarifying that information about the temperatures.

I understand what you are saying about the map as well.

As for the birds... well, I honestly had to look up the size of an albatross as it wasn't something I am familiar with. I will say, no I cannot imagine being carried away by an albatross.

Now, to the part I actually CAN comment about. I was NOT referring to "Savanna Theory of Happiness" However that is an interesting theory and I'll read more about it later on my own time. However, the Theory that I was talking about, which is completely out in left field. Refers to Humans having originated from the sea rather than from land. Which explains why we are more adept at swimming, while our primate cousins are not. Unfortunately I found the article I found this theory in.

Human Evolution

I think this is an interesting theory, and I can see where the author comes from with the idea's and how it could be publicly supported.

I love how that article keeps referring to humans' agility in water.

Compared to any real aquatic creature, we are about as agile in water as a dying fish flopping around in the bottom of the boat.  We haven't got a single adaptation for swimming.  We have no webbing on hands or feet.  We do not have elongated hands or feet (to act as flippers).  Our head faces ventrally, not anteriorly (meaning we would be constantly looking DOWNWARD in the water, not FORWARD).  Our nose turned itself downward, with no mechanism for closing it to keep out water.  Our eyes do not focus underwater.  Our body is not buoyant (when you're fit:  My fat ass can float just fine, thank you very much...).  We don't have great lung capacity when active underwater.

And then, of course, there's the issue of, why would you keep going back and forth, evolutionarily?  We started in the water, only to go onto land, then to go back in the water, and now we're back on land again?  Seems like evolution should make up its mind...

But, most importantly as it applies to this discussion... even if it were true, it wouldn't have any impact on this story.  There aren't even primates at this point in time, let alone other hominids.  And our evolutionary history of 2-3 million years ago isn't going to do much for (future) modern-day humans.

Eric Storm

Eric Storm wrote:

I love how that article keeps referring to humans' agility in water.

But, most importantly as it applies to this discussion... even if it were true, it wouldn't have any impact on this story.  There aren't even primates at this point in time, let alone other hominids.  And our evolutionary history of 2-3 million years ago isn't going to do much for (future) modern-day humans.

Eric Storm

While I agree with all of it about our lack of adaptation in the water, this is a different dimension where things may not be as entirely accurate as they are in their original dimension. Fair? Maybe not humans being evolved but something they thought was one way could be slightly askew, not exaggerated but something a little off to make it completely unpredictable. Like a certain dinosaur not good with water because of XYZ but they come to a point where they are cornered and run into the water and it follows fine or it gets stuck or they find it in the water while fishing.

*shrugs*  Possibly.

The suggestion is too vague for me to say anything more than "possibly".  Basically what you've said is, "What if they encounter something that isn't the way they expected it to be?"  Well, yes, that makes for nice story drama, but there's not really anything there for me to work with.

Eric Storm