Life's a Beach: A story of Triumph and Tragedy.

Angel Ramon
Nov 20, 2017
5 min read

The Thousand Years War, Life's a Beach Expansion Pack releases this Friday, although it's on pre-order now! However, I will tell you a story of how this book almost never got released at all. In fact, a couple of months ago I thought I was a goner and there was a moment where I was almost going to die. So sit back and prepare to cry but rejoice that I'm still alive and well ready to lit the GameLit scene up!

Basically I had this awesome project code named "Carribean", I know it sounds cliche or stupid, lol. Anyway, this was an idea I came up after another one of my "exciting" days at the beach. Please don't judge me being a beach bum. I said, wait a minute, I could write a story about the gloobas taking over Puerto Rico using the alternative universe as a driver. Plus I could take elements from Duke Nukem 3D and use them to enhance the story. I could create a cool LitFPS read with elements of an RPG to drive the features even further outside of just the plain HUD(Heads-Up Display) with only Health and Ammo displayed. I grabbed a beer and started to brainstorm my idea even further and boom, the next great idea is born!

I made an announcement to many people's delight about my new project and how I was going to try to build up the new LitFPS genre. So I got started with much excitement advertising the idea and writing the story. It felt like writing an actual video game or at least writing my own Duke Nukem epsiode that I will not be able to sell to 3D Realms. I was about halfway through the project and decided to put it down for a month as I wanted to start my LitRPG horror and I wanted to let the story simmer for a little while and not force anything. I had planned to release both the LitRPG horror and this one close to each other or even together as part of a Red Pill/Blue Pill promo where you could choose one or both pills.

After getting a killer promo idea, I decided to work on these projects on alternating weeks. It was going well and I was close to the halfway point of both projects. Then September 16th came about and then a look of concern came about. The news was talking about a possible tropical storm known as Maria coming to Puerto Rico. At first I wasn't worried because it was still only a depression, but when I looked at it's path, it had a path with the island right smack in the middle. I said to myself, maybe this baby won't be too bad or it'll get weak when it gets here. You see Puerto Rico hasn't has a hit since Georges back in 1998 when I was still in grade school. Plus that was only a CAT 2 storm, so the island recovered quickly.

That Sunday I watched football all day and didn't care much about Maria. However, September 18th came and the storm had upgraded to a CAT 4 storm and that's when I became concerned. The path had remained mostly unchanged and this is what I had to look at...

This was the projected path of the storm and I had just got over Hurricane Irma that mostly missed us. I'll be damned if I said this storm followed this same path and it did, with deadly results. Wednesday 20th, 2017 was when the storm made landfall and I was in for the worse 18 hours of my life. I could hear those 160+ mph winds blowing and all I could ask was, will I make it? Those winds were so powerful that it sounded like an animial was in the area, not a storm. The storm was so strong, one of my windows were blown out and I had to put a plastic on the window juts to prevent the water from getting into my house. A gust of wind blew into my house and pushed to the the other side of the room. You're talking about 160+ mph winds by the way.

After taking the gust in my face, I started to see the house shake and that's when all hell broke loose. Me, my father, and mother had to hand on to the plastic for dear life for 8 hours in a row with no rest, no light, no water, and no food almost. Not to mention, no phone service, so I was disconnected from the world basically even my family. Eventually to make the long story short, I survived the storm. However, I still had to survive the aftermath of living with no light, water or food for a whole month. When I decided to head to NY to family, I was down to my last 20 dollars since I couldn't take out any money from the ATM's since none of them were working. I felt so low and said to myself, would this be the end of my writing life and would this be the end of my life, period?

When I arrived in NY, I ws grateful for my aunt who gave me and my parents a place to stay until we could figure out what the heck to do. When I said I had survived many of you responded and I like to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Those first people to respond and give me their blessings inculde Bernard Jan, Elaine Emmerick, George Fisher, some of my biggest fans, and Paul Bellow who looked out for me even before Maria was supposed to hit and got me into LitRPG. I have many more names, but then this would be a 10,000 word post and I don't want to bore you. So if I still talk to you, I love you as well!

When I got settled in New York in a friends house, I was smart enough to pack my laptop and decided to get back to work on Life's a Beach. I said to myself, if I survived Hurricane Maria, I can survive anything! I got my ass to work and would you know, I got the book all done even with this kick-ass cover! Many people are excited for me, got a decent amount of pre-orders, and I finally see a light at the end of the tunnel! I'm proud of myself for getting through this and still getting my project done to my heart's desire! Thanks to everyone who supported me and every thing, it's why I have fans and friends for I guess.

If you want to pre-order the book, click on the button below and thanks for reading!