A Story from Cartagena

This is part of the old Spanish wall that was built around the city of Cartagena, Colombia between the late 1500 and 1796. It was intended to keep the Caribbean pirates out--and Johnny Depp wasn't even born yet.

When J. Lee Porter and I were visiting Cartagena this month (Jan 2018) it inspired us as a location for a story about an expat. The character we came up with is not a typical expat, nor a good person, but sometimes justice prevails. It's also a story within the theme of cryptocurrency that we are using for the novels in progress. We are looking at the disruptive nature of the technology, not just on finance, but on people's lives. Change, disruption, brings good and bad, and you don't get to choose which parts you want and which you can ignore. It's a complete package.

A number of institutions and moralists will (and are) argue that cryptocurrency is a spawn of the devil because bad people use it. That's quite true. Any innovation gets used and the intentions of the inventor don't necessarily get taken into account. That doesn't make the invention bad. Henry Ford wasn't a serial hit and run artist, to the best of my knowledge.

At any rate, this story will be out soon (published by Nomadic Giant https://www.nomadicgiant.com). Besides the fact that we got inspired and just started writing the story in Colombia--it just came bursting out, we love the idea that we will have something tangible to give you a taste of where we are going with the Bitpats series. Just a taste, mind. The scope of a short story is far different than that of a novel, and even further removed from that of a series of books.

We will be in Mexico next month, at the Anarchapulco Conference -- yup, it's a real thing (https://anarchapulco.com), where issues around cryptocurrency and personal freedom are bandied about. It should be a great deal of fun and education as well. Should be grist for the mill.