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Russ Rittgers

Russ Rittgers is a CPA who doesn’t do audits, thank you very much. He prefers to prepare personal income taxes (except his own). No one at corporate shows half the appreciation and thanks that an individual taxpayer does.


Retired from the Naval Reserve, his duty assignments ranged from the Philippines to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. He’s now waiting for the munificent military retirement checks to start rolling in once he reaches age sixty. He is married with two no-longer children.


Russ began writing while on trips, during airport layovers and in hotel rooms. His first four novels are still a collection of 1’s and 0’s on a hard drive and will never see the light of day until posthumously discovered and proclaimed to be “great works of his early writing career.”


He has been posting in 1632 Slush since 2003 and his first published story is “Chip’s Christmas Gift.”


Russ' story "Ellis Island" is forthcoming in Ring of Fire II, January 2008.

  • Bathing With Coal

    From: Grantville Gazette, Volume 11


    Firewood costs what!?

    Full Story

  • Fiddling Stranger

    From: Grantville Gazette, Volume 10


    Dolf was the first in his farming village to notice the stranger. Not that strangers walking or riding past on their way to or from Aschersleben were unusual. He was ten, old enough to have finished his formal schooling, or so his father said. "Got your letters and your ciphering, lad. That's all any farmer needs. Knowing more won't help till the fields or harvest the crops."

    Full Story

  • Three Innocuous Words

    From: Grantville Gazette, Volume 8


    White vapor was blowing out of Hudson's nostrils that frosty mid-morning in late December. Chip Jenkins rode his horse around the small snow-covered copse of trees and saw the von Ruppersdorf manor that Katerina had finally finished building this year.

    Full Story

  • Von Grantville

    From: Grantville Gazette, Volume 7


    Chad sat on the front porch swing staring blankly ahead. He held a tumbler of Kentucky's smoothest bourbon and water. It was like a cruel joke. I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is, those thirty-five new cars you have on your lot? You won't have to pay for them. The bad news? They're going to sit there and rot until you take them apart and sell them piece by piece.

    Full Story

  • Grantville is Different

    From: Grantville Gazette, Volume 6


    It was late August, 1632, when Georg Bauer climbed out of the ditch he'd been digging for Jena's new sewer line. Sweat was still pouring off him when he first heard about Grantville.

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  • Chip's Christmas Gift

    From: Grantville Gazette, Volume 4


    Chip and Joachim had just finished working out with quarterstaffs, six-foot-long hardwood sticks, at the von Thierbach estate manor, absorbing a new collection of bruises to join those of the previous two days. Chip wanted to practice techniques he'd previously learned in the army and Joachim simply wanted to gain another weapon in the event they were attacked while on the road. Chip hadn't exactly had quarterstaff training but his close combat training sergeant had taught his company something about using his rifle to block sword strokes. At the same time he'd also said, if they're that close to you, run like hell if you're alone, otherwise block, use your rifle butt, or punch him with your bayonet if you've got it fitted.

    Full Story