Moe Lane's Blog
November 23, 2025
I have the Sleep Madness.
It’s been a tricky weekend: my wife had a moderate dental emergency and my schedule is absolutely horked. I also have to get this house clean by Wednesday. So… early to bed, reasonably early to rise, and I get stuff done as it gets done.
Patreon Microfiction: She Had A Loaded Book, Your Honor.
If you think “She Had A Loaded Book, Your Honor” is horrible enough already, consider this: it was a righteous shoot. Although they’re planning to flat-out vaporize the corpse afterward, then dump the bits into the upper jet stream. Again, just in case.
Patreon!
November 22, 2025
So, Twitter turned on country location.
This would have been more personally entertaining for me in, say, 2015. These days I mostly follow people who aren’t crazy provocateurs, so it doesn’t matter where they’re from. But a lot of grifters had a bad day today, which is always fun to see.
Moe Lane
PS: For the record.
Since everybody else is doing it, FINE. pic.twitter.com/TdLcmObNyL
— Ogiel (Moe Lane) (@Ogiel23) November 23, 2025
11/22/2025 Snippet, BANSHEE BEACH (90K words).
It is starting to get there.
“I’m sure there was some Shamus-related reason for that,” I heard, not thirty seconds after Sister Daria went on to the next set of marks. Of which there were more than a few. Apparently I had managed to show up on a day when they were milking the tourists.
She didn’t sound too angry, so I turned around easily to see — Sister Patli, from the other night. She didn’t look too angry, either. Or at least, not by my standards. You get scowled at a lot, in this business.
“Just the usual,” I told her. “People talk different when they see the hat and tie. They can’t help it. I just wanted to hear what anybody else would.”
She thought about it. “That sounds… rude. I can’t put my finger on why, though.”
I could. I could have told her why, too, but people don’t like it when you remind them that everybody’s guilty of something. “Chalk it up to me not knowing when I’m on vacation. Don’t worry, Sister Daria didn’t say anything dumb.”
“She wouldn’t. Look, Mr. Vargas, do you have few minutes? It’s about the, ah, thing that happened the other night,” she went on when I hesitated. “There’s something concerning about what I found, and I’d rather not involve the police just yet.”
“Now there’s a line that never works out for people,” I murmured.
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Book of the Week: Baltimore Omnibus Volume 1.
I have not yet read Mike Mignola’s Baltimore Omnibus Volume 1, but its concept (monster hunter working in a post-WWI vampire outbreak world) is congruent to my interests. Which is why it’s on my Wish List now. I’ve updated it generally, because Christmas is coming up and my loved ones would like to know what to buy me for a change…
#commissionearned
Tweet of the Day, Was This A Wise Use Of Social Media? edition.
Ha! Trick question. The answer’s always “No, it’s not.”
It was cut short for a reason. pic.twitter.com/3Jsm2MQIXK
— BattlecockActual (@TheBattlecock) November 22, 2025
(Via @RocketPulpHack) Now, mind you: this dude is probably not going to have an exciting next week. But I imagine that various representatives from state and federal law enforcement agencies are going to want to have a chat about what he found, and precisely where he found it. Hopefully his buddy hasn’t owned this farm for very long…
November 21, 2025
‘Higher Love.’
Higher Love, Steve Winwood
11/21/2025 Snippet, BANSHEE BEACH.
It’s kind of funny watching Lucas keep coming to the wrong conclusions. At least to me.
…
What happened after dinner? Well, I took a nap. And no, not because I’m old. Older. A little older. I just didn’t see the need to lose sleep.
Lucas begged to differ. “Macrae’s found this spot that’s got crazy jazz,” he told me. “Trumpets and flutes, and a drumbeat that just won’t quit. You should come along, bring a date. Gotta keep that heart rate up.”
“Since when do I need help with that?” I grumbled. “And I got a perfectly good date planned already. With my bed. Trust me, when you get to my age, you’ll see the appeal of a good pillow.”
Lucas laughed, the little bastard. “Ha! Nice try, Tom. You just don’t want to have to explain to Betty or Delores why you took the other one dancing.”
I didn’t bother asking how he knew Delores and I had been seen in public. I mean, it was in public. I obviously wasn’t gonna explain just how wrong he had gotten things, either. Instead I said, “Don’t tell me, let me guess. You’d just bring along both?”
“Yes,” Lucas admitted, with more hesitation than I expected. “But…”
“But?”
“Ah, well, how do I put this, Tom? …It’d be because I can.”
…DID anybody still think think Rian Johnson would be doing a new Star Wars trilogy?
I mean, after what happened with THE LAST JEDI (to wit: Abrams swooped in, shot everything different Johnson did in the head, and slapped something together that could at least end the trilogy) it was pretty obvious.
And I’ll say it: that’s sort of a shame. The last three films should never have been made, but of the three of them THE LAST JEDI was the only one that wanted to push back against George Lucas’s bull[expletive deleted]. That it ultimately failed to do so is less Johnson’s fault, and much more Disney’s. I’d never thought I’d see the day when a company was so bound and determined to break its own golden eggs…
Oh, well. Twenty years from now they’ll mine that Extended Universe thing Star Wars had, and everybody will go, Wow. Why didn’t they do that from the start? And nobody will have a good answer.
#commissionearned
