Moe Lane's Blog, page 151

Patreon Microfiction: Rationalization.

100WS-RationalizationDownloadPatreon!

Yeah, ‘Rationalization’ works as a title on several levels. You gotta feel at least a little bad for that entity, though. The situation is obviously not optimal, only nobody involved and making dumb decisions particularly wants it fixed. They just want somebody to blame. We’ve all been there.

‘Lullabye.’

Good night.

Lullabye, Jewel

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Book of the Week: The Dweller in Drury Lane.

I haven’t read Paul Leone’s The Dweller in Drury Lane yet, sorry. This is my reminder to read the book, because I am extremely tired right now and I need to get some sleep. I don’t want to forget to read it for a couple of months.

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I am at Fright Reads!

Feel free to stop on by!

BEHOLD! pic.twitter.com/yWNaENkPW7

— Ogiel (Moe Lane) (@Ogiel23) September 28, 2024

Otherwise, buy my books anonymously!

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‘Song of the Dispossessed.’

In what I can only describe as a moment of complicated irony, I am reasonably sure that the singer of this song ended up as a landed baron in SM Stirling’s Emberverse series*.

Song of the Dispossessed, Joe Bethancourt

*It’s very complicated irony. Spoilers, for those who don’t know the series: in that series, Portland, Oregon was taken over after the Change (an event which pretty much magically eliminated high-energy chemistry) by a heavily mutated version of the SCA (known as the Portland Protective Association, or PPA).

One level of irony is that at first it would have been worth Bethancourt’s life, new-minted high noble or not, to perform that song in front of the Lord Protector of Portland, as the fellow was a bloody-handed tyrant with a hardcore medieval fetish, and a burning urge to conquer everything that he saw.Another level of irony is that the aforementioned Lord Protector made the mistake of having a Norman medieval fetish, which is precisely the wrong societal model to adopt if you want to avoid having independent-minded landed barons. In fact, the expectations of the collected baronage got the Lord Protector killed in the end.And the supreme level of irony was that, by the time of Bethancourt’s death in that series, the PPA was populated and largely ruled by people who would have scratched their heads over why this song would ever had been considered at all controversial. Of course nobles were supposed to rule in a conscientious and honorable manner. Everybody knew that.

So I guess Joe Bethancourt won that argument in the end, after all.

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09/27/2024 Snippet, DEAD LEEMAH.

I’m actually going to keep this one to three thousand words this time. It doesn’t need to be elaborate; it just needs to establish the characters. This should be doable.

Patreon!

“So, why are you traveling light?” Nat asked as they made a kind of camp. They’d been in luck; they’d found one of the fabled metal pavilions that the Old Americans used to drag behind their equally fabled cars. It even had a giant spider denning in it, which was a piece of luck, since you didn’t have to cook those. They hadn’t seen any more hodag spawn, but a fire seemed like a bad idea right now to the two of them.

Nat swallowed another mouthful of spider sushi (calling it that helped) and went on. “Solo scout or not, you’d need more stuff to tackle the Marcher country, especially this close to the Nogozone or Unholy Toledo. And we’re still going towards Dead Leemah, which we wouldn’t be doing if you had better options. So what happened?”

Oxman shrugged. “I started off with more stuff, too, but I ran into a Toledo slaver party. Five of the bastards, carting along a dozen captures. After I got ‘em loose, one of the slaves told me there’d be another ten slavers coming along to find out what happened. I knew they were gonna be useless otherwise, so I told ‘em to get their asses east while I got the slavers’ attention.”

He leaned back. “Ain’t gonna lie. That was fun, getting them out into the wilderness and picking them off, one by one. Only problem was, the last three killed all their horses and wrecked all their gear when they realized they weren’t gonna be any luckier than the other seven.”

“Bastards,” sniffed Nat. Sincerely. “Ten to one was sporting odds, especially if they had horses and you didn’t. You lose that bet, your ghost’s got no right to complain. Besides, what did the horses ever do to them?”

Oh, hey, yeah, you gotta catch THE PENGUIN.

No, seriously. THE PENGUIN is, like, good. Proper good. Good-if-you-just-like-crime-sagas good, in fact.

I don’t blame you at all if you had no expectations about this show, because I had no expectations about this show and I had a great time watching THE BATMAN. But I had like three, four people in a row today saying that THE PENGUIN was awesome – and, when I checked it out, I realized I agreed with them. If you have Max, check this one out.

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The BALLERINA trailer.

BALLERINA Trailer first:

Some interesting points in this thread:

Note that the training explicitly states you will always be weaker, you will always be smaller. https://t.co/iCUCWALdUY

— alexandriabrown (@alexthechick) September 27, 2024

…to wit: the trailer is making it clear that the heroine’s fighting men who could pick her up and throw her around more or less at will… which is why she’s using missile weapons whenever possible, and fights dirty without hesitation. She soaks up a lot of damage in the process, but hell: so does John Wick. This series features characters for whom getting punched in the head, shot, sliced, and or kicked down an outdoor staircase is well, it’s serious but there’s no point in whining about it. Just suck it up and let the Matrix heal your internal organs, I guess. Put another way: I’ve already bought into the limited invulnerability shtick, so why quibble now?

So, yeah, I’m now looking forward to this one.

Looks like I’ll be vending at Doxacon again.

They’re having Doxacon at the Catholic University of America this go round, November 1st and 2nd. I’m definitely going to catch Ken Hite’s talk on ‘Revealing the Numinous in TTRPGs,’ and hopefully Lia Lewis’s ‘The Incarnation: Humanity’s Next Chapter and The Children of Men,’ if there’s no scheduling conflict*. I’m also going to be selling my books there, as per usual for me these days with regard to conventions. If you’re in the area, come on by!

Moe Lane

*P.D. James’ The Children of Men is one of those books that I like to call ‘interesting,’ mostly because ‘makes a complicated argument whose core assumptions I don’t entirely accept but am willing to discuss anyway’ is a mouthful. James was normally a very good detective fiction writer, and this book is unlike any of the others that she wrote (which is also, hah, ‘interesting’ but in a much more normal way). I’m curious to hear Ms. Lewis’s thoughts on the subject.

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Light posting this weekend on account of Fright Reads.

Fright Reads goes on from September 28 – 29, and if you’re in Millersville MD then I encourage you to come on by.

I’ll be both selling my books and talking on a panel (Saturday), and I’m happy to sign already-purchased copies of my books. There’s plenty of other good stuff here, too! So check it out.

#commissionearned