Moe Lane's Blog, page 171

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.

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“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.

#commissionearned

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.

#commissionearned

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

‘Jubilee.’

Jubilee, Jean Ritchie

#commissionearned

The ‘Not for me, alas’ HYSTERIA trailer.

HYSTERIA looks, ah, hysterical. A 1980s Satanic panic series where there’s actually a Satan, and it’s guest starring Bruce Campbell? Sign me up! …Well, no, actually, don’t sign me up. I’m not getting another streaming service. But if you happen to have Peacock already, go ahead and watch it. Let me know if it’s any good.

09/26/2024 Snippet, Shorter story.

I have decided that I hate THE LAST DAYS OF UNHOLY TOLEDO because I don’t know who the heck my heroes actually are. So I’m going to do a quick 3K word story that establishes them in my head. If nothing else, this will make me far less cranky about the situation.

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Dead Leemah
(Just outside of Lima, Ohio)

Nathaniel Smart-Mouth did not want to die. He certainly didn’t want to die in a monster-haunted dead city. Ruins were where stupid people died, starting with the ones foolish enough to go into ruins by themselves.

Unfortunately, he was not the only one with an opinion on the subject. The tribesmen who had chased him into Dead Leemah in particular had a burning desire to see his liver. He wasn’t entirely certain that they wouldn’t eat it after, either. The Ohio Marcher country was big enough to hide a lot of horror in the hard-to-find places.

A dumber man than Nat might have taken comfort in how the sounds of pursuit had been fading over the last fifteen minutes. A more optimistic one might have told himself that surely the tales of ‘Dead Leemah’ were exaggerated. Since he was neither, Nat instead kept moving, trying to stay alert but not anxious about whatever peril lurked ahead. Better the monsters ahead than the ones behind.

He hoped that wasn’t him being dumb and optimistic, either.

Hurricane Helene up to Category 2.

If you are in its path, don’t play games with the weather. Stay dry, stay sane, and above all: stay safe. This one looks like it’s going to go up along the Georgia / Mississippi border instead of along the coast, so keep an eye on the updates. And remember: stuff can be replaced, but nobody’s giving out extra lives.

Moe Lane pontificates about self-publishing!

I feel the need to unpack this.

I accepted in 2020 that I would never have an agent, never get a book deal, and instead concentrated on self-publishing. Since then I've published four novels, two anthologies, five four-story chapbooks, and I'm doing via crowdfunding/reader patronage.https://t.co/oIa6e9nqnl

— Ogiel (Moe Lane) (@Ogiel23) September 26, 2024

First off, I should note that I am sympathetic about Lauren Kay’s problem (the author of this article). It’s just that we disagree about what her problem actually is. I think she thinks her problem is that it’s hard to get a book through the endless rounds of interest, pitches, meetings, and rejections that make up the mainstream publishing book process. Which to be fair, it is. But that’s not her problem.

Her problem is that she eventually went through all of that crap, got a book finally published… and that’s apparently it. The book she finally got to publish is doing sort of okay, for an unsupported debut novel with no extra marketing push. There’s no follow-up book, no new books in the series, apparently no novel at all on the horizon – Ms. Kay has apparently decided that there was more money in telling people how to publish via mainstream than there was in publishing via mainstream.

Which is, yeah, fair. But most people don’t pick the writer’s life because they have a burning need to get other authors’ stuff published. We call the ones that do ‘editors,’ and a good one is worth her weight in platinum… but I digress.

Many traditionally published authors could sneer that I am not a successful writer, and if they use most of the benchmarks, they would be correct. I have no book contracts, no agent, no options for movie/TV deals, no paid junkets to conventions or fair — none of the accoutrements of success. But what I do have is this: my novels are not funded by household income. The money comes in through Patreon, sales (both virtual and in-person), patronage, and regular crowdfunding. By that benchmark I’m definitely successful.

Not to mention more prolific. I have gotten a lot more books out in the same time period than Ms. Kay has, which is a pretty nasty indictment of the system that she’s gotten herself stuck in. You don’t need years to edit and publish a book. I don’t care what the big publishers say. Their process is bloated and inefficient, and not designed with the writer in mind.

And while it’s a royal pain in the sit-upon when it comes to doing my own marketing and publicizing, at least I don’t have to keep my first novel in a box because publishing companies didn’t like it*. Which is another problem Ms. Kay has, and the answer to that one is simple: if traditional publishers didn’t like it, publish it yourself. Maybe they were wrong.

Moe Lane

#commissionearned

*I actually keep my first novel in a box because it’s horrible, and I don’t have six months scheduled that I’d need to fix it.