Moe Lane's Blog, page 18
September 23, 2025
09/23/2025 Snippet, BANSHEE BEACH.
Jumped ahead. Gotta justify the title!
Banshee was sitting at our usual spot, looking like she needed a cigarette and only now remembering that she never took up the habit. Hell, she was almost acting worried. Which was impossible, obviously, because Dominion Archmages never do that. There’s easier ways to let your enemies know you’re ready to die.
“Evening, Betty,” I offered as I took a seat without asking. “I gotta say, you did all that pretty slick. Just how long were you planning to snap up Maravilloso, anyway?”
The woman really had been trained in a hard school; she didn’t need to be prompted at all. “Why, Mister Vargas! The very idea! We don’t spend every day in Hershey on matters of Commerce. This was a vacation for me, just like you. I just happened to be in the right place, and at the right time.”
“And with a briefcase full of bearer bonds, drawn on Hershey’s First Hoard Bank itself. You could have bought half the Castle with those.”
“But I don’t want half the Castle,” Banshee pointed out, before simpering at me. She actually simpered. She sipped her drink. It looked expensive, ornate, and the glass was already sweating water in this heat. “I wanted Maravilloso Beach.”
“Why?”
“That’s proprietary,” Banshee shrugged. “If it’s so important to you, I could ask if you would be willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement. But we both know Shamuses can’t.”
Patreon!
The “It may be bad, but it will also be CRAZY” THE BRIDE! trailer.
Yes, I see the pitfalls of THE BRIDE! as clearly as anybody else could. But let me note this: there is no way that Christian Bale will do anything with the role of Frankenstein* as a Great Depression gangster-monster except weigh down the accelerator, and drive right into the Madness Place. I’m not sure it’s physically possible for Bale to show restraint here. Not that I would want him to, anyway.
Also: points for the exclamation point. It gives me some pallid, fleeting hope for the movie.
Moe Lane
*Don’t start. I’m not referring to, and Bale is not referencing, the book Monster. I’m referring to the movie Monster, whose name is Frankenstein. The movies are decades old by now, and have established themselves as legitimate cultural artifacts. I feel their conventions are worth respecting, on their own merits.
The WEAPONS Honest Trailer.
If you have not seen WEAPONS yet, I do recommend it… if you like horror flicks with a certain amount of visceral dark humor. It’s also refreshingly straightforward and binary in its villain. This is a movie where Evil is Evil, and indifferent to any reason to be better that isn’t purely practical. Honest Trailers pretty obviously liked it, too.
#commissionearned
September 22, 2025
I shambled through today.
Surprised I got any work done, really. Went to bed late, got up early, at least I don’t have to be up early tomorrow. So maybe that should be a hint.
Some book art.
Just for fun.
From Anagnorisis: Four Tales of Transformation. My mom made the art for this one.
Decisions: Four Tales of Choices. Ben Fleuter is the artist.
Duties: Four Tales Of Obligations. Crynge isDead is the artist.
Annnnnd Pickman’s Model: A Romance. Ben Fleuter again. Anyway, I love it dearly, and I cannot actually use it for any real marketing.
#commissionearned. Hint, hint.
The Teind (Unfiltered.)
This will probably be my next commercially released game, assuming that wasn’t obvious already.
Teind (Unfiltered) – Google DocsDownload09/22/2025 Snippet, IRONGHOSTS.
It really doesn’t.
Identifying the speaker was surprisingly difficult, even with their glasses. The two could see the outline of a man, only carefully keeping out of the wan light, and with peculiarities about his person.
“You’re keeping yourself to the shadows… mister,” Oxman said after a moment. “There a good reason for that?”
“I cal… I thought you might attack me on sight, before I could speak. This would be in no-one’s interests. I mean you no harm. Can you assure me that you will not strike first?”
Oxman took his hand off his hilt. “Sure. I’ll swear to it. I won’t take the first swing.”
“Neither will I,” Nat added. “But I’m keeping my hands where they are. Nothing personal, you understand.”
“I do not take things personally,” the half-hidden voice. “Even when it would be appropriate.”
Patreon!
September 21, 2025
Speaking of decisions…
…it may be time for me to put my books on Extended Distribution (which will let non-Amazon vendors pick them up, not to mention libraries and such like). Unfortunately, this will also mean raising the prices on the novels, particularly my older ones. I don’t want to do it, but it would let people order my books in more places, and so forth. Also, honestly: at this point my books might be too cheap.
:Pause:
God, that’s annoying to write.
Moe Lane
PS: Guess you should go buy some now!
#commissionearned
Still trying to decide whether to do a particular con next year.
It’s up in Gettysburg, which would give me and my wife an excuse to go to Gettysburg in the spring and have a mini-vacation there. But it’s also a first-time convention, with a first-time con staff. I’ve done one of those recently. It… turned out to be a bit more of a frustration than I expected*. I just don’t know if I want to deal with that particular one-two punch.
Moe Lane
*Short version: I was supposed to get reimbursed for something, I am not likely to get reimbursed, and everybody else who got hit with this got hit a lot harder so I can’t even kvetch about it because I got off light, really.
