Moe Lane's Blog, page 491
September 24, 2022
Fright Reads in one week! (I’ll be selling books and talking about self-publishing.)
Fright Reads will be October 1st, 12-6 PM, at the Benfield Sportscenter (1031 Benfield Blvd, Millersville, MD 21108). I have a table for selling my books (ahem), and I’ll be up on the stage at 4:30 PM for a half hour talk on self-publishing. The latter is of course very gratifying; I’ve been doing this for about two and a half years now, and hopefully have learned a couple things in the process. Lord knows there’s some stuff I would have done slightly differently, if only I had known.
Hmm. I could create QR codes for useful websites, print them out, and then people could use their phones to get the links. That’s a thought. That’s a definite thought.
Anyway, here’s where I’m going to be. Come on by on October 1st! Only five bucks to get in!
#commissionearned
September 23, 2022
The “Well, I admit to being wrong” THE MANDALORIAN Season 3 trailer.
I didn’t think Disney could wait this long for the heat to die down before doing a third season of THE MANDALORIAN and still get it produced. Shows you what I know, huh?
I will have copies of DUTIES for Fright Reads!
BEHOLD! Copies of DUTIES!
Behold! pic.twitter.com/oTOPr0ZQsn
— Ogiel (Moe Lane) (@Ogiel23) September 23, 2022
…And some extra copies of ANAGNORISIS, because I was running out of those. …So, yeah, I’ll have these for Fright Reads in a week. That’s two new books for physical sale for the first time! Huzzah!
#commissionearned
The Widdershins: Sea Change Kickstarter.
Latest chapter (“Sea Change”) of the Widdershins webcomic has completed, so Kate is starting up the Kickstarter to get it printed. I’m not saying I dropped everything to back it, but I did drop everything I was doing at that one moment in time. I shall miss this webcomic, once it completes (next chapter is supposed to be the last)…
Tweet of the Day, Committing To The Bit edition.
Yeah, you gotta use a shot like that when the universe just hands it to you.
#OTD in 1970, TORA! TORA! TORA! premiered. The spectacular scene with a P-40 crashing into other fighters was an accident caused when the stunt radio-controlled plane went out of control. The crew seen running for their lives were not acting. The director decided to use the shot. pic.twitter.com/ZwK7p8jxRB
— U.S. Naval Institute (@NavalInstitute) September 23, 2022
Via @SonnyBunch.
09/23/2022 Snippet, UNNAMED STORY.
This is actually starting to gel.
Patreon!Since she knew my name, even if you do not, I tried my best to be outgoing. “That’s right!” I replied, probably too brightly. “And you’re Beverly! Looking forward to the lecture?” I was proud of myself for getting that question out right away. I knew I might have to do actual conversation, in real time, and thought it would be a good idea to think about what I might say in advance.
I suppose that Beverly had done similar advance planning, because she responded quickly, too. “Oh, absolutely! I’m looking forward to hearing what [Lecturer] says about the Skull Coldheart legends in eastern Tennessee.”
“Skull — oh, yes! The wizard fiddler. I still think there’s a maritime influence in there somewhere…” and that was enough to keep us talking until the guest lecturer took the podium. I suppose Beverly overcame her shyness by acting like we were participating in a nested comment thread at the same time. I know that was what I did.
[Lecturer] — again, we are avoiding names — was an elderly woman, with a long, white ponytail and bright blue eyes behind her glasses. From the easy way she moved and her slightly tanned complexion, I could tell [Lecturer] was the sort of folklorist who collected data straight from the source. I had some hope that we would get more than yet another dry summation of the speaker’s last academic paper.
I needn’t have worried, because she absolutely knew her stuff. From her prepared remarks, [Lecturer’s] own father was himself a combination of musician and folklorist; she admitted to inheriting her interest in the field from him. If she had also inherited her skill at public speaking from him, he must have been a formidable entertainer. We were rapt throughout the full forty minutes of her sometimes-spoken, sometimes-sung presentation.
Thanks to the ridiculously low attendance of the lecture — I was cursing myself for not recording it — Beverly was able to ask her Skull Coldheart question. I don’t think [Lecturer] was expecting it, and I definitely don’t think Beverly expected the answer.
“Oh, he was a real person,” [Lecturer] said. “As much as any legend could be. You can trace the core stories, the ones about the Devil and the fiddle, back to only the mid-1960s; anything that happened after that was just people embellishing for the tape recorders. When they just weren’t adding to it from other sources.”
“When you say a real person, do you mean there was somebody walking around eastern Tennessee with the name ‘Skull Coldheart’?” asked Beverly.
“What? Oh, no. His real name got changed right away. The storytellers all thought it was safer that way. Coldheart was supposed to be a true wizard, you see — and wizards can hear you when you say their names, unless they’ve been burned to ashes. Since Coldheart only got eaten by the Devil, nobody wanted to take the chance.”
“Well, you know the name, right?” Beverly replied.
“I do,” said [Lecturer] — and nothing else.
September 22, 2022
‘Season of the Witch.’
#commissionearned
Fall has begun!
Finally. Halloween will hopefully be normal, this year. 2020 was hellish, and not in the fun seasonal way: I had candy ready, because I refused to let Them win, but the turnout was nonexistent. And last year was a little disappointing, too. But this year… this year, the kids will come.
And if I’m very lucky, the nights will be cool and windy, with leaves pretending that they’re witches, a-flight in the gloom.
