Moe Lane's Blog, page 510

Book of the Week: The Horse and His Boy.

Mostly because I need to remind myself to read The Horse and His Boy again. There’s a line in there about fighting in buildings that I remember being entertaining, but I can’t quite remember. Plus, it never hurts to revisit C.S. Lewis.

#commissionearned

Okay, Marvel’s WEREWOLF BY NIGHT looks pretty sweet.

WEREWOLF BY NIGHT looks like it’s combining the classic black-and-white horror movie aesthetic with the now-classic* 1980s gory horror movie aesthetic, and I am there for it. I have no idea how Marvel’s getting away with putting it on Disney+, but that’s what parental controls are for. …Although that’s a theoretical concept in this household. Both of my kids are devotees of creepypasta, and so far it seems not to have done either any harm. October 7th!

*I truly regret having to remind you that AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON is forty-one years old. So is WOLFEN. THE THING is forty, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is thirty-eight, THE LOST BOYS thirty-five**… that time period is as far away from us now as the 1940s and 1950s classic horror flicks were to me as a teenager. On the bright side: God damn, but the toys are awesome now. Not to mention the baseline medical care.

#commissionearned

**”CRYYYYYYY LITTLE SISTER… Sorry about that.

The ‘Hold on, this might not suck’ QUANTUM LEAP *revival*.

I know, I know, but here’s the thing: this QUANTUM LEAP is not a reboot.

Quantum Leap picks up 30 years after Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the accelerator and vanished, as physicist Ben Song makes an unauthorized leap into the past, leaving his team behind to solve the mystery of why he did it. pic.twitter.com/wLLuR7XcjA

— IGN (@IGN) September 8, 2022

No, really. From THR: “The synopsis reads, “It’s been 30 years since Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished. Now a new team has been assembled to restart the project in the hopes of understanding the mysteries behind the machine and the man who created it.””

…You know something? I’ll allow it. I’m quite keen to get a few questions answered from the original series, as well. And, heck: Scott Bakula isn’t even seventy yet. He can do a guest star turn in this show, no worries. I might actually even find the TV remote and, I dunno, watch this QUANTUM LEAP on network*. Mondays 10 PM, starting September 19th.

H/T: @cwgabriel.

*Bizarrely, it was cheaper to get cable, Internet, and phone than it was just to get Internet and phone.

Publishers need to accept the concept of price points in Kindle.

Yes, I’m shouting into the wind. But this is my blog, so I’m exerting my privilege to do so.

The basic issue here is that, yes, most publishers want people buying physical books, presumably because they’ve spent a lot of money on the physical infrastructure necessary to make physical books. Unfortunately for them, we live in a time where adequate books can be published cheaply on-demand, and digital copies can be published more cheaply still. The publishing industry has been at war with Amazon for decades over this, and the best it’s been able to do is manage a slow, grinding retreat. And if Amazon goes away, I guarantee that smaller, more specialized e-publishing companies will rush in to fill the void*. The technology is here, and it will be used.

In the meantime: if you are a midlist author**, or you are the executor of the estate of a deceased author, you are leaving money on the table if you let the established publishers define your e-book prices. Here’s an example: WASP, by Eric Frank Russell. I’ve never read it. I hear it’s extremely good. I’m not paying nine bucks for it. If you’re in charge of Russell’s estate and you’re wondering why you never see the royalties for e-sales that you were expecting, that’s why. That book should be five bucks. Possibly four. It’d definitely sell better… which would be the problem, wouldn’t it?

I mention all of this against personal interest, mind you. I’m a self-published author who benefits from the artificially-high prices of my competitors (and hopefully future competitors). But we’re all bozos on this bus.

Moe Lane

#commissionearned

*Or the global economy will collapse. But if that happens, the publishing industry will have other problems to deal with, like the effective end of civilization above the regional level.

**There are several authors who I will tolerate paying extra for their e-books. But that’s an all-that-the-traffic-will-bear kind of situation.

‘Walk Like An Egyptian.’

Walk Like An Egyptian, Bangles

#commissionearned

The ‘Completely Mislabeled’ MEET CUTE trailer.

MEET CUTE is not a romantic comedy. It is a horror movie.

I just wanted to establish that for the record.

Moe Lane

PS: To be fair, most voluntary time travel movies are horror movies.

So *that* was fun.

My local computer guy is fortunately still alive, and in business – the latter at least can be a bit of a craps shoot, these days – and was able to diagnosis the problem. Basically, my non-SSD drive decided to commit suicide. Thankfully, all of my creative work, including my books and ongoing writing projects, is on the SSD, because I was apparently smart several years ago and put them on the drive less likely to embrace the void*. Running around to resolve all of this ate up the day.

…Which wasn’t actually so bad. It was a nice day out to go driving around, and there’s plenty of greenery where I live.  The hard part was internalizing the idea that I could just, you know, leave. I wasn’t on-call. The freedom was almost alarming.

Moe Lane

*I have since made sure that my creative work has been freshly backed up on an external hard drive.

Let’s see if *this* publishes.

Chrome and WordPress REALLY don’t like each other anymore.

Reminder: DUTIES on pre-order, TALES FROM THE FERMI RESOLUTION on super-sale.

I’m not gonna be cheesy and imply that buying my books right now will help me out financially, seeing as how my computer may be in the middle of a catastrophic breakdown. That’s silly (I can afford to replace it), and more than a little offensive. No, I’m going to state outright that buying my books right now will help you in your own personal journey to be the best you you can possibly be. Which is still cheesy, but it’s affirmative cheesy, so that’s all right.

DUTIES! Now on pre-order!

TALES FROM THE FERMI RESOLUTION! Now on 99 cent sale!

My computer isn’t working.

Won’t boot up. So I’m doing this off of my new Chromebook, and there goes the morning. Light posting until I can go see my computer guy, assuming that company survived the pandemic…

PS: On the bright side: I can apparently post fine from here. I had to switch to Microsoft Edge on my PC because Chrome for PC didn’t like WordPress anymore…