Moe Lane's Blog, page 513

Book of the Week: 1812: THE RIVERS OF WAR.

I’m glad Eric Flint was able to get the rights back to 1812: THE RIVERS OF WAR, and sad that we’re never going to see that series completed. Mr. Flint was a good dude. I never met him, but I miss him anyway.

#commissionearned

09/03/22 Snippet, BUZZ ON THE STREETS.

Lucas!

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I gave him my best jaundiced look. “‘Business,’ huh? What’s that when it ain’t a euphemism?”

“Geez, you sound like Eagle-Eye Sam,” Lucas replied. “I mean business, Tom. Me and my crew, we picked up some nice treasure up in Old California. Now we just have to unload it. I’m in best with the Guild, so I’m taking point on selling it.” He frowned. “It’s taking longer than usual, though. The Guild’s being real sticky about checking everything out.”

I snorted. “Yeah, we had a problem or two with bum magic items while you were gone.”

“How bad a problem?”

“The exploding kind.”

“Crap. Okay, that’s fair. But nothing we brought back is dangerous.” Lucas paused. “Well, it’s all dangerous, because it’s collectively worth a ton of cash. We scored a bunch of Old American loot: jewelry, hand tools, a bunch of stuff for the restorers, things like that. Authenticated, too! That’ll triple our take.” He shook his head. “You really should’ve gone, Tom.”

“I get worried when I can’t smell the Mountain breeze,” I replied.

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

We’re not doing any traveling, because the kids have just finished their first week back and they have zero interest in going anywhere. Since I have zero interest in making everybody’s lives miserable by making us go on a trip, I’m fine with this. But we’re going to go into vacation mode here, too. Everybody: enjoy the nice weather and relax. I’ll be around here when I am.

So I watched LOTR: ROP.

…I applaud the mad genius who convinced Jeff Bezos to turn what looked like a homebrew Lord of the Rings campaign using the 4e D&D rules into a major television series. Although your silver tongue is wasted upon such activities, my friend. You should be using your supernatural charm to promote something nobler, like clean water charities.

Seriously, this is a train wreck. I’m trying to decide if it’s enough of a train wreck to watch the second episode. Also: I get that JRR Tolkien never wanted to get into it, but humans and elves in his world must have banged. Like, a lot. And even then Tolkien kind of half-admitted it in canon:

Isn't that Dol Amroth's whole thing, a city of halfelves?

— ProtestantMonk (@Protestant_Monk) September 2, 2022

At least the noble families, yeah.

It’s Labor Day Weekend! Buy my books! Read them at the beach!

Or, you know, read them wherever. I’m not fussy about things like that. The important thing is that you improve your life, and my life, by buying my books. You do have an essential regard for yourself, right? You want to be happy, don’t you? Because it’s all right for you to be happy. If somebody’s told you that it’s not, I think you should look at their lives. I think that you’ll find that those lives are full of anger, and pettiness, and endless drama. Doesn’t it sound nicer to not be like that kind of person?

(And if you can’t do it on your own, it’s okay to go to some kind of therapy about it. I understand that you don’t want to get addicted to it, or anything, but that just means you have to be careful. You can get addicted to painkillers, too — but if you’ve just had surgery, you’re not any less of a person for temporarily needing the painkillers. If you have bad vision, you’re not any less of a person for needing to wear glasses. And if you have trauma or issues that you can’t treat on your own, you’re not any less of a person for using a professional to direct your mental recovery.)

Moe Lane

PS …Err, right. Buy my books for Labor Day! Or, you know, anything else that’s both ethical, and makes you happy.

Tweet of the Day, How Did I Miss This edition?

I wish I had known: I might have planned dinner differently. Then again, I might not have. I might love burnt ends, but they don’t always love me…

Happy National Burnt Ends Day!

Hear about Kansas City's ultimate barbecue specialty — as well as efforts by Texas to claim burnt ends as its own — on KCUR's new food podcast: https://t.co/IcFPt4PDvX pic.twitter.com/eobl1fHqu0

— KCUR (@kcur) September 1, 2021

Need an opinion on the DUTIES book cover. [UPDATED]

My wife suggested that I do an offset of the image, this time, because of the nature of the picture. What do you folks think? I could go with both.

UPDATE: She was thinking of something like this:

Which, admittedly, is a good deal better than what I thought she meant originally. Look, I just bang on the clicky-things until the words come out of the magic thought-box.

If you signed up for beta reading for DUTIES…

…it would be useful if you could finish up (or just send me what you got) by the end of the week. Once I have all the feedback I’m getting, I can put the Kindle together and get the whole thing ready for printing. Also: if time has cruelly, cruelly betrayed you, no worries. Time snuck up on me, too.

The ‘Old and the Ring-less?’

Via Constant Reader nicklevi86 comes this act of sheer beauty. I have nothing to add to this. NOTHING.

09/01/2022 Snippet, BUZZ ON THE STREETS.

I have the last line to this story. I just don’t know how we’re getting it, yet.

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And the coffee is good here. I inhaled half of it in one go, which earned me a raised eyebrow. “Long night, I see.” Lucas grinned. “Was it a fun one?”

“Depends on how you define ‘fun.’ I was up until three AM trying to sort out which one of four rich idiots had murdered the fifth. That count?”

Lucas considered it. “It depends. Did you figure it out?”

“Of course.”

“A promising start. Did the murderer try to kill you?”

“One of them did.”

“Ooh, there were multiple murderers? That’s definitely fun. They were all in on it?”

“Nah.” I drank more coffee. “I said idiots, remember? They all had their own plan to bump off the fifth guy, only he had poisoned himself before the festivities even started. I think he did it just to spite them.” I finished my cup, and waved for another. “After an evening with that crowd, I was starting to see his point.”

“Well, it’s definitely ‘madcap,’” Lucas allowed. “Hold on, though. If he killed himself, isn’t that just suicide?”

“I’m sure they’re all arguing that right now with the cops,” I said with profound, grim satisfaction. “They all tried to murder the old bastard, though. I’ll give ‘em credit for making the effort.”