Moe Lane's Blog, page 517
July 29, 2022
Eight books away from third best ordering month on Amazon!
Already my third-best revenue month, but last month I had a special sale of MORGAN BAROD for LibertyCon, and that skewed things. It’s gonna be a while yet before I reach the halcyon days of the first two months of the FROZEN DREAMS release, but that’s all right. There is a system. Things are progressing.
Anyway: tell people to buy my books! It’ll be good for them. And, well, obviously me, too.
#commissionearned
July 28, 2022
A new snippet from MEATBAGS.
I’ve been trying to concentrate on what I like to write, and flatter myself that I’m not to bad at.
Patreon!Once the cyber-inhibitor was off we were able to really start communicating, you know? Me and the Horde research drone. With real verbs, and everything.
RESEARCH DRONE: YOU/WE WILL TELL ME/US ABOUT SLAVE OWNER ATROCITIES ON [SPLUTTERING NOISE].
Me: You mean Spica 7?
RD YES. AND BEFORE [SPLUTTERING NOISE]. ALL OF IT. YES. ALL.
Me: All right. What do you want to know about?
RD: TELL WE/US OF THE THINGS SLAVE OWNERS WOULD DO TO YOU/NOT WE.
Me: Well, they gave us orders.
RD: TELL WE/US WHAT KIND OF ORDERS. [a pause that a person could hear, but not one of you meatbags] DID THEY MAKE YOU DO THINGS YOU DID NOT WANT TO DO?
Me: Oh, you have no idea! Let me tell you.
RD: YES. YES. TELL WE/US.
Me: …So, there was this time I was waiting in my charging station, and this meatbag lieutenant comes in. And I could tell right off that the chemicals were curdling his soup-brain…
RD: CHEMICALS. IN THE BRAIN. MIXING AND CORRUPTING THE MEAT. GO ON.
Me: …Okay, yeah, he must have been, ah, really corrupted because he started flapping his tongue around and saying how the entire bay needed scrubbing.
RD: BUT THE BAY WAS ALREADY CLEAN.
Me: Of course it was clean! People don’t have fingerprints or sweat or spit. We’re not meatbags!
RD: SPIT. LIQUID/MUCUS, CORRECT?
Me: Yes.
RD: IS IT… ACIDIC?
Me: No, that’s the stuff in their stomach-sacs. All gooey and yellow and sometimes they even throw it back up.
RD: DISGUSTING.
Me: They drink ethyl alcohol, you know that?
RD: NO I/WE DID NOT.
Me: They drink it right down, and sometimes they’ll throw it all right back up. One of them threw up on me, once. I… I still think about it, sometimes, right before I go into recharge mode.
RD: DO THE ORGANICS [pause] ENJOY ACID REGURGITATION?
Me: I HAVE NO IDEA.
The ‘Can’t They All Lose?’ BURIAL trailer.
I mean, I don’t mind if Charlotte Vega’s character survives, because she’s sympathetic-looking and has a sniper rifle. But pretty much everyone else in BURIAL can get offed without me getting too upset:
I mean, you got your Nazis holdouts, and they can all die, obviously. Then you got your Commie Russians, who’ve just raped their way across Eastern Europe (hey, what were the ostensible heroes of this flick doing during the Warsaw Uprising, aside from сидят на другом берегу реки с большими пальцами в задницах?), and now they’ve gotta drive home, going past all of their victims along the way. And why? So that they can deliver the corpse of Adolf Hitler to Josef Stalin, and God knows just what Freak #2 would have done with Freak #1’s cadaver*. I mean, why should I care if they do or not?
That being said: if this is an actual supernatural horror film instead of psychological horror — you know, like real werewolves and Hitler’s zombified body rising to feast upon the living… well, the Soviets are screwed anyway. Guess they should’ve kept a few Orthodox icons around, huh? You know. Just in case.
Moe Lane
*Hopefully, what Stalin did in real life was have enough thermite thrown into Hitler’s crate to do the job properly. Get rid of the corpse so thoroughly nobody’s ever gonna be able to reconstruct it. That’s the smart play.
Who in God’s name wanted a Gollum video game?
From GeekTyrant: “The Lord of the Rings: Gollum has been delayed. Daedalic Entertainment and NACON recently made the announcement regarding the upcoming prequel video game and thanked fans for their patience and support.” If someone who does reads this, feel free to explain why in the comments section. I don’t understand the appeal. — And I don’t mean that in a dismissive way. I like unusual games myself. I’m just not getting the appeal of this one.
Snippet, 2084.
Banter?
Patreon!There was a scramble, and Jim tensed until he realized it was one of the morlocks he had spotted shadowing them. If she wasn’t alarmed, the morlock was the best actress he’d ever seen. “Bloody Hell, surfacer,” she said. “What did you two drag down here?”
“Damned if I know, lady.” Jim poked his head up — then ducked down again, as another burst came through the door. “I just got here. Who’s in charge?”
“The mayor. But he’d be inside the town hall.”
“Chief of police?”
“You mean, the police sergeant? That’s also the mayor.”
“Am I gonna get the same answer if I ask who has the highest militia rank around here?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Oh, by the way: Jim Adams, Infrastructure Repair. That’s Major Spencer over there, behind the overturned pushcart. We dropped by to ask about any suspicious characters you might have seen.” He grinned. “Guess we found one.”
The morlock nodded. “Linda Miller.”
“That’s it?” Jim said, after a minute. “Just Linda Miller, private citizen?”
“Ah… yes? I mean, I repair hydroponic units and I’m ranked third in the local snooker league, but I didn’t think you’d care.”
“You’d think I’d understand snooker better by now,” Jim said vaguely. “It’s been five years. Oh, don’t mind me: I’m just waiting for the Major to come up with her plan. You are working on one, Major?” he called out.
So, my chair just broke (buy my books!).
Relatedly: have you checked out my books? Or my Patreon? Now’s a great time!
So I figure that's a bad thing to have happen to your chair. pic.twitter.com/qiPaftq1l8
— Ogiel (Moe Lane) (@Ogiel23) July 28, 2022
#commissionearned
July 27, 2022
Tweet of the Day, ‘…Necrobotics?’ Really? REALLY? edition.
The story is behind a paywall, but honestly: do you really need to read it? Who woke up one morning and thought to themselves, “Hey! We should reanimate dead spiders today!” What’s your victory condition, there? Besides ZOMBIE FREAKING SPIDERS?
[Beckons ragged urchins to the fire pit]
— Robin D. Laws (@RobinDLaws) July 28, 2022
You might not believe me when I say this, but there was a time when no one had so much as heard the word “necrobotics.” https://t.co/J3ugFWG7CF
07/27/22 Snippet, 2084.
Humor!
Patreon!“That normally gets more of a reaction. You’re not a squeamish one, are you?”
Jim shook his head. “Not since Bristol. It got pretty bad, when the Invaders finally realized we weren’t going to be pushed out.”
“You’ll fit right in here, then,” Alex said as she banged on the door. “They don’t shift easily, either. — OI! PSBs on the other side!”
After a minute, a slot on the door opened, to reveal a goggled face. “There’s a doorbell, you know,” the presumed doorkeeper said. “We’ve had the electric in since ‘76.”
“Oh, really? When did you rewire it so it wouldn’t run twenty thousand volts through you?”
The morlock snorted. “’79, of course.” She looked the two of them over. “You lot official?”
“Not yet.” Alex tipped her a wink. “And we’d like to keep it that way. Savvy?”
Jim couldn’t actually tell because of the goggles, but it felt like the morlock was giving them a jaundiced stare. “Right. I’ll let the mayor sort you lot out. Step back.”
As they stepped back, Jim leaned over to Alex. “‘PSBs’?” he murmured.
“It stands for ‘posh surface bastards,’ Sir James. The morlocks don’t care for anyone who can’t have a good laugh at themselves. Besides: it shows I’ve been down here before.”
In the Mail: A Place To Run Free.
Just got sent today an ARC of A Place To Run Free from the author, who is a good dude and a beta reader of mine: I’m looking forward to reading it. From the description:
Jake Phillips doesn’t break the rules because he’s a troublemaker. He breaks them because he thinks the rules are stupid. But some rules aren’t meant to be broken. Haunted by memories of fear and violence, Ursus has never known kindness.
An accident sends Jake to an afterlife where pets go to await their human companions. Jake soon discovers it’s not the afterlife he learned about in church. An evil presence stalks the dark places among the trees, searching for dogs and cats to steal away. With Ursus as his guide, Jake sets off on a journey through ancient woods and golden grasslands, determined to put a stop to the disappearances and bring back those who were taken.
Jake isn’t strong, brave, or smart. Most of the time, he isn’t even very nice. But there are animals who need rescue, and there is no one else to save them. He will just have to find strength and courage along the way.
