Moe Lane's Blog, page 552

Getting some work done on DUTIES.

While I’m waiting for edits for TINSEL RAIN, I’d thought I’d work on the upcoming chapbook DUTIES. It’s the usual four-story job, and features some of my earlier work. Which means the stories have to be gone over, fixed up, and fleshed out more. Back when I started, I was struggling sometimes to hit 3K words on one of these. Now 8K is a much more reasonable goal.

05/19/22 Snippet, SCENES FROM THE ZOO.

I wrote 2000 words on this again without trying hard. Shoot, I have the story blocked out now. Weird.

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George was always surprised just how much beef tasted like… well, the word that he had for it was ‘beef,’ because this body he was in couldn’t properly pronounce the language of Home. It was hard to even think in it, because there were scent cues that human noses couldn’t pick up. But from what he remembered, this was a lot like the ‘beef’ he used to eat, in his old body.

Human beings ate it a lot rarer than he had been used to, though. Although, after three years on a five-year Tour, George was starting to see their point. He might try real beef that way, when he went back Home.

“I wish they’d make something DIFFERENT.” :monkey paw’s finger curls:

Well. It’s certainly different.

‘NIGHTBITCH’, starring Amy Adams, will be directed by Marielle Heller and released on Hulu.

The neo-horror thriller follows a woman who is convinced she is turning into a dog. pic.twitter.com/XmKtuQjRvu

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) May 19, 2022

Via @SonnyBunch, who also wonders how the hell can you even advertise a movie like this without riots on social media. Note that Marielle Heller directed It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which picked up one Oscar nomination (Best Actor), and Can You Ever Forgive Me?, which picked up three. So, this project is, like, serious. Despite the fact that it sounds like the sort of over-the-top parody film that you’d have a fictional misogynist director make in a novel…

‘Ghosts in the Machine.’

Indeed.

Further commentary is, I feel, largely unnecessary.

Thunderstruck (And BATTLESHIP).

Have I… have I gotten this movie wrong? Because this clip of BATTLESHIP looks awesome.

#commissionearned

Up to Chapter 3 on the second set of TINSEL RAIN edits.

This should go faster; at this point, the idea is to look for sentences that can be simplified, and the occasional missed typo. I have a bad habit of over-using semicolons. Why, there’s even one in this paragraph!

…And now I want to remove it, even though doing so would thoroughly spoil the joke.

Tales From the Fermi Resolution: Vol. 1: Shadow of the Tower: on sale this weekend!

The Kindle’s only 99 cents, for a full book’s worth of post-apocalyptic fantasy! The promotion starts Friday, and goes on for a week.

…Although I’m not going to object if you buy Tales From the Fermi Resolution: Vol. 1: Shadow of the Tower now. There’s a Tom Vargas novella in there (“The Case of the Vanishing Visitor”) that isn’t necessary if you plan to buy TINSEL RAIN, but the story is definitely referenced in the upcoming novel. As well as being fun to write.

Buy my books! …Wow, that sounds fairly pitiful when I put it that way. “Feel free to take a look at my stuff, as long as ‘take a look’ means ‘take out your wallet’?”

Nah, it’s more honest the other way.

#commissionearned

GREEDFALL II coming out in 2024.

Nice: “Publisher Nacon and developer Spiders have announced GreedFall II: The Dying World for consoles and PC (Steam). Specific consoles were not announced. It will launch in 2024.” It’ll be a prequel to the first game, which makes sense because the first game got everything resolved in a pretty comprehensive fashion.

I’ve played the first Greedfall, and I liked it: it’s an alchemical-swashbuckling RPG with an interesting take on the Age of Exploration. Interesting combat, and you couldn’t just button-mash your way out of problems, but also not impossible to play unless you were seventeen and hopped up on energy drinks. Interesting factions, and a general lack of These are the white hats (including the natives); I look forward to playing the sequel, when it comes out.

Via @DeclannFinnBooks.

#commissionearned

05/18/2022 Snippet, SCENES FROM THE ZOO.

Title tentative. All I know is, I sat down and wrote 2K words on this story today without trying very hard.

Patreon!

The human child screamed, and leapt.

George Smith did not recoil in horror. After all, the girl was only playing on a toy called a ‘Slip-n-Slide.’ She and her friends were taking turns diving on the water-drenched plastic sheet, to slide down it until they zoomed past the edge and onto the midsummer grass. There was nothing objectively or subjectively terrifying about the playing. If his own species had thought up this item themselves, he would have probably done the same thing as a child.

He thought about his childhood, and then made a mental note.

Aside from the shrieking, the neighborhood was peacefully quiet. This part of the Observational Area was devoted to satellite communities serving a hub city (the humans would say they lived in Joisey, south of Gotham), and it was the weekend. The kids’ parents would be busy on their lawns, or doing ‘cook-outs’ of various meats and vegetables, or tinkering with their personal vehicles. It was, in other words, a veritable snapshot of the old United States of America, during its Late Middle First Republic period.

Which was the entire point.

The THE AMAZING MAURICE trailer.

Strictly speaking, that should be THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS, but nobody checked with me first.

Having read the book (written by Terry Pratchett, obviously) in question: this show does look like it tracks with the print version reasonably well. I’ll mostly be watching it for the rats. The rats in the book are excellent. I just have to figure out how to see it, because this looks like a British production…

#commissionearned