Moe Lane's Blog, page 594
March 19, 2022
03/19/22 Snippet, THE DECALOGUE KILLER.
I decided to start writing the ending, because it’s the middle that i’m having problems with. Here’s more from the middle.
Patreon!I’m no newshound sleuth, trying to solve deadly mysteries, or anything like that. You got people already to do that kind of thing. Sure, I may do some investigating, here and there, but it’s usually about why a city official suddenly has new toys in the driveway, and a tab at the strip clubs. And I’m fine with that. It was for sure that staying firmly on the other side of the yellow tape was all that I wanted to do with this story. Just like the cops wanted me to do, I thought.
I thought. Sgt. Meyer set me straight on that, sort of. “I’m here to leak details on the Killer to you,” she told me that night. If that sounds abrupt, it was for me, too: she walked right up to my bar booth and said it before she even sat down.
“You’ve got a weird way of saying ‘Hello,’ Meyer.” I waved to the waitress. “And don’t you have a pension to worry about?”
What should my *next* publishing project be?
As the Kickstarter winds down I’ve been calculating likely cash flow for the rest of the year, on the assumption that it never hurts to do contingency planning. Obviously, at this point TINSEL RAIN gets published as soon as I can get it back from the editor, and the cover designed. No worries there. But where does the Glorious Moeticae Empire go next?
Here are my options:
Publish nothing else this year. Advantage: that speeds up the process by which I get GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND ready for next year (probably 2Q 2023 in that scenario, which is great). Disadvantage: I publish nothing else this year.Chapbook! Advantage: they’re cheap to produce, so I can put at least one together this year. Disadvantages: it’s good that they’re cheap, because they don’t sell all that well. It’d also push GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND back a couple of months.Get the RPG finally ready for commercial sale. Advantage: It vexes me. It vexes me, and I shall have it. Disadvantage: See ‘Advantage.’…Something else. Danged if I know what, though.Thoughts?
THE SHAPER OF WORLDS Volume III Kickstarter, revisited.
Frank J Fleming’s got a story in this Kickstarter, I like Frank, and God knows I should shut up about my Kickstarter every so often, so… check out SHAPERS OF WORLDS Volume III. They’re 69% of the way there, with eighteen days to go, and every little bit helps, hey? Besides, this isn’t a zero-sum game.
Book of the Week: Theft of Swords.
I have a +4 reaction to people who back my Kickstarters, so when Michael J. Sullivan kindly decided to back my latest one I decided to give his Theft of Swords a whirl. I’ve already chuckled three times and laughed out loud once during the first chapter, so it’s going well. Roguish and thievish fantasy, but not grimdark: I can dig it.
PS: Sullivan also gets full points for using names that are easy to pronounce. No, seriously, I’m not being facetious at all. Tolkien could get away with ‘interesting’ names because he was a linguist of terrifying erudition and potency. Most writers are… not. I am genuinely grateful of having characters who I can keep track of.
March 18, 2022
In Nomine Revisited: The Tzaddikim.
Needed a little revision. I love semicolons too much. And dashes. And… anyway.
Tzaddikim-Google-DocsDownloadLast weekend of the TINSEL RAIN Kickstarter!
We’re pretty dang close – less than a hundred bucks – to the next TINSEL RAIN Kickstarter stretch goal, too! ‘Course, the next one (an audiobook version of TINSEL RAIN) is the big one. Well, the big one that I’m gonna likely hit, barring people accidentally misclicking on Brandon Sanderson’s Kickstarter and backing mine instead.
Anyway, last weekend of me nagging on this, so tell your friends! And, well, everybody else. Just make sure they pick up FROZEN DREAMS first – or, you know, pick that tier in the Kickstarter. TINSEL RAIN is a sequel, after all.
#commissionearned
Disney+’s PARALLELS doesn’t look… awful?
I’m always a sucker for a time-travel story, mind you. And this one looks like it’s got at least a little thought behind it. Maybe PARALLELS won’t suck?
Daniel Radcliffe feels no need to do another Harry Potter movie.
Apparently one of the directors to one of the Harry Potter movies wants to do a film version of the stage play HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD. But: “…[Daniel] Radcliffe was asked to comment about Columbus’ Cursed Child statement. The actor admitted that it’s something he’s “really not interested in doing right now,” especially when he’s at a certain point of his life and career where he feels like he has already “made it out of Potter.””
Lemme translate that out of Polite: Not just ‘No.’ That’s gonna be ‘Hell to the no.’ Sorry, what’s that? I can’t quite hear you, over the sound of all of this money.
I dunno who the agents were for the Harry Potter kids, but they should all get civic awards for their contributions to Western civilization. Straight up: horrible sequels for the sake of money are a real problem in genre film making*. None of those kids from the flicks – well, now they’re adults – really need to go along with a bad script and a quick cinematic hack job just to maintain their lifestyle, for which I am thankful. At least they’ll all come back for an elaborate cinematic hack job, hopefully after I am dead of old age.
…Well, maybe not. I’d like to last longer than thirty more years, honestly.
Moe Lane
*I approve of good sequels for the sake of money, obviously. I am not a Communist.
