Moe Lane's Blog, page 618
December 31, 2021
DON’T LET 2021 END WITHOUT BUYING MY BOOKS!
Every time I feel bad about promoting my stuff, I remind myself that there’s an entire business model wrapped around the practice of telling people that the world has ended because they didn’t send you five dollars. This? This is tame.
So. Buy my books, review my books, and check out my Patreon. Or else nothing will happen. You don’t want nothing to happen, right?
#commissionearned
The December Patreon stuff!
Done, done, done. Short story AND getting TINSEL RAIN to a first draft: I must have been tripping. But it’s over, and for the rest of the night I have no deadlines! Huzzah for me.
THE DOOM THAT CAME TO LUNA CITY. More Tobias and Asenath, looting a dead lunar city. What could go wrong?Ashes of Empire: A Dieselpunk Fantasy Campaign. Just what it says on the tin. Writing up the goblins should be fun. They like zeppelins!Sign up today!
Patreon!
December 30, 2021
‘Pretty Good Year.’
I mean, it was. I think it’s kind of important to give people permission to have good years. Lots of people out there who kind of have trouble accepting that they don’t have to be miserable.
Or something.
#commissionearned
12/30/21 Snippet, THE DOOM THAT CAME TO LUNA CITY.
There’s gonna be maximum effort tomorrow. I can feel it.
Patreon!They didn’t check any other doors until they reached another airlock, three rooms in and one flight of stairs down. This one showed signs of recent use, starting with the portable battery plugged into its emergency power system. Tobias frowned: it was standard practice to maintain secure and efficient connections for everything, but the battery had been almost slapped into place, and left to hang off the cord. Under Earth gravity it would have popped off by now.
That is not standard procedure, Commander.
Yup, thought Tobias. Now tell me something I don’t know, Asenath.
There is an excellent chance that both of the sergeants are dead?
Tobias winced. No, I worked that one out already. Anything else?
The airlock console here looked to be plugged into this subsection’s computer systems. I should be able to link into it, if you have a suitable relay.
12/30/21 Snippet the Last TINSEL RAIN HEE HEE HO HO
It’s a first draft! HaHAHAHAAHO! IT’S a first DrAFT and it’s dONe! I can igve it to the ALphA REaDeR noW…
Patreon!As I whirled to meet Broken Foot his throat blossomed a throwing knife. “Oops,” came a voice behind me. “My eye is off today.”
I turned around: it was Nora, carefully walking up. As she passed Knife Guy, still retching and clutching himself, she raised her Cin City Special, and put a careful crossbow bolt in the back of his head. “Tsk, tsk. Damned hair trigger. Hi, Shamus. Guess I’m getting the Castle bounty on you after all.” She dimpled. “Don’t worry, it’s alive-only.”
That would have been fine, you know? If Rowan did have a dead-only bounty on me, a merciless killer would have made for a fine bodyguard right now. Except that I didn’t get the chance, because at that moment some kind of percussive air ball burst in the street we were on.
Everything went flying. Even the wagon rattled. As I got up, I was almost bowled over by another ball of exploding air. And another, and another, and another…
“On second thought, Shamus: why don’t you just escape?” Nora shouted over the sudden series of booms. “I’ll stay here and rescue the cops!”
December 29, 2021
12/29/21 Snippet, THE DOOM THAT CAME TO LUNA CITY.
Coming down to the wire!
Patreon!It was cold on the other side of the airlock. Minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit, which was absolutely not something to go wandering around in without a vacuum suit, and another excuse not to let the suit use external air (which was at a low but breathable pressure. This part of the base was a twin hallway with ceramic planters in the middle, with service doors at regular intervals. The emergency lights were on, but that only weakened the overall gloom.
“Looks like they stripped this part of the base,” Tobias said.
“Yeah. See the planters?” Lillian replied. “No plants and no dirt. No ice, either. There isn’t even any hoar frost. The air must be as dry as a bone.”
“Don’t take a sample to check, Doctor.” Tobias tried a door. Neither the touchpad or the manual opener worked. “I wonder if they’re all like this?”
12/29/21 Snippet, TINSEL RAIN.
Four more scenes to hack out, and then it’s freaking done. DONE! DONE, I SAY! HAHHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
…Pardon me.
Patreon!The rest of the interrogation was less interesting from my point of view, but more from the cops’. Pickney was working for Rowan, making magical artifacts — but he insisted that he didn’t work with icemold. Ever. “You buy that, Shamus?” Foster asked me as we watched Gannon get names and addresses.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. He doesn’t smell like a moldy. And you don’t want mages to get hooked on the stuff.” You really don’t: they become crazy-powerful, in both senses of the word. “Howie Rowan just wanted his own enchanter; one not juiced in with anybody in Cin City. Pickney would be perfect for that.”
“Yeah. Well, that’s good news. We roll Rowan up, we roll up the whole thing. Oh, speaking of good news? The ATSE and Syndicate, they’re having a sit-down. Cooler heads are prevailing, now that there’s got a foreigner to blame.”
“Ouch,” I said mildly.
“Am I wrong, Shamus? In either way? I mean, he’s got motive and opportunity. And word on the street is that some of the guys Rowan uses for heavy hitters are nowhere to be found. Sure, it’d be stupid for him to kill a couple of cops. But Howie Rowan?” Foster shrugged. “He thinks the rules don’t apply to him.”
“Not quite, Lieutenant.” She looked at me, curiously. “He thinks the rules he learned out there still apply in here.”
“Eh. Same difference.”
December 28, 2021
All right. Light posting for the rest of the week.
I’m writing two things simultaneously on a deadline, and I need to stop ripping myself up about that. Once I have the first draft of the new novel finished I can relax a little, or possibly a lot. And, heck, it’s Christmas, right? I should lean into that. Maybe have some more eggnog.
