Moe Lane's Blog, page 633
November 28, 2021
My novels: still only 99 cents!
MY LOSS IS YOUR GAIN! I should have put more intermediate steps in my Black Friday sale! You can still get my novels for extra-cheap!
FROZEN DREAMSMORGAN BARODTALES FROM THE FERMI RESOLUTION
NaNoWriMo, Day 28: 1,520 / 54,380.
Really, I have absolutely nothing against either the Boy or the Girl Scouts. My wife was a Girl Scout. And yet…
Patreon!The most alarming thing about the Scout camp was how 95% of it wasn’t alarming at all. I’d vacationed in camps like this, growing up on Jefferson; the colony didn’t have full electricity until I was in flight school. If you didn’t mind chemical toilets and food cooked with open flames, it’d even be luxurious by my childhood standards. It was certainly prettier; the buildings were carefully made, then smoothed and polished to clean-lined elegance. Look at a photo of the place, and you’d decide it was peaceful, even serene.
As long as you didn’t go inside.
For example: there was a library (the cabin doors were locked, but I discovered very quickly that the keys were invariably on the top sill). Inside were two rows of school desks, and shelves full of books, each bearing the Scout logo. They apparently needed books on things like woodworking, knot-tying, and carpentry… plus social engineering, demolitions, anatomy, space-based tactics, enhanced interrogation, pharmacology, and eschatology. And those were just the ones I looked through.
The one on enhanced interrogation had both diagrams and photos. It was also written for teenagers.
Patreon Microfiction: Normalcy.
(September 11th was on a Saturday, this year.)
…Nothing further to say on this one.
Patreon!November 27, 2021
‘Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town.’
YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS? THAT’S RIGHT! THE TRADITION CONTINUES!
Back from traveling.
Obviously. And I will be very happy to have this book in something resembling a first draft by Tuesday. It’s changed a bit in the process, but that’s all right. What’s the point of writing a book when you know how it’s going to end?
Hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving!
Book of the Week: Leviathan Wakes.
I keep getting told I need to read The Expanse, so I grabbed Leviathan Wakes today. We’ll see how it goes.
#commissionearned
NaNoWriMo, Day 27: 1,540 / 52,860.
Technically, everything after this is gravy because the target number for NaNoWriMo is 50,000. In my opinion, the more I can do of this, the better. I’m going to have to bump it up to 80,000 words anyway before I can send it out.
Patreon!“Look, Oft,” I said as the three of us walked around the abandoned (permanently, I hoped) Scout camp, “you and me, we share enough core assumptions to tell me what we’re looking for, right? So what is it, anyway?”
“It’s something that we’re not sure actually exists,” Oft replied. “One minute mark.” I was in front, because Oft had asked me to wander around the site and randomly change direction at regular intervals. Oft watched the Anticipant while this was going on, while the Anticipant watched me. “You know how the Scouts conduct their Jamboree rituals on captured ships, yes?”
“Sure. They go through the crew, throw some of them out of the airlock, and let the rest go. Or they put the crew in survival pods, and take the ship. Everybody knows that.”
“Yes. Only sometimes there’s no survivors at all. Say a ship simply disappears, near the current haunts of the Scouts. Was it taken by them? Did it fall afoul of something else in the Tomb Worlds? Or was it something worse? One minute mark.”
“Worse?” I frowned as I turned again. “What’s worse than a ship being lost with all hands?”
“A ship that has gathered together with others of her ilk. There are a number of vessels out there with vile reputations, Chief Pilot. Ships that always seem to be near places where disasters or depravities occurred, with crews who are decidedly unwelcome in the civilized places. When one of those disappear, sensible people do not simply crack a beer and salute the ruthless blind implacability of the cosmos. We much prefer to be certain that the bastards are safely dead before we cross them off our lists.”
November 26, 2021
‘The Regrettable Tale of SpikeTV’s Failed ‘Alternate History’ Pilot.’
I found this while looking for Alice’s Restaurant. …No, I don’t know why that happened, either. And why spoil a perfectly good mystery with an explanation?
NaNoWriMo 2021, Day 26: 1,620 / 51,320.
It’s alarming how easy it’s been to write this part.
Patreon!“I was on the Magellan when the fusion bottle ejected,” Nur told us. He was looking at the water bulb like it was a bottle of whiskey, and I wondered for the first time if there were other reasons beside religion why he didn’t drink. Nobody thinks twice about a Muslim or Mormon not partaking, right? “The emergency power was fine and we had a couple of message drones, so nobody panicked. We sent one ahead and did what repairs we could, just to keep busy. I mean, all we had to do was wait until somebody sent a rescue ship.” Nur shook his head. “Well, somebody did. The Scouts. They must have intercepted the drone while it was in FTL space.
“We didn’t know anything was wrong until after they boarded. The Scouts had come in wearing starsuits, which was good emergency practice, and the first ones weren’t armed. No, they just kept us distracted until the ‘repair crews’ were all over the ship. That’s when the guns came out. And the knives. Those were scarier, you know? Guns were bad, but they were usually over there. Knives are death, up close.“They had their Jamboree after lunch – which they made for us – and it didn’t seem real at first.
The Scouts weren’t what I expected: out of their suits they were just kids, younger than I was then – and I wasn’t even supposed to be on the Magellan; I kind of shaded my age a little to get the steward’s job. They looked kind of old-timey, with those buttoned shirts and short pants they wore, and the sashes with badges they all wore even looked kind of cool. Then again, I didn’t know what the badges meant.
