Moe Lane's Blog, page 655
October 11, 2021
Possible snippet, DEATH SENDS A PACKAGE.
I came across this in my files, and I’m half-tempted to do the whole thing, because I read the reminder I wrote of whodunit and it made me laugh.
I got the call just before I decided to lock up the office for the night; the precinct has me on retainer for the weird stuff, and even five years after the Migration a dead Fae in an alley was still weird stuff. More common than it used to be, but more Fae able to raise a stink about it, too. It kind of evens out.
He had been a pretty little thing, I thought as I looked down at the body, curled in on itself, with a nasty-looking knife still wedged in its back. But all the Fae are pretty, to human eyes. Even the ones that ate marrow straight from the living bone. Not that we had any of those in the city, of course. What was more important was that he didn’t look like a bum or a kneecapper; he had on decent clothes and a sturdy messenger bag. That and the carefully-groomed wings said ‘courier,’ but not the kind that carried packages worth killing over.
“What’s the guy’s name?” I said. Behind me, Detective Sunset Yewflower stopped trying to pretend not to loom and flipped open his notebook instead. He’s one of the Fae who don’t have wings, in case you didn’t catch that hint.
“According to his wallet, the victim’s name is Drowsy Whispers of the Glade. Works as a message deliverer for Quick Transport, no priors, green card is from the Second Wave, no known gang associates.” Sunny closed his notebook. “They’re checking the bag now to make sure nothing was stolen, but he had a list and everything’s in there. We don’t think this was a botched robbery.”
I nodded: neither did I. QT did documents delivery, contracts, things like that. Nothing worth a mugging, even when it didn’t go wrong. Besides, Drowsy here had a steel knife in his back, which meant that it wasn’t fallout from a fight between the local dolmens over territory. Somebody human wanted this guy dead.
And the cops absolutely call me in when there’s even a chance that a human’s going around killing Fae. That can get bad real quick. Five years is just enough familiarity to breed some contempt.
A little snippet from the next-year TINSEL RAIN.
Because I need to get out of the black mood I’m in.
…
Leonidas Pickney was a foreigner, if it wasn’t obvious from the name. One of our more exotic ones; he was straight from what the maps call the ‘Midwest.’ Usually the refugees from the crap going on there move east, not south, then west. You had to wonder why.
Maybe it was because the east kind of didn’t want him; the best you could say about Pickney was he’d be bad at being a villain. Or a henchman. Or even a decent mook. He was tall, kind of gangly, and had a face set in a perpetual snivel. They had pulled him in at 3 AM, so he was also wearing a set of striped pajamas which almost seemed embarrassed to be seen with him. It was hard to match this guy up with an evil artifact that was ripping its way through the ranks of the ATSE and Syndicate, but here we were.
“Why am I here?” Pickney was looking around, trying to find somebody sympathetic to his plight. Since his only two options were Joe Gannon and Lt. Foster, he wasn’t succeeding. Me, I was tucked away in an observation room, looking through a one-way magical glass that had been ‘salvaged’ from somewhere. This was cop business, and I ain’t one. I was barely allowed in here, in fact. Being one of the new ambassador’s objects of scrutiny was making people jumpy.
“Look,” Pickney said, “I don’t get it. It’s okay to do magic here, right? I thought it was safe.”
“We don’t have mages in New California,” Foster said, flatly.
Pickney blinked at that. “Sure, you do. They’re all over the place…”
Foster interrupted him. “I said, we don’t have mages in New California.”
You’d think the guy would have taken the hint, but no. “But I’m telling you-” and then he shut up, because Foster’s blade was at his throat.
“One last time, idiota,” she hissed. “We don’t have mages in New California. Now, repeat what I just said.”
And that got through, hallelujah. Pickney thought about swallowing nervously, visibly decided the blade was too close to risk it, and repeated, “You don’t have mages in New California.”
Foster resheathed her sword as quickly as she drew it. “Good. Don’t tell that lie again.”
FROZEN DREAMS and TALES FROM THE FERMI RESOLUTION go on Kindle Countdown on October 13th.
FROZEN DREAMS is my first novel (post-apocalyptic fantasy), and TALES FROM THE FERMI RESOLUTION is a collection of short stories, set in the same universe. Starting October 13th the Kindle versions will both be on sale for a week. Tell your friends! Heck, tell your acquaintances, professional colleagues, and people you see on the subway.
Item Seed: Thirst.
After the fold. Let me know if the inline writeup isn’t visible and I’ll go back to doing it the other way.
Thirst-Google-DocsDownloadComingSoon’s GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE review makes me want to believe.
They got to see it early, the lucky ducks.
The idea of a Ghostbusters III has been tossed around for decades. But after a lengthy delay, no thanks to the pandemic, we are finally getting a continuation of the two ’80s movies. But our original four Ghostbusters are not the stars of this one, and we instead have a group of kids solving a mystery tied to the Ghostbusters. This could have turned out terribly, similar to the horrifying Ace Ventura Jr. situation, but fortunately, it worked. This movie is a lovely, satisfying sequel to the Ghostbusters films that perfectly combines the new with the old.
It is a measure of the day I’ve had that I am disproportionately pleased to hear that GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE maybe doesn’t suck. This is, like, the first half hour I’ve had to think about the stuff that I wanted to think about. you get days like that, alas.
October 10, 2021
Tweet of the Day, Didn’t Shatner Do A Spoken-Word ‘Rocketman’ Once? edition.
Not that I’m going to look it up, either way.
Aren’t we all adorbs!
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) October 11, 2021pic.twitter.com/rYyEzOXfy5
My Mini-Review of VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE.
Short version: Do you like melodrama? Yes? Then do I have a movie for you.
Slightly longer version: see above, with the caveat that I do not mean ‘melodrama’ as a pejorative. VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE is almost operatic, in its way, and that’s not actually bad. The characters and scenery* are extravagant in their portrayal, with rejection and struggle and unrequited and/or endless love and all the rest of it, and if you’re into that sort of thing, it’s a pretty good movie. If you’re not, well, there’s a lot of loud and messy action. Which is nice, too.
Plus, there are chickens.
Moe Lane
*Some of which may or may not have been literally chewed.
