Moe Lane's Blog, page 673
September 4, 2021
Book of the Week: Star Corps.
[full title: Star Corps: Book One of The Legacy Trilogy, by Ian Douglas]
Getting some critical editing for the FERMI RESOLUTION RPG!
Not as much editing as I would like for it, but the most important bits are going to get professionally proofed and pared down. I’m now hammering out the details of the art. With any luck, I could have the FERMI RESOLUTION RPG supplement ready for layout by November! Which would be awesome*.
*Books in that universe:
MORGAN BARODFROZEN DREAMSTALES FROM THE FERMI RESOLUTIONVideo of the Day, …You Want To See What A Crazy-A*s Motherf*cker Looks Like? edition.
His name is Dario Costa, and this is in fact real. If it isn’t, then CBS got fooled first and so it’s not my problem. Great googly moogly.
I took so many naps today.
I’m not sick and I’m not even particularly tired. What I am is just not going anywhere this weekend, and the novel’s out. Absent running out into the street and waving people down to buy my chapbook, there’s not much really for me to do today.
…Well, that’s not true. I have to get started on finishing up [PROJECT SHIVA]*so that I can send it around to be rejected for the next five years. I understand that’s an integral part of the writing experience. But other than that… naptime, baby. Such an underrated activity, napping. Although you never actually hear of anybody complaining about naps…
*God damn it I needed to nap even more. Good eye, Constant Reader acemarke.
September 3, 2021
‘Closer to Fine.’
…Look, we all knew going in that I have eclectic tastes. It’s a little late to be bemused now.
Remember: I’ll be at Fright Reads on October 2nd!
There’s a bunch of other writers who will be at the Fright Reads book fair so stop on by! If you already have one of my books, bring it along and I’ll sign it: I also should have print copies of MORGAN BAROD and DECISIONS available. I look forward to seeing people there!
…And selling books, obviously. Money is always nice. It lets me make more books to sell.
The first week of school went pretty good.
The kids didn’t want to go back, obviously. Neither did I, and my toys were vastly inferior to theirs. But they got back into the swing of things. …And now they have a four-day weekend, because Rosh Hashanah intersected with Labor Day this year. Whatever, my dudes. Whatever. It’s a great day when the school doesn’t call.
Working on maps!
Real maps, even. My SCA barony has an event going on in a few weeks, and I get to be the guy who tells people where to put their tents and so forth (they’ve figured out that I effectively work from home these days). But to do that, you need maps. With grids! And little scales.
…I have to say: when I was writing MORGAN BAROD I leaned a hell of a lot on Google Maps. Trying to remember where everything in Monmouth County was after being away for twenty years was surprisingly difficult. Not that I was all that aware of my location before then, either.
Tweet of the Day, …*Crap* edition.
There’s bad casting, there’s good casting, there’s amazing casting, and then there’s… this. I’m putting it up as a link because I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Or the brain-lock.
Item Seed: Jim-Bob’s Ferocious Laser Pistol.
Jim-Bob’s Ferocious Laser Pistol
Description: It looks like somebody took a plastic revolver-style pistol that shoots foam darts, and: replaced the oversized cylinder with a hand-made electromagnet; put a quartz prism over the muzzle; and glued four D cell rechargeable batteries (plus a lot of circuitry and wiring) onto the sides of the pistol. This is because that is exactly what James Robert Hernandez of Moorhead, Mississippi did.
You know how you hear about some poor person who could have been a world-beater at a particular profession, only they never got their chance? Yeah, that’d be Jim-Bob, only somebody noticed his engineering ability in the fifth grade and was in a position to do something about it. High school graduate by fourteen, Doctor of Philosophy from Caltech by twenty — and that last year? Jim-Bob was just marking time until he finished up the residency requirements. After that was all done, Jim-Bob… went back to his parents’ house in Moorhead and got himself a job as an auto mechanic.
When asked why, he replied that he felt like having a working vacation.
That vacation ended last week, when Dr. Hernandez walked into one of DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office with his Ferocious Laser Pistol. It’s real. It’s spectacular. It has the punch of a M249 light machine gun while weighing less than a M4 carbine — and there’s no kick to it, almost no moving parts, nothing to foul, and it runs on D batteries. Best of all? It’s understandable. The spin-offs from this device are so potentially valuable, DARPA has already secured the doodles made by the engineer brought in to quick-assess the FLP. Better safe than sorry.
But all of this does cause a major problem. To wit, getting Jim-Bob and his FLP somewhere safe. He’ll go along with that; after all, he brought it to the Feds himself, right? But Jim-Bob has his own opinions on the best way to get to that safe location, and they don’t involve skulking about and being so sneaky that you stick out. Nah, he figures a road trip is honestly the safest way to get to… wherever they’re going. Especially since it’ll all be on Uncle Sam’s dime, too.
And Uncle Sam is being very, very mindful of the Aesop fable about the goose and the golden egg. Keep Jim-Bob safe, keep him happy, and keep him out of the papers. Which may be hard, because the guy’s amazingly socialized, despite being a twenty two year old engineering wunderkind. Fun to drink with, too. Far too fun to drink with, so watch out for that…
