Moe Lane's Blog, page 704
August 3, 2021
Doctor stuff today.
Nothing very serious, although next week I get to have them fix my hernia. Because that’s what you get when you get to be my age: old-people diseases. I’m already taking the over-50 vitamins, and isn’t that fun.
I know, I know. Being in your fifties in 2021 is nothing like being in your fifties in 1921, or even 1971. I have decades left in me. But pretty soon college students will stop being one-half my age, and start being one-third. Yay! …I’ll stop now.
My mini-review of THE GREEN KNIGHT.
Short version: I have a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make it possible for me to enjoyably extract 95% of the meat of THE GREEN KNIGHT without difficulty. …Your mileage may vary.
Slightly longer version: have you read SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT? As in, voluntarily, and with enjoyment? Then you will have no trouble whatsoever with THE GREEN KNIGHT. It will be an open book to you, so to speak, and you will get to enjoy an excellent movie that is steeped in that particular myth, with no incomprehensible deviations from the text. You’ll enjoy it.
If you have not read the source material, though… yeah. I won’t blame anybody in the slightest if they came out of the movie theater going “Huh?” Even the ending ruthlessly assumes you’re familiar with the original work. Mind you, I’m fine with that, but how does A24 expect to make their money back on this one?
Bottom line: if you like Arthurania, go see this quick before it goes away.
August 2, 2021
‘Fanny Power.’
Video live: music from album.
So the next novel I’m working on after TINSEL RAIN will be…
…GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND. This was originally a short story that I did a few months ago for my Patreon, only I think it could make for a decent novel. It is absolutely not set in the Fermi Resolution universe, but it does draw from my Unfiltered SF-horror RPG setting. I’ve put a little bit below.
God knows when it’s getting published, mind you. But at least I’ll have put in the writing for proper exploitation later.
Patreon!The post-flight checklist for Amalgamation vehicles is likewise a masterpiece of elegant efficiency which I’d love for some human cyberneticist to decipher. It shouldn’t work, and yet it does; and if you think for too long about how that could possibly be, your head begins to hurt. And that’s why I don’t think about it too much (which is really the best way to deal with Amalgamation tech generally) while I’m using it. The important thing was I was out of the hauler in a minute and a half, which meant I could find out what was going on.
The drumming picked up as I popped the hatch. It rains a lot at Luxor Base, but pretty regular, too. If I had been another thirty minutes it would have been pouring — and if I had somehow managed to be late for a whole hour the storm would be over. There are some parts of the planet where the weather isn’t this accommodating, but the old weather programming still works just fine in the area, which is why the corp had put its main settlement and offices here when we started developing 118-G-002. That and the weather, which is shirtsleeves all year around. When you have an entire empty planet to choose from, why not settle in the nicest parts?
I was met at the hatch by Greg, which was both not usual and unwelcome. Not personally unwelcome, you understand; Greg’s a good guy. But when your project head is waiting for an in-person talk, it’s rarely for anything minor. “Pam,” he said as soon as I cleared the hauler, “how quickly can you do a turnaround?”
Picture of the Day, How DOES The Two Trees Thing Work, Anyway? edition.
I have spent forty years trying to visualize how the Light of Valinor in the Silmarillion worked. Which is why I’m not upset that they put the Two Trees together; sure, it doesn’t visualize what Tolkien was thinking, but what can? I can almost guarantee that the man did not waste a single moment on worrying about how tough some poor bastard would find it to actually put some of this stuff up on the screen.
It definitely looks pretty, though.
On September 2, 2022, a new journey begins. pic.twitter.com/9tnR7WqDoA
— The Lord of the Rings on Prime (@LOTRonPrime) August 2, 2021
My new illustrated chapbook DECISIONS will have a 2021 3Q release.
Four stories, with original illustrations by Ben Fleuter. This book will stay at the $2.99 price point that I’ve established for the other chapbooks. No art yet, because that’s still in progress (I hope to have this ready in September, too, but no promises). DECISIONS will be mostly fantasy, although there is one straight-up horror story in it. Keep watching the skies! And buying my books!
My new novel MORGAN BAROD will have a September release!
I’m self-publishing, so I am comfortable saying that. September 1st, with any luck: the editing is on-schedule and the book cover art is done (and below). I’m going to be working up a rough estimate of page count this week so that I can get that information to the book cover designer, and while MORGAN BAROD is not yet available for pre-order I encourage everybody to buy my books.
So there you have it! The new novel is indeed coming. Tentative price will be $4.99 in Kindle, $12.99 in paperback. I say tentative because I have to let KDP finish crunching those numbers first.
The new ‘Wait, the first one grossed $850M?’ VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE trailer.
I figure Sony was a little surprised how VENOM racked up a very, very respectable box office score. Happy-surprised, to be sure – and they’re not taking any chances, here. VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE looks about what I expected. Which is to say: gonzo, Venom and Eddie squabbling at each other for comic relief, and Woody Harrelson chewing up the scenery, then spitting it out in bloody fragments.
Can’t wait to see it.
August 1, 2021
Quiet day today.
It’s the first of the month, and I’m always drained then. Did do that writeup earlier and worked on chapter edits, so it wasn’t unproductive. But I just didn’t have much to say.
Moe Lane
PS: I do gotta be relentless about advertising my stuff now, though, so… buy my books! Or tell other people to buy my books. That works, too.
Pantera [The Day After Ragnarok]
Pantera
You can call him Jimmy, if you find the name ridiculous. He does, but it’s the price of doing business.
And what is the business? Revenge. Pantera, or Jimmy, or Lt. Colonel if you’re somewhere the enemy can’t hear you, was having a rather nice little war for himself until the Jerries decided to summon a giant snake and destroy both the United Kingdom and the USA — oh, and Nazi Germany in the process. But that last one doesn’t count, since the damned fumble-fingered fools did it by accident; and then the survivors decided to go run off to South America, and hide there. Perhaps they heard of a giant bloody ocelot that used to do Huitzilopochtli’s bidding, or some rot like that? No doubt it’ll come screaming through the bloody jungle any day now, and try to eat Lima.
Well. Since ‘Pantera’ found himself at a bit of loose ends after the Serpentfall, what with him being on the wrong bloody side of it and having no interest in making cowboy movies for Stalin, he thought a South American working vacation would be just the thing. He finds Buenos Aires quite congenial, playing cheerfully dissolute and washed-up film star by day, and mysterious jewel thief by night. The worst of the Nazi refugees took their wealth with them in crystalline form, you see. And when Pantera is done with them, they won’t be needing gemstones anyway. Rocks in the pockets will do, when it comes to tossing the bodies in the sea.
Alas, a minor complication has arisen. MI-5 caught up with Pantera recently: while they understood why he took the initiative to start robbing and, ah, resolving the status of problematic Nazis, they’d much prefer it if he was under some sort of — oh, not supervision. Perish the thought. But at least contact. The Gaullist faction of France is sending their own operative to Argentina to track down what stolen French artworks managed to survive, well, everything. It would be quite the thing if Pantera were to coordinate with this Inspector Vendeurs of theirs. In the spirit of cooperation, and all that.
Pantera takes some comfort in the thought that at least the French won’t be sending anyone actually incompetent, at least…
Agility d8, Smarts d8, Spirit d8, Strength d6, Vigor d6
Climbing d6, Driving d4, Fighting d6, Healing d4, Intimidation d4, Investigation d6, Knowledge (Movies) d6, Lockpicking d6, Notice d6, Persuasion d6, Shooting d6, Streetwise d6, Stealth d8, Survival d4, Taunt d6
Charisma +6, Pace 6, Parry 5, Toughness 5
Edges: Assassin, Charismatic, Hard to Kill, Harder to Kill, Thief, Very Attractive
Hindrances: Code of Honor
Languages: English, French, German, Spanish
