Moe Lane's Blog, page 842
September 21, 2020
09/21/2020 Snippet, THE THING IN MY HIP FLASK.
Grinding on through!
Patreon!“Please, David,” I said. “I’m not a fool. I’ve had toxicology reports done. There’s nothing in there you wouldn’t expect from a normal brewing process. No heavy metals, no alkaloids. Why, the goo is even mildly antibacterial. Not enough to be worth pursuing, but still. BSB is perfectly safe.” I sipped my now non-alcoholic drink. “In moderation.”
“And what about the people who get hooked?” David looked extremely upset at this point, but not precisely worrisome. More like on an edge I hadn’t expected. “You ever notice how the demand isn’t tapering off? We’re not expanding our customer base.”
“Our customers include buyers in bulk for resale,” I said, squashing resolutely a twinge of alarm (I had noticed how the demand remained high). “They’re the ones finding new customers, not us, and they’re welcome to. I wouldn’t care to sell directly to some of those people.”
An understatement, that. This entire part of New England seemed to attract some extremely odd individuals, and I had recently made the acquaintance of far too many of them. The alarming thing was, many of them seemed to like me on sight. Not in any particularly tawdry way, although there was offers for that, too, sometimes with a remarkable directness. But they would welcome my presence, under circumstances where I would have expected toleration at best. This would have been more refreshing, if only most of my new acquaintances were not so subtly repellant in their forms and manner.
Microsoft Buys Bethesda.
Welp.
Microsoft’s Xbox team significantly expanded its list of game development studios on Monday, announcing the purchase of ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion in cash. The entertainment company owns several industry-leading game developers, including Bethesda Softworks, the maker of the post-apocalyptic Fallout games and the fantasy series The Elder Scrolls. It also owns Id Software, known for its Doom, Rage and Wolfenstein shooting game franchises.
…Well. At least it wasn’t EA. God knows what happens to the next Fallout and/or Elder Scrolls, though. No, wait, we were wondering that now. So: never mind, I guess?
Tweet of the Day, I’m Pretty OK With This, Actually edition.
Better to have a Gundam and not need it, than need one and not have it.
Who looks around at 2020 and says "This is the perfect time to build and activate without consequences my six-story 25-ton weaponized robot"? https://t.co/UO4ezS3wSG
— Kenneth Hite (@kennethhite) September 21, 2020
Spent the morning going over beta reads for TALES FROM THE FERMI RESOLUTION.
I’ve got another to go through, later — but there’s a limit to how many times I can read a text before my eyes begin to glaze over. I will say that so far I got at least one comment that made me swear at myself for not seeing that possibility right away, so the beta read was worth it, right there. I figure I can get TALES FROM THE FERMI RESOLUTION, VOLUME I: SHADOW OF THE TOWER to the editor by the end of the month. Then the Kickstarter in November, and hopefully publication by February.
Huzzah!
September 20, 2020
The “Oh, this is gonna be messed up” WANDAVISION trailer.
I don’t mean that in a bad way, mind you. I’m down with a little messed up. Nothing like a bit of the horrorshow, what-what?
Dunno when WandaVision’s dropping, though. Presumably in the next few months or so.
09/20/2020 Snippet, THE THING IN MY HIP FLASK.
Rationalizations!
Patreon!Two weeks later, we started selling Black Salt Bitters, which was nothing more than the goo itself, heavily salted and mixed with a small amount of distilled alcohol. The irony of adding the goo back to the same liquor we had extracted it from did not elude me, but a concentrated and very small dose of the stuff made it a perfect mixer. Or at least an engrossing one.
I imagine people might ask how I justified this to myself. Simple: any chemist knows that there are many, many substances out there which are harmless enough in small doses, but fatal in large ones. If a regular distiller did not stay up nights worrying about people dying from drinking a full bottle of his grain alcohol in one sitting, why should I feel awful about someone deciding to drink himself to mindlessness on my product? Particularly since the bottles I used for BSB were as small as I could find in bulk. Besides, I told myself, I can always raise the price if too many bottles are purchased.
Indeed, it only took two price increases — well, three, but the first adjustment was an absolute guess and should not count — before the demand stabilized. Mostly stabilized. But the increased demand after that was merely from people trying to get their hands on something fashionable. I am sure of it.
Happy benchmark to FROZEN DREAMS: 150th *sale*!
It happened today: in addition to a very successful Kickstarter, today I got my 150th actual purchase of FROZEN DREAMS on Amazon! Not Kickstarter fulfilment, not from the pre-order store: no-fooling actual sales, money on the barrelhead and all that. I would like to thank everybody who bought, reviewed, and recommended the book: I couldn’t have done it without you folks. It’s very appreciated.
Moe Lane
PS: The next book (short story collection) is being beta-read, while the next novel is being alpha-read, and the next Tom Vargas novel is being plotted out in advance of NaNoWriMo. I am, as one might say, still on the job.
Patreon Microfiction: Reasonable Realignment of Resources.
‘Reasonable Realignment of Resources’ illustrates the great question of draconic-human interactions in medieval societies: why does the king particularly care if the burden of having a local dragon is merely that she eats a cow every week or so? He has plenty of cows. Of course, if the dragon is a wild beast otherwise, it’s still a problem. But if she can demonstrate language and self-restraint, well… there are opportunities, there.
Patreon!
