Moe Lane's Blog, page 844

FROZEN DREAMS now on Audible!

At last. Check FROZEN DREAMS out here and feel free to spend your monthly credit on it! Or spend the twenty bucks for the Audible version. …And now you know why they sell subscriptions to Audible.

Copy of the print book below if you’re looking for the dead tree version.

09/16/2020 Snippet, THE THING IN MY HIP FLASK.

Apprehension!

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Considering that I am — or at least was — the owner-operator of an illegal distillery, I am not all that fond of parties. Particularly ones involving over-consumption of distilled liquor, which this clearly and spectacularly had been. Most of the participants were still conscious, but curiously sluggish — and they reeked. Reeked in a way that suggested skipping over showers and going right to using a garden hose, then a shower.

Perceptive readers of this will probably guess that I recognized the smell, and I did; it was like that of the goo, only less awful — no, it was still awful. But also more exotic, perhaps? Or even almost, well, not really attractive. But it was a smell with a bit of fascination to it. It’s hard to describe, even though I can even now remember that smell perfectly. And still find it strangely appealing.

The smell of the goo seemed to be coming from several cheap plastic punch bowls, each half-full of a blue-gray liquid that was probably high enough proof to run in my car. Amazingly, some people were still drinking it; it took a few minutes, but I was able to find somebody functional enough to point up to where my workers presumably were.

As I climbed the stairs, I started to wish that I wasn’t. I do not scare easily, but the air in that fraternity house grew ever more fetid and cloying as I ascended. I did not like the look of those on the second floor, either; they seemed more sluggish, more sluggish, than the partiers below, but I fancied I saw sparkles of malice poking through the sloth on their faces. Was it directed towards me? Perhaps. Or perhaps they were maliciously amused about me. I might go ask them, if I was free of this place; but that particular fraternity has had a remarkable number of members dropping out of school since that day. I do not know if any of them are even still in town to be questioned.

Yes. Even still in town. That is what I mean.

09/16/2020 Update, DUTIES revision.

15,250/32,000. Better, but not quite at a good cruising speed. Finished “The Fight in the Grove,” (final wordcount: 5,300) and am now working on “Processing Duty.” I am starting to think that this may be a five-story job. Which would be a further complication. Ach, well.

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From “Processing Duty:”

So I’m there doing the job, and my co-worker Jack comes into the processing room. He didn’t seem any worse than usual, at first. But that’s not the easiest thing to figure out, on the site. A lot of us, we got what you’d call quirks. Either from what got us our jobs, or what we’ve seen since getting ‘em. In Jack’s case, he was just generally twitchy and laughed at weird times. Not what you’d call noteworthy in this place, really. Hell, that’s barely worth mentioning.

What? No, I didn’t like him at all — and I’m not saying that because of what happened. I never liked him, and there’s two years’ worth of monthly shrink reports right on the desk there to prove it. I put up with him, because that’s what you do at the Site. We just don’t have enough people to do the jobs.

But, I’ll be honest here, gentlemen: I don’t think Jack was also a Commie, no matter what your Mr. Hoover might believe. From what I hear, the Reds hate all this weird stuff way more than we do. Doesn’t fit the way they think, so they just shoot or burn it all on sight without trying to figure out what’s weird and dangerous, and what’s just weird. Which helped us out of a jam in Korea, didn’t it?

The FROZEN DREAMS Goodreads Giveaway project is at 30%. Sign up today!

30% of the way there!

If we hit 100% ($10/$30 physical tiers only) at the preorder store, I will give away 5 physical copies on Goodreads!

Tell your friends today, because supplies of signed copies are limited!

The DAUGHTER OF THE LILIES – Book 1 Kickstarter.

It’s no real secret that Daughter of the Lilies is a favorite webcomic of mine — it’s a post-apocalyptic magical fantasy series. Gee. Go figure — and I’ve waited a while for a print copy of the first volume. Behold! Here it is.

It’s probably gonna fund by the time you read this – possibly even before I finish writing this – but that’s all right. As I said, I want a print copy of the first volume.

‘Like A Friend.’

Nothing in particular about this one; I just heard it, and I liked it.

Like A Friend, Pulp

Tried the ISLE OF SIPTAH DLC for CONAN EXILES today.

I am so totally not loving the sudden lack of God-damned healing. I mean, apparently you can use bandages and potions. If you can find aloe plants. There are no damned aloe plants anywhere I can find on the Isle of Siptah.

That is all. Just wanted to vent about that.

09/15/2020 Update, DUTIES revision.

Still stuck at 500 words/day, and I’ve just decided not to pad this current story into 8,000 words. If it really wants to be 6,000 words that badly, fine. Maybe I’ll need the wordcount for the other ones.

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We smelled the corruption before we saw any of it, which relieved my mind some. Bittersap bezoars are truly not alive the way that either Man or Those Who Talk understand it — I keep saying this because truly foolish people make absurd claims otherwise — but they do seem to have strategies. Some are reckless in spreading their corruption, trying to infect as much as possible before they are destroyed; others are more craven, fortifying themselves away in the vain hope that this time, the bittersap can survive long enough in the outside world to dominate all.

Bittersap cannot do that, mind you. It is never has been able to withstand the perils of the surface world. But it never stops trying; and every time it makes another assault, innocents die. That is reason enough to fight it as hard, and as quickly as you can.

Although so is bittersap’s inherent malice. When we finally came up to the grove itself, the two of us took advantage of a low hill to scout out the coming place where we would fight. The dryad turned out to have binoculars from Yonder — “I like watching birds,” she explained with a shrug when I asked — and I had my own spyglass as well. This gave us both a clear view of the grove, alas.

09/15/2020, THE THING IN MY HIP FLASK.

Criminal indifference!

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…if a single use of goo as fertilizer packed two months’ worth of growth into a month, what would a weekly dose do? 

That was the question I asked David, over the beers he was slowly starting to be able to afford. He seemed less thrilled about the idea than I was, though. “Doesn’t it bother you?” he asked me.

“What?” I said. “Making money using my major? Never.” I winced a little inside — that was an impolitic thing to say to someone without that luxury — but luckily David hadn’t noticed. The beer was stronger than he was used to, I think.

Besides, he was concerned about other things. “No! I mean the stuff we keep pulling out of the booze! What is it? Where did it come from? Are we drinking it now?” At my shrug, he blinked a little, in either surprise or inebriation. “You don’t really care, do you?”

“Not really,” I replied. “Whatever the goo is, it can’t be that dangerous. If it was, somebody would have noticed it already. There are a lot of nauseating substances in chemistry, David. We even need some of them to live. Besides, we are eliminating it from the final product. We should all be fine if we try not to drink it straight.”

The MULAN (2020) Honest Trailer.

In some ways, this Honest Trailer for the new MULAN is more cutting than something I would have written. I’m just so plain pissed off about this flick that I would have spent the time yelling about slave factory camps, and said nothing about everything else that’s apparently wrong with this film. Honest Trailers was more comprehensive in its dissection.