Moe Lane's Blog, page 860
August 18, 2020
Unexpected Snippet, THE HOUSE.
Very unexpected; I was just trying to revise that one for ANAGNORISIS. But there needed to be a little more dramatic tension…
Patreon!When I came into the living room Alyx was indeed there (her younger brother had taken two, earlier, and was already asleep. Most of the children who took the candy would ‘crash’ early this night, for absolutely no conventionally detectable reason whatsoever). I imagined that she might have brightened ever so slightly as I entered; Alyx was naturally suspicious of me at first, but as the months passed she had decided that perhaps I might be a little trustworthy, after all.
It was that trustworthiness that I needed to take advantage of, if only for selfish reasons. I cannot abide dramatic scenes. “Alyx, please listen to me,” I said, holding the candy out. “Everything you secretly believe is true. The world really is full of the strange and uncanny, despite what your mother might think; and this really is a special night, with great and terrible possibilities. Adults lie to you about it because they prefer to remain blind.
But I will not lie to you. If you want to see, however briefly, the first step lies in you eating one of these candies. They will not harm you. In fact, I will eat one of your choosing, myself, if only you will eat another.”
She made me pick the one I was to eat, of course. After that, Alyx willingly took another and consumed it in front of me. As I left, she said, “Thanks.”
I turned. “For what?”
“You were lying,” Alyx said. “There’s nothing like what you said out there. But it’s Halloween, and you made me believe that there was for a moment. So, thanks.”
I came very close to smiling. “Well. ‘Tis the season.” I then made my goodbyes to Betty, and went back to the House. With any luck, I could continue the next step in my plan.
08/18/2020 Status, ANAGNORISIS Project.
Anagnorsis is the next, fast-turnaround project: a selection of short stories, about 32K words total (now with art!). I’m in the process of getting the second of the four horror stories formatted; the third will likely get done tonight, and the fourth will be expanded in the next few days. I will need some volunteers to read the blessed things in the next two weeks, so drop a line in comments if you’re interested. I’m trying to have this all approved by the time virtual Dragon Con comes around; they’re supposed to be doing a virtual dealer’s room, and what the heck, right?
In other news: somehow, the series of calls to my mother that started with my Do you done any spooky-looking woodcuts that I could use for the cover? has turned into her So I’ve done the preliminary sketch for the first story and I’ll get the other three and the cover to you next week. I… I do not understand how this happens. As I said yesterday, at no point did she disagree with me in any way about the limitations of the project; and yet somehow I found myself signing off on those limitations being removed. On the other hand, I didn’t fight too hard after I saw the preliminary sketch.
On the gripping hand; admittedly, it’s no longer going to be a $1.99 book.
08/18/2020 Snippet, MORGAN BAROD novel revisions.
Up to 73K words. got about 8 chapters of 30 cleaned up for the alpha reader. I also have something that amused me to write:
Seven years of apocalypse had made everything surprisingly green. This stretch of the Magtrak wasn’t overgrown yet, but the woods surrounding it seemed to be working overtime. There was plenty of wildlife around, too. No raptors, thank God, but lots of regular small critters — and a slightly terrifying moment when the brush ahead of him rustled and a bear came out.
Morgan had stopped, and so had the bear. Morgan had heard that black bears were fairly small, for apex predators, but this one looked reasonably huge. It was also wearing a bowler hat, which was somehow oddly reassuring.
Carefully, Morgan stepped back a few paces; just as carefully, so did the bear. It raised one paw in the air, almost hesitantly, and waved it about. Just as hesitantly, Morgan waved back. After a moment, the bear turned and went back into the underbrush. Fairly loudly, almost as if to make sure Morgan could hear.
Once the bear was gone, Morgan made it a point not to run down the Magtrak as fast as he could. He certainly set a brisk walking pace, but it wasn’t a run. And he didn’t look back, either. He didn’t want to freak himself out. And he really didn’t want to freak out the bear.
August 17, 2020
The (not very) Epic/Apple war.
OK.
The new legal battle between game developer Epic and iPhone-maker Apple continues to heat up, as Epic says Apple will be cutting it off from the developer platform for Mac and iOS before the end of this month.
…So what?
Moe Lane
PS: Don’t get me wrong: I understand why they’re fighting. But here’s the thing about the Computer Wars: they’re over, and Apple came out of them as an increasingly self-contained hermit kingdom. Apple will last for a long time, but what it can’t particularly do is recover from the inevitable setbacks.
So people can’t play Fortnite on their iWhatevers. All right, I admit it: it kind of bytes*. But what’s it to me? I got plenty of hardware and software support to fall back on.
*Sorry.
08/17/2020 Snippet, TIPPED ON A STIFF.
Screams!
Patreon!Memo screamed, and I winced. Mostly because it was my fault, but also because he had one of those screams that you remember for a long, long time afterward. At least it wasn’t the scream somebody makes when they get skewered by a nightmare monstrosity of evil and spite. Nah, it was the scream somebody makes when a nightmare monstrosity of evil and spite suddenly manifests right next to him. Lucky for Memo (and my conscience), the spirit wasn’t interested in him; it wanted my liver, and from the screeching it made when it leaped off the cab it figured now was a great time for a snack.
I was so flabbergasted I almost didn’t dodge out of the way. A summoning. In the damned street. Was this guy out of his mind? The alley was bad enough!
But yeah, I dodged out of the way. This time when I moved I could feel something bad going on inside those stitches, but it felt more like a stab than a tear. It was starting to get rough, and if I didn’t do something quick I figured I’d end up eating the pavement. Or even if I didn’t do something quick, but I’d rather have the choice about what lays me out, see?
The *next* project.
It’s actually kind of interstitial. I realized that, hey: I have several years’ worth of short stories from my Patreon to draw from. I’ve picked out four of them (total word-count to be around 30-32K), one of which does need to be expanded a little because it could use it. They’re all horror, or at least horror-adjacent, with a common theme. The idea is to edit them some, have people read ’em, edit them some more, then release the four stories as a Kindle-only sampler.
Hopefully, I can get it done by the beginning of September. The only thing is, is this project a $.99 project, or is it a $1.99 one? Four stories, 32K words, remember. My inclination is to go with $.99, but I want people to take them seriously as stories…
Moe Lane
PS: I am apparently getting* my mom to do the art for it. She’s looking for something to do and she is an artist.
*I started the call saying Mom, you have any spooky woodcuts handy? and ended it saying Sure, I’ll send over the stories tonight so you can make something. While INSISTING THROUGHOUT that I didn’t want her to drop anything and do this project. Somehow, she kept agreeing with me until I was inexplicably doing what I was told…
08/17/2020 Snippet, OMBUDSMAN.
Meetings!
Patreon!Bad Jack wasn’t an idiot. He wasn’t in a business where idiots lasted long. So he kept an eye on Just Jimmy, and he kept an eye on Gumball, and for damn sure he kept an eye on the Ombudsman. Which was too many eyes, dammit. He needed to make things… simpler.
So he sent a message to the Ombudsman. “Morty, dammit,” he muttered to himself, after he had Barb send it over. His name is Morty. Don’t you start getting scared of him, too.
Bad Jack had thought about the best way to do it, too. His first thought was to order Morty to come to his office, which would work great if it worked and wouldn’t work at all if it didn’t. Then he thought about going to Morty’s office, and rejected the idea on the spot. And lunch would just look like Bad Jack was scheming. He was doing just that, sure, but he wanted it to look smoother.
So Bad Jack went with a message on the need for a meeting about the new wing of the school. Yeah, that makes sense, he decided. It was a normal thing to set up; there were even a couple of things about it he needed to talk out with the Ombudsman, anyway.
Dammit, I’m doing it again.
08/17/2020 Update, Second Pass-through of the MORGAN BAROD Origin novel.
I need a better name for the book. Anyway, we’re at 72,406/80,000, which is nicely ahead of schedule for me. The only problem is, I can’t really excerpt anything because I was just smoothing out the text and adding sentences and paragraphs here and there. Real useful stuff, but nothing earth-shattering. There’s a couple of more places for more actual content, but not for a bit.
This is not the next Kickstarter book. The next Kickstarter book is a collection of Fermi Resolution short stories. It’s also not the next thing for sale. The next thing for sale is… the subject of another post.
