Moe Lane's Blog, page 884
June 28, 2020
On Order: MR. JONES.
MR. JONES is the one about the reporter who broke the news about the Ukraine genocide, back in the 1930s. It’s not coming out as a DVD for another couple of weeks, but you can buy it digitally now. …Or, rather, you can buy whatever version they say is the digital one now. And you never know when that determination might be subject to a sudden, retroactive change.
06/28/2020 Report, FROZEN DREAMS Kickstarter.
The big news is that I finally did the first pass-through of all the stories in the short story sampler. I will now proceed to ignore it until Tuesday, then go through them all again to catch all the typos and whatnot that will bred between now and then. Because the typos do breed. I am certain of it… right.
What this means in practice is that the short story sampler will, hopefully, be ready to go to backers by next weekend. The sampler will not be commercially available at this time, and quite possibly ever; I don’t have the budget to get a professional cover and/or copy-edit it. On the other hand, I will be including the continent map that I commissioned for the RPG worldbook, and one of the stories in the sampler is original, so I feel the whole shebang will be valuable.
That’s mostly it, except that I was also mucking about with Backerkit’s postage calculator. I haven’t gotten the hang of it yet, but hopefully they’ll get in touch with me tomorrow to help. Backerkit’s got pretty solid customer service.
Moe Lane
PS: The FROZEN DREAMS pre-order store will be open for a little bit longer.
06/28/2020 Snippet, HOLDOUTS.
Gonna go down to the wire, but it’s almost all done now.
Patreon!I was halfway to kicking my boots off — I keep my toenails sharper than my fingernails, and maybe the chains on my ankles were more lightly attached to the wall — when the door opened. It was Greta; she held up a key. “Shout,” she said, “and I leave. And then you’re dead.”
That’s one way to get my attention. “Fine,” I replied. “I’ll be good.”
She didn’t move. “If you want to get out of here, with or without your blood slave,” said Sax, “then you have to listen and do what I say after I set you free, too. You’ll die if you don’t, only more slowly than if I just leave you here.”
“You make a lot of death threats for a rescuer, lady,” I half-grumbled. “But sure, fine. Until we’re out of this, you’re the trusty native guide. I swear.” Greta moved forward to unlock my arm and leg cuffs. “Word of advice, though?” I said as I rubbed my wrists. “Never let Lt. Grier hear you call her a ‘blood slave.’ She’d gut you in a heartbeat over that.”
Patreon Microfiction: The Principle of the Thing.
Heh. There might have been a joke there if I had called it “The Principal of the Thing.” But then people might have written in to let me know that I meant ‘Principle,’ so I guess I dodged a bullet but not noticing the potential joke before now.
June 27, 2020
I was going to put up a trailer…
…but then I made the mistake of watching it. I do not understand why they make bad sequels to bad movies and then send those sequels directly to digital/DVD. I can understand making a bad sequel that you know will make lots of money. They gotta feed their families, you know? But if it’s crap that’s not even going to sell, why not make a sequel to ARRIVAL, instead? Or at least keep the damn team together.
No, I’m never going to stop being cranky over this. It’s the good movies that piss me off about Hollywood, not the bad ones. The good movies show that they have no excuse for their behavior.
Book of the Week: The Necronomnomnom.
I kept being asked, Brother, have you seen the Necronomnomnom? Eventually I failed my SAN check and bought it. It came in the mail today – and the drinks menu alone seems guaranteed to send one’s consciousness fleeing to the peace and safety of a new dark age.
Yeah, I’ll stop now. I bought it in large part for the seafood recipes anyway, although I don’t think I want to cook octopus. They’re just a little too bright for my liking.
So, what *is* a successful author, anyway?
It’s a really interesting question; and, as you might imagine, one that’s of some interest to me. Depending on who you ask, so far FROZEN DREAMS has either broken through the average number of sales for a new book, or is rapidly approaching it, or the entire conversation is ridiculous because the Kickstarter skewed everything. The number ‘250’ gets bandied about a lot, you see; only I’ve seen people confidently say that should be e-book sales, and others say that only print copies count, and still more say that the true number for print copies should be about 100, and then people start suggesting it should be about how much money you’re making per year.
It doesn’t help that most people don’t talk about their own sales, much. I’m not really sure who makes money in this business, really. I think that I’m doing okay, here: the question is what happens with the second novel? And everything that follows?
Still: all in all, it’s been a good two weeks for the book. I just have to sustain it. And, in related news – very much related news – here are links to Amazon and Goodreads for honest reviews. And if you like a book that I didn’t write, review that one, too. The author will thank you. Apparently, books live and die on reviews.
06/27/2020 Snippet, HOLDOUTS.
Got up this morning and got 1K words done. Actually wrote the ending, so now all I have to do is fill bits in. I was starting to worry…
Patreon!What’s a ruined city like? Weird question, that; the USA’s been full of ‘em for years. Nothing like Eurasia, sure. You can walk on rubble from Dresden to Moscow, although the Imperials are working on that. But I’ve been in a lot of broken places while on the Bureau’s business.
Rochester wasn’t so bad, although I was pretty sure we were being watched by something. Feral vampires, maybe feral humans, or even just raccoons. The place didn’t feel empty, the way it’s supposed to. “This area gets swept, right?” I asked Greta.
“Yes, Special Agent,” she said. “Once every two weeks.” Like me, she was being quiet but not whispering. We weren’t sneaking around, over Pam’s wordless objections. I mean, she saw the logic and everything; if there was anybody in here, they were clearly better at stealth than we were. We weren’t going to out-sneak them, so why bother skulking around in the dark and maybe get a broken ankle for our troubles? But Pam’s good at not being seen.
