Christopher B. Wright's Blog, page 31

Pay Me, Bug! is in the Immerse-Or-Die StoryBundle

The 15th of April is a day of woe and suffering here in the United States. That's our deadline for filing Federal Income Taxes, you see, and that's when a lot of us watch sadly as we stuff envelopes full of money and watch that money fly away, never to return. It's a time of change: specifically, a time when change is really all we have left, jingling uselessly in our pockets.

It's a perfect time for a StoryBundle. And if you're going to buy a StoryBundle, why not buy one with Pay Me, Bug! in...

King's Gambit: Part Four

Esperanza, July 20, 1992

Artemis and David have been at the small house on the beach for four days, trying to decide what to do. The library was acceptable as a base of operations when the focus of their activities was the palace, but that’s no longer the case, and David decides Artemis would be better off with access to a real bed and a refrigerator stocked full of healthy food. Artemis doesn’t object to the change in venue. He’s subdued for most of the short trip back, brooding silently over...

King's Gambit: Part Three

One Day Earlier

“Which is why we’re certain it isn’t a member of the board.”

Jason Kline stands in the Haruspex Analytics Situation Room, facing a large flat-screen monitor displaying the shadowy silhouette of the Chairman. Simon Yin is working on a laptop to his right. The rest of the team is in other parts of the building making discrete alterations to the network that will make things a little easier to manage in the future. The only other person in the room is Mara Ioannou, sitting off to...

King's Gambit: Part Two

New York City Morgue

Special Agent Alan Grant is dead. His body is placed on an autopsy table, his upper torso split open, the gaping crack in his chest held apart with an old, dented rib spreader. Plastic bags filled with his organs, each clearly labeled and marked with permanent black marker, sit in a pile on a small wheeled table to the left of his head. His lifeless eyes are still open, and wide dark stripes—something called tache noir—spread across the whites of both eyes.

“Jesus.”

Specia...

King's Gambit: Part One

Haruspex Analytics, Top Floor

“Thank you all for coming. I regret the necessity.”

Though he is, as always, covered in shadow, the tension in the Chairman’s posture is unmistakable. The board room is silent, all eyes on him. Jason Kline shifts uneasily in his seat, instantly regretting it as it squeaks in protest.

“As you know,” the Chairman continues, “we have been operating under the shadow of a very serious security breach. Someone has betrayed us, quite overtly, on at least two separate occ...

Issue 22: King's Gambit

Story: Christopher Wright
Cover: Pascalle Lepas
Logo: Garth Graham

K.B. Spangler and Christopher B. Wright Discuss CleanReader on Twitter

I'm going to add a little context, but for the most part I think the tweets should speak to themselves.

Yesterday I heard about a service called CleanReader, but didn't pay too much attention to it. This morning K.B. Spangler, a fantastic web cartoonist AND author, had some very clear opinions on it:

Gonna be grumpy about #CleanReader now. Rant mode enabled (1/5)

— K.B. Spangler (@KBSpangler) March 25, 2015

There's a new app out which allows ebooks to have "clean" to "squeaky clean" filters...

Things I Didn't Know I Still Had: Curveball, the Webcomic Script

So sometimes when I dig through my files I find things that surprise me. This is one of those times.

Waaaaay back in 2000 or 2001--when I still lived in Raleigh, NC--I came up with the basic idea that eventually turned into the Curveball Prose Comic Serial. I eventually abandoned it because I realized there was no way I could ever draw it, and I didn't know anyone who would be interested in collaborating on it. So the idea sat for... oh... about ten years before I picked it up again.

But today,...

This Mortal Coil: Part Six

This Mortal Coil

David stays against the far wall, but moves over so he’s facing the door. Through it he can see a long room that reminds him of the old workshop his dad had in the basement of their house—narrow, full of shelves, with a table set against a wall that lacked only a vise to complete the picture. And it is empty: every shelf, every surface. Completely bare.

“The books are gone?”

Artemis nods.

“How?”

“I don’t know,” Artemis says, voice hollow. “It’s… it’s not possible. The wards are in...

This Mortal Coil: Part Five

Esperanza Imperial Palace

Artemis LaFleur stands in a room he has not thought of for a very long time.

When he’d commissioned the construction of the Imperial Palace, he’d made it a grand and public affair. Set into one of the few mountains on the island, it would look out over his tiny nation, serving as both beacon and reminder of its new way forward. His quarters, it was reported, would be at the lowest levels—no dungeons here, just a secure suite for the island’s leader. This was in start c...