Christopher L. Bennett's Blog, page 21

ARACHNE’S EXILE on NetGalley

A quick heads-up for reviewers, librarians, and book vendors: Arachne’s Exile is available for review on NetGalley through the month of February 2021.

https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/215070

I appreciate any efforts to get the word out about this novel and Arachne’s Crime. Professional reviews are welcome, as are reader reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, etc.

The DTI comes to STAR TREK ADVENTURES in “Another Roll of the Dice”!

I finally have a new Star Trek Adventures standalone RPG campaign to announce, and it’s a fun one.

Star Trek Adventures: Another Roll of the Dice

Experience time travel and engage Tzenkethi raiders!

“Captain’s Log: We have been ordered to suspend our routine patrol of the Tzenkethi border and proceed to the nearby Federation colony Natsumi’s World, where we will take aboard two agents of the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations. As usual, the DTI has provided no details, stating merely that we are to place ourselves at the disposal of the agents and follow their instructions. Thus, I have no idea whether to prepare my crew to face some unimaginable existential threat or, far more likely with the DTI, days of tedious routine and bureaucratic obstruction.”

When the player characters receive an assignment from the DTI to deliver a powerful alien artifact to DTI facilities, they are soon set upon by Tzenkethi raiders. The ensuing skirmish destabilizes the artifact’s energy field, and the characters discover that they have somehow changed into alternate timeline versions of themselves! Can the characters deal with the sudden changes in themselves and the rest of the crew, and also figure out how to get back to their own time, all the while battling the Tzenkethi?

This standalone 20-page PDF adventure by Christopher L. Bennett is for the Star Trek Adventures Roleplaying Game and is set during The Next Generation era. This adventure also contains advice for adaptation for use in campaigns based in other Star Trek eras. Download includes a regular version and a printer-friendly version.

Yes, it’s the triumphant return of Agents Lucsly & Dulmur! And it’s consistent with my DTI novels and novellas, while still standing alone as a game scenario.

Normally I’d talk more about the story and my creative process behind it, but I’ve already done that for the STA blog, in a piece that also went live today. You can read it here:

https://www.modiphius.net/blogs/news/sta-blog-another-roll-of-the-dice

Another Roll of the Dice is available as a downloadable PDF at the following links:

Modiphius EntertainmentDriveThruRPG

And this won’t be my last STA standalone. Another new one is currently wending its way through approvals, and I’ve just gotten started on writing a third. And I’ve begun talking with my editor Jim about something new and different on the horizon.

Arachne’s Crimes… of the Hub? Only on Patreon!

This month’s Fiction post on Patreon is a little unusual. It’s an excerpt from an early draft of the novel that became Arachne’s Crime and Arachne’s Exile, from a time when I was piling on too many characters and species that led me too deep into the weeds, requiring me to regroup and streamline the latter half of the story. One of those characters was the prototype for Tsshar, the adorably larcenous Mrwadj captain from Crimes of the Hub. She was meant to be comic relief, so after I cut her out of Arachne, she slotted neatly into the comedic Hub universe with minimal changes required. Now you can see my original version of the character, and get a few extra glimpses of Arachne worldbuilding that I ended up not having room for in the duology. Maybe not the best of both the Arachne-Troubleshooter and Hub universes, but a unique convergence of the two.

Fiction: Deleted scene: Arachne Meets the Hub?

Accompanying it on the Behind the Scenes tier is a second excerpt from my “Life in the Galaxy” worldbuilding notes, focusing on ancient galactic history and the evolution of the galactic institutions and social structures that exist by the time of Arachne’s Exile.

Worldbuilding notes: Life in the Galaxy (Part 2)

As always, the Fiction tier is available to Patreon subscribers at $10/month, and Behind the Scenes is $12/month.

It only just occurred to me that both these works ended up with “Crime” in the title.

Battery better-y?

The latest on my car battery situation: Someone on Facebook suggested that the culprit draining the battery might be a power adapter in the lighter, if it had an LED. I have, in fact, been keeping just such a thing plugged in, so after the last time my battery ran down (this time so completely that I even had to unlock the door manually), I took out the adapter, and after I jump-started the car with my portable power pack, I went for an extra-long drive to recharge the battery as fully as I could, even going a few miles out and back on the freeway. I figured that if driving around recharges the battery, and if my short local drives weren’t enough to give it a lasting charge, maybe a longer, faster drive would do better.

A couple of days later, I was down in the parking lot to take out the trash, so I tried starting the car, and it worked. But the real test was today, when I went to pick up groceries. Luckily, for the first time in a month or more, I was able to start the car on the first try, with no jump needed. I’m not sure if that’s because of the adapter being removed, the long drive I took, or the fact that it’s only been a week since then. But it’s a relief.

Still, I’m going to need some car maintenance before long, since my wiper blades are turning into spaghetti. I suppose I could try buying new blades online and installing them myself, but I’ve never done that and I don’t know how easy it would be.

—

In other news, I’ve now been paid for that novel manuscript I recently finished and still can’t talk about, and I’ve finally paid off the remainder of that rather large tax debt I’d been paying in installments. The interest on that payment plan was pretty steep, so I’m glad to be free of it at last. I’m still waiting for the go-ahead for the next book, and I’ve just turned in copyedits for my next Star Trek book which also hasn’t been announced yet. So now I’m sort of taking advantage of downtime between projects, while thinking about what to do next.

Last week, due to bad weather and finally having some money to spare, I got my groceries delivered instead of picking them up, which didn’t turn out great. I had them delivered on the same day I ordered, which means I wasn’t given the chance to approve their substitutions for missing items. There was a weird substitution this time — instead of substituting my usual frozen orange juice concentrate with another variety of orange juice, they substituted some single-serve scrambled-egg cups, with ingredients that you’re supposed to mix into the cup with one egg and then microwave. I don’t have eggs; I don’t much like them. So I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the things. Luckily, it turned out that the distinct ingredients (e.g. diced ham, bacon bits, diced peppers, onions, and potatoes, and grated cheddar) were in individual pouches, so I’ve been using them in various other recipes. I had the ham with peas and grated parmesan atop fettucine, approximating something my father used to make, and it was pretty good. I didn’t expect to like the bacon bits, but I had them in a single-serve bowl of microwave macaroni and cheese along with diced tomato, and it was pretty good. I had the pepper-onion-potato mixture and more diced tomatoes with vegetarian Italian sausage and olive oil on top of rice, which didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. And I’ve had the grated cheese as part of my standard “chili” dog recipe with refried beans, cheese, chopped onions, and Dijon mustard on turkey dogs, as well as on top of a bowl of beef ramen soup with veggie crumble and mixed vegetables. So I found a use for all of the ingredients after all. Although I had to go a week without orange juice.

Ah, yes, that beef ramen. A few months back, they substituted a 6-pack of beef ramen packets in place of the chicken ramen I wanted, even though I asked them not to. I finally used up the last of it this week and tried ordering the chicken again — and once again, they substituted a 6-pack of the beef kind. Ugh. Just when I thought I was out. Well, I suppose I could just throw out the beef flavor packet and mix in some diced chicken and my own seasonings, and that would be fairly close. I keep meaning to try that, but I have kind of a mental block against throwing out food unnecessarily, even something as cheap as a ramen flavor packet.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll be glad when I feel safe to go into the grocery store again. Luckily, with the new administration and Congress in place, it finally looks like we’re getting onto the right track to get the pandemic under control. But it will still be months before things can begin getting back to normal.

Arachne annotations update

I’ve now got all my author copies of Arachne’s Crime, Arachne’s Exile, and The Arachne Omnibus containing both of them plus the print debut of “Comfort Zones” and reprints of “The Weight of Silence” and “Among the Wild Cybers of Cybele.” Since it was the print debut of “Comfort Zones,” I realized I should add the story’s annotations (previously posted on my Patreon) to my Arachne Saga page here, with page numbers for the omnibus version. While I was at it, I added parenthetical page numbers for the omnibus to my annotations for Crime and Exile. All the annotations can be accessed from the main page here:

https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/the-arachne-saga/

Starting anew

Well, here we are at the start of 2021, which will hopefully be the year we climb out of the hole we collectively sank into in 2020. So far the climb is definitely happening for me. I have money in the bank again, and I have more on the way. I turned in that new novel manuscript on schedule, after doing a few revision passes and incorporating some very useful notes from my consultant, and I was notified this morning that the payment is being processed and should be in my bank by next week, which is nicely prompt. And I’m making excellent progress at outlining what comes next. (Still waiting for it to be formally announced so I can say more.) I’m really feeling upbeat this past week or so, happier than I’ve felt in probably the past few years. That’s both from the financial relief I’m getting from this project and the creative satisfaction and fun of writing it.

Oh, and I got a call today from my eSpec Books editor Danielle McPhail, telling me that my author copies of Arachne’s Exile and The Arachne Omnibus are on the way, including a copy of the hardcover edition of the omnibus. That should be cool to have, a nice companion piece for the Only Superhuman hardcover on my shelf. I find it ironic that this duology that I initially wrote as a single book and then decided would work better as two books has ended up being available as a single volume after all. Anyway, Amazon has been showing the omnibus as one of the most popular books on my author page, though its sales rank listings don’t seem to agree. I wonder if popularity is calculated based on views rather than sales. (Also, for some reason Amazon isn’t showing my books on my author page at the moment.)

I got the aforementioned call while I was in the middle of trying once again to jump-start my car to go pick up groceries (which is why I was a little curt on the phone, Danielle, sorry). Yes, even though I drove around for half an hour 12 days ago to charge up the battery, it was drained once again. (The post title has a double meaning, see? See?) I didn’t think it had been that long; I’d been planning to go to the grocery store sooner this time now that I had a bit more money. But between my reluctance to drive in chilly weather (which makes my car sluggish for the first few minutes it’s running) and my preoccupation with finishing the manuscript, I let a whole two weeks go by between grocery trips and the battery ran dry again. At this point, I’m starting to wonder if it’s really just the car’s lack of use, or if there’s some glitch in the electrical system draining the battery.

The portable jump-starter power pack was acting weirdly again too; the power lights wouldn’t go on. Yet nonetheless, it successfully started the car. I don’t know what happened there, but I’m glad it worked after all. Still, I’m getting tired of having to jump the car every time I drive it. Maybe I need to take a longer drive soon, to charge the battery more fully. Or maybe I need a better battery. (What I really need is a better car, but my finances haven’t improved that much.)

One good, minor bit of car news, though, is that for once I remembered to write down my end-of-year mileage for tax purposes. Usually I forget until March and have to reconstruct my travels in the interim to estimate how much to subtract from my current mileage. This time I finally have an exact figure.

Anyway, for a moment it looked like I wasn’t getting the usual text from the grocery store asking me to approve their product substitutions, and I hoped I’d finally get everything I ordered, including the vegetarian Italian sausages I really love and haven’t been able to find since the pandemic started. But it turned out the text just came a bit late, and they did substitute a couple of items, including those. So I do have veggie Italian sausages, but a different brand, and just basic Italian instead of the really good sun-dried tomato and basil flavor. Hopefully they’ll be a reasonable substitute — or at least better than the veggie kielbasa I got as a substitute last time I tried buying those sausages (which was, wow, all the way back in May).

Oh, and I also made a second try at buying a frozen pizza, a Mediterranean veggie variety. Last time I tried ordering it, they put a spinach and mushroom pizza in with my order even though the receipt showed it was the Mediterranean one, and I don’t like mushrooms (though these were tolerable). This time, I finally got the right pizza, so that’s something. But ironically, they made the exact same mistake with my veggie burgers, substituting the wrong flavor even though the receipt shows the right one! (The online page also says that the cheese singles I ordered were out of stock and substituted with… the exact same cheese singles. Huh??)

I’ll close with a reminder — if you read either of the Arachne novels or the duology, please post reviews or at least ratings on Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever. The more reviews the books get, the more awareness there will be for them.

The whole ARACHNE saga now on sale!

Well, at first I expected Arachne’s Exile to come out at least several months after Arachne’s Crime, and then I thought they’d be out simultaneously. As it worked out, they were released exactly a month apart. Not only did Arachne’s Exile go on sale today, but so did The Arachne Omnibus, a deluxe hardcover volume (also available in trade paperback and e-book) containing both novels, plus the Kickstarter/Patreon prequel story “Comfort Zones” (in print for the first time) and the connected follow-up stories “The Weight of Silence” and “Among the Wild Cybers of Cybele.” It even includes my alien height chart, which you can also see on my Aliens of the Arachne-Troubleshooter Universe page.

Here are the ordering links I have so far:

Arachne’s Crime

Available from:

eSpec BooksAmazon (trade paperback)Amazon (e-book)Barnes & Noble (TPB)



Arachne’s Exile

Available from:

eSpec BooksAmazon (e-book)Barnes & Noble (e-book)



The Arachne Omnibus

Available from:

eSpec BooksAmazon

I’ve also gone live with the Arachne’s Exile annotations: https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/the-arachne-saga/arachnes-exile-annotations/

While I was at it, I also added some cover art notes to the Arachne’s Crime annotations, since I forgot to do that before.

So there we are. The entire Arachne saga is now available for purchase, either in two paperback volumes or in one hefty single volume available in hardcover (though Exile and the omnibus are not back from the printers yet). After all these years, more than 22 years since the original story came out and more than 11 years since I first started expanding it to novel length, the entire thing is finally out.

Although the saga of Arachne‘s crew may not be over yet…

COVER REVEAL – THE ARACHNE SERIES

An auspicious start to the new year — cover reveals for both ARACHNE’S EXILE and THE ARACHNE OMNIBUS, a deluxe volume collecting both novels along with the stories “Comfort Zones” (for the first time in print), “The Weight of Silence,” and “Among the Wild Cybers of Cybele.”

eSpec Books

This is exciting. Two books in as many days, and they are both related, so we are featuring both of them in this post. We hope you enjoy the forthcoming releases by Christopher L. Bennett, Arachne’s Exile, and The Arachne Omnibus, which includes not only both books in The Arachne duology, but also the three existing short stories in that timeline and a special rendition of the author’s height chart for the aliens featured in the books.

What a Tangled Web…

When the colony starship Arachne unwittingly destroyed a deep-space habitat of the Chirrn, her crew committed themselves to a lifetime of penance to repay their debt. But a brutal act of vengeance has now forced them into exile in a distant part of the galaxy.

Drawn into a cosmic conspiracy spanning millennia, the colonists learn that the Chirrn’s ancient choices have exacted a terrible toll on human…

View original post 469 more words

“Safe Hex” on Patreon

Since I’ve been extra-busy this month writing my new novel, my Patreon Fiction entry this month is a very short story — no annotations, sorry. If my memory is reliable, then “Safe Hex” is technically the first story I ever had published, in a newsletter of the University of Cincinnati Honors Society, of which I was sort of an honorary member back in the late ’80s and early ’90s (i.e. I had friends there and they let me hang out in their lounge). Although that was an earlier draft of the story, less imaginatively entitled “Be Careful What You Wish For.” This version was written in 1996-7 and never sold; apparently I gave up after the first rejection, not having a lot of faith in the story. But I’ve always somewhat liked the idea, and it sort of works as a companion piece to last month’s “Vein Glory,” for reasons that will become clear. I did a bit of revision and updating for this edition.

As always, the story is available to subscribers of the Fiction tier at $10/month:

Fiction: “Safe Hex”

An automotive addendum

Since it was fairly warm this afternoon (which meant I didn’t have to worry about my car being sluggish to start due to cold lubricants or whatever), I took that drive I mentioned above, to recharge my car battery and test the GPS on my new phone. Turns out the battery ran dry again even in just the two days since my grocery trip, so said trip was nowhere near long enough to charge the battery. And for a few moments, I was worried that my jump-starter battery pack wasn’t working. The cable bit that plugs into it is supposed to go from flashing red and green to solid green to let you know it’s working, and it wouldn’t go green. It eventually did, though, when I happened to tilt it 90 degrees from the way it naturally rests, though I don’t know if that was cause and effect or coincidence, since it stayed engaged when I tilted it back. Anyway, I started the car and moved on to the next thing.

The USB adapter worked fine, letting me plug in my 6-foot charging cable, and the GPS worked smoothly too. But I’m out of practice at looking down at the screen as the phone rests in the cup holder, or else the angle was less amenable with the new phone somehow, even though it’s a bigger and brighter screen. I’ve never felt particularly safe doing that anyway. What I really need now is some kind of phone mount for my dashboard or dashtop or whatever you call that flattish surface under the windshield. The cable is easily long enough to reach even from the outlet in the back seat (the lighter in the front doesn’t work as a power outlet, I guess because the designers figured only passengers would need one, since the car predates smartphones).

Not that I expect to need it anytime soon, as I said above. I thought about maybe going to some store or other, maybe pick up some food at a drive-thru, but I decided I’d rather not deal with exchanging cash with anyone, and I only have a few bucks in my wallet anyway. I ended up just driving around the neighborhood, including some areas I haven’t been to in years if at all, just so I could experience the change of scenery. I was willing to risk getting a little lost since I had a working GPS again. But I didn’t need it. I still have a fairly good sense of the layout of the area and knew which way I needed to go.

Although the same can’t be said for everyone. As I was coming up along the one-way street leading to my home street, another car was approaching me the wrong way in the same lane! But they were on the other side of an intersection and they turned off before they and I got too close — also going the wrong way into a one-way turn lane. I hope they got back on the right side of the 2-way street they turned onto after that. At least, I didn’t hear any evidence to the contrary.

Given how effective my little pocket-sized jump-starter pack is, I wonder why car batteries need to be so big and heavy anyway. I guess a car battery is meant to hold a greater amount of charge, though, since it’s used for more than just starting the ignition. Isn’t it? Also, the pack always needs at least two tries to start the car. I guess you want a larger charge in the battery to make it more reliable — providing you use the car often enough for the darn thing to hold onto its charge.

I didn’t really think I was using the car that much less frequently than I did before the pandemic. Maybe about half as often, at a guess. But I suppose the distance I drive is much less, just to the neighborhood grocery store and back, which is only about a mile every couple of weeks. That was still my most common destination before, but it wasn’t the only place I drove to.