[As usual, two weeks lag here, if you aren’t reading this on my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/blazeward). If you’d like your news fresher, and the monthly Anti-Stodgy/Redneck Chef newsletter, all I ask is a buck to help keep the lights on around here.]
Ya know what? Still bouncy. Which is way better than morose. Got a new project I’m deep diving research on. Anybody know any experts on jet aircraft from the era 1945-1950? Figured I’d ask. Also equipment and style, but I am doing pretty good there.
It will turn into a new series at some point. Historic Action Thriller with jets, secret agents, Nazis, and trouble. I’m cackling as I research.
More news later.
It is also the first Monday of the “Going to Grandma’s Sale” over on KRP.
We try to do this every year. A sale starting a week and a half out from American Thanksgiving and running through Cyber Monday. The logic is that a lot of folks will take off next week entirely and get a nine-day vacation. Long drives or time spent in airports, you need books.
I mean, you always need books, but especially now. Plus, lots of us aren’t sportsball fans, and would rather sit quietly and read than sportsball. (Me, I’d write.)
Anyway. Twelve box sets for folks to get cheap for the next two weeks. Similarly, we’re looking at doing some sort of big Christmas sale but I don’t have the details yet. It won’t start until Dec 1 anyway, so we’ve got time. And you can always buy a boxed set for a friend as an early Christmas present, then forward them the download code to break up their turkey travels.
On the writing front, I finished another Reilly story (#6) last week. The Scattered Tribes Chronicle is sitting at about 80,000 words right now, and feels like maybe 1/3 to 2/5 done. LOTS of story yet to go, and lots of novels to follow it, so you won’t be bored, I hope.
Mistaken Identity and The Coven are both out and getting good ratings. Except for that one guy who would have given Mistaken Identity five stars but he didn’t like me telling him what his politics should be. That Uly suggesting that Capitalism™ wasn’t the highest possible form of civilization was a sin. Especially when Uly preferred Socialism. (Buddy, you’ve never lived under capitalism, although the modern Robber Baron TechBros would REALLY like to get back to that era.) Mostly, the Khet are using a form of 1950s US Industrialism, but I doubt that most folks have read wide enough and deep enough to appreciate the subtleties there.
And seriously, have you read ANY of my books, pal? I’m not saying I’m a Red, but I’m also not denying a deep, abiding fuchsia, either. I think he prefers the wild west of interstellar rape and piracy of Lacium, which really tells the rest of us WAY more about him that he probably is comfortable explaining. Or maybe he’ll tell everyone over Thanksgiving dinner, because he’s THAT UNCLE.
(I’m the weird Uncle who bought my nieces non-standard toys. The oldest girl loved her firetruck when she was two, by the way, and she turned out to be an amazing lady and badass Nurse these days. So there.)
After that, I spun back to Corsac Fox #5. Esko, you’re gonna love this one. We’re going deep into your ideas.
BACKGROUND: The two Kickstarters offered up “Be a character” or “Be a Major Character” and two of my friends went all in. One appears in both 3 and 4 as one of the Lords of the Endless Plains (you now know who they are), while the other will be a major player starting in 5, and he wanted to contribute an entire new species to what Uly and the gang are up to.
I’m about 10k in at the moment. While I’d love to give you more details, there are two major novels in the way, so you’ll just have to trust me that I’m cackling about where we’re going. And what we’re finding.
And how much I enjoyed taking The Iliad and The Odyssey with me to the Soviet Union in 1991. (I was in Moscow the day Yeltsin was originally elected President. We took off for Leningrad and landed in Petrograd when they voted to undo the name change.)
The Odyssey is a flavor of book four and five. You’ve got about six months to digest both books (I recommend the Fagles translation of the Iliad and the Fitzgerald Odyssey, by the way. Those were the ones I carried.)
Past that, cackling, bouncing, and writing. Probably in that order. Having WAY too much fun for my own good, but that just means I’m on projects I really enjoy and plan to get big and crazy with.
Y’all are hopefully along for the ride at this point. If not, I might have to take hostages. Heh.
Have a lovely Monday, even though it won’t be as good as mine.
shade and sweet water,
blaze
West of the Mountains, WA
—————————-
Thank you so much for being my patron and for funding these essays!
If you’re reading the free version (which is published two weeks after the Patreon version), please consider joining the ones who do pay at https://www.patreon.com/blazeward. It’s only a buck and helps keeps the lights on around here.