[As usual, three 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.]

Ugh.

Fabulous Publisher Babe™ came down with a head cold last week, then gave it to me over the weekend. Mostly recovered today, but still sitting down to write. At least I have words today. Took a couple of days off and just let backbrain and rabbithole fill things in.

Just under 18k words into Science Officer 16. “G” for those of you keeping score at home. Like where it’s going.

War of the Pirate Clans, Volume 2, as Zakhar calls it. Now that you’ve read Exile, you’ll understand better when I tell you that this is part of an interior trilogy (14-16) that kind of wraps up Season Two (I have H for 17, and a rough idea of a plot, but might call 16 good for a time.

Mental break. Corsac Fox came to rest. Science Officer might need to rest at 16. Dunno. It’s 2025, and a few folks took the mask off yesterday, revealing who they had been hiding previously, so it you’re throwing Nazi salutes, even ironically, understand that I don’t want to know you anymore, because my friends include the sorts of people your friends want to put into work camps.

You know: Work will make you free.

It sounds worse in the original German.

Facebook will be going away. I’m dialing down my time there from regular to weekly to maybe monthly, mostly so nobody can squat on my account information and claim I support racist scum and cop killers.

You can reach me on Bluesky, at least until it gets enshitified next. Mastodon is a lovely idea, but the guy in charge went total fucking Nazi on me last summer, so I might not log in there more than enough to tell people I’ve left.

Www.blazeward.com is likely the only spot I will reliably be over the next decade. If you aren’t paying for admission, then you are the product. That includes eyeballs and outrage, and most of the major social media sites have decided to go all in on the sorts of stuff that caused Louis XVI to have problems. Or Nicolas II.

What do you stand up for?

If you read my books, you gotta pretty good idea what I believe in. Hopefully, you wake up to things before we descend into the sorts of ugliness that saw Octavian come to power. Or the Three Kingdoms period.

Also, obviously, Patreon, at least as long as they don’t turn into shits, then at some point I might have to move to a subscription model on my own site. Or find someone to load me $50 million dollars to start the sort of bank that lets undesirables not have to deal with puritans and race purists.

Hope your Tuesday is the worst day of the rest of your life, and that every morning from here gets better. I’m aiming for the same.

shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

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