[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.]
Broke out the mower over the weekend and cleared the lower meadow. And got a new blade coming for the brush cutter because the old one is a little U-shaped now from all the rocks around here. Will do some serious mowing in a few hours when it gets warmer, but it currently 58F outside.
And it’s summer, so I was bleeding yesterday. Machete and blackberry bramble. I will win. Just takes patience. Then mow the shit out of it once I get it knocked down far enough.
Having a pretty nice week. A little grumpy, but nothing out of expectation or control. The usual, coming up on June 1, when I tend to reset my life on an annual basis to keep from falling into the same old same old.
WorldCon (World SF Convention) will be in Seattle in August. As usual, a bit of a shitshow as the fools in charge decided to use AI to handle panel programming. With SFF writers, who are among the hardest hit tranche. I know a lot of folks who are so pissed they have withdrawn from participating, but I will be there. If nothing else, I want a front-row seat of the stupidity, as it might manage to be the last WorldCon. Been expecting that since I went to my first one a decade ago and at 45 I was in the younger half of the participants. (As opposed to ECCC, where I was in the oldest 20%).
Writing is going well. Had to spin up new worlds for BSQ, and been thinking about how I extend them. You’ve read the four Brother Jon stories by now. Signy 01 will be in the next BSQ, and I’ll drop 02 with it in July. Got another Laima/Forever City story written for June.
Wrote the next Beckett Fernsby story (08) for a future BSQ, but might be done on those themes for now and need to just write loose stories for Volume 2, with Vol 1 being 1-6 when we get there next year.
Also have started a new caper team for a future issue of Thrill Ride Magazine. Boston is a bit more caper in the sense of light-hearted and a touch silly. Riordan is more inspired by the Parker books by Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark. Darker. Meaner, if you will. And a twist on the usual, with a four-man team rather than the classic Sentai of Five. Dortmunder (also by Westlake) always said that the best crew fit in a sedan. Considering that he was writing in the 60s and forward, that’s 4-6 people, but I went with four, once I knew how to arrange the job. Have space to bring in ringers for future jobs.
One of the joys of editing Boundary Shock Quarterly is that all the various themes have forced me to explore sub-genres I would have never gone after in my usual writing, where I tend to stay in military space opera/space adventure. And make most of my living.
Expanding my horizons.
Similarly, Thrill Ride Magazine forces me to write hard, sharp, fast, and high-energy, because the rule is under 10,000 words, where BSQ caps at 20,000. Generally, that means 4500 words of setting and dialog, and 4500 words of action.
That’s it. Since my natural length if you handed me a blank piece of paper is closer to 25,000, I have to keep things under control.
And I will keep putting the short stuff out in collections as we go, as well as writing longer. Chace Haig needs more novels. And I have a couple of other folks now that can go there, with Boston, Riordan (eventually) and Rory. Not sure when I will publish Gator, but it’s in the can. Maybe fall. Maybe next year.
Hope y’all enjoy Brother Jon. New spin on things and I’d like to expand him sideways into bigger things as well. As usual, the limits tend to be time and space to write, rather than ideas to pursue. I will die of old age with ideas that never bubbled up to the top to be written. Hell, I could triple my word count in any given year and not run out, so tell all your friends to buy my books so I can afford the kind of staff that would require.
Everyone would win.
🙂
shade and sweet water,
b
West of the Mountains, WA
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