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I’m just gonna go ahead and blame Jon, Charles, and Mark. In that order. You know what you’ve done. And if you don’t, I’m talking about someone else. Honest.

Background: a bit of erotica, as previously mentioned.

Except…

So on Monday, Jon wanted to talk about playing something like squad level Warhammer 40k. Like, 3-6 minis total. Sure, why not? I have about 20 old Marines and the same number of Eldar, presumably First Edition, as one of the marines is still on a sprue with a 1993 copyright date printed on it. (I sold all my armies in 1997 when that rules change rendered my Guard Army irrelevant unless I immediately spent $1,000. Fuck that noise.)

Then: As I’m wandering on Etsy, Charles points out that he has subscriptions for places like HeroForge and could take in stl files from them. So I went and got silly. Devilbunnies riding on Dire Lynx cavalry, because you can do that. He pulled the files because he had monthly credits built up that he hadn’t been using. (Gave him $20 yesterday for filament and headache costs, because he’d gonna print me an team.)

Then: Talking to Mark last week. He’s another writer. We talk every month. Tell him about the Devilbunnies, because by then (less than 48 hours) I already have thoughts on world-building for these Bunnies. Towards the end of the call, he wonders aloud if there was space for some sort of quarterly erotica magazine in a manner similar to BSQ and TRM. (He had forgotten me asking him the same question 18 months ago. But it was a good question.)

Get off the phone with him and one of my novel series ideas that I’ve dabbled on but never bothered writing down suddenly locks in with Devilbunnies, but not cavalry. Still, good idea, but the original novel I had intended wouldn’t have had any sex until about the start of Act Two. You can do that in a novel, but if we’re a magazine, then it’s serialized fiction and the readers will have…needs. And…expectations.

So to do it, everything has to start with a really solid In Media Res. (Starting in the middle of things, with no background. No setup. Dropped right into the action. Like, literally starting with a gunshot before you introduce the cast. Kinda the opposite of most epic fantasy fiction these days, where you get 10-15,000 words of Joe Normal puttering in the Shire before Galdalf arrives.

BSQ has a word limit of 20k, because I have to read them. TRM and MCM cap at 10. This forces the action to be more actiony and less drag, because you ain’t got time to exposit.

Wandered down to the bookstore yesterday for a coffee, with about an hour of free time before the game. I have a fun portable writing rig that is a second-hand phone with no Sim card and a bluetooth keyboard that pairs. Turn the phone sideways, deploy the kickstand, and write. No surfing. No nothing. Just words.

Wrote some more when I got home after dojo. Have roughly 2200 words on the new story as of now, which means I better be a quarter of the way done. Think I am, because I’m forcing a hard 10k cap on myself for this as an exercise. And to hammer on the In Media Res portions.

And having fun, which is the important part. I have mentioned that I dropped the hammer in December, specifically shelving several projects so I could do the thing I love, which is writing.

So Cole is generating some new erotica. I have no idea if Mark will come through with a new magazine, or if I might have to do it myself. (Not sure how much blackmail I have on the boy.) Or I might just write 10k serials and put them up for sale everywhere. People occasionally stumble over Cole and buy his books, so anything is possible.

Meanwhile, Red Branch 6 crossed 40k this morning. Right at the top of the final dogfight between a pair of identical, experimental Soviet attack fighters based on something like the F-104 Starfighter. Maybe the thing that inspired Kelly to build it, but he had to tell everyone it was something else. Dunno. Complicated caper of a theft, stealing both the aircraft and helping the designer defect. If you have read (READ) the novel Firefox, you will see elements here. (The movie is a lot better, but does a lot of things differently that were left out for running time and because they bogged the story down.)

If you wanna read some erotica that’s really more spicy romantic, lemme know. If you know anyone who writes erotica and might be interested in a project like this one, send them my way?

Every single time you push the publish button, that might be the thing that catapults you to the stratosphere. Alien monsterfucker erotica might be the thing. I’d be okay with that, though it might be a little weird to have Cole suddenly bigger than Blaze.

But I’m a capitalist pig, and them nickels spend.

Y’all have a lovely Tuesday.

shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

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