[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.]

Woke up to about a footprint of snow, and three elk in the side yard grazing. Not exactly mid-March in my mind, but what the hell. Let’s run with it.

Starting yesterday, I am producing a set of essays on all the research I did for Red Branch, as we get ready to publish 2, 3, and 4. And I’m about mid-way through 5.

I have acquired several expensive books on early Jet aviation. Metric shit-tons on World War 2 aircraft, then you come up to “The history of aviation” books that cover everything. But Tony Buttler and Yefim Gordon both have deep catalogs and I’ve been tracking hard copies of those down slowly.

Way too much fun, because I’m exploring that “What if…?” element of science fiction while studying a lot of history that is utterly new to me. Like the civil war in Colombia that ran from 1948 for about a decade. Never gets mentioned. Or all the wars in NW South America in the 20^th Century.

Having fun. Turning it all into essays, so I have to stop and think about why I wrote any given book and what I had to learn to do it right. There will be a new edition of Book One in a month or so so you can go back and update your version of the ebook. Or send me a note and I’ll email it to you. Probably have them in every novel in the series as I go forward. New idea, but a lot of fun.

Red Branch 5 is in South America and the eastern Pacific. Slow build with a lot of history, espionage, and occasional strafing and bombing missions to advance the plot and explore what these worlds were like.

Discovered after I got into it a bit that I really enjoyed the new villain I introduced, so I probably circle him back in a future novel. Or find a way that he and the Red Branch have to team up to somehow save the world. Enemy of my Enemy kind of thing.

Rereading Heather #3 because I plan to dive into #4 shortly. Hoping to have them all done in the next several months, so I can pub them next year and move on to Veronika after that. Plus all the other series I want to write. All the stories I have yet to tell.

Got a couple of trips planned this year. WorldCon will be in Seattle, but we’re getting a B&B downtown close to a rail station so we don’t have to park. Last I heard, I had been invited to be on panels, but nothing about what. Hopefully I know soon, as it’s in August. And hopefully AuthorNation invites me to talk again this year. Suggested a couple of ideas that apparently were well received. Always trying to push the envelope forward, because Indie never stops.

Couple of folks in the “Teaching Young Writers” phase seem to have kind of stalled out recently, as I’ve watched. They stop writing, then start teaching, then disappear after a couple of years. Sad, because entropy is a bitch. So is ennui. Gotta stay moving.

Hopefully, your Tuesday isn’t biting much and you can keep going forward. Lower your shoulders and unclench your jaw. Breathe. Drink some water.

It’s an ultramarathon, as we walk to Kamchatka.

shade and sweet water,

b

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 three 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.

[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.]

Late day today. Started slow and late this morning. Struggled with words. Forgot it was Tuesday until my alarm went off. Of course, I was halfway to the dump at that moment. Been busy since I got home.

Finished Scattered Tribes last week. Was closer to the end than I realized, and may end up slipping a couple of chapters in the middle later, but I like where it cliffhangared. Same as 1, in that we completed a part, and are about to embark on the next phase of excitement.

Started Red Branch #5 this week. Coming forward into the summer of 1950, starting about a month after the Korean War turned hot. (It had been a quieter insurgency on a scale with the US involvement in Iraq before that, but tanks rolled.)

As with other things, I want to be able to mention and reference real events, but not have the team caught up in the middle of them. At least not with any of the stories I have in mind. Working out technology in that moment when the Americans had only one competitor with jets (the MiG-15) and everyone was working out what the future would be like.

Guided missiles are still a few years away, but the US decided to use unguided rockets on interceptors. The logic was that the interceptor blasted up to the Russian bombers and fired something like an explosive shotgun at it. Took them years before they admitted the futility of that, but missiles were working by then.

Smart folks will keep dogfighting with guns for now. But having a Nazi madman genius aeronautical engineer with enough money and rage means that I can do all sorts of fun, crazy shit. #5 certain involves it, after #4 was much more espionage and shadow wars. (You’ll see this summer as they roll out.)

Also working on some small research projects to keep the brain sharp by exploring new genres I’ve never encountered and trying to figure out how to write in them. I won’t spoil the surprise, but might share more later as I get moving deeper.

Everyone who was Tuckerized for A’Zedi Survey Corps Book One, make sure you reach out. I’ll have a paper copy I want you to sign this summer, possibly at World Con in Seattle if you’re coming. I’ll be there. On panels and part of a group that plans to have a sales table, so if you want to preorder books, let me know and I’ll make sure I have them available.

Not much past that. Grinding, but a lot faster than I was this morning, when no amount of coffee could get me in motion. Finish this and time to goof off for the night.

Remember the secret is to keep banging the rocks together.

shade and sweet water,

b

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 three 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.

[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.]

Close to finishing Scattered Tribes #2. Sitting at 70k right now and targeting 85 give or take. Couple bits to wrap up, then on to the next chunk. Not entirely wound up this morning, but that’s just the day.

I have a thingee on Bluesky that notifies me when things happen in the background. Added to lists. Blocked. That sort of thing. Somebody randomly blocked me yesterday. Dude I interact with occasionally. No clue what set him off. Might just be a punk. Not like my politics are that opaque. I even usually tone things down, because I have strong opinions most of you don’t encounter anywhere but my writing. (Trust me, most of you never get anywhere close to the truth.)

So scratching my head this morning, shrugging, and making some more coffee. Fuck-wits will fuck-wit.

Shadowdark campaign yesterday. D&D variant with a LOT less rules, but we’ve been exploring some house rules that bring in a few feats (the game has none) to let people build characters that are a little less two-dimensional. (Fast rules. Clean combat. The cost is a lot of possibility gutted out to limit you to a handful of classes and no multi-classing.)

Conversation last night over text about building new characters. Dunno why, but writer brain got involved and suggested archer-first ranger as a playtest of those new rules.

Why?

Shrike.

Oh.

So I dug out Rebels last night and reread it before bed. I have two of three novels written and moldering in the trunk for several years. Kept meaning to circle back and finish that trilogy. This is obviously the cue, so I need to reread those and remember how the series ends. Then go write it.

Not immediately. Next Red Branch coming. Then possibly Heather 4. Then probably Shrike 4 so I can drop a full trilogy after Rebels. Dunno. That’s out a couple of months, and a lot of things happen between here and there.

Might finish Scattered Tribes this week. Probably will, depending. Then on to something. Still need to write a chunk of short fiction. Pretty much monthly, because I have so many projects requiring it these days.

We’ll see.

shade and sweet water,

b

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 three 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.

[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.]

Good workout first thing this morning. I am a white belt, but I am not a white belt. Lots of years in other arts, and GoJu Karate literally means “Hard/Soft” in the sense of starting with relaxed form, then snapping tight at the moment of impact for extra torque. Additionally, the philosophical standpoint is that one who has toughness can then choose to be soft.

Not a lot of kata involved, but that’s my Sensei choosing a stripped down curriculum that does things in threes. He breaks the old logic of a decision tree into a decision stick. So throws, locks, and strikes. Tanbo (3’ stick), Bo (6’ stick), and Sai, in a three and five-step strike and counter pattern for training. Weapon kata later, but not a lot of them.

When I was going kung-fu, the main form we learned was 99 Tai Chi. And each of those 99 often had 2-5 parts. Doing it at proper speed took about 15-20 minutes, slow and smooth. All of the GoJu kata combined are probably about as long, across all junior belts AND all black belts. Would have liked to proceed deeper, but had a recent conversation with my former Sifu and he casually pointed out that he had decided I wasn’t ever getting a black belt, so were there still bits to learn?

Excuse me? After I asked you several times in 2024 what I needed to do to get close and eventually TO a black belt?

There is a reason I consider 2024 something of a failure. “A learning experience,” we call it. Obviously, he didn’t want to hear anything that ran counter to his assumptions.

Former teacher. Might still eventually be a friend, but he had said a long time ago that he wasn’t ever friends with his students, so I knew going in that I would end up with a Sifu more than a comrade. And that’s how it happened.

Might change back. He kinda has to reach out and decide to change our relationship in his mind. Or not.

Second best advice I ever got was from my Mom, about 12 years ago: “Sometimes, it’s okay to outgrow your friends.”

Wow.

Best advice I ever got was in college. I’m 17. My buddy Jerry was a school teacher, going back for his Masters. Former Vietnam vet so in 1988 I would put him about forty.

“Eventually, you’re going to have to roll over and talk to her.”

Hell of a concept. Still is. Meant that I should only chase after the smart and interesting ones.

Sure, I did stupid shit in college and later in LA working as a bouncer in a cowboy bar not far from several working ranches and two Marines bases, but knowing that I’d need to talk to her meant that some of those never went more than a one-night fling.

Broke hearts, but only briefly. Some of them might have even turned out pretty good, but even then I understood that all too often society forced the really smart girls to act like bimbos so as to not threaten the fragile egos of boys.

The problem for me was always when they forgot how smart they were, having played the airhead for too long that the didn’t know how to turn it off again later.

Damned good advice, both times. Had conversations on both with friends over the last few weeks. They learned a bit more about me. (Fabulous Publisher Babe™ already knew the key points.)

Currently deep into Act Three of “Turn of a Deadly Card” which is the second Holden story. As noted, going huge at every fork in the road. Intentionally. Having fun, but Holden obviously has me in something of a dark patch this morning. We’ll get over it. Story is at 58k.

Last big chunk and heading towards 85 again. Then more Red Branch.

Then I’m working out Ilona Akino, who will be part of yet another monstrously big Epic Space Opera series in a completely new universe, because I needed a break from both Javier and Uly & Dan.

More Heather (4 and 5) coming. More Marrakesh coming. More lots of things.

But it’s Monday and I decided to write the blog today instead of tomorrow.

Y’all have a pleasant week.

shade and sweet water,

b

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 three 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.

[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.]

Colder than shit around here, but getting warm during the day so a lot of the snow is finally melting off, up here on the mountain. Haven’t been snowed in (knock on wood) but haven’t gotten out much. Will blame the gang. Both gaming groups have had “issues” for the last couple of weeks, so a Thursday game this week might be the first time I’ve dropped dice in almost a month. Getting a little grumpy.

Do have a new game engine I need to find some folks to test with, but both groups are entirely wrong. One is a fantasy-only player and two rookies. The other is basically four chaos goblins and no mastermind.

Need a handful of folks who can take direction to test things cleanly, instead of me having to constantly field curve balls from them. But you cannot convey that without insulting them to their faces, and I’m not (quite) there yet. Yet.

Finished Science Officer 16 last week. Went out with one hell of a bang. And I know what the title and overall theme of 17 will be, but I’m taking a season break after 16 and letting Javier and the gang have some time off. It got big. And ugly. And repercussive.

As Javier usually is.

Have started a cute little series starring a Mexican Pygmy Spotted Skunk and a Striped Possum. Will finish that up at some point soon so I can send it to you in March.

Right now, I’m a few days into the next Scattered Tribes book. This one will be a full novel instead of collected shorts. That lets me twist threads around more as I go. Plus, I had a problem.

In Book One, I attempted to include every stupid trope and scam I could come up with from Epic Fantasy and Space Opera. No idea was too dumb or outrageous to use. As you’ve seen.

In planning #2, I came across a whole NEXT set of silly that I had missed. So we’re upping the stakes here. Scavenger Hunt/Plot Coupon book, with a prophesy and a dark god awakening.

As one does. And I have no idea how many books there will be in this series, but it will come to a conclusion at some point. Probably. Don’t quote me on that. I mean, I know what four stories I am using for inspiration here, and most of you won’t see that until they bite you in the ass about midway through the last book. Because.

Same time, I finally got through Corsac Fox Block One and Science Officer Season Two. Both will return. Not immediately.

Scattered Tribes will fill part of that niche. Then, because I could, I started on another mega-huge series. EPIC space opera sorts of stuff, where I already have 20,000 words of research pulled from wikipedia and other places, mostly for inspiration and because history, if you read it close enough, is usually weirder than people who write fiction for a living will lead you to believe.

So I’m Deep into the Bronze Age Collapse/Greek Dark Ages, plus the Cromwell Era of English Civil Wars. Because why the hell not?

Throw in a few other things that I haven’t sorted out yet, and I ought to be ready to write Colossus in a couple of months. There are not enough hours in the day for everything I want to write, so I have to plan.

Have been prepping everything for publication this spring/summer, so rereading Red Branch. Will write #5 at some point. And have started rereading Heather’s War (3 of 5 done) so I can plug that in. Probably next, because Scattered Tribes will be light enough and weird enough for me to get back to hard-core serious space opera. And everything else.

Just gotta get there.

You do the same.

shade and sweet water,

b

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 three 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.

20250121

[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.]

Tuesday. I hope.

Deep into the next Science officer. 38K before I start writing today.

Just wrote an intro to a new Chace Haig collection coming out in March. Got a lot of Action-Thriller shorts, so trying to get everything out of the trunk and earning rent. And I have a Chace novel that is currently being edited. Planning to write a few more of those this year.

Once Javier it done, it looks like the next Scattered Tribes might be a novel. Or a series of shorts. No clue, other than a lot of ideas to pursue, including a scavenger hunt/plot coupon book for #2. If shorts, you might get them. If not, something else.

Fan reached out about paper editions of the old Brak stories. Four of them. Kinda cringy to look at, but that was ten million words ago and I’m a lot better these days. Thought about extending that story, but the quality difference will be so jarring that anything will go into a Volume 2 instead.

And why the hell not? From Feet of Clay, the original campaign arc got REALLY weird. And that’s on top of a half-troll warrior. Best part, all five of those characters in the Brak stories were in the campaign. Brak the trollkin. Bob the Greedy. Princess the half-drow. Piper the wizard. And Sleipnir the Drider who tells Brak that he’s a special kind of centaur. Because he was. And Brak was that gullible.

It was one hell of a fun campaign, and the crazy shit is still coming. (“Flying Turtle Poop” is a potential title. Nuff said?)

got a lot of short material written in the early part of the month. Will continue to write more, as I have patreon and two magazines, so I have to add twenty new titles per year going forward.

Good thing I can.

Colder than snot outside. Staying indoors and writing and editing today. How are you getting through the winter?

shade and sweet water,

b

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 three 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.

[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

—————————-

Thank you so much for being my patron and for funding these essays!

If you’re reading the free version (which is published three 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.

[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.]

Tuesday. Been reading Corsac Fox 6&7, so quickly giggling that it’s a Tuesday. Hopefully not a Tuesday, mind you.

Six is at first readers. Seven will be ready in a day or two.

Meanwhile, writing short fiction for a variety of deadlines. Two Brother Jon stories done. First one is for Boundary Shock Quarterly 30 (Fading Empires) because I didn’t get as many words submitted as I wanted. Second one because I was having fun.

Assassin short (Rory) that helps me set up the character and see her in action, as I start into a novel. Maybe. Might write more shorts first, just for the hell of it.

Then, shit got a little weird. By now, you should know who Captain Sapphire is. And Eclipse. Bellerophon. Others.

Brain caught a throwaway line in there about Bolt’s niece taking up the mantle of his William Tell thing.

Never expected her to be a vampire. Seriously. Got an “origin” story there that’s kinda amazing, but probably not sufficient to submit to the Vampire anthology call R* is doing right now. Dunno. Writing #2 now. Might send her both and ask. Worst she could say was no, after all. And Wayne Gretsky always said you missed 100% of the shots you never take.

Finish this one up tomorrow, I think, then take a look at what deadlines I need to be working to. Got Javier 16 to write. A trilogy of Marrakesh stories I wanna tell, but might do those individually as part of a longer arc. Drawing on Napoleonic history, because why the hell not? Wellington and Nelson were assholes, but victors get to be painted in the best light. Got notes and ideas.

Also wrote a B4B that talks about how to sustain yourself across a career, after having that initial level of success, however you define it. Lots of folks will sell you a seminar, but few of those folks last longer than a couple of years, and then the world changes.

And then the world changes.

Had someone ask me to submit a short essay to their publication talking about how I could sustain writing 1,000,000 words every year and not burn out. They did not like my essay, because I basically said, Write. With tips on how to find joy in it.

Won’t bother submitting there again, because they think Generative AI is the future of literature, and I learned a along time ago never to argue with a fool. (Bystander can’t tell the difference.)

Past that, words. Fun. January. Had a massive bonfire after T* hauled off all the scrap lumber from the Tiny Greathall and a few other projects. Cleaning. House, too, as I found a new home for an old acoustic guitar and have a pile of stuff to go away.

If you are reading this in real time, I also have some model kits going to Value Village soon. Military, for the most part. Plus one Imperial AT-AT. Yell if you want. Folks seeing this in 3 weeks, Value Village at Southcenter, in Tukwila, because they will be gone by then.

What are your January traditions? We’re resetting our lives and regaining momentum lost in all of the 2024, and it feels pretty damned good.

shade and sweet water,

b

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 three 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.