Need your help.

Recently saved several boxes of vinyl albums from being tossed into the dumpster. Long story I can explain when someone needs details.

Got four boxes of albums. About 70″ shelf width. A few albums I know. A bunch of bands I’ve never heard of. Lots of dance.

Obscure bands like “Shall Not Pass” and “Distant Hawaii.” Several that have only some sort of ink stamp of a pineapple on one side. Like nothing to ID them.

I’m trying to find a DJ to rescue them. That’s where you come in. Had one, but it fell through because he has just downsized from a studio to a closet. Want someone to inherit them and give them a good home. Happy to talk inventory with someone, but don’t really want money.

Mostly, don’t want all this stuff landfilled, which was the threat then, and likely ends up there if I can’t rescue them, because even Half-Priced Books will throw up their hands at some of this stuff.

Seattle.

Not shipping unless someone pays me a lot. Happy to send pics and info.

Find your DJs for me and forward this to them.

blaze AT blazeward DOT com

thx,

b

[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.]

Just sent the April Newsletter. Now on to the sausage making.

Or something.

Got a gallon of Blueberry rum on the counter, slowly finishing fermenting. Started with two quarts of blueberry juice from the store, and a jar of molasses. Let that run for a couple of days, then found some vanilla beans that had been mostly dried out flavoring brown sugar and tossed them in as well. Bubbled like hell for a couple of days. Week in now and probably killing it Thursday, give or take, so that it can rest, then be distilled down into a half-gallon or so of darkly flavored rum.

I usually split the carboy in half and distill one and pour all the alcohol into the second. Given the yeast I used, we ought to be around 15% ABV starting, so maybe close to 60 proof when done and ready to backsweeten, because I like ports more than I do dry wines.

Will be nice as a thing to sip come summer.

Finished Red Branch 5 last week and have gotten 14k into Heather’s War #4 so far, targeting 65k. This is the one where shit gets a little dark, because I’ve set up a three-sided civil war, into which troublemakers are adding their own, deadly mischief. Knew when I started that it would be five novels worth of story. And that 4 would get the dark one, before things started to turn into something better.

And a transition, because I have whole generations of characters I intend to explore from here, as the Republic, Empire, and others evolve slowly over time.

I have a buddy who wants to write one of those grand, multigenerational epics like James A. Michener did in his illustrious career. I’ve never been that ambitious, but the various Republic of Aquitaine series will probably fall into that category, because in the chapter I just wrote it was Date of the Republic April 23, 418. For comparison, Auberon starts Date of the Republic June 26, 392. If my math is right, that’s twenty-six years so far, and I have another year or so here, then two more series behind that, taking me forward probably another twenty to twenty-five years from here, or around Republic 440.

Can’t talk much about those characters. Well, I can, but I’m four novels ahead of the rest of you, and the name Veronika Provst won’t make any sense, except when I tell you that she’s Tom Provst’s oldest granddaughter. And eventually, you’ll meet Kati Weigand, youngest child of Casey and Vo.

Did I mention BIG?

Spring coming. Lots of books coming, so I’m putting out a lot of things to try to clear the trunks and start earning rent here. More Chace Haig and some Pizzafarmer coming, in case you haven’t gotten your preorders in.

Just hit publish on the latest Boundary Shock Quarterly (Issue 030: Fading Empires) and expecting more stories from my Syndicate. Editing on the latest issue of Thrill Ride, with 010 (“Fast Cars”) coming in June.

Make sure you are signed up for my various newsletters, because I’m not on facebook hardly at all anymore and not much on Bluesky, either, so you gotta hear it direct from the horse’s mouth.

https://www.boundaryshockquarterly.com/newsletter/

https://thrillridemagazine.com/newsletter-signup/

And remember 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.]

There is news. Good, even. Uplifting, in my case.

Some of you are paying attention and remember that I transitioned out of doing Kung Fu last summer over issues and found a GoJu Karate dojo teaching a compact curriculum focused more on budo than keiko (sports) or kenko (health and fitness). And I have several years of experience in Kung Fu, going back a ways. Three and a half to most recent. About three in the 90s when I was living in LA and studying with a bunch of Vietnamese folks. And a background in dance which helps with movement and knowledge of three-dimensional space.

I started as a White belt. Everybody starts in white. Instead of the usual 5-10 color/ranks to black that many American schools had adopted, this sensei has culled things down as tight as he thinks can convey the art itself.

White, Green, Brown, Black. That’s it. And only Black, rather than 10 grades of black belt that often become pecking order bullshit for folks that never really got over themselves.

Yesterday, I put on a Green Belt. Kinda jazzed about that. Working towards Brown, which is likely a year away, as he’s planning on making some changes to the dojo this summer and opening it up to a handful more students, all of whom are new to GoJu, like me, but have studied other karate forms for a while. I’ll be behind most of them in many ways, and ahead of them in others, because all the kata are new to them, even a reduced list. All the grapples, takedowns, controls, and breaks will be new to them. At the same time, they are all students who know how to punch, kick, and block. Know how to learn.

Gonna be an adventure.

Based on conversations with my sensei, I have started a new book that will effectively turn into my black belt thesis. A “What Have I Learned?” kind of thing that I might only ever put a single copy on my shelf, or maybe I make it generally available. Dunno. I might teach someday. And I might not. Don’t have to know at this moment, but writing it all down will force me to really organize it into a compact form for communication, and I’m pretty good at that.

Follow this space for more as we go.

Deep into Red Branch #5. Might finish it this week or over the next week. 41K now, targeting 50-55. That last major confrontation is just ramping up.

Probably Heather after that. And some other things. Little slow ramping up this morning, but I’ve been going like hell for too long. Sat in a coffee shop yesterday and wrote pure rant as an essay that will likely never see the light of day, because most of you aren’t ready for that sort of thing. (If you have to ask, that includes you.)

Going into Seattle later today to meet with someone, but all I know is an ask for coffee. Will go. Will find out. Will go from there. Will get back to writing.

Still having fun building up the thing that will turn into Colossus this summer. Still planning Holden #3. Got lots to do, including a few old projects I intend to finish and publish next year.

Hope your tuesday makes sense.

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.]

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.