And yet, I’m here to tell you for your own good to go do something. Fortunately, it will achieve karmic balance for me, because I’m asking you to do something for someone else and we’ll all benefit from it.

BACKGROUND: When I first moved to LA in the early 90’s, my roommate Snake had a book by a guy I had never heard of. SF, cyberpunk, thriller, space opera. It had all of it. The book was The Long Run by Daniel Keys Moran.

Several years later, I ended up stealing Snake’s copy of the book, but at that point, I had found others by the man. Long Run is actually the second novel, but it contains enough background on the first book: Emerald Eyes that I was able to follow the story. And get hooked.

To give you an idea what kind of fan I was, I wrote a fan letter (actual paper, sent to his publisher, forwarded to his agent, and then) to Mr. Moran, since we both lived in SoCal at the time, fan-boying all over him and inviting him to join our rpg group anytime he felt the need. (Dan’s only a few years older than me, and we were both young then.) He even called me on the phone and was gracious enough to tell me the really good news about the last question I had asked in the letter: Namely, when was book #3 coming out? This was the funniest part, because at the point he called me, The Last Dancer was about two weeks from dropping everywhere.

Dan was and continues to be a major influence on me as a storyteller. His life went sideways not long after that (the man’s a verifiable superhero, to those who know the whole story), and he largely stopped writing fiction to raise a family. I have snippets of things he self-published in the early days of the interwebs (and by early, we’re talking boards on the world wide web in the mid to late 90’s here).

Years later, I found him on social media and followed him there like a proper fan-boy. When I found out that he was going to be going to the WorldCon in KC a few years ago, I made the offhand comment that I was going to have to stalk him in order to get his signature. I doubt he remembered talking to me on the phone, but he invited me to join his group for lunch one day and then talked to me. Like I mentioned, total fanboy here. SQUEEEEEEE!!

I have stayed close by, listening, as his life slowly starts getting into a place where he’ll be able to write again soon. A few years ago, he even published the next story in the Continuing Time, The AI War: The Big Boost. Got it on my shelf.

More recently, he added a new collection, Tales of the Continuing Time, which starts to fill in all the bits and pieces of this vast, amazing universe he has created. Better, he has started writing again. Serious writing. Three amazing kids through college, one almost done, one more about to start, but enough time and mental capacity to write.

This is where you and I come in.

Just yesterday, his Patreon went live (I was #19, just so you know). Same FatSam we all know and love, but now he’s in a place where he’s actually making money from his writing again. (I’m a full-time writer these days, completely supporting myself from my words rather than a day job, so I can tell you how awesome it is when you open a publisher report and say “I made HOW MUCH last month?”)

We need to get Dan there. This is where I’m playing on your sympathies in a hard, bad way. But my karma will be good, and so will yours.

$5 a month means you’ll start to get all his stuff, including the new novels the man has planned. (In my old copy of Emerald Eyes, and I just looked, Dan promised us all 33 novels in the Continuing Time as part of his Author’s Afterward where he explained where all these ideas come together. Planning to hold him to it, as I even told him today.)

And face it, $5 is one less coffee you get yourself, spread over an entire month, when you can damned well learn to make your own and live with it. You’ll be getting Dan into a place where he can start paying off those 33 novels he threatened me with. Teased me with.

So go sign up for Patreon if you aren’t already. There are some amazing people out there doing strange and exciting things and relying on people like us to help them bring in a few bucks each every month so they can commit art. This is your chance to help Dan. And me. And you. And get some amazingly good stuff to read.

If you weren’t a fan of his before now, I highly recommend you go buy Emerald Eyes right now and become one. And then Long Run. And keep going. If we can get enough fans together, he’ll start making enough cash each month that he had no choice but to set his ass down in that chair and start generating more Continuing Time stories. Bitching constantly, mind you, but writing.

Tell all your friends, too. That’s the blackmail part. Share this blog post on your wall and call on all your friends to get involved. It is a good cause, and you will get some damned fine fiction out of it.

thanks for being you, and listening to me squeeeeeee

b