Category Archives: Thriller Action/Adventure

20250218

Leave a reply

[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.]

Snow’s finally melting. Gone, for the most part. Temps in the 40sF. Not spring, but not ice everywhere, which is a vast improvement.

The Crazy that was January appears mostly over. Now into February’s but it’s a step down. Got Issue 009 of Thrill Ride mostly done. It will go up for preorder this week and folks will be sending me their stories for Fast Cars/010. Boundary Shock Quarterly will be April 1, so I’m successfully off-schedule there and that was a lot of January stress for me.

Always fun, guessing how many stories I will get from my writers. This coming issue of BSQ was “short” (only around 50k stories when I usually want closer to 70k). that was why I created the new Brother Jon arc and universe, and will be feeding more into that as I go.

Need to pivot this week and write some shorts, so maybe tomorrow, depending. My usual Wednesday Mastermind call canceled this week, so I’ll talk to her in March and will spend the afternoon grinding offal. Got beef heart and liver, pork liver and fat, and chicken innards (everything you pull of rough frames when you get them from the butcher) running around 8# of mass. Probably take about 2 hours, which is usually how long I’m on the phone with each of my calls.

And needs doing, because the Babe makes pate out of it and has a little every morning with her homemade bone broth. Way healthier and better for you than what you had for breakfast today. You should anti-stodgy yourself and get healthy. I plan to outlive all of you or die trying.

Heh.

Words: about 36k into the next Holden and Reilly. This one is done in chapters and introduces a couple of new POV characters.

I think the most fun so far as been that I don’t really have a plot. I have a series ending planned, but I literally started with that and I doubt that most people will see how it shapes until we get right down to the end.

But I had no conception of what might happen along the way, which was why book 1 ended where it did. How it did.

And why I needed a break before attacking 2. However, the ending of 1 promised something of a plot-coupon/scavenger hunt story. So I did. Am doing. Worse, as I threw in a small assassination attempt, the universe jumped outward another whole step. 3 is likely ANOTHER scavenger hunt, the dark mirror of 2 when the answers the gang find just lead them off after more questions.

Got notes. Got LOTS of notes. GRAND EPIC SHIT, because my goal with this series has always been to include every possible Epic Fantasy and Space Opera trope I could manage to sledgehammer in. And more ideas keep popping in.

Figure it will run like 7, give or take. 1 sets it up. 2-3 for the background of the epic conclusion. 4-6 for wars and double-cross and dark prophesies and shit. Then bring it all home with something along the scale of killing a god.

I mean, how exactly do you kill a god? What is a god? (That’s a question Zafar asks all the sorcerers at one point.) What makes one a god? And how do you keep someone else from unmaking you?

So yeah, just leaning in on all of it and laughing my fool head off, because why the hell not? This is a story about found family, ethics in governance, and revenge. Magic never gets explained in rpg-level rules, save that folks use up most of their power doing crazy shit, then have to sit down and rest.

That’s part of the reason most fantasy series never entertain me. Not counting the Fabulous Publisher Babe™ who does those things, most writers just handwave things and the character can do whatever they need, without having to pay any great cost. Never get their hair messed up or break a nail. Meanwhile, after our Shadowdark game yesterday, we had to bribe the innkeeper extra for spare clothes and silence after we stumbled in covered in blood from fighting a horde of ratman lycanthropes in the sewer while hiding from the law.

But I’m all about all the old tropes here. Just planning to invert and subvert them, like usual.

Book one came in around 90k. That means that I’m about a third of the way through 2, give or take. And hell, it’s a crazy amount of fun, all of these people having opinions about things.

Hope your Tuesday isn’t something that Lukyan recognizes.

Y’all stay loose. Drink some water. Breathe.

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.

20240722

Leave a reply

[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.]

Monday. It rained yesterday. Not a lot, but actual water falling from the sky. And mid-70s instead of mid-90s around here. Yay.

Today, the marine layer is still heavy at 11am, and the forecast calls for partial sun after it burns off, but only about 72F up in the mountains. I’ll take it.

I’m finally done with all the damned steroids. And physically recovering. I have zero stamina right now, having found the edges of it a few times.

Emotionally, I’m kinda a mess as well. HOWEVER, I have a reminder in my phone that tells me every August 1st to beware of rage and depression issues. I have a few theories as to why it hits when it does.

Today, (August 22) is the anniversary of when Donna died in 2008. Sixteen years. We were married for just over three weeks, because for the first 9 years we were together, she told me in no uncertain terms that if I suggested marriage, she’d toss my ass to the curb.

When she turned that around after she got sick (breast cancer, Stage 4, untreatable, Make your peace with God sort of thing), you could have knocked me over with a feather. We got married in late June. She died July 22.

Yeah.

That was a Tuesday. We did not have the wake that Saturday, because that’s a granddaughter’s birthday, so we did it a week later, which would have been Aug 2.

Hitting that reminder every year (as I’ve been processing things this summer) is probably part of it. This summer has been a trial.

I think I hit bottom last Thursday. Told the Fabulous Publisher Babe™ that August had come early, and she understood. Also told her not to let me make any important decisions.

Not because I would do things I regret. More because I would be painting in molotov cocktails when I did.

PROBABLY not the best idea. Probably.

Then a friend of mine who is an amazing baker handed me a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread, still warm from the oven last night. Just had a slice five minutes ago. Gonna ask him at some point to teach me how, because I have never made yeast bread. Quick breads, sure. Nothing that involves rising and punching, so I’ll need adult supervision.

Plus, his looks like a hydra coil of thin ropes, all twisted together. And yes, let me taunt you with how amazing it turned out. But baking is his love language.

Writing: Crossed 35k on Heather #3 this morning. Target 65k, so past halfway and setting up a series of small battles and intrigues that will culminate in something almost apocalyptic in scale.

Still expecting 5 novels in “Warlord of Yaumgan” but I could be wrong either way by one. Depends, because I’m letting this one unfold organically. Jessica was 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2 in organization, plus 2 side stories and the CS-405 trilogy. Kosnett was designed as six novels, sequentially touching each of six cultures and exploring them. Warlord is really the second part of what happened at The Passage at Loong at the end of Kosnett 6, when the Zerzan Unification decides that they cannot live in peace with the Monarchists.

Additionally, I’m doing research for the next two Red Branch novels. If you or anyone you know are experts (or knowledgeable dilettantes) on early Jet Aviation (Second Generation stuff, really, from an advanced and experimental de Havilland Venom through the never-built Lockheed XF-90) and would like to First Reader for technical issues, lemme know. I’ve done a LOT of research, and started accumulating a fun library of stuff (see attached image) for story ideas.

In Indie Publishing, EVERY time you hit publish, you might be struck by lightning, and that book becomes your entire career, so publish something you’d be okay with, if you had to write 10-20 more in that series/universe. I have no idea how folks will react to Red Branch, but I’m having way too much fun reading history and technology of the early Cold War Era. Stuff that kinda gets mentioned in passing, because most history books end in 1945 with the war. From there, they MIGHT mention a war in Korea, before everyone spending volumes on Vietnam or more recent events.

So I’ve had to rabbit-hole my library’s ebook collection in order to find stuff. Yesterday, I walked individually through all 1750 titles in the military section, because they have no filters worth a shit to let me leave off anything ancient, or anything Vietnam, or the US Occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Got about a dozen titles queued up, and currently reading about what happened to everyone at Bletchly Park, after they moved GCHQ back to London in 1947.

Hope your Mondays are getting better. I’m off for a burger in a while, just because.

OH, AND: REMINDER: The pre-order for Warlord of the Spinward Reaches got nuked by Amazon. If you didn’t get your copy, this is your reminder to go find it.

Amazon

Knotted Road Press

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.

20230925

Leave a reply

[As usual, two 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.]

I woke up and found Noah hard at work in my front yard, building something he refuses to discuss in any detail as the rain MONSOONERATED down all night. Fall has arrived, perhaps a week early.

Seattle weather is ^generally^ predictable. Dry season usually starts around noon on the Fourth of July, just in time for the fireworks. September tends to be dry and nice, with the rains starting on October 1. Seriously. I’ve been here twenty-six years now, and that’s a thing.

This year was hotter than normal, and our usual “Junuary” wasn’t as bad as it could be. My apples never recovered. I have a Fuji and a Honeycrisp, because that’s a combination you need in order to cross-pollinate. Fuji flowered early with heat. Honeycrisp flowered late. I got five apples from the honeycrisp and none from the fuji. No quince. Half a dozen pears. About a half-gallon of grape juice. Few cherries. Not a lot of blueberries. I have seriously considered cutting down the cherries, but I’ll let the next homeowner deal with them.

Figure I’m going to sell this place by 2030 and move into town somewhere. I’ll be sixty in 2029, and this place is a lot of work. Served its purpose, though. And continues to.

Gray, drizzly, yucky kind of Monday, which puts a smile on my face, because I moved to Seattle for the rains. They hardly get rain here. A horrible, terrible, OMG!!! Pineapple Express might drop several inches of rain over a twenty-four hour period. Trains have to stop because the hillsides slump (poor design and cheap railroad companies).

I’m from Kansas originally. I’ve been outside in storms that dropped several inches of rain in an hour, instead of a day. Knock you on your ass amounts of rainfall coming down. This is a gentle shower, a little too cold to stand out there naked, but about as much force hitting you.

Writing is going well. Finished the Gator novel. Still don’t know what I’ll call it or the series. Gator is good enough for now. Got a block of thriller stuff written now, so I’m ready to make a bigger push next year when the Chase Haig stories come out in Thrill Ride magazine (I hope).

Started the fifth Marrakesh novel this last week. Going a little slow, but that’s how crappy my August and September have been, with a hope that this time next week things will have hopefully finally recovered some. (I’d like a normal week for once, going back to at least May.)

Along the way of working out this plot, writer brain decided to spin off one of the second-tier characters into a new series after this, the so-called Survey Corps Tales that I’ll work on later. It’s nice having an entire universe designed and built. And four full novels completed, so I have things in reasonable detail. Plus, because it is space adventure instead of space opera like Corsac Fox or Auberon, I can shift over and not worry about saving the galaxy every episode.

And it lets me confront an element of military science fiction that most authors get wrong. (And I’m as guilty as the next nerd.) In a real military, officers will frequently be promoted and/or transferred on a regular basis. Call it two or four years, then you move on to something else. It requires a lot of personal and bureaucratic sacrifice to keep a ship’s crew together for a long time, in spite of what the writers of the show or series want.

So I’m taking out one guy who is at that point in his career where he could get a major promotion in terms of responsibility. A minor character in Captain Boru’s narrative, but he’ll become the hero in his own story. As they should. And I’ll widen the overall IP, by being able to tell stories that are outside the realm of many of the others (and series I have) because these will be survey and exploration sorts of things, instead of tramp freighters, pirates, or military warships.

And a much smaller crew, because I’m looking at the new USCG Legend-class boats and working that way. I’ve even gotten permission to tuckerize a friend of mine as the person the ship is named for. (Mad cackling approval, even.)

Coming up, I’ll be working on more Holden and Riley. The next Corsac Fox (with #2 delivered to kickstarter backers and going up for pre-order everywhere. I’ll be starting #5). More Beckett Fernsby. The next Heather Lau book. Possibly the third and final in Kincaide’s War. At some point, the 14th Science Officer, so I have something for NEXT December, with Dragoon’s Honor coming out this year for the holidays.

Lots to do. Two anthologies to complete and deliver this week. Planning for more. More books. More everything.

Mostly, just trying to let it settle down, ya know?

shade and sweet water,

blaze

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 two 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.

20230821

Leave a reply

20230814

[As usual, two 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.]

By the time most of you see this, the Kickstarter Campaign for Corsac Fox #2 Mistaken Identity) will be done, as it only runs to August 22. Then you gotta wait.

However, more music up everywhere. Time To Say Goodbye.

Monday. Chewy air everywhere. I haven’t checked, but someone said East of the Mountains was on fire, as usual. Air has a brownness to it this morning, but it finally cooled off. Hit 98F on Wednesday, after 94F Mon and Tues. 47F when we got up Saturday morning and went for a long walk because Sifu had a personal emergency and canceled class.

72F, a little after noon. Gonna be warm, but not stupid.

I planted three trees yesterday.

Down at the bottom of the hill there used to be a lake. One of the neighbors on the north side apparently backed a machine up in the mid-1990s according to the story, and tried to mine peat moss. They pierced the lining of the lake and it drained some eight feet as a result. I have a bowl with several distinct lips, and the bottom was classified marsh in a 1988 survey the former owner had done when he bought the place.

Fifteen years ago, I started clearing out all the blackberry, but then got sidetracked and let it go feral for a while. This summer, I have been clearing it again. At the top, I wanted to put up a hedge to create a visual barrier for folks out on the cul-de-sac, so we got three cypress trees. Two gold and one green. Got them in and will water them until the rainy season starts up again.

Eventually, I want a hedge all the way across, but there are easements, so I have to move precisely. But clearing that bottom and turning it back into a meadow adds significantly to my property value when I get around to selling the place. Plus, it keeps me in good shape, because this is all machete work for now. Later, I can go in with the brush cutter and the mower and keep it down, but neither work with a 6’ tall wall of thorns.

I’m in better shape than I’ve been in at least 25 years as a result. That is its own benefit.

Writing: I finished the first Chace Haig novel over the weekend, mostly because I wanted it done and out of my way. We also published the first/origin short story: Assumed Identity.

At present, there are three more short stories done and in the can, for submission to Issues 6-8 of The Thrill Ride Magazine. Specifically, Gadgets, Adventure, and Lone Wolves themes.

Personally, I enjoy action-adventure stories, but have been talking with Matt and most of the genre right now is filled with Ex-Special Forces trooper burned by the government and gone rogue. Then the President calls them up and secretly reactivates them to save the day because they can’t trust their own government to do the right thing.

Wish fulfillment, for a genre of men (4F, older, white, conservative, overweight, and riding around in a mobility scooter I presume) who want to be that asshole anti-hero who shrugs off bullet wounds and keeps going. Think Batman, without the cowl and more guns. Ultra high-profile, for being secretive assassins being hunted by everybody.

Yawn.

Personally, I enjoyed Bond growing up, both books and movies, but I can’t find any major series about professional spies/troubleshooters like that. Only burnout killers who somehow will throw everything away to help an old woman across the street, even in the middle of being hunted by every government on the planet.

Question for you folks: Anybody recommend me some books where the main character is a spy, rather than an ex-special forces assassin rogue bully killing machine? You know the character. And the formula. I’d like to wander outside that as a reader and a writer. Someone with style and elegance, who isn’t a punk or a bully in the real world. And a professional, rather than a wish-fulfillment amateur who somehow overcomes the entire world twelve books in a row. And counting.

Lemme know what you have in the way of ideas.

Anyway.

Started on the third Beckett Fernsby story this morning. Had been planning to write four in a row for Boundary Shock Quarterly, but might see about hitting eight as a challenge.

  • 25 Gulliver’s Other Travels (done)
  • 26 Future Crime (done)
  • 27 Cold Steel and Hot Blasters (begun)
  • 28 Space Horror
  • 29 First Contact
  • 30 Fading Empires
  • 31 Swords and Sorcery and Starships
  • 32 Zeroes and Ones

I mean, seriously, I can fit him into all of those situations without a lot of work. Got my notes for Space Horror roughed out, with a lot of world-building that I might spin off. The other four all lend themselves to a slightly cranky Apothecary on an exploration ship. And it lets me roam a bit with the novels, knowing that I have the short fiction largely covered. Plus, I want to spin back and write the rest of the first Holden and Riley novel. And a bunch of others.

So it’s Monday. What are you folks up to?

shade and sweet water,

blaze

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 two 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.