[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.]

Getting packed up shortly to go on a quick vacation to celebrate our anniversary. Been married ten years and it hardly feels like it, which is good. I still have six years to go to be her longest relationship (the kitty who was with her almost twenty years) but we’re on a roll. And taking her East Of The Mountains to see some things she’s never explored for all the time she’s lived here.

Mostly, she’s a city girl. Living with me has been an adjustment for her, because when she met me I owned 6 acres of trees, pond, and wilderness at the dead end of a dead end road, back up around the curve of the hill where I’d lived here for several years before most of the neighbors realized that there was a house back there. By design.

Taking advantage of space this summer to write a whole series of short pieces, all serialized in a way that will turn into book one of something later. Those will be your patreon shorts starting in August and running. Started #7 this morning, so gonna be a bunch. Think Scattered Tribes in shape but a whole different everything and a story I’ve been wanting to explore since I started writing fiction for money.

Additionally, I started book two of the space opera erotica this week. Five stories/40k words in #1. Started V2-2 yesterday in between game and dojo, hanging out in the library because that’s what my Mondays look like right now.

Target is still to start Ollie #4 at some point soon, in order to round off that series for publication next year. Letting it ferment in the back of my head at the moment, having reread #3 to remember what the hell I’d written. You know how it goes.

Also planning more Last Stand, having completed #13 for a future issue of Boundary Shock next summer and having fun. And coming up with a meta-arc that might run the entire season. And running into all sorts of complications and such.

I would greatly appreciate you telling all your friends to go buy my books. Several First In Series are $0.99, so not a big investment and I’m certain I can hook most of them as readers at that point. Every little bit helps me to not have to go get a real job.

Lots of folks have decided to use AI to do things these days. Had someone come up to me the other day utterly proud that he’d had some AI take his ideas and turn them into a story and wanted my help getting them published. I aimed him at a few resources and washed my hands of the man.

The LLM AI machines that people are using to create pictures, videos, and books were trained by stealing thousands or millions of pieces of copyrighted source material without paying the artists. And they’ve sued to keep from having to pay for their theft, because they’d go out of business if they actually had to pay me for the more than 100 of my books in their system.

If you use AI that way, I don’t want to even know you. Seriously, unsubscribe and walk away, because your actions have destroyed the careers of a number of artists and writers over the last year, with people like that flooding the publishers with mediocre crap. Because it is mediocre and beige. If you want to be a writer, learn to write.

If you want a secret handshake that tells a robot to create stories for you, I hope that you’ll be happy when all the creatives out there are put out of business. It is not all fun and games, even if you are intentionally obtuse about the costs to the rest of us.

Pay the artists you are stealing art and rent from.

Cheers,

b

==========

Oh: WORLD CON IS IN SEATTLE in August. Knight Errant (A’Zedi Survey Corps, Book One) is out and so is First In The Field. I will have a paper edition (it is sitting on my left on my desk). If I Tuckerized you into that book (all but a handful of the folks I got permission from at this point), and you will be in the Seattle area (WorldCon or any other reason), I would like to get you to sign my copy. And I’ll sign yours.

Mark your calendars. I’ll also be in Vegas for AuthorNation in November, and am talking to the folks at Superstars for February.

Also happy to road trip to Portland to see you, but not any greater distance than that or Spokane or the Canadian border going north. You let me know.

More erotica in the background. If you wanna first read it, lemme know. If you write erotica or know folks who do, I suspect we’ll give serious talk to starting a Syndicate Magazine at some point, so we’ll be talking and recruiting. Film at 11, as it were.

Past that, y’all have a lovely Tuesday.

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.]

And I just finished Heather 5.

• Warlord of Yaumgan
• Ground Control
• Tyche
• Chevalier
• Griever

Plan is to drop them next year starting in Feb, offsetting even months with Ollie starting in March and those two spanning nine months of 2026. January will be a couple more character collections. November MIGHT be Marrakesh 6 (done) or something else. Need to write December. Or bang on something. Got options like a next Survey Corps. And I figure three more Scattered Tribes, but not sure when and want those done.

2027 might be another (half++) year of Last Stand, as #13 will come out in July in BSQ, then be ready to repub 6 months later.

Dunno. Got options. And time. Writing blogs and newsletters today. Then back to the project you folks will start seeing as $5 Patreon stories in August. Three done. Hoping for ten to twelve as a book one of that series, written in between novels and the like.

Erotica continues. Book One (Two Against the Stars) is done and I’ve started Book Two (On the Wings of the Night), with everything being 6-10k stories serialized for collection into the novels and bundles later on. Mark is leaning towards a magazine and is now working out the details of how he wants to do it. Quarterly with possibility of bi-monthly and monthly as time progresses and everyone commits. I’m into #6 overall and will finish it this week. Got lots of world-building done, so I can keep writing these as long as I have fun. Eventually, I want to pivot back to more Stephanie. And a few other characters I have in my notes but never got to explore.

Lemme know if you have opinions, because I’m on my usual Lots Of Words Per Year™ pace and that won’t slow down anytime soon. And emptying out the trunk, which also allows me to circle back and tack on new stories to a few of the series that were set up as ongoing. Or start sequels in a few cases.

Indie means I can do whatever I want, as long as folks will purchase it and keep supporting me. That’s you. Thank you.

Anti-Stodgy/Redneck Chef Newsletter is next to be written and delivered, so y’all stay tuned.

Cheers,

b

==========

Oh: WORLD CON IS IN SEATTLE in August. Knight Errant (A’Zedi Survey Corps, Book One) is out and so is First In The Field. I will have a paper edition (it is sitting on my left on my desk). If I Tuckerized you into that book (all but a handful of the folks I got permission from at this point), and you will be in the Seattle area (WorldCon or any other reason), I would like to get you to sign my copy. And I’ll sign yours.

Mark your calendars. I’ll also be in Vegas for AuthorNation in November, and am talking to the folks at Superstars for February.

Also happy to road trip to Portland to see you, but not any greater distance than that or Spokane or the Canadian border going north. You let me know.

More erotica in the background. If you wanna first read it, lemme know. If you write erotica or know folks who do, I suspect we’ll give serious talk to starting a Syndicate Magazine at some point, so we’ll be talking and recruiting. Film at 11, as it were.

Past that, y’all have a lovely Tuesday.

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.]

Hot. Summer finally arrived this week, as it does in Seattle.

Over the last two weeks, we have also harvested some twenty pounds of cherries off the three trees. I have never gotten a whole pound from the three, and they’ve been in for a decade. All the elements aligned this spring for a LOT of happy tree sex. Got cherry juice, cherry shrub, cherry leather, and a bunch frozen for making booze.

Also got a batch of corn mash turning into moonshine and then whiskey because I have a (TINY!) wood cask to hold it, thus satisfying some of the technical grumps on the topic.

Conversation tomorrow with Mark on the erotica magazine. From day one, I have now completed a novel’s worth (5 totaling 38k words unedited) of stories for Book One. And started Book Two this week. Having a lot of fun, which is what matters to me.

Heather 5 has begun to spiral down into the massive final cataclysm that will wrap up five books of Heather’s War. Dropping next year on a schedule TBD. And setting up Veronika for a series after that, because I still have a LOT of blank spaces on the various maps to explore at some point.

Need to reread Ollie soon, so I can finish that series off as well. That gives me 9/12 of 2026. Wanna write some more Scattered Tribes, because that’s fun. Got Marrakesh 6 done for a slot next year. And more things planned.

Busy.

Dojo work continues to be challenging fun. BuDo. The way of violence, for lack of subtleties. But also reading a lot of that deeply philosophical stuff that you get with people who make it a lifestyle. Focused primarily on GoJu Ryu Karate, but also expanding into Naha-te and other things, because all martial arts have things to teach you if you are willing to listen. And you should be, because you don’t know everything. None of us do.

Work on the Tiny Greathall also brings me joy. Sat out there and had a phone call the other day. Need to move the refrigerator out and get it set up. Need to do a lot of things, but it is my space and I like it. Those of you coming for the bbq will get to see what I’ve done.

Not a lot past that. Keeping the pace. Keeping the faith. Keeping the dream.

Y’all hang in there.

Oh: WORLD CON IS IN SEATTLE in August. Knight Errant (A’Zedi Survey Corps, Book One) is out. I will have a paper edition (it is sitting on my left on my desk). If I Tuckerized you into that book (just about everyone I got permission from at this point, saving a couple), and you will be in the Seattle area (WorldCon or any other reason), I would like to get you to sign my copy. And I’ll sign yours.

Mark your calendars. I’ll also be in Vegas for AuthorNation in November, and am talking to the folks at Superstars for February. Hoping to make it to Minneapolis in December for family holiday, but that’s not nailed down yet.

Also happy to road trip to Portland to see you, but not any greater distance than that or Spokane or the Canadian border going north. You let me know.

More erotica in the background. If you wanna first read it, lemme know. If you write erotica or know folks who do, I suspect we’ll give serious talk to starting a Syndicate Magazine at some point, so we’ll be talking and recruiting. Film at 11, as it were.

Past that, y’all have a lovely Tuesday.

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 morning.

Just finished rereading editor’s comments for an anthology I’m in that’s coming in the fall. Some of you will remember Eclipse and the gang from the 2000 CE (superhero) universe. Got a pair of stories about Bolt done, and #2 is in the anthology, so I’ll probably put #1 up for sale at the same time. Not one most of you have read, I don’t think.

Past the one-third mark of Heather 5. Second big chunk rumbling up, but I have blogs and newsletters to write this morning so might not get far on that one. Flip side, I write the erotica on a spare cell phone that got wiped and has no sim card, so I can take it anywhere and bang out words. About 6k into #5. And next week we’ll figure out if I just start publishing those or hold them for a new magazine.

Two newsletters after this, so please don’t scream if I show up in your inbox a whole bunch today, okay? 🙂 First of the month is both personal newsletter and I have two magazines so I trail each publication by 30 days to let them settle and generate a bump. Plus, Sloan Webber has a story in the coming issue of BSQ and it’s sequel is coming tomorrow in your inbox if you’re on the story tier. (Rest of you won’t see it for a LONG time.)

Health was a little yuck in June. Nothing bad but a string of little things that left me perpetually exhausted and emotionally wrung out, so I’m hoping that July turns into something a lot less trying. More words, more worlds. Probably a couple of weeks to wrap up Heather, then we’re off.

Farm News: Have had an enormous harvest of cherries this year. Put 8 pounds into the freezer last night, on top of 3-4 more pounds harvested to be eaten yesterday. Last week, Chef Bryan came out for several more pounds. I’ll probably still end up leaving 30 pounds on the trees at this point, to fall and rot and get eaten by critters.

When Bry was here, we talked about whiskey, so I put some Mexican ground corn in the carboy with brown sugar and have watched it bubble all week, where I can turn it into whiskey at some point. That and half the cherries turned into wine and then brandy are going to be fun in July/August.

But I’m a redneck and you knew that.

Hope your summer continues to be amazing.

Oh: WORLD CON IS IN SEATTLE in August. Knight Errant (A’Zedi Survey Corps, Book One) is out. I will have a paper edition (it is sitting on my left on my desk). If I Tuckerized you into that book (just about everyone I got permission from at this point, saving a couple), and you will be in the Seattle area (WorldCon or any other reason), I would like to get you to sign my copy. And I’ll sign yours.

Mark your calendars. I’ll also be in Vegas for AuthorNation in November, and am talking to the folks at Superstars for February. Hoping to make it to Minneapolis in December for family holiday, but that’s not nailed down yet.

Also happy to road trip to Portland to see you, but not any greater distance than that or Spokane or the Canadian border going north. You let me know.

More erotica in the background. If you wanna first read it, lemme know. If you write erotica or know folks who do, I suspect we’ll give serious talk to starting a Syndicate Magazine at some point, so we’ll be talking and recruiting. Film at 11, as it were.

Past that, y’all have a lovely Tuesday.

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. Got Mama Doe and two Zoomies grazing in the back yard as I write this. Total of three fawns from two mothers that I have seen. Plus some random bucks wandering around, because I have a lot of trees and no dogs to chase them off. Kinda nice watching wildlife wander by, and I built the orchard box to keep everyone but the squirrels out.

Harvested some cherries over the weekend. Got another tree that will be ripe this weekend. Made shrub. Might make booze.

Trying a whiskey/moonshine recipe at the moment. Corn and brown sugar. Bubbling slowly, so I have no idea how or even if it will work, but happy to try. Give it a few weeks and see what kind of taste we have.

Got the Art Colony barbecue in August, for those of you who have been in the past or would like to talk about joining. Artists of all kinds, cross-fertilizing and meeting people, because we need more of that, the longer we all receded into social media distance.

Writing. Kinda grumpy, but that’s the material. Spend last week working on new shorts for Patreon. Those will, like Scattered Tribes, turn into a book one at some point. Slow build, because lots of material and no hurry to get to the really crazy bits as we explore the slightly less crazy bits first.

Also working the erotica. Close to done with #4 at the moment and continuing on. Might know in July if it turns into a project or just becomes stuff that I pub under Cole’s name. Space Opera. With adult content, but you honestly could strip out a lot of that and keep it PG-13.

It entertains me.

Heather 5 is about 11k completed as I write this. The end of that series, setting up the series after that, which I will write at some point. The current Year of the Republic is 419, for those of you with a copy of Auberon handy to compare. Lots of light-years in between.

As I am working on a variety of genres, this one will take a while to complete, but that’s fine. I do have Last Stand #13 done and it will go into a special edition of Boundary Shock Quarterly next year. It also motivates me to write more of those, because I have an idea that will span a while bunch of stories.

Got more Action-Thriller to write. More SF. More erotica. More STUFFFF.

Hopefully, you people are entertained enough to keep funding my lifestyle, ya know?

Rambling, and that’s fine. Lemme know what questions you have and I’ll try to answer.

Oh: WORLD CON IS IN SEATTLE in August. Knight Errant (A’Zedi Survey Corps, Book One) is out. I will have a paper edition (it is sitting on my left on my desk). If I Tuckerized you into that book (just about everyone I got permission from at this point, saving a couple), and you will be in the Seattle area (WorldCon or any other reason), I would like to get you to sign my copy. And I’ll sign yours.

Mark your calendars. I’ll also be in Vegas for AuthorNation in November, and am talking to the folks at Superstars for February. Hoping to make it to Minneapolis in December for family holiday, but that’s not nailed down yet.

Also happy to road trip to Portland to see you, but not any greater distance than that or Spokane or the Canadian border going north. You let me know.

More erotica in the background. If you wanna first read it, lemme know. If you write erotica or know folks who do, I suspect we’ll give serious talk to starting a Syndicate Magazine at some point, so we’ll be talking and recruiting. Film at 11, as it were.

Past that, y’all have a lovely Tuesday.

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.

20250617

[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.]

And then, I was sick from Thursday to Sunday. Pretty sure I get to blame the Fabulous Publisher Babe™ for something she brought back from Portland, because she had it first.

Mostly better now, but that was the yucks. Slept Sunday a lot and sat on the couch with the writing phone the rest of the time. That much brain worked, but not much of the body.

In a couple of hours, I’ll head into town to have lunch with my friend who sold her bookstore in Tehran and moved to Seattle to get her PhD in Science Fiction at UW. Scheduled this last week before the racist shits decided to expand their colonialism to yet another war in another country. Been reminding people that the Iranian regime only exists today because Reagan and North literally committed treason to save them in the 80s. Go look up Iran-Contra and ask some hard questions. North should have been hung.

But I might also be grumpy and wishing a lot of ill will on a lot of feeble-minded losers who are incapable of rational introspection and merely parrot whatever they last watched on whatever right-wing vomitorium they subscribe to. I do wish that they got the full effect of their politics rammed into every one of their orifices.

Nuff said. Grumped.

Writing two series at the same time these last two weeks. Started a new SF Opera yesterday. Going to be another series of shorts like Scattered Tribes, where all of them get assembled into a Book One later and subsequent books are written as straight novels.

I have considered whether to take a machete to my writing assignments. At this moment, I have two quarterly magazines (deadline every three months) and a monthly patreon short story. That works out to twenty short stories per year, because I don’t generally combine them. And, again, grumps. We’ll see what happens in July, because you should never make binding decisions when angry.

Well, almost never. There have been times I made decisions that the rest of the world ended up regretting, but they brought it upon themselves and I’m not required to play nice. Not gonna start now.

If a third magazine happens, that’s yet more effort on a monthly basis that impacts novel writing, unless I send out chunks of novel monthly to patreon folks. (When I publish Scattered Tribes 1, you folks will be getting a free download link, because you supported it coming into existence.)

But writing erotica on one computer and space opera on the other actually rotates the brain in different orbits, so it all works. Midway through the fourth part of Two Against The Stars. Started the new Redlance tale I’ve wanted to tackle for years, just wasn’t sure how to bring all the pieces together to make it happen. Story #1 should be in your August mailboxes, after something special in July.

Y’all stay tuned.

Oh: WORLD CON IS IN SEATTLE in August. Knight Errant (A’Zedi Survey Corps, Book One) is out. I will have a paper edition (it is sitting on my left on my desk). If I Tuckerized you into that book (just about everyone I got permission from at this point, saving a couple), and you will be in the Seattle area (WorldCon or any other reason), I would like to get you to sign my copy. And I’ll sign yours.

Mark your calendars. I’ll also be in Vegas for AuthorNation in November, and am talking to the folks at Superstars for February. Hoping to make it to Minneapolis in December for family holiday, but that’s not nailed down yet.

Also happy to road trip to Portland to see you, but not any greater distance than that or Spokane or the Canadian border going north. You let me know.

More erotica in the background. If you wanna first read it, lemme know. If you write erotica or know folks who do, I suspect we’ll give serious talk to starting a Syndicate Magazine at some point, so we’ll be talking and recruiting. Film at 11, as it were.

Past that, y’all have a lovely Tuesday.

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.

20250610

[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. Spent last week dealing with a dead control board on the furnace, so no AC or heat. Wasn’t bad, and they got the parts installed by Friday when shit started getting hot. Summer might have finally arrived, which is weird, because usually this month is cool and damp and we call it June-uary around here.

Knight Errant came out last night. Hope y’all enjoy it. First In The Field next month.

Finished Marrakesh #6 last week. Title is Undaunted and I had a lot of fun drawing inspiration from the historical elements around Napoleon Bonaparte’s original exile to Alba. Or rather, the elements leading up to it. Filtered, of course, through the worldbuilding I’ve done.

Originally, I had planned for it to be a 2-parter, but once I got into the story, adjustments I made meant that any second part will be at a remove. Possibly with a second story slipped in to make it #8 instead of #7.

Dunno.

What it did mean was that the next writing project turned out to be Last Stand #13. I left things at a good spot at the end of Season One, but I have EXTENSIVE notes about future story ideas, and delved into those. At the same time, I came up with a meta-arc that might span at least half if not all of Season Two (another 12 novellas) into one big things. Because why the hell not?

At present, the target is for this story to go into Boundary Shock Quarterly Issue 035, coming out a year from now. That means that I might start publishing more Last Stand stories in 2027, which isn’t that far away, but I would need to write several so I am extending. And more Marrakesh. And more Survey Corps. And a bunch of other things, but adding one story to an existing series is a lot easier for me, because I don’t have to generate a half-million words to publish. I don’t like leaving you hanging, and have too many First or Second books in a new series that need banging on because they don’t stand alone.

And, because I’m having too much damned fun, I’m about halfway through the third story in “Two Against The Stars” which is the new space opera erotica stuff for Cole. Talking to Mark tomorrow and see how he’s feeling. Maybe we build a new quarterly anthology magazine. Maybe not. News next week.

Lots of critters around here. Saw a mama deer with two zoomy fawns over the last week. And saw a barn owl hunting snakes during the day. She must have a nest just up the hill a little from the way she was flying. Never seen a daytime barn owl, so extra cool. But I live in a rural zone that I keep wild for them to enjoy and survive. My fun is just a bonus

Past that, y’all keep keeping on.

Oh: WORLD CON IS IN SEATTLE in August. Knight Errant (A’Zedi Survey Corps, Book One) is out. I will have a paper edition (it is sitting on my left on my desk). If I Tuckerized you into that book (just about everyone I got permission from at this point, saving a couple), and you will be in the Seattle area (WorldCon or any other reason), I would like to get you to sign my copy. And I’ll sign yours.

Mark your calendars. I’ll also be in Vegas for AuthorNation in November, and am talking to the folks at Superstars for February. Hoping to make it to Minneapolis in December for family holiday, but that’s not nailed down yet.

Also happy to road trip to Portland to see you, but not any greater distance than that or Spokane or the Canadian border going north. You let me know.

More erotica in the background. If you wanna first read it, lemme know. If you write erotica or know folks who do, I suspect we’ll give serious talk to starting a Syndicate Magazine at some point, so we’ll be talking and recruiting. Film at 11, as it were.

Past that, y’all have a lovely Tuesday.

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.]

Sunny morning. A little chilly in here, but that’s the furnace dying over the weekend. Control board fried, which was exactly what my week needed on top of everything else. A little salty. Actually, a lot salty and staying largely away from people who don’t deserve to be bit. (MOST of you don’t deserve to be bit, I’m presuming.)

In the home stretch of Marrakesh 6. As noted, aiming for a duology, where 6 ends but flows right into 7. Not sure that I will manage. Might just end 6 and circle back to the story in 8 or something. Don’t have to know today.

Also working on the erotica on the side. About halfway through story #2, but sidetracked. Will keep working on it, because fun.

Honestly, an unmotivated morning. After the furnace guy left yesterday (gotta order the board, supposedly installing tomorrow), I went down to the lower meadow and spent several hours staying in shape. Electric brushcutter (think weedeater with a steel cruciform blade), ditch tool (think hockey stick with an oversized metal blade), machete, attitude problem.

There is a barbed wire fence under the blackberry bramble. I have uncovered a long stretch of it. Found more yesterday. Talked with the neighbor on that side and she’d excited that I’m clearing out the property line between us, because it’s been a bramble like that for at least twenty years. And her husband will drag a mower on a tractor to keep it knocked down, once we know he won’t be ingesting barbed wire as he goes.

With luck, I can get it fully knocked down this year (last year was last year) and keep it down long enough for grass and trees to take over. Figure my property value goes way up when I end up selling, if I add an entire acre of usable space that fronts onto the pond (currently buried in bramble on all sides).

And it keeps me in shape, because I’m swinging a small scythe back and forth, plus digging for half-buried wire with it. Keeps the upper body loose and strong, and I’m old enough now that I’ll start losing more and more muscle and bone as I age. Fighting that battle today means I’m in better shape tomorrow. Same with the karate. Stuff I want to still be able to do at ninety, because I started today and kept at it for thirty-five years.

Not a lot past that. Unmotivated. Unexcited. Might take the day off from writing and get other work done instead.

Oh: WORLD CON IS IN SEATTLE in August. Knight Errant (A’Zedi Survey Corps, Book One) is coming out in June. I will have a paper edition (it is sitting on my left on my desk). If I Tuckerized you into that book (just about everyone I got permission from at this point, saving a couple), and you will be in the Seattle area (WorldCon or any other reason), I would like to get you to sign my copy. And I’ll sign yours.

Mark your calendars. I’ll also be in Vegas for AuthorNation in November, and am talking to the folks at Superstars for February. Hoping to make it to Minneapolis in December for family holiday, but that’s not nailed down yet.

Also happy to road trip to Portland to see you, but not any greater distance than that or Spokane or the Canadian border going north. You let me know.

More erotica in the background. If you wanna first read it, lemme know. If you write erotica or know folks who do, I suspect we’ll give serious talk to starting a Syndicate Magazine at some point, so we’ll be talking and recruiting. Film at 11, as it were.

Past that, y’all have a lovely Tuesday.

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.]

Rain passed yesterday. Sun’s out but still a bit chilly this morning. Fabulous Publisher Babe™ has an Eye of Round on the grill at the moment, making roast beef from real beef. (As opposed to all those deli meats you buy at the grocery that are made of scraps and meat glue.)

And she baked a new kind of bread over the weekend. Italian wheat, water, salt, yeast. Most American breads include A LOT of sugar or other sweeteners. Subway Sandwiches in the UK lost a lawsuit several years ago and technically had to rate their bread as cake because of it, just as Pringles has so much other crap in it that they won the case against being classified as potato chips (crisps).

What kind of ULTRAPROCESSED yuck are you eating on a daily basis? Hmmm?

Okay, back to work.

Had a lovely night at the dojo last night. Holiday, so only a handful of us. Both senseis, me, bunch of white belts, so I took the kids and focused on one portion of the Sanchin kata, where you have to walk backwards, while moving both hands in opposite directions as double-blocks.

Right up there with chewing bubble gum and walking in a straight line when I first learned it. Takes time. And practice. So we practiced while the Senseis pulled each student over and worked one-on-one.

Really nice feeling when Sensei took me aside and told me that I’d done a good job with the kids. I’m about eight months deeper into the curriculum than they are. And while they have a couple of years of Isshynryu behind them there are only a few adult white belts and a mass of yellow and orange belts, all under thirteen.

But they’ll get there. And catch up with me at some point, maybe. It will be glorious, if I ever have a chance to visit the dojo of the youngest girl in class after she grows up.

Writing: Finished Red Branch 6 (Iron Curtain) last week. And that first erotica piece I talked about last week, mixing some epic space fantasy opera and a few other things for some future project. Maybe a new magazine, depending on what Mark has to say, but he’s a little busy right now with life and I’m not in a hurry.

Started Marrakesh 6 instead. It will be a duology (two-parter) that I’m aiming to publish in Nov/Dec 2026, after Heather and Ollie are both done. Extends the universe, and circles back, because that’s an ongoing series as opposed to one of those where everything comes to a conclusion and then is done. (Jessica, for instance. Uly doesn’t count, because 7 just rests and I already know what 8 is. Plus, I planned 30+ from the beginning.)

Past that, not a lot. Busy summer coming up.

Oh: WORLD CON IS IN SEATTLE in August. Knight Errant (A’Zedi Survey Corps, Book One) is coming out in June. I will have a paper edition (it is sitting on my left on my desk). If I Tuckerized you into that book (just about everyone I got permission from at this point, saving a couple), and you will be in the Seattle area (WorldCon or any other reason), I would like to get you to sign my copy. And I’ll sign yours.

Mark your calendars. I’ll also be in Vegas for AuthorNation in November, and am talking to the folks at Superstars for February. Hoping to make it to Minneapolis in December for family holiday, but that’s not nailed down yet.

Also happy to road trip to Portland to see you, but not any greater distance than that or Spokane or the Canadian border going north. You let me know.

More erotica in the background. If you wanna first read it, lemme know. If you write erotica or know folks who do, I suspect we’ll give serious talk to starting a Syndicate Magazine at some point, so we’ll be talking and recruiting. Film at 11, as it were.

Past that, y’all have a lovely Tuesday.

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.]

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

—————————-

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.