“Baby, it’s cold outside”

And inside, too. Having worked HealthBenefitsJob this weekend, I was off today. My plan was to retire to the basement to record two if not three chapters of Part Two of “Friend & Ally.” It’s 15F outside; the vents are closed in the basement… and I turn off the furnace when recording, anyway. Hmmm. Catching a cold and/or freezing to death does not seem a good execution of said plan, so I shelved that. Maybe Thursday.

Needing to do something creative, I forced myself to start typing out the short story in the back of my head for a week: a generation after the end of “Goddess’ Crusade,” for some reason, Faustina gathers her adult male children together for a meeting. Why? I’m not entirely sure, but I think it has something to do with the succession to the imperium. Making some notes before typing, I now see that at forty-three years old, Faustina has six + one children, four of whom inherited her demi-human nature. I am just as curious as you are.

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Audiobook waypoint

Having begun recording on January 24th, just today, February 4th, I have completed the raws for Part One of Friend & Ally. That’s about 230 minutes of me yammering into my microphone and pausing Audacity whenever the dogs start barking or someone flushes the toilet upstairs.

Part Two will be much rougher on my voice as one of the tertiary characters is General Tessmer. His voice is based upon that of Admiral Halsey’s from the movie Midway (2019). That should have me mute for most of the rest of this month and into March. How will I manage Part Three?

American Imperium Trilogy complete!*

A week sooner than planned, for once, I am pleased to announce the release of all three books of the Crusades of Faustina Hartmann. It is available in both the virgin ebook format and chad paperbacks (Princess, Empress, Goddess). Thanks to everyone for your support over this past year as I got these stories written, edited, and covered.

*The ending of “Goddess’ Crusade” surprised all of us. There is another story there…

Marketing

It is not something I am very good at. Thus, when “Billy” Webb, author, was on last weeks Star Chamber Show webcast, and made a comment about “signed postcards are ten times better than business cards. People toss business cards. But… hey: this guy just gave me his autograph… I don’t know him but maybe I should check it out…” Brilliant! I cobbled together a design of my dozen book covers, made a QR to my Amazon page and put my contact info on the back.

I’m stupid but not slow.

GC on the runway…

Didn’t plan to go dark again, but had many things happening at once. In meatspace, I was fighting some GI-tract infection while still going to DayJob, as the main pharmacy tech for oncology was out with a heart attack. As I’m one of the few trained for that, it meant me going to work, no matter what my condition. Ugh.

Better now. And, even better, I received the copyedit of “Goddess’ Crusade” back. Better still is I just moments ago implemented those changes into the MS. The cover art is complete, so I am hoping to upload all this tomorrow and request a proof copy. Then, I’ll be done with this trilogy. A trilogy whose epilogue lends itself to at least one more book… if not more. I’m such a terrible writer. Or, at least, person.

This puts me two weeks behind here I wanted to be recording audiobooks. That is now slated for next weekend. My current thought is to record the raw of the entire book, “Friend & Ally,” if my voice holds out, and then do the editing. We’ll see. In other news, I’m also re-covering “Crosses & Doublecrosses.” The current cover is… lacking. Cheerio!

Radio Waves

I try to listen in and add to the chatroom of the weekly Star Chamber podcast when I can on Wednesday nights. Every now and then the host, Stephen Zimmer, forgets himself and invites me to call in. As their primary guest had to bail after an hour last night, Mr Zimmer made his mistake again and asked me to call.

I come in around the 1:03:35 mark. However, the main guest, John Pyka, I found to be an interesting man and the entire show is worth a listen. Cheers!

A Haunting Past

Of the two most famous Inklings, it was said that Lewis would sketch a scene by saying “The children stood in the forest. A chill wind blew.” Tolkien, on the other hand, would spend the next twenty pages not only telling you the history of the forest, but then go on to describe each and every leaf.

An exaggeration, but to make a point. My writing style can, charitably, be called more Lewisian; not so charitably, “the son-of-bitch-writer never explains anything!” Guilty as charged. I have a story to tell and my characters would be rather miffed at me if I take time to describe the leaves on the trees.

A positive of that, though, is in the million of tiny cracks and folds of my novels, there lurk hundreds of more stories. Back in January, I realized that over the course of five years being in Machine Civilization, I was able to pull together a short story collection. Below the fold is another example. Based upon “real life” – whatever that means – events, I was able to peek in on an interaction between Faustina and a civilian in a far flung corner of her imperium. This takes place about halfway through “Empress Crusade;” it is not in the book, but it is canon. Fodder for my next collection!

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No such thing…

My tiny handful of regular readers know that since I became a writer, one salutary fact has been rammed down my throat: there are no such things as coincidences. As a young godless materialist I would shrug and call an event a “statistical outlier.” Once I was a Catholic Christian, I fell back on “we cannot see God’s ways.”

In my second year as a writer, when I was 49 years old, I realized: fuck me.

Time and time and time again, I would see something and it would show up first in my writing and later in meatspace. God, obviously, is trying to make a point to me. One, admittedly, I am still learning. Saying all that to say this…

Four hours ago, see the post, I completed the raw manuscript of “Goddess’ Crusade.” The core battle of that novel is how Faustina recognizes her opponent has an overwhelming advantage of armor and considers what she can do to neutralize it and win. Being her military father’s daughter, she plucks an example from history and plans accordingly.

Five hours later, tired and just wanting to relax, I retire to my basement to watch a few videos before going to sleep. Ah! A new video from Kings & Generals… it’s about… about…

Fuck me. Pharsalus. There are no such things as coincidences.

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A preliminary fork

The very raw manuscript of “Goddess’ Crusade” is complete. I need to make at least two passes through it to check coherency, then pass it onto my copyeditor. I admit, this a one of the oddest stories I’ve been told to write down. At two points I tossed my hands in the air and walked away from the laptop.

As this is toward the end of the book, I don’t want to post spoilers, so I’ll post sex, instead.

Continue reading “A preliminary fork” →