Finally.
Shaenon, of course, did the cover for my first novel FROZEN RAIN — and will be doing the second Tom Vargas cover, once I’m ready to rev TINSEL RAIN up to speed. I’m glad she’s found something to keep her busy until then:
Karen Wojtyla at McElderry Books has bought world rights to Steam by The Dire Days of Willowweep Manor author Shaenon K. Garrity (l.), illustrated by Emily Holden. The YA graphic novel follows the adventures of Ruby, a “hypercognitive humanoid” designed to solve science’s greatest problems, who escapes from a university lab and finds a job as a barista in a kooky coffee shop, where she finds plenty of problems to solve.
I know where it’s going to end up; but I think that 8K words is barely enough time to deal with the monster in front of our hero — what’s that? Yes. Of course there’s a monster. Obviously. I’m not calling it ETERNAL NIGHT OF THE MOON-BEASTS because it’s a [cowboy]-[nurse] romance story*.
Anyway, spent time thinking about how to make this scene a real short story instead of, well, just a scene.
Moe Lane
*Do those exist? …Well, they probably do now. You’re welcome?
They asked for authors to sign up for some slots to talk about their books; I am — oddly enough! — an author now*; so I will be blathering on for a half hour about my stuff. This would be on October 2nd, at the Fright Reads book fair in Severna Park, Maryland. If you can’t make it or can’t wait, buy my books now!
*It’d be nice if there was some kind of pin, honestly. Even a 10% off at the Staples frequent-publishing card.
The drone’s radar sensors did nothing to help the mood, either. It was barely able to show outlines, which at least kept Tobias from crashing into the sides; but the deeper the drone got, the worse the shaft seemed. It was… off-kilter, like parts of it had been pushed out of line, but not all at once. And at the bottom was rubble, tumbled and settled. The drone carried a radar sophisticated enough to pick up anything man-sized or larger (in happier times, it had been used for moonquake emergency response calls), and as it drew closer to the bottom automated request were made to Tobias to start scanning for biological material.
He was hesitant to let it — the radar sweeps weren’t triggering a response (And just what’s supposed to be responding? asked a voice in his head), but Tobias felt an instinctive reluctance to try anything more intrusive — when he realized that there was another issue. The drone was starting to react sluggishly, like it was getting caught up on something. Only slightly at the moment, but it was definitely reacting.
Less work than I’d like, today.
Continue reading 09/13/21 Snippet, ETERNAL NIGHT OF THE MOON-BEASTS.Exploration!
In the old days — which was to say, six months ago — Tobias could have flown a drone into Jetshaft from the perfect safety of his own office pod. Humans had spent forty years creating an Lunar orbital satellite network that would do the work of a proper ionosphere, and nobody had really comprehended just how useful it had been until the whole thing had just detonated, in the space of three seconds. Trying to figure out why had driven three researchers to suicide; and from what their surviving colleagues had gathered, it wasn’t because the poor bastards had failed to find the answer.
The various Lunar facilities did have enough emergency replacement satellites on-hand to allow limited communications beyond line of sight, and things could be done with relays and cables. But if Tobias wanted to remotely pilot a search vessel out past the horizon, he’d have to stick relatively close to it. That meant firing up a hopper and parking it somewhere with a good view of the target.
And it has to be me, he thought as the drone approached the target. Everybody else is too busy with keeping us all alive. Even this trip was only justifiable because it would be malignantly helpful if they could loot Jetshaft for spare parts. Plus rescue any survivors, naturally. The other facilities all needed more workers.
‘Ghosts’ is, I guess, a bit grim. I mean, what happens if you implode? It doesn’t sound entirely pleasant, imploding.
This is Darrell Huff’s classic How To Lie With Statistics, not the auto-generated knockoff sales leecher that I almost linked to as a joke. I was real tempted, too. But I overcame my darker impulses. That’s been kind of the theme today, really.
I have no idea if this is good, or not. It’s in the middle, at least.
