07/20/2024 Snippet, THE REAL THING.

Naked lizards! …The horrible kind. Not the weird Skyrim mod kind.

Our best bet was to move west, and track down what the old maps called the Chattahoochee River. 

I have no idea what that word means, by the way. I’m assuming it meant something like ‘hidden,’ because we had spent a day trying to find it, and failing. And it was hot, and it was dry, and the air was also somehow greasy, and every fly and mosquito in Georgia was trying to make our acquaintance.

That last, at least, I could do something about; I used a cantrip from the Second Republic to suck the life force out of every bug that came within twenty feet. It worked fine, but that meant the party had to try to stay within twenty feet of me, too. That made our travel a little crowded, with people jostling each other as they tried to stay in range. I’m not a fan of being crowded, especially when nobody’s bathed enough to suit me, including me. Very much including me.

But it was just as well. If the naked lizard pack had attacked us while we were all spread out, things would have gotten even messier. As it was, three of them had jumped one of the archers and had him down in the dirt screaming as they swept at his body with their red-dripping fighting claws.

A reminder: you should not buy books with AI-generated covers.

Whether they be fiction books, or TTRPG supplements. You should be particularly disinclined to do that if they are not forthright about using AI prompts. Those people know perfectly well what they are doing.

No names because I don’t have confirmation. But if my suspicions are correct, then I am profoundly disappointed in the company in question. And it will certainly be a consideration when it comes to my future purchases.

Yeah, quiet day today.

A combination of my wife’s birthday and the need to get those edits done. I don’t know if I mentioned, but I should spend this weekend getting a do-not-publish draft set up so that I can calculate page count, and get that to the cover layout dude. We are on track for September! I may even have it for Fright Reads, although the MD Renn Festival will be trickier. Oh, well, we’ll see.

07/19/2024 Snippet, THE REAL THING.

I have a pretty good idea of how this is going to go now.

“Sounds fine to me.” I paused. “Ah… anything vile in those camps?”

“Nah. Or nothing that made me throw up,” Finglas replied. “No human bones in the stewpots, no black-glowing idols, none of that crap. The only skulls I saw were deer and pigs. Oh, and they got a dog-god around here, looks like. Saw a shrine or two in the camps.”

Nellas narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t…”

“Didn’t do nothing except light an incense stick at each one. Didn’t touch nothing, either.” Finglas snorted. “I ain’t some penchannas stripling, brother. You meet a god at the side of the road, you give it a friendly nod and leave it the hell alone.”

As it happened, we never had any trouble with the locals around Lost Atlanta, either coming or going. Maybe their dog-god liked the incense. Or maybe his worshipers just didn’t want any trouble.

70% done on edits for TALES FROM THE FERMI RESOLUTION Vol 2!

And I even have the next story back! After that there’s one more, and then after that… well, the tenth is probably going to get a bunch of feedback. It’s a collection of vignettes that I wrote for the new version of the TTRPG, only put in order and fleshed out a little. It’s not bad, and I kind of need it in there to justify the cover, too – but it’s a little choppy. I’m curious to see what she thinks.

Still. We progress!

Continue reading 70% done on edits for TALES FROM THE FERMI RESOLUTION Vol 2!

07/17/2024 Snippet, THE REAL THING.

God, I can’t wait for this heat to become more manageable. It’s downright enervating.

Elf-Lands

Kentuckians may not have a King, but they definitely know how to put an expedition together. By the time I arrived at Fort Savannah, Mary-Jo had already gotten our team assembled. There was me, her, Finglas and Nellas for the scouting, a dour-looking healer named Elanor Dawnflower, and an entire squad of grizzled, hard-eyed elven archers led by one ‘Bob Jones.’

Mary-Jo had warned me about that, ahead of time. “Some of the elven families still hold onto what human mages did to them, back before they got loose. Bob knows you’re not one of those, but he’s not going to give out his True Name to you anyway.” I had still spent half of the two week trip up to Lost Atlantia wondering if Bob really did know I wasn’t one of those Mage Alliance bastards, but he never said or did anything except keep one eye on me at all times. Eventually I decided it was his problem, not mine, and I needed to concentrate on actually getting to Lost Atlanta.

Damned if it wasn’t properly lost, either. It was so lost, the locals from Savannah said that even bandits couldn’t find it. The way they said that, I gathered that I was supposed to be impressed. I did my best, but we don’t have bandits in Virginia. I had to take on faith their supernatural ability to find lost places.

My books are now in my local library.

The county library system where I am has a policy where they’ll put books by local authors on the shelves. When I heard about that, I naturally brought my novels over for submission and acceptance. They let me know this morning that the books had been processed, and would end up in my local branch library in the very near future.

I don’t make a dime off of this directly, and I’ll never really know if I make a dime off of it indirectly, either. It’s still cool, though. I’ll have to track them down later, and take a picture.

#commissionearned