My schedule for the 2024 MD Renn Fest!

As you can see, I’ll be at Page After Page in October. This will be later in the season – I don’t know if that matters any – and will be on a Saturday instead of a Sunday, which I imagine does. I had a good time doing the Festival last year; I look forward to doing it again. If you’re there, come and stop by! …If you’re not, buy my books here!

#commissionearned

Self-Tweet of the Day, My Instinctive Reaction To The ALIEN: ROMULUS trailer.

Point.

Counterpoint.

03/20/2024 Snippet, THE BRANDENBURG SANCTION.

Complications!

Neither of us heard anything (Francesco wasn’t even trying to listen, not that he was the kind of rogue who could notice a Scandinavian war-bear if it fell on him), which in retrospect should have been more of a hint. At the time, I just chalked up the general lack of movement in the basement of a bank as being more evidence of just how backward and backwoods Schmoditten-Schloditten was — and still is, mind you. It’s the sort of place that will bring its sidewalks in at night, once it actually gets around to buying some.

Ah, I digress, probably from lingering embarrassment. It wasn’t until we actually got to the bank vault that we discovered that it wasn’t actually a vault anymore. It lacked certain amenities, like a guard post, alarms either arcane or mundane, and indeed a solid door. Instead there was a barred door that even Francesco could unlock with a sniff.

I let him get to that while I fiddled with my dowsing rods; Gefikst rumbled up to me while I was making my final adjustments. “So, about my being able to pop the hinges on the safe if need be, Mr. Weld. I should mention that I’d need to actually find the safe first?”

“Yes, ha, ha, very droll,” I muttered back. “I don’t see the blasted thing either. But the rods still do, dammit.” Indeed, they did. In fact, they were unerringly pointing to a particular spot on the floor; one showing signs of a heavy object being removed. “We’ll need to take a sample from the dirt and scratches.”

The Ultimate Conclusions short story collection Kickstarter.

Ultimate Conclusions is a fantasy/science fiction short story collection by Karl Gallagher; this is his first Kickstarter. Karl is a good dude who actually has the chops to write hard SF, and you should definitely check out his Torchship Trilogy even if you’re not going to back his Kickstarter. But you should back his Kickstarter.

#commissionearned

03/17/2024 Snippet, PICKMAN’S MODELS.

Airlocks!

The first team was made up of three grenadiers and two Squad members, and when the door opened again, they had the exact same number of people. “There’s power and air, sir, but no people manning the gate,” the Squaddie told Tobias. “No communications network up on the other side, either. My suit couldn’t even find anything to handshake with.”

Reithner had been listening to one of the grenadiers, presumably telling her the same thing. “Nothing from our suits, either. The atmosphere is breathable, but the temperature is at thirty seven degrees.”

“Well, at least there’s no ice — no, wait.” Tobias frowned. “I forgot: your people still use Celsius. You’re saying it’s hot in there?”

“Yes. Blood temperature, in fact.” She sounded incredulous, which was fair, because so was Tobias. Most of Heinlein Base had been shut down and sealed off in order to conserve heat; the other human-occupied outposts had the exact same problem. If this place was that well heated, they probably had power, and to spare. Yet one more reason to investigate, he thought. Not to mention, handle gently.

Patreon Microfiction: ‘Fine Terran Craftmanship.’

Perhaps ‘Fine Terran Craftmanship’ is simply pro-Browning propaganda. But perhaps we should be unsurprised if, once we are out and about the stars, alien collectors flock to our planet to acquire M1911A1s and Avtomat Kalashnikovas in the same way that we will go to theirs to find guaranteed authentic Altarian needle-pistols and flame-spears. Some aesthetics might be universal.

Book of the Week: Lovecraft’s Iraq.

I saw David Rose’s Lovecraft’s Iraq and I thought I’d give it a whirl. I’m about halfway through it now, and it’s not half bad. The author is a war veteran from the time period that the book’s set in, and he’s obviously intimately familiar with what military life in Iraq was at that point. This gives the book a certain built-in authenticity when it suggests how the military would react to the Mythos.

Warning: it’s kind of bleak. Even by modern “Thomas Ligotti is my dark guru” cosmic horror standards.

#commissionearned

03/16/2024 Snippet, THE BRANDENBURG SANCTION.

Walls!

Gefikst could have punched through the wall in about thirty seconds, but that would have just ended with us eventually fleeing Schmoditten-Schloditten with a host — well, at least a mort — of soldiers after us. Worse, and more importantly, we’d be doing so in public. The idea was to be discreet in our burglary. Making a splash wouldn’t help any of us. That’s why the golem was instead carefully vibrating one finger through the mortar holding the bricks together. Once it had one brick cleared, it would gently yank it out, and give it to me to be carefully stacked on the ground. Francesco ignored the work entirely, but then we didn’t really mind. Honestly, I couldn’t trust him not to drop a damned brick on his foot.

It wasn’t as slow as it sounds, and we didn’t need to take the whole brick wall down, but it was still a nerve-wracking ten minutes of tense work. Yes, nobody was likely to patrol the basements, and yes, security for this building was lax at best, and yes, they weren’t supposed to have even a hint that we were coming, but you wouldn’t believe the things that can happen in even a small caper. At least I was able to hear if someone was coming, once the first brick was out. I’d have trusted Gefikst’s echolocation trick a good deal more if I was the one who was imitating a bat.

Tweet of the Day, @AXECOP Could Use Some Help edition.

A combination of a crooked vendor and a jackwagon of an insurance company. He’s making his online catalog available for a low price to get money together. Personally, I would have been fine with just donating the cash.