Everybody’s buzzing about this newly announced project, so I thought I’d lay down a few markers about how I think this is going to play out. Please note, I don’t have any inside information nor do I necessarily approve of the decisions I’m describing below, this is just a few thoughts from someone who finds both the Odyssey and Nolan’s movies to be kind of interesting.
Continue reading “Stupid Fan Predictions About Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey”Category: Myth
Instead of Weird Wednesday, Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale
Hans G. Schantz is once again hosting the Based Book Sale on his substack and has graciously agreed to include Wolf’s Trail, currently listed at 99 cents. Click here to check out a wiiiide selection of discounted books!
If you’ve already read Wolf’s Trail, here’s a quick reminder that its sequel, Undead Flight, just released, and is free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers. Happy Thanksgiving to all!
The Sorceror Casts Ctrl+C on the Python Shell
instructor in python coding: “If you don’t set the condition for the while loop correctly, the code will run continuously until you manually stop it with Ctrl+C.”
Me: “Now I know the spell for ‘Shut It Down Now!'”
Hunter Healer King, Book 2 is Here!
The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I am in trouble. First I helped Maxim kill a werewolf, then I kissed him, and then I insulted him when I found out that he was roughly twice as old as he looked. Now Maxim is about to be crowned King of the Stormcrows aboard a luxury airship, and he has invited me to attend. But this ship feels more like a cage with each passing hour: a passenger’s horse has turned up missing, a crewman has turned up dead, and before it all started, I heard noises in the cargo hold. But Maxim has a mind as sharp as my banishing dagger, and between us, we aim to put an end to whatever monster lurks aboard the ship, no matter how awkward we feel around each other right now…
My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night. With my coronation mere hours away, something stalks the shadows of this vessel: a monster that answers to a human being..but who? And for what purpose? Despite our recent…complications, Chloe’s courage and loyalty make her my strongest ally as I pursue our enemies, and brace for the dreadful pomp and circumstance of my own coronation. The crown of the Stormcrows may await me, but first, we have a mystery to solve – together.
State of the Author, 4Q2024
-First off, I think my books are all in Kindle Unlimited now, free to anyone with a subscription to KU. If you see any sign that they are not in KU, please let me know in the comments.
–Undead Flight (Hunter Healer King Book 2) is now in the hands of my proofreaders. Barring complications, should be ready to publish by Christmas time. Ebook cover is done; blurb is done with AI help (stay tuned, my post on the blurbing process will be out tomorrow. Print cover is dependent on my final cleanup of the manuscript to determine page length.
-Also started Hunter Healer King Book 3 by writing a fairly dark and distressing scene from the last third of the book. This is kind of suboptimal, because stitching together scenes written out of order tends to add (wo)manhours to the first draft process, but I hadn’t figured out the opening scene at that point. I don’t know when it will be released but I know that I am aiming for Christmas of 2025.
-I have had a sci-fi Pride and Prejudice retelling in development for a long time; finally got the first scene down. No projected completion date at this time. My main inspiration for this concept was, weirdly enough, Star Wars: A New Hope. If you dig deep enough into the filmographies of the supporting cast, you will find one with a Pride and Prejudice connection in his earlier career. Regrettably, the catchy working title explicitly references Star Wars, so the official title will probably be something rather sedate of the “Pride and…” format.
-New ebook covers using AI art for Shadow Captain and Spider Star are done; still need to do new paperback covers for them, and ebook/hardcover for the 2 in 1 volume for the duology. Projected release date for the 2 in 1 is first/second quarter of 2025.
-Early stages of AI art covers for the Jaiya Series and Ancestors of Jaiya series. No text layout yet. A four in one of Ancestors might come out in third quarter of 2025; a seven in one of the full metaseries might be sometime in 2026 but a lot could go sideways between now and then.
Music By Suno Monday: Beowulf and the Dragon
I used an excerpt from some verse translation on gutenberg as the lyrics.
Rings of Powers Season Two Teaser
More thoughts below, but keep in mind that I neither hate RoP enough to fisk it nor love it enough to defend it.
Continue reading “Rings of Powers Season Two Teaser”Wolf’s Trail is Free Until Friday!
The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I am in trouble. I left my father’s ranch on the plains to come to the Old World: a place of airships, steampower, and monsters nobody talks about. Now I’m dodging giant werewolves with fangs the size of my knife, and the hunters crazy enough to go after them. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man with a tired face….
My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night. The leader of this pack of werewolves has set his mark on Miss Fortebat, but this brave lady would rather fight him than let him make her his tool. As far as I am concerned, that makes her my ally. My only chance of curing her lies with an ancient machine, hidden by my people in the caves beneath Wolf Island. We must keep that artifact out of the werewolf’s grasp at all costs, for he would put it to a terrible use….
Wolf’s Trail, the first book in Hunter Healer King, my gothic gaslamp fantasy series, is free for all readers until Friday, March 22, 2024!
You may know me from my clean romantic fantasy novels in the Jaiya series and the Ancestors of Jaiya series, or my space operas, the Star Master duology. Wolf’s Trail still combines adventure, mysticism, romance and fun characters, while avoiding harsh language and the more graphic forms of violence and sexuality. This new series is written for fans of steampunk, gaslamp fantasy, lost civilizations, and monster hunters like Van Helsing (the more action hero version of the character, as portrayed by Peter Cushing and Hugh Jackman).
Where Did That Come From? The Posh Guy in Wolf’s Trail
We’ve discussed the origins of the feisty girl/posh guy idea before, and the evolution of the feisty girl in my head into Chloe Fortabat of Wolf’s Trail. The evolution of the posh guy was less dramatic, because for a long time I thought primarily of him as a foil to the heroine. Here are the different phases, numbered to match the entries under Feisty Girl:
Continue reading “Where Did That Come From? The Posh Guy in Wolf’s Trail”Where Did That Come From? The Feisty Girl in Wolf’s Trail
(Note to pedants: I use “girl” here in a colloquial sense, as the counterpart to “guy.” All the female character concepts mentioned below were college age or older when I stopped to think about how old the character ought to be.)
As previously stated, the basics of the feisty girl/posh guy teamup came to me while watching Agatha Christie’s Criminal Games. It was a long road from there to Wolf’s Trail.
Continue reading “Where Did That Come From? The Feisty Girl in Wolf’s Trail”
Jaglion Press 