Hey heroes -
I’m heading out to Indianapolis on Wednesday for Gencon, where I’ll be appearing at the Writers Symposium with some more of your favorite people!
I’ll have some goodies with me to share if you catch me out and about, including some chapbooks, Savage Stars postcards, and a few Lesbians in Space pins.
FRESH FICTION
If you ever wondered, gosh, where can I get a really weird story that breaks my brain from that Hurley fellow, welllll…. There’s a new adventure waiting every month for the 1300+ folks who subscribe on Patreon. I’m delighted to be celebrating 10 years of monthy fresh fiction here. See why I do indeed have dozens of folks who’ve been subscribing that entire ten years! (bless you all)
“It is for hunger and love that people die,” the woman leading the caravan said as they crossed the sea of sand to the next mountainous island; a black, craggy wound that scabbed against the sky.”
“We met at your mother’s tomb, dressed in our fibrous armor, our daggers prickling with sharks’ teeth. You said you admired my pufferfish helmet. I appreciated the knot you used in the tendon that secured your fish skin gloves.”
A PEEK INTO THE NEW #WIP
WIth THESE SAVAGE STARS coming out in March, I’m getting questions about my next project. While this one isn’t out on sub yet, it’s called IF WE SURVIVE THE BLOOM, and it’s a detective/weird fantasy war novel that’s like THE TAINTED CUP meets THE LIGHT BRIGADE.
Here’s a peek:
The Bloom was over, and the soldiers were singing.
The soldiers were Karasiko, long-limbed and broad of shoulder and jaw. Their bloodied, blistered feet were wrapped in dirty muslin. The years of war had left them half-starved, their uniforms gray, shoddily patched, coming apart. They tilted their pollen-smeared faces to the green blush of the sky as they sang. They sweated in the rising heat, wild with joy, as if an emovere had cast a tide of Celestial Ecstasy.
Alekos perched precariously in the rear segment of a winding, centipede-jointed convoy, watching the soldiers pass. The convoy had paused outside a blistered way station crawling with yellow fungus. The bulky, one-eyed berserker who had accompanied him since Iro Els disembarked.
“You aren’t escorting me to Viljoje?” Alekos said.
“Change of plan,” she said.
He didn’t like changing plans.
A knotty-faced woman with the tattooed face of an emovere slung herself over the side of the vehicle. She was Renske, fine-boned and heavy browed, whip thin, hard as a hazelnut. Her body bore signs of contagion: the left fist throbbed with a fine yellow fungus. A tiny green tendril emerged from her right eye. She stank of fermented leather. She waved paper orders at the convoy leader, who accepted the papers with hardly a glance. Alekos could speak seven languages, but couldn’t read any of them.
“You have a chaperone?” the convoy leader asked. “Where’s your Ascetic?”
“Dead,” she said, in bad Iro. She jutted her chin at Alekos. “I’m escorting him. Until Viljoje. Some woman has to.” She squinted hard at him. Stuck out her lower lip. “I see why.”
The convoy leader grunted and waved at her to sit down. The emovere squeezed between Alekos and a concussed Renske soldier who had said nothing during the entire three-day journey from Iro Els to Viljoje.
When the convoy lurched forward, the emovere half-turned away from him. When Alekos asked her name, she told him he probably couldn’t pronounce it.
Alekos offered her a ball of honeyed suet, as if she were a pet bird.
She snatched it. Forced half of it into her mouth. Chewed loudly. He had three more of those, if he needed them. He didn’t think he would. They were all half-starved here.
Alekos said, in fluent Renske, “You look like you’ve been at the front.”
She narrowed her eyes. Said in Renske, “Where did you learn Renske?”
“From my mother.” This was an absurd lie, so absurd that it amused him, but talk of mothers soothed people. Reminded them you came from one….
THESE SAVAGE STARS
And finally… don’t forget!
FINALLY, BE THE LIGHT
Stay frosty out there, folks. In a world that seems wildly out of control (spoilers: it always has been), the best thing we can all do is focus on the work.
I have built an extraordinary garden since 2020. I’ve survived the slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes. Fall down seven times, get up eight.
A lot of those times, I was not at all sure I was coming back: to the world, to life, to writing, to any of it. But here I am, with a book coming up next year (only 5 years late!), heading out to speaking engagements at Gencon, and getting up every fucking day with the resolute bloody mindedness to just keep going and write another book.
If life was easy, if writing books was easy, if getting up every day was easy, everyone would do it. And not everybody does.
Take the win.
Let’s get to it.
