All posts by Howard Tayler

Memorial Day 2021

This Memorial Day I wish to acknowledge those who continue to fight on the front lines of the pandemic. Their service has saved millions of lives, often at the expense of their own.

This Sunday I met a young woman who has been working as a nurse in rural parts of Utah. Our conversation was brief, but I could tell she was carrying a very heavy burden. To her, and to uncounted tens of thousands of people like her, I say thank you.

My household and I—all five of us—got vaccinated as much for them as for our own selves. For my own part, I view my body as a temple, and now it’s a temple where certain coronaviruses can come to die. SARS-COV-19 won’t amplify itself on my premises, and I won’t be darkening any hospital doors with a load of it in my lungs.

This Memorial Day, as we pause to reflect on those who have passed, especially those who have done so in service to us, let’s ask how we might pay their service forward. Like the Minutemen of the 18th century, we can arm ourselves, not with muskets, but with antibodies. The pandemic continues to rage, but we can eradicate this particular enemy from our shores. From every shore.

Gird up, get vaccinated, and soldier on my friends. It’s never been easier to save lives in the service of others.

BIG DUMB OBJECTS: The sketching begins!

Last week I signed the covers of all the copies of BIG DUMB OBJECTS necessary to fill pre-orders.

This week I begin sketching. You can see the wall of books in front of my sketching station, which, unlike stations for previous books, is configured with gear to allow me to live-stream the process.

The streams, when they happen, will be found at twitch.tv/howardtayler. I’m still waiting on a USB hub and a power strip, so it might be a day or two before I get started.

Then again, it might begin today. I have a lot of sketching to do, and waiting on UPS is not the way to get it done…

Coming Back From the Printer!

Big Dumb Objects is on its way back from the printer!

We had a couple of delays, but yesterday we received our advance copies of the book, along with some advance copies of the slipcase for books 12 through 16.



It wasn’t a big box of books, but it was full of new book smell. Which I wish I could share, because it’s awesome.

You’ve been waiting a long time for these, and the shipping container won’t actually get here until early May, and then I need to begin signing and sketching, so there’s a bit more waiting to be done.

But it’s a measurable wait. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it is definitely not a train.

Off to the printer

Big Dumb Objects has been sent to the printer.

And it’s about time. Big Dumb time, even.

Cover image for BIG DUMB OBJECTS, Schlock Mercenary Book 16

The cover inset art was done a year ago, and the principal art and story was done five years ago. It was the bonus story which hung us up, and a lot of things went wrong during 2019 and 2020 (including the flooding of my office, and several productivity-impacting health problems), but we finally got that last piece finished a week and a half ago.

From there all I needed to do was assemble the cover, with all the circuits and stuff, write the back cover copy, and clean up some of the interior marginalia. I did all that last week, between December 28th and 30th, and then Sandra assembled the final files for the printer and sent it away.

It feels nice to be finished with that.

Sandra has promised me that on Monday she will unearth the sketches I’ve forgotten about drawing, the ones which outline the covers for books 17 through 20, and I guess it was nice having a two day vacation.