February’s Projects

February 5, 2015 Howard Tayler

I’ve got a full plate this month. Aside from wrapping up the climactic bits of Schlock Mercenary: Delegates and Delegation (the current story online) I need to tackle the bonus story, the cover, and the marginalia for Force Multiplication so that we can send it to print.

Then there’s the substantial task list for the upcoming Schlock Mercenary role-playing game, designed by Alan Bahr, with lots of input from me. The core game stuff is done, and once we’ve got some art to show off we’ll start building a Kickstarter page. That campaign will likely go live sometime in mid-March, and will support the production of a very nice, fully-illustrated rule book, and some odds and ends that will make some of our peculiar (maybe even unique) game mechanics fast, intuitive, and hilarious.

I say “we” with regard to the art. I’ll be doing a few, goofy comic-type things in the book, but most of the artwork will be the sort of thing that you’d expect to see in a wonder-invoking, far-future, science-fiction RPG book. Full-color, fully rendered characters, weapons that look like they’d actually work, and vehicles that are more interesting than the things I dash off with a straight-edge and a circle template. Think of it this way: Schlock Mercenary, the comic strip, is the canonical story, but the comic’s artwork is mere caricature. The RPG book will show you that universe more clearly, and give you and your players much better starting points for your flights of fanciful shared storytelling.

Back to the task list: I’m also featured pretty heavily in the programming of LTUE, the SF&F symposium here in Utah on February 12th, 13th, and 14th (Thurs-Sat.) and at the end of February I’m flying to Chicago to record more Writing Excuses Master Class sessions.

You might get a movie review or two this month. I’ve seen Strange Magic and Into The Woods, and I’ll be seeing Jupiter Ascending, but the real time sink is actually writing them up.

And speaking of writing, I’ve got a bunch of prose fiction on my plate as well, so I should finish writing this, and start in on some actual work.

Essays

Hot Cocoa, My Way

January 26, 2015 Howard Tayler

News of Snowpocalypse 2015 had me craving blanket forts and hot cocoa (but not necessarily snow,) and then I realized that my hot cocoa recipe is good enough to share. Here it is:

Ingredients

3/4 cup Hershey’s baking cocoa (the powder)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup water
a dash of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
Milk, and some mugs

Optional ingredients*

1 tbsp Terva-Siirappi (Finnish pine tar syrup)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Preparation

Put the cocoa, the sugar, and the water in a small pot. Bring it to a boil, stirring constantly with a whisk. It’s ready when it’s smooth — no cocoa clumps, no sugar granules.

Add the salt and the vanilla. At this point you have a standard dark chocolate syrup.

Add the cinnamon and the tar syrup. The cinnamon adds a very cozy aromatic flavor, and the tar syrup gives it a hint of smoke for some extra-very cozy. More tar means more smoke AND more sweet.

Now that the syrup is ready, take a mug, fill it partway with milk, and then microwave it for a minute or so. You want hot milk, not boiling milk. Now fill the cup the rest of the way with the chocolate syrup you’ve made. For an 8oz mug I do 3/4 cup of milk and 1/4 cup of syrup (at least when I’m talking about it publicly. It’s possible the syrup-to-milk ratio moves from 1:3 to 1:1 when nobody is looking.)

Stir. Enjoy.

(*Note: no, they’re actually not, but since you probably don’t have Terva-Siirappi on hand right now you get a pass. It’s remotely possible that the same effect can be achieved with a tiny bit of liquid smoke, but I’m not going to perform that experiment until, in desperation, I realize that I’m out of Terva-Siirappi.)

Announcements

Last Chance to Register to Nominate for the Hugos

January 25, 2015 Howard Tayler

If you’re not already registered for WorldCon, and you want to participate in the Hugo Award nomination and voting process, you must register by Saturday, January 31st. That’s coming right up.

If you’re interested in nominating projects of mine for the ballot, here’s a list of what I did in 2014, and the categories in which those projects are eligible for nomination:

Graphic Story

Schlock Mercenary: Broken Wind, published online at schlockmercenary.com by Hypernode Media
Schlock Mercenary: Parallel Perspectives, published by Hypernode Media in the print edition of Massively Parallel (note: the main story is not eligible, as it appeared on the Hugo ballot in 2011)

Short Story

“Call of the Caber,” published by Privateer Press in Iron Kingdoms Excursions, Season One, Volume Five
“U.I.”, published by Cold Fusion Media in the anthology Shared Nightmares
“An Honest Death,” first published by Dragonsteel Entertainment in Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology

Novelette

“Mind Over Matter,” published by Privateer Press in Called to Battle: Volume Two

Related Work

Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology, published by Dragonsteel Entertainment. (Note: Writing Excuses, the podcast, is also eligible for nomination in the Best Related Work category, but we think this anthology of stories, drafts, and session transcripts is a better fit for that category.)

Whether or not you think any of these are worthy of nomination, the nomination process is something you can be involved in. If you love genre fiction, and want to see honor done by your favorite things, get registered and fill out your ballot!

The registration deadline is January 31st. The nominations close on March 10th, 2015. The final ballot should appear by the end of April, and the voting on that ballot will likely close at the end of July. Winners and full results will be announced at WorldCon in Spokane Washington, on August 22nd of 2015. More information is available at http://www.thehugoawards.org/.

Reviews

Gemini Cell by Myke Cole

January 20, 2015 Howard Tayler

Myke Cole burst into my reading queue when I met him at Lunacon in 2012. I devoured his debut novel, then waited patiently for the follow-ups, which I consumed with aplomb.

Gemini Cell is Myke’s fourth foray into the 21st century’s “Great Reawakening,” a setting in which magic has come back into our world, and the military’s best and brightest have blended it with modern warfare to create squads, platoons, companies, and entire battalions of trained, disciplined, and sorcerous soldiers. Which is good, because their enemies are every bit as well equipped. It’s a compelling setting, but this time around we’re seeing it differently.

In Gemini Cell we get to see the beginning of it all. Our protagonist is a SEAL at the top of his game, but it’s a completely non-magical game, and he has no idea that his current operation will cross paths with a magical supply line.

The story is a powerful one, and to my eye it takes some oft-maligned tropes of military adventure fiction and shows us how those things are supposed to be done, especially the “prequel” trope. That might technically be what Gemini Cell is, but it stands quite well on its own, inviting an immediate sequel or two while leaving plenty of room for the extant Shadow Ops series.

Gemini Cell releases on Tuesday, January 27th, 2015.