Category Archives: Crossposted

Announcements, Crossposted

NASFIC This Weekend in Layton, Utah

I’ll be at NASFIC/Westercon/SpikeCon this weekend¹ in Layton Utah with Sandra Tayler and Keliana Tayler. Come see us in the dealer’s room, and admire Keliana’s work in the art show.

Outside of that, you can find Sandra and/or me at the following places and times.

THURSDAY
4:30-5:00pm, Aurora Boardroom: Sandra Tayler Reading

FRIDAY
12:45-4:15pm, Meridian Stage: Writing Excuses Live
Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler, with special guests Jim Butcher, Eric Flint, Laurel K. Hamilton, Janci Patterson, and David Weber

2:00pm, Stratus 9: Authors and Companions Tradecraft
Sandra Tayler, Sharon Rice-Weber, Jonathan Green, and Bridget Correia talk about support systems for creators

5:45pm, Meridian E: Establishing an Interstellar Colony
Howard Tayler moderates a discussion of colonizing the far stars, with Nick Halper, Thea Hutchison, Bill Thomasson, and Toni Weisskopf

SATURDAY
11:30am, HIE Boardroom: Howard Tayler Kaffeeklatch
It’s an in-person AMA. Register in advance. Seating is limited.

11:30am, Meridian F: Recreating the Fairy Tale
Sandra Tayler moderates this discussion of why, and how, we work fairy tales into the stories we tell, with Dewey Douglas, Steven Heumann, Wendy Van Camp, and Amy White.

8:00pm, Stratus Hall: Charity Gaming
Charity auction winners can play MUNCHKIN: STARFINDER with the game’s illustrator, Howard Tayler

SUNDAY
11:30am, Meridian E: New Takes on Old Tales
Sandra Tayler, Ann Chamberlin, B. Daniel Blatt, Scott William Taylor, and Amy White discuss the appeal of Greek and Roman mythologies, and how we can work these and others into our own work.

¹ NOTE: My work schedule is pretty tight, so I’ll only be available at the show on Friday and Saturday. If you want books sketched in, be sure to come by the dealers room BEFORE Sunday.

Announcements, Crossposted

Typecast RPG Again!

The game session of Typecast RPG I announced two weeks ago is now live on YouTube! If you’ve ever wanted to watch me do the role-playing game thing, the moment has arrived.

Also arriving: I’m doing it AGAIN TONIGHT on Twitch, at twitch.tv/typecastrpg. The game starts in about ninety minutes (9pm EDT), so yes, it’s short notice, but I did have enough time to come up with a nice patriotic song for the flying prison island from which my cheery bard hails.

As an extra-special super-bonus, Sandra will be joining the game for the evening. I have no idea what she’ll be playing, but it’s possible she and I will have BANTER.

 

Announcements, Crossposted

Yes, You Read That Correctly…

Sergeant In Motion: Schlock Mercenary Book 20, will be the last book in the Schlock Mercenary “mega-arc,” the unbroken¹ string of 7,300-ish² days of daily comics airing here at schlockmercenary.com. At that point the continuity of the Schlock Mercenary universe will include those twenty books, assorted bonus stories (which appear in the volumes in print), the Seventy Maxims book, and the Planet Mercenary RPG materials.

Many of you may be asking (and indeed, many of you have already asked) “what comes next?”

Good question.

The answer requires a bit of cold, calculated business stuff. See, it’s much easier to sell a collection of stories in print when you can tell a potential buyer that the collection is complete. So no matter what comes next, it won’t make the twenty-book story feel incomplete. I’ll be leaving lots of room for readers (and RPG players) to tell their own stories about what comes next for such characters as survive the events of this final book.

That sounded a bit more ominous than I meant it to. But only a bit.

Also, all I’ve done is answer the question “what DOESN’T come next?” and that’s not what anybody is asking.

In the face of a crassly commercial decision about what NOT to make (and let’s be blunt here—between the words “schlock” and “mercenary” there is a broadly telegraphed justification for me to be crassly commercial) I need to give people a reason to keep showing up. So here is a bulleted list of things that will definitely be here after Book 20 wraps.

  • Sense of wonder
  • Witty dialog
  • Punchlines
  • High stakes adventures
  • Interesting characters
  • Schlock
    • and Schlock will still be a mercenary

It’s far too soon to go into much detail about any of this. I have a book to finish, and it would not be overstating things to say that I’m feeling a bit of pressure to brilliantly stick the landing after spending twenty years tumbling through the air pretending I know what I’m doing.

 ¹ Past results are no indication of future performance. I plan to not miss any daily updates during book 20, but blah blah mice men etc. 
² June 12th of 2020 would be day 7,306 of Schlock Mercenary, and that date falls in about the right place for me to be ending a book. Dates aren’t important though. The story says when it’s over, not the calendar.

Crossposted, Reviews

Good Omens

Amazon’s Good Omens miniseries is a rare thing. Exceedingly rare. So rare, in fact, that I can’t off the top of my head name another thing like it, though I’m certain others must exist. It is a TV show which is as good as the great book from which it was adapted.

There have been plenty of TV shows which failed to live up to the brilliance of their namesake novels, and more than a few which have outshone the prose from which they stemmed. And of course there are countless programs which reached equilibrious mediocrity with their so-so source material.

Good Omens, however, is brilliant in both mediums. The book, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, is a classic of modern literature. The new miniseries from Amazon is every bit as artful. It plays with the form enough to surprise us, but not so much as to alienate the audience. It subverts some expectations, exceeds others, and will someday serve well as a master class in “how to turn a book into a TV show.”

It’s a far better piece of work than the fan art it inspired from me, but that didn’t even slow me down.