Tag Archives: Schlock Mercenary

Announcements, Crossposted

Pre-Orders for Maxim 70 Coins

You may now pre-order the Maxim 70 coin. We expect to be able to ship these out during the second week of November.

m70-coinproof
“Maxim 70: Failure is not an option. It is mandatory. The option is whether or not to let failure be the last thing you do.”

They are $10.00 each, and should make excellent gifts. Award one to someone¹ whose persistence you admire, or to someone who needs a leg up over a recent failure. Or perhaps you might carry one in your own pocket as a tactile reminder of your own passion for standing back up after having been knocked down.

Our first run of these is limited to 500. The Schlock Patreon supporters got a head-start, and we’re down to 250 as of this writing. We’ll order another 500 if it looks like we’re going to sell out, and if that happens this week we should take delivery of the second order in plenty of time to ship everything in time for Christmas. There’s no difference between the two runs, and we’re not numbering the coins.

¹The practice of awarding a coin to someone who has performed a service, or has otherwise acted in a notable manner, is about 75 years old. We’ve chronicled a bit of that in this free PDF: An Unofficial Anecdotal History of Challenge Coins, which was funded by our Kickstarter backers in 2013.

 

Crossposted, Journal

Me, Tolkien, and G.R.R.M.

A couple of weeks ago someone told me I was being quoted in Civilization VI, but I couldn’t spot the reference. This morning someone again pointed me at the play-through video, right to the the 8:20 mark, and it’s true, I was quoted in Civ VI.

I talked about it a bit on Twitter.

civ6quoteshowardtayler-cropHere’s a crop from the graphic that accompanies the moment where Sean Bean totally reads some dialog I wrote.

Funny thing: I didn’t remember having written that line. I had to Google it, and fortunately it appears in the comic during the years where transcripts are searchable.

schlock20050105-blog

I didn’t ask for this placement, and I wasn’t paid for it¹. It’s what we call “fair use,” and “awesome.” Something I wrote eleven years ago resonated with the developers of Civilization VI, and so they quoted it² in their game.

“Me, Tolkien, and G.R.R. Martin… we’ve all written dialog for Sean Bean.” —Me

¹If the fine folks at Firaxis would like to comp me a copy of Civilization VI, I will happily accept. It’s on my Christmas list…

²The way in which they used that quote gives it a different emotional impact than the three panel strip for which I originally wrote it. And this is why fair use is so important for the growth, development, and evolution of human culture.

 

Announcements, Crossposted

Coin Pre-orders Opening Soon

We’ve been wanting to make some new challenge coins for a while now. Our hope is to have at least two designs done, die-struck, and delivered in time for Christmas.

This is the first one. It’ll be simple struck brass, with an antique gold finish. No colors, no resin domes, just metal.

m70-coinproof

I love all the coins we’ve made, but this design really speaks to me. I look forward to having this in my pocket, serving as a reminder that I’m allowed to make mistakes.

The second coin we’ve planned is the Bristlecone ship coin, similar in design to the previous ship coins we’ve done. It’s not done yet, so no pictures.

Watch this space. Pre-orders will open soon, perhaps as early as next week. The coins will be $10 each, plus shipping.

 

Crossposted, Journal

Force Multiplication is in The House

Sandra and Keliana ushered a couple of pallets of books into the Hypernode Warehouse late last week. This is the first time we’ve taken delivery of books when I haven’t been there to crack open the first box and huff the concentrated scent of new books.

Keliana Tayler, with stacks of boxes full of thousands of books
Keliana Tayler, with stacks of boxes full of thousands of books

The warehouse isn’t particularly exciting, and is downright deficient in terms of how photogenic it is. These aren’t the reasons why I do book sketching at home, but they certainly add weight to the argument.

On Friday, Sandra and Keliana hauled a big stack of boxes into our front room (which is now a bit larger with the absence of a 117-year-old piano¹) and set up my signing and sketching station.

Our front room, classed up with a raggedy folding table and stacks of boxes.
Our front room, classed up with a raggedy folding table and stacks of boxes. And a popcorn bucket.

I haven’t gotten started on that part of the project yet. I’ve got about three months of outline to nail down, and then three weeks of comics to script, and then I’m allowed to start work on signing and sketching.

That probably means Tuesday².

We’ve said that your pre-orders for Force Multiplication will ship by July 25th. The odds are pretty good that we’ll beat that date. I like having the wiggle room, though. It lets me pace myself, and my hand, which seems to wear out faster with every book release. Slow and steady may not actually win the race, aphorism notwithstanding, but it does ensure a healthy finish, and I’m quite happy to settle for that.

¹I should blog about that. It’s a poignant story, and worth more than a footnote.

²Most of the work on the outline is already done, furiously hand-written in my sketch book. I need to transfer it to a nice CTRL-C/CTRL-V medium so I can make sure all the bits are in the right order.