Not everything in life can be politics, thank heaven. And on Fridays, I promise to keep things lighter.
But boy, do I have a post ready to go for Monday.
Meanwhile, I thought I might post a little something from the book I’m writing right now – the sequel to Battlehymn. SPOILERS FOLLOW! But if you’ve read Battlehymn, and you don’t mind getting a sneak peek, here’s a piece of Crown of Exiles Book 2: Lamentation.
Earlier this year, a good friend and fellow podcaster, Scott Roche, reached out to ask me if I’d be interested in participating in a short story anthology he was going to post on Kickstarter. A western short story anthology. That took gunfighters and applied the warrior code of bushido to their ethic. To which I said… “samurai gunfighters? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?” And I was in.
Of course, then I found out who else was coming to the party.
A new Sinner’s Tale is done, and is now up at the Free Story page.
If you’re not familiar with Seth McAllen, also known as “The Sinner”, you might want to track down a couple of the older stories that have appeared here at Mad Poet Files – specifically, “High Moon” and “The Devil’s Due”, available in e-book formats at bn.com or at Amazon.
With this story, I started taking some of the things I’ve been learning about actual US History and weaving them into the Sinner’s old west. There were a ton of changes, of developments that happened in the Old West in and around the end of the Civil War and the years immediately following.
New story time!
This one’s been kicking around for some time. Last year, Scott Roche and I co-wrote a novellette we called “The Battle of Wildspitze“. I’ve been trying to decide how to explain that world to people, and I think I have a concise way of summing it up.
And that’s basically it in a nutshell. One of us had come up with an idea for a short story regarding dragon-riding pirates raiding airships, and we started writing. I had originally thought that this would be a parallel world, no really recognizable people in it, until Scott introduced Baron Richtoffen as one of the pirates. That single character nailed the setting, the attitude, and the timeline for me.
Cross-posted at www.geeksurvivalguide.org.
I’m at the library for a write-in, and don’t really have access to my desktop PC – just this Chromebook and my iPhone. So I recorded this episode on the phone, mailed it to myself, and have uploaded it.
Upside – we have a podcast.
Downside – it’s in m4a format, not mp3. Which shouldn’t be a big problem for any computer nor for most audio players now available on the market. But some time tonight, I’ll convert it and re-upload.
I realized something interesting. The story that precedes the current “live” story, The Devil’s Due, does not appear in text on the site. It’s appeared elsewhere, but not here in text – just audio. So, because this will go up on Amazon when Devil’s Due will, and because I’m a completist, here’s the text of my Great Hites story – “High Moon”.
High Moon is now available from Amazon and BN.com. Meanwhile, enjoy the current story.
The cover image is by Michael Martelli. It’s used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License, the text of which is available here. And the original picture is available here.
The Devil’s Due is now available on Amazon and will be up soon at BN.com, and wherever else I can put it. If you’d like to read it, links will be posted here when it goes live.
Meanwhile, feel free to read the current story.
Cover Art by Madeleine Fisher
Athena and The Mechanic is now available at Amazon – Click Here
I’m posting the original Mad Poet Files stories up at Amazon, for those who are interested.
Frosty’s Deposit
Because someone is looking for them. Maybe.
And then one day he walks into his bank in the middle of a robbery. It’s available from Amazon (link above) and bn.com for $0.99 US.
If you missed it, and you can search the site, I’m pretty sure it’s stil available here. But I think it’s worth at least one dollar.
Here’s story number two. It’s set in the same world as the collaboration Scott Roche and I did last year – the Battle of Wildspitze – but this one takes place half a world away and some years prior to Norris Tilney getting his first taste of magic and mayhem. I hope you like this, and I hope we’ll see more of these characters.
Finding the Fire is down now because the new story is up. Once this is up at Amazon and BN.com, etc., links will be here.
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