Thanks for all those who have bought Call Me Mumbles. And and even greater heaping load of thanks for those who have reviewed it.
Now ranked #42! (In science-fiction anthologies and short stories).
If you’d like to join the fun – and you should – you can buy and review the story here
::: SUBLIMINAL MARKETING :::
As of a few minutes ago, the first installment of the Subcommandante Mumbles vs. The Dinosaur Nazis saga became available for sale on Amazon. This is my first foray into the digital publishing (for cash money) business and, I must say, I am mildly excited. I’d be more excited, but my emotional spectrum runs only from mildly annoyed to mildly excited.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
For those of you that read the story, you would do me an enormous service by visiting the Amazon page for Call Me Mumbles to leave a review. And, if you enjoyed it, please consider buying a copy yourself.
OTHER IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you haven’t read it, go buy it. I guarantee you will get your dollar’s worth.
[also wik] Since the story is now available for sale, I’ve pulled it from view here at Veil War.
By way of a status report, a few items for your consideration and edification:
Informative, no? To allow you a peak behind the curtain, here is what’s afoot:
Editing on the Veil War is about 2/3 done. When it’s complete (more on that schedule in a moment) or nearly so, a couple things will happen in quick succession. Part of the novel will be offered for sale on Amazon. A kickstarter project will be launched to raise money for copyediting and artwork. Your help and support will be crucial in making this all work, and I’ll provide more details as the DAY approacheth.
The Mumbles story, which started as a joke but which you all seemed to enjoy more than I expected, will go up for sale on Amazon shortly. Strangely enough, almost certainly before Veil War and in fact – probably within a week or so. Once it is up for sale, it won’t be visible in it’s entirety here.
I’ve also written another Mumbles story, and I’ve sketched out plans for a couple more to make a full story arc. The resulting paste-up novel would end up in the ballpark of short novel length. Episodes 2 and onwards will get teasers he on the site as they go up for sale.
In addition to the Mumbles tales, I have completed three (3) whole short stories. One is in the world of the Veil, another is a ripping yarn of space opera co-written with my son, and the last is something else entirely. They are variously being polished, submitted and otherwise being prepared for you to read; more details as they become clearer.
***
The schedule for all this writing stuff is dependent on other, more important schedules. My wife and I are expecting, imminently, a new son. Once he arrives I’ll be taking time off from work, and in between helping out the wife I’ll be making a hard push to finish the edits on the Veil War, and get a few more random piles of text transformed into stories. The mere fact of not having to commute for a couple weeks should make that a reality.
So soon, there will be things to buy, and new things to read.
And just a reminder: you are all outstanding, handsome and clever people, and I am pleased to have you all as readers.
No really, I just moved. Which is why Subcommandante Mumbles vs. The Dinosaur Nazis isn’t done even though there’s only only 500 words left.
But don’t worry, I didn’t suddenly keel over like the cartoonist in Quest for the Holy Grail. I’ll finish it as soon as my office is set up…
A sudden urge to google overtook me this morning, and this is what I found:
When you type “Dinosaur Nazi” into the google, most of the top results are for two things: Dino D-Day and Chronos Commandos: Dawn Patrol. The first is a game, the second a comic book.
Dino D-Day started as a half-life mod, but is now grown up and a complete first-person shooter. The creators did up some fun propaganda posters:
Chonos Commandos: Dawn Patrol is a five-issue comic series from Titan Comics.
Awesome. Here’s some sample pages:
There’s some other stuff, too. In May another comic will be released, Half Past Danger:
Here’s a really old Dinosaur Nazi comic. And then there’s this:
And sprinkled throughout the search results, there’s links to this weird story.
I was going to say something clever about the interesting essay that follows. But I am totally distracted by horror at the thought of rule 34 applied to this phrase:
Meaty Tiddlywinks. Once you recover please read this excellent essay:
Meaty Tiddlywinks
Car crashes are scary. The auto companies spend millions every year trying to convince us that their cars are the safest, but we know better. We’ve watched too many movies that show us how easy it is for cars to shoot into the sky, roll over, and blow up. Thanks to YouTube and dashboard cameras, we can watch Stupid-People-Who-Are-Not-Us smashing into other cars left and right, rebounding from stationary objects, and blasting pedestrians into the air as if they were meaty tiddlywinks.
In films, the scariest crashes aren’t the ones we see from a distance, but rather the interior shots where gravity suddenly seems cancelled due to lack of payment and the view out the windshield stops making sense. When the passengers dangle from their safety restraints and their personal possessions begin the mid-air waltz of underwear in the tumble dryer, we have to cover our eyes.
If watching car crashes second hand is bad, the near-misses we’ve had are terrifying. Looking into a rear view mirror in anticipation of a rear-ending makes us feel helpless. The loss of control that we feel when the tires hit a patch of ice makes our hearts seize and our breathing stop. It’s probably the lack of control in general that is so unnerving; one likes to be the captain of one’s destiny, the pilot of one’s soul, the composer of one’s metaphor—and we don’t like when reality intrudes on that delightful illusion.
We both drive a lot, and almost all our trips take us on the highways around Detroit. We see the carnage of driving-gone-wrong every day. Maybe that’s why crashes scare us so. We know we’ll probably never be taken hostage by bank robbers or flee from a tsunami. But a car accident? Highly likely. In fact, they’ve already happened to both of us, and in Harry’s case, it was nearly fatal.
There are a lot of car crashes in Taking the Highway—terrifying collisions where the people don’t just have to worry about their own driving or the dubious skills of the other drivers, but about the very technology that is supposed to keep them safe.
In the fictional world of Taking the Highway, cars and highways work together to keep drivers safe. Overdrive technology—an artificial intelligence system—lines every highway in Detroit. Overdrive monitors the flow of traffic and sends override codes to cars to keep them from speeding, veering, or crashing.
That is, until things go horribly wrong. Someone is sabotaging Overdrive, confusing the sensors and causing horrific accidents. Is it somehow connected to the carpool laws, and the professional hitchhikers who are paid to fill cars? Or does it go deeper, into the sordid politics of Detroit itself? The only one who can stop the crashes is homicide detective Andre LaCroix, who has to arrest the culprits before becoming their next victim.
Writers are told to write what they know. But it’s more important that we write what scares us. And what scares us is car crashes. We hope it will also be what scares you, because cars of the future will be safer than ever—and will fail in ways we can only dream of.
M.H. Mead is the shared pen name of Margaret Yang and Harry R. Campion. When not writing books together, they can be found at their homes in Michigan watching very bad television and eating key lime pie.
Buy Book: Taking the Highway
Visit the author’s website | facebook
Friend of the Veil War and Really Big Idea alum John Lumpkin has a new book out – The Desert of Stars. The sequel to Through Struggle, the Stars is just as good as the first – no sophomore slump here. If you like hard sf this is something you want to be reading. The world that John has created is plausible in its politics and history and realistic in its portrayal of future technology. In fact, there’s only one real departure from our current understanding of physics: the wormhole gates that allow FTL travel between Earth and her colony worlds.
If you’ve ever wondered what space combat might be like, these books will give you a taste of what real space warfare might be like. All and all, an excellent read; a ripping yarn of space war and interstellar espionage. Highly recommended.
A while back, of a Sunday I was feeling sick and out of sorts. I pulled out the phone and started reading my twitter feed. I saw a tweet pimping a zombie book. Zombies, I thought. Just the thing for a rainy sick Sunday. So I went and bought it. (And so I am living proof that social media works to get books into the hands of readers.)
And it’s fun. Also grim, bloody, British and filled with zombies. Here’s Chris Braid to explain:
Going Viral
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t read. Encouraged by parents and grandparents I would more often than not walk around with a comic book or paperback stuffed into my back pocket, ready to be whipped out and perused at a moment’s notice. At least, as soon as I started wearing trousers with pockets. (Mine was the last of the UK’s ‘short trouser’ generation; being given and allowed to wear full-length trousers with pockets was seen as a rite of passage. Thank the Lord that times change!)
But I digress. I do that a lot.
It seemed a natural progression to go from reading almost anything I could get my hands on to writing. The first few ‘books’ I wrote were when I had just become a teenager. They were a series of detective novels whose hero, Wes Chisel, just might have been inspired by Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer. (It was surely coincidence that I was collecting – and reading – all of Spillane’s books at the time!) But what I really wanted to write was fantasy; I just didn’t know it yet.
I’d taken a break from Wes Chisel’s latest case to read the most recent issue of Marvel Comic’s Savage Sword of Conan comic. Yet again I noticed that almost every one of the QNS’s† letters referred to a book called The Lord of the Rings. Which I had often heard of but never read.
This time I decided to do something about it. I got hold of a pretty tidy copy from a local second-hand bookshop. Luckily it was the summer holidays. I read the whole thing in two sittings and spent the next three days wondering around like a zombie (I liked zombies, even a thirteen year old schoolboy had a chance against a zombie, as opposed to a werewolf or vampire!) due to lack of sleep.
Sorry, more digression. I did warn you.
The upshot was that Wes Chisel got fitted for concrete overboots and a veritable rainforest of exercise books were filled up with lots of sub-Tolkien …well, garbage, actually. Not long after I discovered that there were aliens living among us and a couple of years after that, aged 16, I joined the army as a boy soldier.
Fast forward a couple of decades. I’m still a soldier but far, far away from being a boy and I’ve married my own special alien (I’d found out that the species were known as “girls” and they were even more alien than I had ever imagined!). I’m undergoing a protracted stay in hospital with little to occupy myself apart from read the mountain of books supplied by my alien, sorry wife, when I realize that some of them are…not very good. When I mention this, I am told. “Well if you think you can do any better…” So I tried. And I tried. And I kept trying.
And got nowhere.
All I had to show for my efforts was a mountain of rejection letters. All containing the advice to, “Write about what you know!” But I didn’t know any elves. Or Dragons. Or wizards. Oh I knew a few Rangers, but they were not that sort of Ranger. And then Santa brought me a Kindle.
I was out of the army, with time on my hands. I went into a feeding frenzy. Books for Free? I’ll have some of that! And some of that. And that, and that and…well, you get the picture. I spent so much time with my nose buried in my Kindle I was walking about like a Zombie again. And then it hit me. I didn’t know elves but I knew soldiers; and surely the essence of a Zombie was not that they were the risen dead but that they were mindlessly driven to infect the living.
It was the “mindlessly” bit that finally helped the pieces slot into place. The so-called Zombies (or infected) cannot help the way they act; they are driven by their infection. It isn’t their fault! But the others, the people who knowingly, even joyously, prey on weaker, less fortunate humans, well they are the real monsters. And so The Virus Sequence was born. I’m not saying that Zombies (or infected) are cuddly or anything, don’t get me wrong. But they can’t help what they are doing. The “Black Hats” can. They know that what they are doing is wrong. They just don’t care.
† QNS (Quite ‘Nuff Sayer) – someone who has had a letter printed in a Marvel Comic.
Buy Book: amazon
Follow the author’s wife on twitter
This is a silly story. I admit. Some friends were joking around and one line caught me funny – and this story was born. I’ll post one section each day, about 500 words a pop. Enjoy.
P.S. Click here to get see all published episodes of the Saga of Subcommandante Mumbles.
Hey! There’s a new pope! For those who are Prophecy of Saint Malachy followers, he wasn’t named Peter and doesn’t seem to have any Peter-type connections. So, we probably won’t get to see Rome in flames. At least not for that reason. In other news, the delayed bonus chapter is nearly done. I’ll probably post that tomorrow morning. But in the meantime, I have a special double-extra-plus bonus:
A new serial!
This is short story, but since posting things serially is kind of my thing, I’ll just run with that. I’ll post a short section of the story every day until it’s done, for about two weeks, starting today, in a few minutes.
