The 2015 Still Not a Real Writer Book Tour Recap

 

I got back from book tour a few days ago. Thanks to the release of Fallout 4 and a marathon day of radioactive looting and shooting super mutants in the face, I’m just now getting caught up with emails and blogging. I get a lot of emails. It is funny what happens when you don’t read any of them for three weeks.

The reviews for Son of the Black Sword are really positive. I’ve got to say that the fans are really seeming to like this one. It’s always hard to talk about the new book on tour, because most of the people in the audience haven’t read it yet, but everybody I spoke with loved it.

The numbers are still coming in, but right now it looks like Son of the Black Sword has had a great release. My guess is that it will be a Grimnoir sized release, not Monster Hunter sized. Don’t get me wrong, both are good, but Nemesis was ridiculous. Nemesis was pay off the mortgage twenty five years early numbers. This was a new genre for me, so I wasn’t sure how that was going to translate in sales, but looking good so far.

Where SotBS really shined was on Audible. The only thing that beat me in sci-fi and fantasy was the Martian (though as we’ve seen before, there is a big gap between properties with a new movie/TV tie and everybody else). I got the numbers for the release week on Audible, and damn… Really good.

I listened to the audiobook on various airplane rides and while driving from city to city. I finished it while driving around somewhere out west. Tim Gerrard Reynolds did a fantastic job. Even though I knew what was going to happen next, I still got sucked in.

Speaking of the SotBS audiobook, I’m really glad I brought it with me, because I could have subtitled this tour The Still Not a Real Author Tour: Larry Gets Stuck in Traffic. No wonder big city liberals hate cars. That’s because when you do drive it is a miserable experience, and all you do is park on the freeway. In Boston, you pay tolls in order to have the privilege of being stuck in traffic. Hell, your traffic is so bad it takes the shuttle forty five minutes to make it from the rental car drop off to the airport terminal. How the hell can you get stuck in traffic at the airport? That’s why you guys all want robot cars.

One fun thing about what I do, I get to try out a lot of rental cars… Pro tip. The Chrysler 200 is a death trap. It is an example of what happens when the government manages a car company. Lots of useless widgets, gadgets, and flashy buttons, with a giant rear view mirror that goes blocks 30% of your windshield for tall drivers. Oh, I’ve got a start button and shift with a pin wheel, but tall drivers can’t lower the seat enough to actually see anything on the right side of your car. Brilliant. If you are given one of these, give it back. Unless you really want to squish pedestrians.

The last couple of weeks have been really hectic. I was signing in a different city nearly every day. There were a few stops where I flew in, and only had enough time to pick up my luggage, rental car, and check into my hotel to shower, and then go to the night’s signing, only to get up the next morning and do it again.

The Tactical Melon Baller has a paracord grip and tac light for all your anti moose needs.
The Tactical Melon Baller has a paracord grip and tac light for all your anti moose needs.

It was great to meet so many fans, or see people again who I’d met on tour before. Of course since the entire Monster Hunter Nation is a bunch of comedians I was given lots of presents, and I now have more melon ballers than I know what to do with. Modern Manhood. Achieved.

 

I wasn’t the only author who had a good book signing during this tour. Part way through somebody asked if I’d sign Mike Kupari’s new novel. I was happy to.

tour 2015 Kupari autograph
After that got posted, Mike sold out at every single place I stopped at. 🙂  This is genius. If all Baen authors do this, Toni can sell twice as many books and only have to send half of us on tour!

He asked for Scot with one T. :)
He asked for Scot with one T. 🙂

BRILLIANT!

New Hampshire
New Hampshire

I got so many presents and swag that by the end I was getting overweight charges on my luggage. Because most of my San Diego signing was military (and a surprising number of feds), I got a pile of coins from various units and ships. I love those.  

I'm going to put it next to my prestigious LaMancha Award.
I’m going to put it next to my prestigious LaMancha Award.

 

I got hats, minis, books, bottle openers, fan art, and all sorts of weird stuff.

I think it makes me look cunning.
I think it makes me look cunning.

Most events they’ll have me in an area where I can shoot the bull for an hour, and then sign after. For the people who show up, they know I’m pretty enthusiastic about this stuff. We hang out, joke around, I tell everybody what is coming up (including some stuff I don’t talk about on the internet yet), and then I answer questions. Very few of my events ever finish in the expected time frame, and we end up closing down a lot of stores. You folks are just hard core like that.

Agent Franks tat.
Agent Franks tat.

I don’t know how many book store managers I had to try and explain the various inside jokes to, like why I had to keep drawing manatees in people’s books or members of the audience would randomly shout HOOOOOOON.

G-Nome
G-Nome

Basically my fans are amazing. I love you guys. I wouldn’t trade my fan base for anyone else’s. You’re just that hard core.

Grimnoir tat
Grimnoir tat

There were a few days where I had enough free time to squeeze in some fun. When I was in Minnesota I went and hung out with the JP Enterprises crew and toured their place. If you aren’t familiar with them, they make really super nice, high end, custom rifles. JP owns competition shooting for a reason.

Yep, I'm not wearing ears. .300 subsonic with can. This thing was ridiculously quiet.
Yep, I’m not wearing ears. .300 subsonic with can. This thing was ridiculously quiet.

I’ll be posting more stuff about JP Enterprises later. It was a pretty cool visit, and it looks like I’ll be doing a book signing at SHOT Show with them this January.

This thing was like five pounds. Light weight bolt carrier, and zero bobble even in rapid fire.
This thing was like five pounds. Light weight bolt carrier, and zero bobble even in rapid fire.

I am a food nut. I love food. So when I go on book tour I always eat really well. Whatever it is that the locals eat, I’m in. I only eat boring chain restaurant stuff when I’m too tired to drive somewhere else or that’s all that’s still open. I love seafood, but I live a thousand miles from the ocean six thousand feet about sea level, so when I’m on tour by the ocean, I’m stuffing myself with fish. Minnesota? African food. North east? Portuguese food. Yay! In Seattle, Michael Rothman took me to Ruth’s Chris where the steaks come from magic happy cows, who’ve lived care free lives, and their meat is extra tender because the cow gets daily full body massages, and virgins play soothing music to them on flutes. Basically, I love to eat well, and book tour is perfect for that.  It helps that at character creation I got triple sixes in Constitution.

The only real hard spot this trip was when I got food poisoning my last night in the Boston area. After years of book tour adventure eating, my iron gut finally failed me. I’m pretty sure it was from a Boston Cream Pie. I got it for lunch, couldn’t finish it, and put it in a to go box. I left it in the rental car, and ended up staying at the signing far longer than expected. I should have thrown the pie away, but I thought, what the heck? It is probably still good. It wasn’t hot today… So I made a very bad decision and ate it when I got back to the hotel. It still tasted great, up until when it tried to kill me. I started getting violently ill about midnight. I had to get up at four the next morning to catch my flight to Seattle. I thought I was going to croak. I didn’t bother to sleep. Normally I get fatter on book tour, but not this year! This year I paid my stupid tax.

We averaged about 30-40 people at most of the stops. By far my smallest signing was in Cambridge, but it was on Halloween. San Diego and Phoenix were the biggest, with over fifty people each, and my home town signing was even bigger. But this does bring up a funny story that became this tour’s running gag for the fans, and the source of the official Still Not a Real Writer Tour name.

San Diego
San Diego

One stop was at Powell’s in Beaverton. It is a great store, and I had a great time with a good crowd. But I saw later on Twitter somebody had apparently seen me there, and taken to Twitter to talk about my pathetic showing, and how nobody was there at the lamest book signing ever, and hashtag something about how I was the saddest puppy of all.

That struck me as odd, since we had over forty people show up, which by most author’s reckonings is great, and we filled the signing area to the side. But then I realized what he’d probably seen (mistakenly thinking that a Puppy Kicker was honest and not just lying about me on Twitter, silly me). I’d gotten there almost an hour early, and had killed time just hanging out in the audience with the seven or eight people who’d shown up really early too. I figured that was what he’d seen, because by seven o’clock we had filled the chairs, and more people kept coming in the whole time.  So being my usual diplomatic self, I responded and told him that the “big hand goes on the seven, doofus”. Luckily, some of the fans had taken pictures of the crowd too, and since you guys are so super helpful, you posted the photographic evidence to the dude.

Now, a smart person would say, whoops, my bad. But not a Puppy Kicker. They have that whole narrative about how anybody who disagrees with TRUFAN is irreparably damaging their career, so of course he doubled down. Oh no. He was there at 7:05! And he saw my 40! And that was still horrible garbage failure of suck, because that bookstore ROUTINELY gets 500(!) people at a book signing…

This of course came as a surprise to the people who work there, and my more famous author friends who sell ten times as many books as I do, who only got around 200 there. Basically, you can count the number of mega superstar authors who routinely get five hundred people at a book signing on your hands, and have fingers left over. Puppy kickers are harsh, man. I think the average book signing in America is like five to seven people.

But I don’t make the rules. Five hundred it is! Anything less is shameful garbage.

Last week's Amazon author rankings. Let this be a warning to you authors. This is what happens to your career when you defy SJWs!
Last week’s shameful Amazon author rankings. Let this be a warning to you authors. This is what happens to your career when you defy SJWs!

Of course that running gag led to my fans being super helpful the rest of the tour. You guys are full of all sorts of comfort. Rounding up the local homeless to pose in the group shots was a brilliant idea. Utah tried to rally the troops so I’d finally qualify as a Real Writer, with over sixty people attending. If we counted small children and service animals, we had 79. Sadly, 77 humans and 2 dogs still falls far short of the minimum requirement. But maybe someday I’ll be a real writer, and finally satisfy the… Oh hey, look another six figure royalty check came in the mail while I was gone. Sweet. What was I talking about again? 🙂

Arizona: Pretty good, but if it ain't 500, it's crap!
Arizona: Pretty good, but if it ain’t 500, it’s crap!

(for the record, I have had over 500, but only at conventions where I’ve been in a booth, stretched over a few days. I’ve probably broken that number at DragonCon, and I know for sure I’ve done it at Salt Lake City ComicCon and New York City ComicCon… but shhhhh… If I go spreading that around, they’ll declare a thousand to be common, and anything less is crap!)

Inquisitor masks from SotBS. It looks like we're about to go out and start looting.
Inquisitor masks from SotBS. It looks like we’re about to go out and start looting.

I’m about traveled out now. Luckily I don’t have any other events for a while. I’ll be at Chattacon in January in Chattanooga. I’ll be at SHOT Show in Las Vegas in January also. I’ll be at LTUE in February. Other than that I believe I’m clear until April, when I’m doing my first ever European book tour. I’ll be signing in England, France, and Germany. I’m taking the lovely Mrs. Correia with me for the Europe trip.

Now I’ve got to get back to work. I’ve got to do some editing on the Tom Stranger project (shockingly enough, I was able to get away with probably 80% of the MHN inside jokes!). In order to refresh for the deluge of upcoming MHI projects I need to reread the five books. Then I’ve got to work on Monster Hunter Grunge, and I owe Sarah Hoyt a whole bunch of outlines… Right after I play just a teensy bit more Fallout 4. 🙂

Thoughts on Paris
Series II Challenge Coins: Update #4

118 thoughts on “The 2015 Still Not a Real Writer Book Tour Recap”

  1. The twitter twit was hilarious. I watched his replies in real time until I got banned after pointing out that Powells themselves debunked the 500 person number (I explained that I had called them to confirm).

  2. Looks like you had a great tour (for a fake author)! Bummed I wasn’t able to make it to your Layton signing, hopefully you will do another local one soon!

  3. You didn’t happen to eat at John Harvard’s in Cambridge, did you? Reason I ask is that I ate there before walking over to the signing at Pandemonium (I was the awkward, skinny, gangly dude who kept (metaphorically putting his foot in his mouth), and I felt kinda sick for a couple of hours afterwards. Don’t think I’ll be eating there again.

    Anyways, possible food poisoning and my own awkward buffoonery aside (sorry about that, I’m not good at that whole social interaction thing), the signing at Pandemonium was awesome, and I think I speak for everyone there when I say that I had a great time.

    But I just remembered that I forgot to ask you the question about Dead Six I’d wanted to ask. Without spoiling anything, is Arial Evangeline?

      1. I know. I ate there the last time I was in Boston and the food was out of this world.

        But I’m not 100% sure it was food poisoning, at least in my case. It could have been my nerves (I’m not good at the whole social interaction thing), or my ears could’ve been buggered up from flying in the day before (that happened when I flew to Austria some years ago). Now if Larry had eaten there, I would’ve known for sure it was the food, but… eh, whatever.

  4. Glad you had such a great tour! (By non-real-author standards)
    I hope to catch you at Chattanooga in January.

    Your continued success as really inspired me to get off my a$$ and write a couple of the story ideas I have had floating around in my head. Your Writing Related section was definitely a big help.
    Thank You

  5. If you ever come to Australia, Larry, I WILL BE THERE. (bar being hospitalized or dead) I will also cook you dinner at my place if it’s at my home town (assuming time will allow.)

      1. True, but I probably wouldn’t be PUFF exempt yet.

        …Also I’ve already told my family I want a cremation, specifically to prevent undeadness. It’s our family policy now.

        However, this says nothing about hauntings. You will know me by my moaning ‘Chooooocoooolaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate…. Cooooofffffffffffeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee’~ ^.~

  6. I like the notion of your luggage being overweight from fan gifts. I really like the notion of TSA opening your heavy bag and finding it full of melon ballers.

    I’d think at some point it gets easier to stop at a UPS store and send a box of gifts home. That’s we we did with souvenirs in Hawaii rather than drag them on a couple island hops.

    1. I usually FedEx a box home half way through, but this time my second half of the trip was all whirlwind, in and out. So the luggage just got heavier and heavier. But it is cool, because that last overweight charge is about what I would have paid to ship a box home.

  7. Want to get your blood boiling? The Pike (AKA I-90 AKA the toll road you were kvetching about) has been paid off decades ago. Political maneuverings to keep the tolls up for the cash cow to remain. They did remove some of the tolls out in the far west of the state, only to have them return.

    I left a positive review @ Amazon. You can write a story without MOAR DAKKA!

    1. I used the Pike to get to Burlington to see Larry and I really hated to pay the toll for something that was paid for years ago. Damn politicians.

  8. Glad that fun was had. Lover the tactical melon baller . . . but does it have a dedicated MOLLE compatible pouch? No, still a long way from being totally tactical then. 🙂 I received Fallout 4 as a belated birthday present; very early days yet so I haven’t come to a definitive judgement about it yet, but -darn- does it look good!

  9. Six figure royalty checks? Pfft. If you were a REAL writer, you wouldn’t care about such silly things as money. 😛

    1. Exactly! How’s a reader supposed to virtue-signal by having a … shudder … popular book on his coffee table? Don’t you know your duty to your readers? Write more grey goo!

      1. Y’know, I just realized I don’t know why they’re called ‘coffee table books.’ The ones we have tend to be on shelves and read; and what is my ‘coffee table’ tends to be covered in magazines/books being read/actual coffee+nibbles. My dad’s coffee table tended to be occupied by his TBR pile (novels and work stuff.)

        1. Since my parents’ job involved visiting a LOT of people at home with kids (my sister and me) in tow, I saw lots of American living rooms when I was growing up. And there were two basic kinds of homes. First, the ones where the living room was basically a parlor, with a “proper” coffee table in front of the sofa with two or three large books of beautiful photographs, in classic “coffee table book” style, for guests to leaf through idly. And second, the homes where the living room was truly a living room, with kids’ toys not completely put away by the time the guests arrived, and real books (that were actually for reading) scattered around.

          I always felt more comfortable in the latter kind of home. Still do.

        2. Traditionally, (at least in the American market) “coffee table books” are oversize glossy-format picture books, usually art or travel. They aren’t for reading, they are for show, to show how cultured you are.

          There’s another complete genre of periodicals, which apparently exist only in waiting rooms; they also feature lots of photography, incomprehensible articles apparently lifted from internet “content generators”, and ads that are so exalted I often can’t figure out what it is they’re trying to sell.

        3. Not to mention if you leave critical items like books on low sufaces like coffee tables you’re just asking for the dogs to eat them…

          Oh hey, that’s why the grey goo books are called that: they’re meant to be chew toys!

    2. I think the SJW’s are confused by the lack of drunken ravages, a terrible personal life, and a well publicized struggle against some sort of emotional issues.

      That stuff is easy- the typical writer poseur can do that, and see themselves as a real writer. They may need to stretch the emotional issues thing a bit, but the large slate of SJW approved neurosis makes it easy to find one suited to your background no matter how privileged.

      It’s the actual writing books and getting paid that is hard.

      1. Joe has a point Larry. Have your publicist leak that you have an uncontrollable addiction to a combination of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate. You’ll be granted an SJW exemption until someone tells them what it is. 🙂

  10. bwahaha. on a people showing up for a signing stuff… I think when I was at Laurel K Hamilton’s signing in NYC, there was.. maybe 200 people? that’s at B&N in a middle of Manhattan. I don’t think some people have a concept of what 500 people actualy looks like.

    that said… how are Bethesda patented bugs treating you? 😛 personally, I’m waiting a few months for more patches to be out before I brave that game, as tempting as it looks. Fallout 3 and New Vegas should tide over in a meantime.

    1. avoid most social media =/ I don’t play the game but I heard people are posting the spoilers of the end.

      Legacy of the Void has me all kinds of excited for the Warcraft movie that Blizzard is releasing, in terms of cinematic storytelling/awesome. (And that is all I will say.)

      1. oh, I live on spoilers, so that is NOT a problem for me at all 😀 prefer to know what I’m getting into since it lets me relax and enjoy the rid,e instead of rushing to the finish. that said.. I watched cutscenes to legacy of the voice and lets just say.. its.. well.. I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about warcraft movie. we’ll see I suppose. trailer looked decent so there’s that, but given story telling in actual world of warcraft lately… I don’t know… hope for the best, expect the worst 😛

    2. I’m about 20 hours in now. A couple of freezes, and one time I had to unplug the Xbox and plug it back in to get it to launch. But other than that surprisingly unbuggy for a Bethesda game. Though your dog is hilarious, and sometimes falls off of cliffs and tall buildings, but he’s fine. 🙂

      1. my favorite part about part 4 is that Dogmeat is immortal. in prior game, I had to leave him behind, cause he was too prone to dying otherwise.

    3. Laurell is one of the mega selling authors I tagged in! 😀

      She usually gets into the hundreds at book stores, but bigger than that is only at things like DragonCon. Her line at DragonCon is epic. Even she was telling the guy that 40 was great, but what does she know? She’s only one of the bestselling authors alive.

      Even better, Dave Farland holds the Guinness Book of World Records title for biggest single author, single book signing ever (1,800!), and he chimed in saying that breaking a hundred was incredibly rare and abnormal. I told Dave don’t worry, someday he’ll be a Real Writer. 😀

  11. So any way on the next tour you can come to the Cleveland area of Ohio? I’m sure you would get a big showing there at a signing, maybe even enough to get closer to that magic common number?

    1. Chicago could also use a visit from the International Lord of Hate. Someone needs to put down all those undead voters.

    2. You have a bookstore in mind Kevin? I personally don’t know a Cleveland bookstore that would have space for a signing like this.

  12. My son, who unfortunately didn’t make the signing locally just said you need to set up a twitter account for Milo if you’re going to be doing the SHOT show.

  13. I’m trying to figure out how to get Kupari to sign your book, and you to sign one of his. That way I would have a matched set.

  14. I listen to audio books to pass the time both during my hour long commute to the salt mines, and while I’m exercising. I just finished listening to “Son of the Black Sword.” I must say that you’ve got a couple of stylistic things that I don’t really like about your writing, and I probably won’t re-listen to it any time soon, but to me the test of a good book is the number of times I continue to listen after the drive is over, and this certainly passes that test.

    The only problem with that is I keep running out of month before I run out of book to listen to. (That there is what we call a “first world problem.” I’m sure I’ll survive.)

    If you ever want to come to Southeast Texas, there are a couple of bookstores I know of in the Houston area that would be happy for you to sign books in.

  15. Glad to see the tour went well! I hope you can make it closer to Metro NYC next time! Albany was just a bit too far on a Wednesday night!

  16. Ah! You were in Minnesota and I missed it! That must have been when I was out of commission due to an aggressive gardening accident. Next time. Next time.

  17. AH HA! So you admit SoTBS was not as successful as MHI:NEMESIS! And you call yourself a writer! I’m telling Vile 5150! /sarc

    1. Well, considering Nemesis earned out its advance on eARCs alone, I figured that was going to happen. 😀

      Speaking of Vile 770 and Glyer 50 Hugos, he links back to all my blog posts now. I just delete the track backs. His traffic must be terribly sad.

  18. Has anyone seen a 2005 gangster film made in South Korea called A Bittersweet Life? There’s a scene where a disgraced on the run gangster is trying to buy hand guns from another gangster, falsely claiming he’s doing it for his boss who is trying to kill him. The other gangster has been trying to teach the guy to disassemble and reassemble the guns. Suddenly the seller gets a phone call from the buyer’s boss and both of them realize the truth at the same time. They’re sitting on opposite sides of a desk and a race goes on to see which one can reassemble his pistol first to kill the other. Great movie. Pretty violent in spots but A-list filmmaking. It’s a rather famous little scene available on youtube.

  19. I was at the Powell’s signing. Forty sounds about right. To prove I was there, I was the guy who told you his name was John Scalzi. Did you get a chance to read much of Gemmell’s Jerusalem Man?

  20. ” Right after I play just a teensy bit more Fallout 4″ – Yeah, right. Riiiiiiiight. Teensy. Yup. I’ve already lost my girlfriend to that bloody game. And two of my friends canceled our bi-weekly board games saturday.
    *shakes fists at heaven* FALLOUT!

    1. Speaking as a fellow Fallout widow, I sympathize.

      My husband went downstairs right after dinner to play Fallout “just for a while–I don’t want to go to long.” I think it was almost midnight before I saw him again.

    2. My Twitch circuit is all screwed up right now. Everyone I follow is all playing Fallout. Still wait times in my other games are way down at least.

  21. Nice work Larry.

    Where’s your England signing going to be? I’ll have to book time off to make a trip down – buy you a pint if you like.

  22. I was at the signing at The Poisoned Pen and ended up at the back of the line next to a nearly barren table where Larry’s books had been stacked at start of the night. The two employees were there at the cash register and I heard one of them say to the other,

    “This is great! It’s the first sellout we’ve had this year!”

    I guess they didn’t get the memo that Larry wasn’t a real writer.

    1. And Poisoned Pen is the major indy bookstore of the region. They get lots of big names there. (fantastic store, and great staff by the way)

    2. I was sorely tempted to attend that signing, but I just couldn’t justify driving all the way from Sorry Vista and back while I’m out of work.

  23. Epic fantasy series that are popular tend to start with smaller sales at first and then build up steam because people want to see where their characters are going. I have not read this yet, but I will. I prefer epic fantasy over urban fantasy. I like a new world where I am taken away.

    Fallout 4 is buggy like all Bethesda games at release. The settlement system is clunky and annoying. The modders will have to enhance that. We have to wait until 2016 for the mod tools to come out. So we won’t get good mods until then. Its fun, but if you are bothered by unpolished games, don’t buy this until next year, then look for good mods to add. There is always a community patch as well. I run Skyrim with 200+ mods in it.

    If you like Fallout 4, I recommend a free zombie roguelike called Cataclysm DDA. The code is open source. Over 100 people have contributed to it. Its post apocalyptic and has a crafting system far larger than Fallout 4. No graphics. Default is ASCII, but there are alot of tile sets you can use (its in the options). Its an old school roguelike. One life. You die, you start over. You can start in the same world. Its in constant development. So much so they do ‘nightly builds’. So if you get the ‘experimental build’ its the latest one. Its a fun community. Lots of mods for it. They come fully loaded with the downloaded.

    It is very hard. Much harder than Fallout. You will probably die in less than 20-30 minutes (if your lucky) the first time you play. It has incredible depth, but a large learning curve.

    Hope its ok to post a link. The game is free. Its not created by a business. Just people doing it for fun. There is a link to the wiki on this page to. You will need it. Anyone is welcome to contribute code.

    http://en.cataclysmdda.com/

    1. I have that installed on the other machine. Died fast many times, and gave up on it when I started the other roguelike I had installed at the time.

      What are some good strong starting builds? Is there a wizard mode or debug mode?

  24. I’m sorry I missed the Boston leg of your tour. Next time, give me a shout and I’ll chauffeur you around. Boston traffic is nothing to someone who used to be a motorcycle courier in London.

  25. Wow!
    You’re ranked next in line after J.R.R. Tolkien! That sir, is a remarkable accomplishment in and of itself, Congratulations!
    I’m sorry I missed your Phoenix signing, I’ll catch you next time through.

      1. A friend had to live in Boston for a few years. He returned with a plan he called “Bulldozers for Boston!”

        Basically, rent a bunch of heavy equipment and push the entire festering mass into the sea.

        Frankly, it sounded a lot like my “Nukes for Norfolk!” proposal. So far, that city if #1 on my urban cleansing list…

  26. The Chrysler 200 is indeed Satan’s spawn. I mean, a radio knob for a gear shift?!? Who got visited by the Good Idea Fairy for that one?

    Every time I get stuck with one of these (and Avis seems to love them), I’m grabbing for the turn signal to shift.

    1. Chrysler lost their way back when the oil crisis hit in the early seventies, and still haven’t re-figured the whole “car” thing yet.

  27. > My guess is that it will be a Grimnoir sized release, not Monster Hunter sized.

    Its the first book of the series. I’m guessing SoTB will represent the ground level, and each subsequent release will be bigger than the first.

  28. I just wanted to say, again, Thank you, for coming to Albany, NY, my neck of the woods.

    I was one of those quiet, starstruck,people that couldn’t speak when actually faced with my favorite author. But you were gracious and funny.

    Thanks again!

  29. HA. Going through the disaster known as my house and just found my copy of your original self-published MHI, complete with the scribbled line that purports to be your autograph.

  30. Fourteenth. Behind an old geezer that got run over by a truck and a limey who’s been DEAD for more FORTY YEARS. You’ve been a full time writer for what, most of a decade now? and this is all you have to show for it?

    Pa – THE-tic.

    Mr Correia, I fully expect you to come to your senses, immediately, abandon your slothful and immature attachment to video games and for the love of god, apply yourself, sir.

    The fate of nations hangs in the balance. You are our only hope. Do not fail us now.

  31. I’m surprised knowing so much about guns that you don’t get slight aneurysms sometimes playing games or watching movies where they don’t know what the crap they are talking about in the realm of firearms.

    I’m gonna get Fallout 4 for Christmas but I watched a friend show me a bit of it on that little thing one team that let’s you watch someone playing….. and when I saw the slide on the 10 mm pistol I couldn’t help but think (That slide looks like it would require two hands to chamber a round with) when he told me he had a full auto mod on it and my wrists decided to start crying of the thought of that pistol in full auto.

    Then again I’m a bit of a wuss. The most I ever shot was a .41 magnum Blackhawk my dad has for one shot and the muscles around my thumb ached for the rest of that day.

    1. I think Larry knows the difference between a fantasy weapon and the real McCoy. When he rants about a gun being misused or doing something physically impossible in a story, it’s because the story is trying to present it as if that’s how the real world weapon works.

      Anyway, those Fallout 10mm pistols look massive. I think they’d tame the recoil of that round a bit.

      1. True my buddy tells me I need to stop over analyzing stuff. I mostly meant for using it in full auto not in semi auto. I would think it would flip out of your hand

    2. In video games I just check my brain at the door and have fun. That way when I’m playing Call of Duty and I have to shoot a guy four times with a .308 before they die, it doesn’t bother me too much. 🙂

      I’ve shot full auto 9mm pistols several times, and actually did really well with them. But I’m not recoil sensitive and I’m really good at squeezing off short controlled bursts in full auto. A 10mm would be a handful, but I’d still try it. If the gun was heavy, or compensated, it probably wouldn’t be too awful. Especially once you consider the wide range of loads you can shoot through a 10mm.

      1. Lol. “I’m not recoil sensitive” = “My massive hands and 350 lb frame are immune to kinetic energy”

  32. Meanwhile John Scalzi says Larry Correia is a pro who would entertain ANY size crowd, big or small, that took the time to see him. What a monster!!!!

  33. Scalzi had a post on book tours commenting on Larry. When Scalzi talks about the economics of being an author he makes a lot of sense. And Scalzi agrees with Larry on marketing issues (like Larry’s post) probably 90%+ of the time.

    Larry – I’m glad you are making lots of money. That means you will (hopefully) keep writing. I enjoy your books, have all of them in hardcover, and your MH audiobooks are just amazingly well done.

    Larry – as a marketing professional I always enjoy reading your posts on the business side of being an author. Your beat-down of public idiots is always funny.

    1. On the business side of publishing, I seldom disagree with Scalzi. It is on everything else. 🙂 (but that is really good to hear)

  34. I’ll bet that the guy just ahead of you on the Amazon list could draw 500 people for a book signing.

    Meanwhile, I know to make you a real writer. It’s complex algebra,.

    Given this equation:

    (Larry Correia) = i(Real Writer)

    We multiply each side of the equation by –i:

    i(Larry Correia) = i(i(Real Writer))

    (Larry Correia) = (Real Writer)

    QED 😉

    1. Let’s see if adding some spacing makes the middle equation look clearer:

      i (Larry Correia) = –i ( i (Real Writer))

      1. I don’t think that’s how it works. To remove the i from the first equation shouldn’t you divide by i instead of multiplying by -i?

        (Wow, that’s hard to type and still get the italic tags right.)

        1. Just multiplying by i would result in the following equation:

          -(Larry Correia) = -(Real Writer)

          I could have done it in two steps, but I chose to do it this way.

        2. Ah, I see. You way would also work, but the italics and the “/” for division might look confusing. Let’s try it:

          (Larry Correia) / i = i (Real Writer) / i

          (Larry Correia) = (Reak Writer)

          The way I did it works because of this:

          i^2 = -1

  35. Ahh, Fallout 4. Or the Fallout game that should not be called Fallout. It’s a pretty interesting game. Still buggy since Beth can’t be bothered to move to a modern engine and instead uses a 17 year old pile of kludge. There’s a reason every game that models physics on Gamebryo has been buggy as shit.

    Then there’s the fact that the game has so much potential it’s not even funny. Properly rebalanced weapons would remove the need for straight incremental perks. This would allow for truly transformative perks to be the majority rather than the minority. Combine this with a crafting system that makes sense(lopsided bathtubs and broken toilets make no sense if you’re crafting the damn thing) and is properly expanded.

    Then there’s the PC UI, which is horrid, and the fully voiced BS which sharply limits your response options. All things which can be fixed with time and effort, but they shouldn’t have to be if the developer was competent.

  36. Thanks for all the extra masks and the great talk at The Uni bookstore in Seattle. You’ve really mastered the art of public presentations (and I should know) so I got great value for my SotBS book-buying dollar. I’m more of a SF gal than fantasy, but I’ll keep buying your books because you and Mrs Hoyt and your campaigns to end puppy- related sadness made me aware that that there is still quite a lot of readable adult SF out there. I’m very much in your debt.

  37. I’m still kicking myself for not going to your Columbus, OH book signing in 2013 for Warbound. It was storming and the signing was on the other side of town so I told myself I could just go next year.

    And of course there hasn’t been a signing in the entire state of Ohio since.

  38. This post answered one of the burning questions I had after finishing Son of the Black Sword – “Larry, Do you have something against seafood?” But now I know that to the contrary not only are you racist xenophobe, etc. etc. but you are also a saltwater tainted fish eater! Can you stoop any lower?

  39. I was at Powells in Beaverton and your signing was better than most. They just don’t like you because of what you represent which is honest fun without trying to kiss asses all the time. Good on you. Be that way!

  40. Never read any of your books, I didn’t, until now, know you even wrote books. A inet friend of 20 years emailed me you thoughts on immigration and Islamist nut jobs, got me to your web site. \You should think about running for office.

  41. Just read some of your bio., pretty interesting. I was born in northern CA.. I loved growing up there, I had the chance to move back when my parents passed, but I couldn’t stand the “progressive” politics of the soon to be BK CA., so I left, never to become a resident of CA. again. What a waste of a beautiful state… Funny, my best friend from college is 1/2 Portuguese and still lives in the hills of CA. I’m now in a more sane state up north of your current state.

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