Sorry for the lack of updates, but life has been very busy! A few weeks ago was the 3rd annual JoinderCon gun school event at my house, and I’ve got some more gun school next week.

Book Stuff –

The next release is Monster Hunter Memoirs: Fever, by me and Jason Cordova, which is coming out in October. We just barely got the final edits back and turned in this week. I think you guys are going to really like this one.

All the MH Memoirs books are going to be collaborations, and feature other characters who haven’t been in the main series (though Chloe Mendoza gets mentioned in Bloodlines) and in other times/settings. Like the previous memoirs took place in Seattle and then New Orleans in the 1980s, Fever takes place in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Though the narrator of this one is very different in personality from Chad!

Jason Cordova is a really talented author and it has been fun working with him. I’m really hoping this helps get his name out there and gets more people to check out the rest of his work.

Up next, though I don’t have the date, is the third Noir sci-fi/fantasy anthology that I’m co-editing with Kacey Ezell. This one is called Down These Mean Streets. The first one the theme was Femme Fatales. The second, Hardboiled Detectives. This one, the theme is The City. And the stories are awesome. I’m really excited for you guys to see this one.

My current writing project is the fifth and final part of the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior, which is titled Graveyard of Demons. I’m currently rereading the first four books (man, I love this series). I look forward to finishing Ashok’s story.

(on that note, there will be a Tower of Silence audiobook, they are working on it, as soon as I know the date I’ll post it)

I had a hard time deciding between what to do next, the next mainline MHI novel, or Saga. But by doing this that’ll make the whole series be about a decade from first book to last, and I honestly think that fantasy genre fans would like to see some series get wrapped up for once. 😀

I’ve negotiated a deal with Audible for a 3rd episode of Lost Planet Homicide. No idea on dates for that yet. The plan is for me to do several episodes, audio exclusive, and then combine them into one cohesive novel.

After I finish the tale of the Sons of the Black Sword, it’ll be back to regular series MHI, post Bloodlines. There’s also going to be another Monster Hunter Files anthology with stories from other authors. This has been something that I’ve been meaning to do for a while, but just haven’t had the time.

There is a second Grimnoir trilogy planned, which is another reason I’m looking forward to finishing Saga, before I start another series.

Steve Diamond is currently working on the rough draft for the sequel to Servants of War. The outline of this one is awesome. Like seriously, this story is cool, and the universe/setting is really interesting.

I mentioned Monster Hunter Memoirs above, but there’s another one of those in the works with author Les Johnson. I need to get with him at LibertyCon to talk planning and timing.

Writing Related Stuff

The MHI miniatures game from Everything Epic is still moving along. They have sent me the final rule book to review (which I’ve not had a chance to do yet!). The best source of updates for that though is their emails.

After getting repeatedly kicked in the nuts by Covid and various economic meltdowns and supply chain issues, the leatherbound Grimnoir books project is almost done! The first two have shipped, and they’re almost done with Warbound. When that’s all been fulfilled I hope you guys buy the rest of them, because they got their butts kicked on this one.

Appearances

I am the GoH at LibertyCon in TN coming up here in a few weeks, and then in January I’m the GoH at MarsCon in VA in January. I’ll be at 20books in Vegas in October.

And thanks to our amazing supporters, WriterDojo now has good sound equipment to take on the road with us to interview other writers at all these events.

How pathetic.

Full disclosure. I named this screen cap “Stupid Glyer”.

For those of you who aren’t aware who Mike Glyer is, stick that name into the search engine of this blog, and then buckle up. He’s got a long history of being a disingenuous, manipulative, truth distorting piece of shit.

Short version, this is a scumbag who runs a shit tier gossip column about the sci-fi/fantasy publishing business. Back in the old days he used to have the illusion of importance. Using Chinese bot farm traffic before most people were aware of how that worked, he liked to brag about his massive traffic, and that he was actually a big important deal who could make or break careers, and then used that fake clout to bully and intimidate authors who were scared he could hurt their sales. He was the worst kind of parasite. Creating nothing, but sucking the life out of those who do.

Until he fucked up while trying to fight with me and accidentally revealed his scam to the world (all while stupidly trying to say how many more readers he had than I did, by putting up screen caps showing that 96% of his readers were from China… which I’m sorry, is fucking hilarious)

Now his power is broken and he languishes in obscurity, furiously masturbating to his 27 Hugo Awards while catering to a gang of bitter has-beens and never-weres, who screech and bellow endlessly about every author who isn’t a left-wing bootlicker whenever Glyer puts up some passive aggressive insinuations.

And I ain’t even exaggerating about how many Hugos they gave this shit tier gossip column. It really is something like that. He had the industry so snowed that he actually mattered that they pulled out all the stops to suck up to him.

Now it’s over, once distinguished awards are now a meaningless wasteland, and sane people know it is safe to ignore this vapid shit suck. A few of my fans are gluttons for punishment (similar to how Glyer is a glutton for raw sheep testicles) so they lurk there on his shit tier gossip column website and send me screen caps whenever he tries to boost his pathetic traffic by talking about me, all because these fans know I enjoy writing the occasional reminder to Mike Glyer to keep my name out of his whore mouth.

But I am busy, and unlike my detractors, actually have a job, fans, readers, loved ones, and self-esteem and am busying writing books which rank higher than the 3 million range on Amazon. So I can’t always spare the time to remind this former tax collector (I shit you not) to keep my name out of his whore mouth…

But this one is so glaringly stupid, I’ll make time. Not for Glyer, who has the intellectual processing power of a sea sponge and is thus incapable of learning, but for the audience. But this stuff is comedy gold. 😀

First off you guys need to realize that the dregs who inhabit the fetid comment section of File 770 are very predictable. If Larry Correia dislikes something, they will adopt it and love it forever, no matter how stupid it is. If Larry Correia likes something, they will reflexively hate it and rail against it.

So as usual whenever I state the obvious, Glyer barfs up some passive aggressive mush like: “a cruel rant blaming a couple of well known fantasy authors for allegedly crushing the nascent careers of other fantasy novelists by failing to finish their series and creating reader resistance to new writers’ series”

And then his dumbfuck loser commenters reliably have a come apart about it.

But let’s break this disingenuous mush down-

“cruel”. Yep. Because the truth is often cruel, and cowards and chickenshits don’t like to come out and say truthful things, because the truth often makes people uncomfortable. Glyer, being the self-appointed Tone Police, often likes to cry about obvious truths as mean and hurtful. Oh well. Suck it up, buttercup.

“rant”. Lol. Not particularly. That was fucking understated all things considered.

The couple of well known authors are the two main guys who caused the issue I talked about. GRRM and Pat Rothfuss dominated the genre for a while, and then their lousy failure to finish what they started soured a giant chunk of the market to the point that those customers are now punishing an entire generation of young authors because of the wealthy dude’s laziness.

Duh.

There ain’t no allegedly about creating “reader resistance”. Whenever the topic of those two lazy millionaires comes up there’s hundreds of comments from epic fantasy customers saying they’re not gonna get burned again and will wait for the series to be finished before spending money on it, and dozens of comments from epic fantasy authors going it sure does suck that my car got repossessed because nobody will buy my book.

How much did these vapid fucks screw over their own industry? Ask DAW. Oh wait. You can’t. They’re now owned by the Communist Chinese.

You’d think a gossip columnist who supposedly has his finger on the pulse of genre publishing would understand the market of actual human book customers and how they feel about stuff, but you need to realize that Glyer inhabits an echo chamber of fucking dipshits who don’t actually sell books or understand readers. Their entire thought process for business is: Left Wing Propaganda Bullshit Good, Everything Else Bad.

Of course a lot of readers are resistant to starting new series, you fucking mopes. Crawl out of your yeasty slime cave and talk to them. They’ll happily tell you so, endlessly and constantly. There’s more to fandom than the bunch of unemployed, old, weirdos on the sex offender registry you usually consult with.

And regular readers feel burned by Martin and Rothfuss to the point that they’re starving out the next generation of writers. Guys like me who squeaked in before they tainted customer expectations are doing fine, but we’re getting older, and there needs to be up and comers to replace us when we age out. My post was an attempt to get some of these readers to realize that their hesitancy to take a gamble on new guys is long term screwing over the future of the genre they love.

Of course in the comments, the Vile 770 fuckstick crew is saying that this is me being motivated by selfishness, like I feel George or Pat are stealing money from me. That’s because they’re a bunch of socialist nincompoops projecting their own insecurities because they think the pie is finite, and if somebody else make a buck, they stole that buck from them.

No, you financially illiterate dopes. I literally buy ammo by the pallet. I’m doing okay. It’s the guys who don’t have 10,000 loyal customers on their fan page that readers need to take a gamble on. Because if they don’t, those authors won’t be able to stick with it and get the practice they need to become the future greats. You fuckers are still out there trying to pick your future greats based upon which newb has the most victim points, so you can shut the fuck up and let us actual professionals focus on the important stuff like story telling and making readers happy.

Then there’s weak ass shit like this here: “Then finding he had mud left over, he deposited some on a third author who has an unfinished SF series”

No kidding, bumblefuck. I mentioned scumbag and all around toad David Gerrold, because he takes the all star world record for coasting on an unfinished series to loot rent money from his gullible yet eternally optimistic hard core fans. I brought Gerrold up specifically because he represents the Proto-Rothfuss, and some reader always cites Gerrold when discussions of unfinished series arise. This is a man whose greatest claim to fame is that he once stole an idea from Robert Heinlein which got used in a TV show back when Lyndon B. Johnson was president, and the only thing he’s done of note in the last decade was be a spiteful douchebag handing out wooden anuses to a bunch of authors and editors who didn’t deserve that kind of mean girl pettiness, all because they’d been recommended by the likes of me.

On that note, try not to upset the secret police or get thrown in a Covid gulag at your Communist Chinese WorldCon, you miserable trash. 😀 (Edit to add: see if your hosts will give you a tour of the Uyghur concentration camps! Edit 2: and ask the Guest of Honor how he feels about war crimes. That’ll be a hoot!)

But back to David Gerrold. His “unfinished sf series” started when I was in grade school, the last book came out the year I graduated high school, and I ain’t exactly a spring chicken, so cry me a river, I’m fresh out of pity. Of course readers are gonna bring him up when talking about writers who failed to finish what they started. This time I just go there first. And I only mentioned him once, because honestly, David Gerrold is a washed up irrelevance now. Unlike Martin and Rothfuss, his rep has no real effect on the industry. He’s a footnote.

You could say he’s an asterisk.

It amuses me to no end to watch you losers squander what little credibility you have defending the indefensible. Oh who am I kidding? Your credibility died years ago. Even the File 666 regulars know they’re all full of shit. They just have to go through the rituals so they don’t lose face and get devoured in your side’s next inevitable cannibal feeding frenzy. Deep down they know how sad they are.

And deep down, you all know how sad the situation created by Martin and Rothfuss is too. Only you can’t ever admit I’m right, so go ahead and pretend their example isn’t damaging the careers of young authors. I’m also firmly against drinking antifreeze, so go for it.

Consider this an intervention.

Listen, epic fantasy readers, real talk time. I know you had a good thing going with George. At the beginning of your relationship there seemed like there was so much potential there, like he really cared, and he’d provide a satisfactory end to your relationship. Only George is fat and lazy, and once he got that sweet sweet HBO money, he didn’t need you anymore. So then you turned to Pat, only he was even sleazier, gas lighting you, promising you a new chapter if you paid his rent, stringing you along for a decade.

So now you’re bitter because you’ve been burned by these two bums. No more abusive relationships for you! All men… er, I mean, epic fantasy authors, are untrustworthy scum, who’ll never seal the deal, and you’re never gonna date/read again! You’re only gonna read epic fantasy series once they’re complete! I ain’t reading nothing unless they put a ring on it! That’s right, epic fantasy authors, don’t come sniffing around here unless your epic 5 or 7 book series is already done!

You sit there with the salty tears leaving mascara trails down your cheeks, drinking your box wine, bitterly posting about how all fantasy authors are trash and you’ll never try their books, because you’ve been burned before! And then you act surprised when no new epic fantasy writers show up to court you…

Alright, enough of that tortured analogy crap. Let’s get down to business.

George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss have totally fucked over an entire generation of new authors. That will be their real legacy. They wrote some books that got super popular. These books dominated their genres for a lot of years, and hundreds of thousands of readers were glued to them, waiting for the next installment. Only because they are both apathetic sacks of shit with zero work ethic, their fans have been left waiting for over a decade for them to fulfill their promises.

Only this post ain’t about them. I don’t know what makes up the assortment of their particular bag of nuts, or why they suck at doing their jobs now. As a writer who has retained his dairy farmer roots interpretation of what it means to have a work ethic, fuck those guys.

I’m here to talk about you. The readers. The customers. The folks who pay the bills and keep the publisher’s lights on.

Get over it.

I’ve written before about how the whole “unwritten contracts” thing between authors and fans is bullshit. They don’t owe you anything, but they made promises and burned them, so you’re right to be pissed at them.

Only you aren’t taking your anger out on them. Oh no. Thanks to HBO George has got Cheeto money until he dies. People still give Pat lots of money for some charity or something. Beats me.

The people who are getting fucked because of your righteous anger aren’t the assholes who let you down. It’s the entire generation of fantasy authors who came after them.

These authors haven’t wronged you, because you destroyed their careers before they even had the chance.  

This post came about because of some conversations I’ve had recently with a bunch of other fantasy authors, so once again it falls on me to be the one to tell people the ugly truth that everybody else is either too polite or scared to.

I had put up some goofy ass reviews from Amazon where various dipshits were whining about how they loved the book, but ONE STAR because the series wasn’t done yet, and something bad might happen that could prevent the series from getting finished.

Well no fucking shit. Forgive authors for not being immortal.  

Bragging about not trying new authors unless their series are finished has become stylish. It’s a fucking meme.

But anyways I ended up talking to a bunch of other authors about this, and it was the exact same thing across the board. They write an epic fantasy, and then people don’t buy it because they’re scared it isn’t going to get finished. This has even leaked over into sci-fi. I can’t speak for thrillers or other genres, and I can only hope that those authors aren’t getting burned too because their most famous guy turned to shit or died.

The issue is if nobody buys book 1, then I can absolutely fucking guarantee that the series isn’t gonna get done, because no author is stupid enough to waste a decade of his life not making any money, in the off chance you fickle bastards *might* give it a shot when he’s done.

Let me break this down for you.

Depending on authors, it takes about 6 months to a year of nonstop effort to produce a good epic fantasy novel. Some of us it takes a lot longer. (it doesn’t take any of us a decade, and whoever is telling you that is full of shit). We can make books faster, but the faster you rush an artistic product, the rougher it is gonna be. And epic fantasy is one of those genres where the customer is accustomed to a certain level of quality. So if you do the churn and burn, book of the month indy thing, you might get sales, but nobody is gonna remember that series. When most of us tackle a big epic fantasy series, that’s the thing we’re hoping will stick around and still get read after we’re dead.

Epic Fantasy is a genre that’s also based on fat books and long series. Both of which take time to create.

Now here’s the ugly facts of life. Let’s say there’s a new, unestablished author, who really wants to write an epic fantasy. Let’s even say he’s fucking brilliant. This guy is potentially the next Tolkien/Howard/Sanderson/Erickson/Donaldson/(insert whoever your favorite is here). He’s really that good. He sits in a chair for one year of his life, planning a five book series magnum opus, then pours thousands of hours into a manuscript and writes an epic fantasy novel that’s brilliant. It’s amazing. It’s fucking gold.

He publishes this amazing book… and then a bunch of snide fucks go hur dur I got burned by George RR Martin, so I’m not gonna give any new authors a chance, and that author with potential for greatness ranks in the two million range on Amazon and makes just enough money in sales off that year of labor to buy dinner at Applebee’s.

Now what are the odds this guy is gonna be able to spend another 8,000 hours of nearly unpaid labor to finish that series, while also being broke and poor?

Near zero.

I made one guarantee above. Here’s another. I can promise you with absolute certainty that there are some brilliant authors out there, who you will never read, and never see, and never hear of, because their careers died when their first book was a commercial failure. Whole careers were aborted before they ever had a chance to get started because the market is bitter at a couple of lazy fat fucks.

Just imagine the stories we have all been deprived of. The next Tolkien was right there. Only because you were ass mad at Patrick Rothfuss, Tolkien 2 had to hang up his dreams of being an author and go back to work at the RV dealership because he’s got alimony checks to pay.

This business is difficult to break into at the best of times. It’s harder when the customers are punishing the new guys because they’re pissed off at a billionaire with a stupid hat and scraggly beard.

Now full disclosure, because my regular detractors are gonna claim that this post is because I’m personally bitter, I’m doing fine. I’m 4 books into a 5 book epic fantasy, that’ll be 10 years from beginning to end, but it actually sells pretty good, and I’m successful in multiple genres already. I dodged the stupid Martin/Rothfuss kiss of death because I’ve been doing this long enough I had lots of fans I brought over from writing urban fantasy first. So when I get those whining crybabies talking about how they can’t read Son of the Black Sword until the whole series is done, that makes for amusing Facebook fodder for me to mock for the fans enjoyment, but it doesn’t make enough financial difference for me to actually give a shit.

Guys like me are fine.

Guys like Brandon Sanderson are SUPER FINE. Like piles of money fine. He’s built a fan base that trusts him. This is extra ironic because he owes his career to stepping in to finish another famous author’s series when he died. (and sadly I see assholes lumping Jordan in with Rothfuss and Martin… are you fucking kidding me? Jordan DIED. Rothfuss and Martin are alive but lazy. These things are not the same)

Guys who got established and built fan bases before GRRM smothered epic fantasy with a pillow are good to go.

But guys like I was talking to last week? The new guys? The guys who aren’t bringing thousands of readers with them already? They’re fucked.

I was talking to a friend of mine who just had book 1 of his epic fantasy come out last year. He got endless whining from entitled dicks about Rothfuss and Martin. His sales were okay, enough he can justify number 2 and hope it picks up. He’s one of the lucky ones. His publishing house now desperately picks up authors, tosses a book 1 out there in the hope it sticks, and when it usually doesn’t, the publisher just boots that author, then tries again with the new flavor of the week.

There’s another author I know who did a fantasy trilogy. His reviews and buzz were amazing. His covers were fantastic. Wide distro and good marketing. Book one sold meh. But he was in a financial position that he could keep pushing. Book two sold a bit better, and dragged book one up, as some more people thought okay maybe this guy isn’t a quitter. Again, he stuck it out because he could. Book three finished the trilogy, and then there was a huge spike. Sales took off, and the market breathed a sigh of relief and said, this guy isn’t Pat Rothfuss!

Well no shit. Because the vast overwhelming majority of us aren’t Pat Rothfuss. So quit fucking treating us like we are.

Now, imagine that last author wasn’t in a personal financial position where he could continue investing thousands of hours into labor into something which hadn’t had a positive ROI? Or what if it was supposed to be a 5 book series instead of 3? This arbitrary don’t buy until it is done nonsense, assures that the only people who can stick to it are people with a lot of money from something else… because gee whiz, when you think of the best authors in history, you think of the ones who were rich and sheltered trust fund babies with no life experience!

I’ve written something like 25 novels, 50 short stories, 6 novellas, edited 4 anthologies, and even wrote a non-fiction book about gun rights since George Martin’s last Game of Thrones novel came out, and I still have to listen to entitled dipshits act like I’m gonna suddenly hang it up tomorrow. Motherfucker, if I stop that suddenly it’s because I died, and in that case, oh well. Sorry. If you’re that much of a bitch about artists being human just program a chat bot to spit you out a trash book a day and shut the fuck up.

To those readers who aren’t perpetually aggrieved victims, get back out there. Please give new authors a shot again. Their series might not get finished. They might die. They might get a terminal illness. They might get shot by ATF agents for having a pistol brace on their bumpstock. The entire fucking Earth might get hit with a giant asteroid tomorrow.

But if you want more new good epic fantasy to read, you’re gonna have to take a gamble occasionally and buy some.  

This goes for sci-fi too, only they aren’t as infested with this toxic idiocy as fantasy. There’s fucking trashbags like David Gerrold, who started a hit series when I was in elementary school, but apparently it’s easier for him to beg for rent money on the internet in exchange for vague promises of finishing it, than it is to actually work for a living.

Every career field has shirkers, grifters, and beggars like that. Writers aren’t unique. Only you don’t assume that every roofer in the country is a lazy bastard who won’t finish the job, so you just let your roof keep leaking. No. You pick somebody who looks like they can provide a quality product and you roll the dice and hope they live up to expectations. If they don’t, you fucking move on, and hire somebody else. If no customers use them, they can’t stay in business and have to go do something different.

This is true of every business. Why would you expect books to be any different?

We recorded some episodes of WriterDojo last night and talked about this subject. Most of our episodes are light hearted and fun, but this one got a little grim at the end, because this subject is sad. Steve and I could talk about a few authors we know on the show, but during the break we thought of dozens of others who had gotten rolled up in this and broken. I’m talking amazing artists, who would have told wonderful stories. Only the whole world got deprived of their art, because too many of you are still hung up on some other assholes who dropped the ball.

That ain’t fair.

I try to help other authors, but I’m just one dude with very limited reach. I hate seeing good authors and newbs with great potential get fucked over for no good reason. I’m not writing this post out of anger. I’m writing it, begging you, the burned and bitter, to get back in the saddle and go find some new authors to give a shot.

They might suck. They might fail and let you down. They might have the audacity to have lives, or even die… the bastards. Or they might be awesome, and in a few years of practice because they’re able to make a living at this they might develop into your favorite author.

But you won’t know unless you try.

EDIT: adding the link to the post I talked about promises and expectations because some people have got really selective memories with their attempted gotchas.

https://monsterhunternation.com/2017/11/13/a-capitalist-novelists-guide-to-fan-expectations-and-how-not-to-be-a-douche/

As for todays post:
Fans don’t owe writers anything.
Fans owe it to THEMSELVES to not let a genre they love die off because they were so pissed off at the last generation of producers they fuck over the new one. Duh.

Tower of Silence is available now!

Tower of Silence

The audibook is not out yet, I’ll let you know as soon as I get the date for that.

This is the 4th of the 5 Saga of the Forgotten Warrior books. I love this series.

(Larry posted this on social media- bringing this here for those of you staying out of the sewers.- Jack)

I spent the last two days in Shawnee Oklahoma at the Meadhall Range, shooting the Symtac Consulting shotgun skills class. I highly recommend both. (Symtac travels and does classes around the country, Meadhall hosts teachers from all over)

I’m a long time shotgun nerd, and I still got a ton of stuff out of the class, and was taught some new techniques. Whether you’re new to defensive shotguns or experienced, you’re going to get something out of this.

The class is taught my Rob and Matt Haught, a father and son team. Rob has been doing this an extremely long time and has forgotten more about shotguns that most people will ever know. Matt grew up in this world, and is an absolute monster on a 12 gauge. Good dudes. If they’re teaching anywhere near you, check it out.

And if you’re near Oklahoma, check out the stuff Meadhall hosts. They bring in some quality instructors. And they’re really nice hosts with a range facility that’s actually comfortable.

The most valuable thing most people will get out of the class is learning the Push-Pull technique, which if you do it correctly, knocks about half the felt recoil out of the equation. Which means you can go really fast (and also practice more without getting beat up, like I did about 500 rounds and the only thing that’s sore is where I paid my stupid tax and wacked my thumb nail on a steel light mount)

For being a little rusty on shotguns (well, by my standards, I’m tuned up by normal human standards, but I used to be a shotgun freak back when I was competing) I still did pretty damned good. They have a skills challenge drill, using slugs, that’s really spicy. There’s only been 7 people who have ever passed it (4 of who teach the class). Nobody in my class cleared it, but I came the closest, missing it by .5 of a second (and I know exactly how I could clean that up for next time).

Then at the very end, to put test out the various skills you’ve learned over the last two days, there’s one on one shoot off brackets for top gun, where I got beat out by the guy who took the title. We were so close. The dude was quick. Much respect.

Best thing about Gun School is when you end up with a class full of cool people, and this was a great bunch. And shotguns are just fun. I love pistols, I love carbines, but there’s just something about the sheer oomph factor of rocking a 12 gauge. So this was an excellent weekend.