While whiny Americans are crying about cismale gendernormative fascism, and pasty authors are contorting themselves into awkward poses to protest sexualized covers, the Czechs say screw it, we want more guns, hot babes, and monsters. I can hear the heavy metal soundtrack as I look at these covers.
The Czechs are like “Patriarchy? What is this word? Is the succubus not sexy enough? Wait… Cis what? Do you mean we should make the werewolves on fire? We can do that. Dmitri! More fire! Now, why does this flabby man pose in his underwear like sexy pole dancer? You do not want to appeal to people who give you money? America is strange place.”
Some of you have read the short story Keeper of Names available in the Shattered Shields anthology already (and if you have read it, leave a review! Seriously, Bryan and Jennifer did an amazing job putting this together so they deserve some credit, and reviews are always a great boost.)
Keeper of Names is about the origin of one of the pivotal characters in my upcoming fantasy series. I’ve not been able to say what any of this stuff was called yet because I was still working out the details with my publisher.
I’m happy to announce that the first novel in the Forgotten Warrior saga is called Sons of the Black Sword and it will be out Fall 2015.
Forgotten
After the War of the Gods, the demons were cast out and fell to the world. Mankind was nearly eradicated by the seemingly unstoppable beasts until the gods sent the great hero, Ramrowan, to save them. He united the tribes, gave them magic, and drove the demons into the sea. Ever since the land has belonged to man and the oceans have remained an uncrossable hell, leaving the continent of Lok isolated. It was prophesized that someday the demons would return, and only the descendants of Ramrowan would be able to defeat them. They became the first kings, and all men served those who were their only hope for survival.
Fallen
As centuries passed the descendants of the great hero grew in number and power. They became tyrannical and cruel, and their religion nothing but an excuse for greed. Gods and demons became myth and legend, and the people no longer believed. The castes created to serve the Sons of Ramrowan rose up and destroyed their rulers. All religion was banned and replaced by a code of unflinching law. The surviving royalty and their priests were made casteless, condemned to live as untouchables, and the Age of Law began.
Fearless
Ashoc Vadal has been chosen by a powerful ancient weapon to be its bearer. He is a Protector, the elite militant order of roving law enforcers. No one is more merciless in rooting out those who secretly practice the old ways. Everything is black or white, good or evil, until he discovers his entire life is a fraud. Ashoc isn’t who he thinks he is, and when he finds himself on the wrong side of the law, the consequences lead to rebellion, war, and destruction.
There are three novels planned so far:
Sons of the Black Sword
House of Assassins
Destroyer of Worlds
I had a lot of fun with this book. I got to tell the origin story of someone who becomes a cross between George Washington and the Punisher. This is a man without fear, utterly devoted to the Law. The people call him the Black Heart for a reason.
This was my first foray into traditional fantasy, so I got to build a society, so obviously I went with brutal caste systems, a massive bloated corrupt secular bureaucracy, and oceans teeming with killer monsters.
I turned the manuscript in to Toni last week. Special thanks to Reader Force Alpha for providing lots of useful help and criticism. It brought joy to my heart when Steve Diamond–the guy who runs Elitist Book Reviews and has read more fantasy novels than anybody else I can think of–finished a fight scene and emailed me “That was probably one of the most violent fight scenes I’ve read in years, so it was awesome.”
Randy Asplund has done the maps, which look fantastic. He managed to make my terrible collection of lines, dots, and squiggles, and make them excellent. I grew up on piles of fantasy novels so I’ve always wanted a book with a map!
And I probably can’t say yet who has been hired to do the cover, but the man is a legend. He is one of the most famous fantasy artists there has ever been. Hell, when I was young I had his posters on my wall. So yeah, I totally geeked out.
So there has been a deluge of trolls lately. We had Forest the super troll trapped in Trollheim for a few days, then I had another Clamps infestation, and yesterday that Pox dumb ass. And that doesn’t even count the regular, unmemorable drive by poo flingers. I think it is because of last week’s election results, so all these losers have had nothing better to do than simmer in their impotent rage. Luckily, I have a seal club and a total lack of compassion. 🙂
Shadowdancer drew this last night in honor of this week’s epic trolling.
I’m only up against Anne Rice, Richard Kadrey, Dean Koontz, Jonathan Maberry, James Rollins, John Connolly, Scott Sigler, Charles Stross, and Lauren Beukes, so this should totally be in the bag. 🙂
Apparently a member of the literati SJW army—and super prestigious Campbell nominee for BEST NEW WRITER—has turned out to be a huge internet troll, with a bunch of aliases, attacking and tormenting people. Of course, those of you who read this blog or followed Sad Puppies are like, duh… They attack and torment Larry, and anybody who agrees with him nonstop, but no my friends… Benjanun Sriduangkaew did the unthinkable and used their regular SJW tactics of threats, insults, intimidation, and career sabotage against fellow SJWs, and that is super badthink!
Now, when you threaten, intimidate, troll, and try to sabotage the career of anybody who disagrees with the Social Justice narrative, then that is doubleplus good! Try not to get confused.
I tried to read that article linked above, but the first page is caveats and trigger warnings and excuses and namby-pamby blah blah blah to ensure that nobody of any protected groups gets their feelings hurt. She could have just copy and pasted ONE OF US! ONE OF US! a couple hundred times and saved some space. Yes, author, the audience is now aware of your proper goodthink credentials. Get to the point.
But by the time she got to a paragraph of hand wringing about Ferguson—where her total ignorance of the facts of the case make me really glad we have a functioning justice system that requires things like jury trials and evidence—I’ll admit that I gave up and started to skim.
Basically, this “up and coming writer” who was nominated for a prestigious writing award for having one pro sale short story and being a Thai Lesbian (which is totally worth like ten books of actual writing) treated fellow SJWs the way that SJWs treat all of us, and that is the worst thing ever. And now she should be shunned by all the other proper good thinkers for hate speech crimes and unsafe feels. She will now be banned from Wiscon’s Racially Segregated Safe Zones and I’m sure people will threaten not to attend WorldCon because she might call them fat.
A note on being an “up and coming writer”, as far as I know this woman had a handful of short stories, only one of which would have counted as a professional sale, and a blog where she wrote about Social Justice crap, and that was enough to get her nominated for the Campbell Award for Best New Author. It doesn’t look like this nominee for Best New Writer has published much since.
Meanwhile, when I got nominated for the same Campbell award a few years before I was “controversial”, “threatening”, and “a right wing hate monger”, who “made them feel unsafe” and if I won it would “end literature forever.” But then again, I had only published two really successful novels and several short stories at the time, and since gone on to publish ten more novels, a few dozen short stories, and some novellas… Only, we all know as a libertarian minded Republican I can never be a *real* writer.
Yet, when I say that the Hugo awards are biased in favor of the liberal cause of the day, I’m the controversial one. Go figure.
So anyways, UP AND COMING WRITER and SUPER PRESTIGIOUS AWARD NOMINEE turns out to be an anonymous troll douchebag on the internet. Whoop.
The fun part of this for me is watching all of the politically correct writers freaking out this week about how her behavior is totally unacceptable. How career sabotage, fake reviews, slander, libel, trolling, doxxing, and threats are the worst things ever… Yet, I wonder… Where were all these people when it was me getting attacked?
Oh, that’s right. I’m on the other team, so anything goes against non-SJWs.
When writers say something that doesn’t fit the SJW narrative, we know to expect their trolling, attacks, death threats, and calls for boycott from the caring SJWs. We expect to see our names dragged through the mud, with unsubstantiated cries of racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynist, hater applied. Showing up in major newspapers with fabricated quotes attributed to us? No big deal. We expect to be labeled as “rape apologists” to tens of thousands of complete strangers.
But that’s totally cool. Lies and slander are perfectly fine when directed at right wingers. The same people condemning Sriduangkaew’s behavior manage to overlook or even laugh along with the exact same behavior when directed against people who aren’t part of their little incestuous tribe.
If you follow history you know that leftist movements always end up with leftists eating each other. This article was just Trotsky getting the ice axe to the head.
The SJWs are perfectly aware of their hypocrisy. They talk about how Sriduangkaew was praised for “punching up”, meaning that it was okay for her to use these tactics against non-members. Threaten somebody of the correct sex and race, cool. Threaten somebody of the wrong sex and race, bad. If you have a brain, you will find that sexist or racist, but you are not thinking like a proper SJW. Anything they say isn’t sexist or racist, but anything we do is. Simple.
If you really want to see just how stupid people can get, read the comments, where SJWs argue about “privilege”, where a bunch of white, liberal suburbanites excuse attacks on people who disagree with them, because they probably possess some nebulous concept of privilege. Like me for example, I grew up with Portuguese Dairy Farmer Privilege, where all that back breaking manual labor, knee deep in cow shit, at 3:00 in the morning, in order to scrape by in near poverty all those years, somehow turned me white and made it so that it was okay for SJWs to lie about me.
Behold! The face of privilege! (yes, this person has Holsteins. The truly disadvantaged would be forced to milk Jerseys)
Privilege sounds awesome. You guys should totally get some of it.
This article is hilarious. They actually break her trolling down with graphs! GRAPHS! Yes, they literally analyze Sriduangkaew’s obnoxious behavior based upon the race and sex of who she attacked. Because they are equal opportunity assholes!
A reasonable person would say, hey, maybe you should just not troll and slander anybody, but reasonable people only say that because of privilege (and sanity). A proper Social Justice Warrior knows that since they’re full of shit, all they’ve got is dirty tricks and outrage in their toolbox, so they can’t give that stuff up. That would force them to debate with logic and facts! And everybody knows logic and facts are privileged cisgendered colonial patriarchy!
This is one reason I’ve been enjoying the hell out of GamerGate. First, it has been awesome having a great big group of people witness the same bullshit that my industry has been dealing with for years. Second, SF/F people tend to be squishy and polite, with a handful of outspoken outliers like me and the rest of the Evil League of Evil, so SJWs have run roughshod over my industry… But gamers? Holy shit. You really think you can pick a fight with people whose brains are programmed to win? Gamers will outlast, outthink, and outfight the SJWs. Tell a Gamer that there is loot or XP in it, and he’ll grind SJWs to the grave.
So enjoy this SJW cannibal feeding frenzy, sane people, because tomorrow they will be back to telling you that you are enjoying yourself wrong.
