All posts by correia45

Down These Mean Streets

Available January 2nd, in hard cover, ebook, and audio, is the third anthology of noir sci-fi and fantasy stories edited by me and Kacey Ezell.

Down These Mean Streets

Honestly, these are just awesome. It’s a great bunch of stories.

Since the theme was “the city” for mine I went with a Lost Planet Homicide story, where the Mount Zenith maintenance AI tries to solve a murder. The city is the hard boiled detective. It’s called Low Mountain, and it came out really good. I really really enjoy writing in the Lost Planet Homicide setting.

Everybody picked different cities, some real, some fictional, and we’ve got a wild assortment of different kinds of stories out of them. In order:

Ophir Chasma by Kacey Ezell, takes us under the shadow of Olympus Mons, where a weary cop takes the murder of a joy girl personally, and hunts a killer through the slums of Mars.

Yokoburi by Hinkley Correia: People can’t give me crap about nepotism, since my daughter’s story in the first anthology earned the highest reviews! (She’s legit got skills) and she returns to the world she introduced in Kuro, this time from the perspective of the American branch of her family of Japanese ghost hunters, as a fish out of water in Tokyo.

Empire of Splinters by Mike Massa. Mike introduced his Genius Wars setting in the first anthology, where cities develop souls and turn sentient, and it turns out history has been these cities warring against each other, using humans as pawns.

The Streets of CircumFrisco by Robert E. Hampson, when the clients of Frisco Station hire a PI, they expect a classic gumshoe, so he leans into it hard.

He Who Dies With the Most Scars by Patrick M. Tracy – takes us back to the gigantic, rotting, fantasy mega-city of Remnar, where by day a friendly necromancer runs a coffee shop, and by night solves crimes.

Fool’s Gold by Dan Willis, this is from Dan’s Arcane Casebook series, about a wizard PI who handles problems for his clients in 1930s New York.

Central After Dark by Casey Moores. This one is bonkers. The city is Albuquerque, and no matter how weird you think Albuquerque is, this gets weirder!

Ghosts of Kaskata by Marisa Wolf. A war hero gets called back to duty to solve a murder in the sci-fi city of Kaskata, which is pretty on top, but ugly all the way down.

A Devil’s Bargain by Steve Diamond. If you’ve listened to WriterDojo you’ve heard Steve talk about WEREWOLF COP! The city is Sacramento, which if you’ve not been there, is a perfect place to have some occult murders.

Urban Renewal by Chris Kennedy, with a dark adventure on an alien planet where the city is just The City. And these aliens are mean, and can hold a grudge like you wouldn’t believe.

1957: The Dark Side of Paradise by Robert Buettner, who has been in all three of these anthologies, because he always kills it. This is a follow up to his story in No Game For Knights, in a gritty alternate history where Germany won WW2.

Breathe by Grffin Barber, who brings us another bad ass story with his same undying protagonist as in Noir Fatale, this time involving a killer in the scummy fantasy city of White Boar.

It’s Always Sunny in Key West by Laurell K. Hamilton. Vampires in Key West, from her mega-bestselling Anitaverse. Laurell is just so damned cool to work with and her story is just plain fun. Also, weaponized sea gulls!

It was an honor to be able to work on this project. What a great bunch of talented authors. I really hope you guys enjoy these.

The A-Z guide to anti-gun vulture talking points on Facebook

A. Gun owners are never trained enough so are dangerous and shouldn’t be armed at all.

B. Gun owners who do train are crazy psychos living out their wannabe fantasies itching to shoot someone.

C. Even though it takes orders of magnitude more effort to become marginally effective with martial arts than a gun, you are better off using martial arts and not having a gun.

D. *Real Men* use their hands. This is why your mom and grandma shouldn’t have guns either.

E. Twitter randos who have never been punched in the face are experts on real life violence, and whatever you have personally experienced doesn’t count.

F. No matter how trained you are, it is never enough for the hypothetical attacker they make up. Sure, your concealed handgun might be enough to stop a regular robber or rapist, but what about if you get attacked by 20 Chechen terrorists with AKs, huh? Huh? (we call this the Dracula Riding Godzilla rule)

G. If the anti-gun vulture was ever in the military, this makes them a Military Trained Expert. Even though most of the time this means they got to put 20 rounds through an M-16 once in 1992.

H. No matter how many certified MMA bad asses or combat vets go “lol wut, dork? I’d rather have a gun.” the anti-gun Twitter vulture will remain undeterred.

I. Goldilocks Rules apply. No matter how much you know about guns, you’re either too ignorant and dangerous, or you know too much and that makes you dangerous. Whatever amount the anti-gun zealot knows is Just Right.

K. Whatever stats they pull out of their ass are sacrosanct. If you cite any numbers they reflexively scream “SOURCE?!” and then have some reason they won’t accept that source when provided. “The actual FBI Crime Statistics? LAME!”

L. At some point they’ll need to talk about how big our penises are, because guns are for compensation. Obviously the female gun owners are compensating for their tiny uteruses.  

M. “I believe in the Second Amendment BUUUUUUUUT-” (insert statist bullshit here)

N. If you insist on using terms correctly and words having actual definitions, clearly this demonstrates you are a fanatic. Words mean whatever they need to mean in that moment, especially legal ones.

O. “Castle Doctrine” is a secret right wing code word that means that you can just shoot whoever you want.

P.  Get ready for a history lesson about “what the founders really intended” from some dumb motherfucker who was stoned through every history class in high school.  

Q. Everybody knows big blue cities are way safer than the scary red state flyover country.

R. Gun control isn’t racist! Sure, historical gun control was all about keeping guns out of the hands of the “undesirables” like freed slaves, Indians, and the Irish, but that’s totally different now!

S. AR-15s are the most dangerous gun that’s ever existed. It can fire ten thousand ultra deadly murder bullets a second and each one can explode a moose from a thousand yards away. There is nothing this miracle death machine can’t do.

T. lol your AR-15s are utterly useless against a tyrannical government.

U. The NRA is an all-powerful, super evil entity which has tricked innocent Americans into wanting ultra deadly assault rifles, to satisfy their incessant blood lust. They do this through their ultra powerful marketing, like giving out free hats.

V. Anti-gun organizations are all totally innocent grass roots movements made up of moms, orphans, and kittens, funded entirely by bake sales, who just want the best for all Americans.  

W. “I grew up around guns” makes you an unassailable subject matter expert on the topic.

X. The gun industry is made up of giant soulless mega corporations who make trillions of dollars off of selling Glocks to preschoolers. This message was brought to you by benevolent small businesses like the six companies that own most of the world’s media.

Y. Even though everything the anti-gunner proposes is ass backwards and would just make the problems they are crying about worse, and everywhere they get their way good people are disarmed while evil doers are empowered…they CARE HARDER than we do. So we’re the real bad guys.  

Z. “You sound angry.”

The new and improved version of Residue by Steve Diamond

Most of you know Steve as my cohost from WriterDojo and coauthor on Servants of War. Residue was his first published novel that went through quite the saga with a bunch of different publishing houses. So now Steve’s got the rights back, is publishing it himself, and best of all has gone through and improved it to make the definitive author’s edition.

Plus the blurbs are me and Terry Brooks, so that’s pretty cool. 😀

Residue

This is a really cool read and I hope you guys check it out.