I got this question on the Triple Nickle video, (edit, just added link) and my answer got big so I’ll give it its own post- “Also, I believe you’ve said before you carry a Philster holster but can you talk about (or link to) some info on appendix carry? I’m currently running a P365 XMacro Comp on a P365 grip to conceal better at 4 o’clock, but I’d love to be more comfy and get the gun in front of me. So far (at 6’3” and 260 lbs) I haven’t figured that out. Any tips?”

https://www.facebook.com/larry.correia/videos/1113383889881194

Okay, this one is in honor of Jack Clemons because he was the big dude who gave me advice as a big dude to figure out how to make AIWB comfy (and also Hyrum Grissom, who hooked me up with a different rig because my first one was pokey and designed for skinny people!)

First off, we don’t want to hear it Fuds. Appendix is perfectly safe as long as you aren’t an idiot, and the single most common self inflicted gunshot wound is still the old hip down the leg whoops I was a dumbass speed holstering move, so buzz off.

AIWB is faster to draw from and conceals great. If you’re built like me (all torso, no hips/butt) then it doesn’t pull your pants down all day like regular hip carry.

The biggest issue is comfort, and that comes down to fiddling with it. Regular hip carry you just slap it on about where you want and call it good. Appendix you really need to fiddle around with it to find the sweet spot. For me the issue wasn’t walking or standing, but sitting, especially driving in a car for a long time.

Also, where you position it in front is going to vary based upon your physique and how you wear your pants. I don’t run it directly in the middle, I run it off to the side of my centerline a bit. I go pretty far right compared to most, but I’ve got more real estate to work with. 😀 Some guys will go more towards the middle, it just depends on build and comfort.

My regular holster is a Phlster Floodlight, but having a flash light on my carry gun is just a happy bonus because the main reason I originally went with the Floodlight is that the end is bigger and rounder and felt a lot better. (plus as a gun hipster who likes to try out all sorts of different weird guns, being able to not have to buy new holsters each time is awesome).

A good AIWB is going to have some adjustment available. The wing thingy (let me demonstrate my mastery of terminology) determines how much it levers the gun back against your body. This keeps the grip from making a big obvious rectangle under your shirt.

Contrary to what you might think, smaller is not necessarily more comfortable, because it’s about where the end of the holster pokes your body. That’s why a lot of people who carry stubby guns are doing it in longer holsters. The shorter ones have less of a lever effect below the waist line, which causes the top end to flop over your belt, which prints, and can really suck when it pokes you forever while you are driving.

So try it out, wear it around, use it, and then figure out where the hot spots are. What I mean by that is find out where the holster is bugging you, rubbing, poking, basically any discomfort. Then they’ve got foam wedges you can buy to stick onto your holsters to mold them to your body and prevent those hot spots. You can also use these foam wedges to get the angles perfect so there’s absolutely zero printing, even under very light clothing.

Or, I will get a Dr. Schol’s gel shoe insert, chop it into shape, and super glue it directly onto the plastic. I got this trick from Annette Evans and it works brilliantly. Plus, since I wear an undershirt the gel tends to stick to the fabric, so my it doesn’t get untucked when I’m drawing over and over. (and clothing getting into holsters is a safety concern)

On that note, either style of holster, you get no points for speedy holstering. Take your time. Look at the holster first to make sure it is clear of obstructions, then gently and deliberately put the gun back. Don’t just angry shove. That’s how you get a super fun trip to the ER.

I’m not flexible enough to look my gun into the holster. Like my body literally doesn’t bend that much in the middle. But go slow, and before you holster move your hips so that if it does ND on the way into the holster, you’re putting the bullet into the ground and not your body. This is something I have to constantly remind myself to do, because I’ll get into a groove where I’ll be drawing and holstering hundreds of times. If I catch myself going too fast on holstering, it is time to pause and refocus.

There’s a bunch of different brands, I can’t comment on them all. Note though that most of the high volume, really serious, hard core types are using the same handful of holster brands. I did another post a while back about what makes a good holster in general.

But once you find one you like, that works, and you’ve learned how to tune it to your body, you’re golden. I can drive a car all day and not notice the gun now. On the downside my holster looks like a big silly pillow with blue and yellow gel shoe inserts all over it like some kind of clown thing, but it’s comfy, and as the videos show, it works good. 😀

Hey all, Jack Wylder here. We know you’ve been swag-free for far too long, but the good news is we’re back in business! The new and improved swag shop is located at www.WriterSwag.com

We’ve got a bunch of new stuff we think you’ll love! Patches, stickers, magnets, sweatshirts, Christmas [Noun] stuff, and MORE! Lots of fun things. I’ll post some pics below. Keep in mind that if too many people rush it all at once, it has a tendency to bog down (which has happened every time on every platform) but that just means ‘try again later’.

The shop was originally going to remain open until 7th, but there were some errors with one of the plugins related to zip codes. (Hopefully that’s fixed but if you have problems with it, trying it from a different browser sometimes helps. Also, make sure the state is the 2 letter version and not spelled out.) (‘TX’ vs ‘Texas’)

Because of those problems we’re going to extend the open date a bit. We’ll begin fulfillment immediately after the shop closes- we have everything in hand, so there’s no delay on manufacturing.

If you have any questions email Jill at SwagHelp411@gmail.com (but go easy on her- y’all outnumber her by quite a bit)

Thanks again for everything!

Team Rhino, Los Angeles California 1970s

Team Flaming Warthog, Seattle Washington

MHI Metal Car Emblem

Two different weights of hoodies

All this and more! Act now before the shop closes

Larry shared this on the book of faces today…- Jack

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I’m nearing the end of the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior.

So I had to split the finale, Graveyard of Demons, in half because it got so damned big. The rough draft of the first book is done (I’m just waiting for a couple Hindi translations) and it is 5,000 words LONGER than Tower of Silence. 😀

So yeah, this would’ve been by far my longest book. But luckily it works out that there is a perfect logical cut off for the end. And having just read through it again… damn, I am proud of this series.

In the final scene of part 1 I get to explain something that I’ve had planned since the beginning, which totally explains why one of the major characters is the way he is, and once I explain it, the reader is going to go oh man how did I miss that? And it’s friggin’ rad. 😀

So yeah, cutting this one in half is the way to go, and it gives me a bit more room for other important characters’ resolutions in the second one. Which hopefully won’t take me very long to finish, so we can have a pretty close release.

The other day when I put up that list of everything I’ve written, somebody on Twitter said sure, you’ve written 25 novels since GRRM’s last GoT came out, but his are longer. Yeah, he writes 800 page doorstops while my fantasy novels are 400. But honestly, I can’t stand that meandering, bloated, nonsense that plagues fantasy where authors have to describe the ingredients of every meal and what every dress looks like, or fixate on characters that nobody cares about who do things that ultimately don’t matter. That’s the kind of stuff that I get bored and skim when I read epic fantasy. I figure if I don’t care, the reader really doesn’t care. I get bored writing that kind of fluff. I put enough description to provide a basic visual, and then let’s get to getting.

And I don’t like to spend time on minutia. Nobody cares. I’ll drop enough about the world to make it feel fleshed out, but the fact that the Capitol has fractional reserve banking, though fascinating to me, is utterly irrelevant to the stuff readers care about. So no, George, nobody gives a crap about Aragorn’s tax policy. (though I might stick one line about Devedas’ tax policy in there, just to be a dick).

One of the things I’ve been enjoying about the pro reviews of this series (which I’m FINALLY starting to get, ten years late) is them marveling how this is a fantasy, but it’s plotted more like a thriller. I think that’s fun that people are getting that, because when I set out to write this series it was to make the kind of story I wanted to read. It’s a throw back to the fantasy I read in my youth, with lots of action and adventure, intrigue, and heroes and villains, but I still wanted quality and depth, so there’s a point to all the hacking and slashing… just without the navel gazing and pointless nihilistic meandering that’s invaded the genre.

I had one dork troll on twitter (who hadn’t read my stuff, but it is funny when they try to guess) go all “hur dur, you’re a writer? Son of the Black Sword? sounds super HEAVY.” because these morons excel at sarcasm. But then all the responses were from fans going, doofus, it’s about genocide and caste systems.

So yeah, I get to write about fantasy Judge Dredd turned George Washington and play with heavy stuff like religion and the nature of government and legends vs harsh reality, and I get to kill lots of stuff with swords and blow crap up.

I have an awesome job. 😀

This is an anthology of stories that were originally written in Czech by Czech authors, set in my Monster Hunter International universe, and published in the Czech Republic, but now by popular demand, have been translated into English.

Monster Hunter FANTOM

The e-book will be available at Baen.com on Thursday. . https://www.baen.com/monster-hunter-fantom.html

Larry shared this on Facebook about something he thought of while on TwitterX, so I thought I’d put it here on the blog. -Jack

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Because I’ve been arguing with morons today on twitter who don’t know anything at all about history, it brought to mind this memory.

As a kid I was a massive history nerd. I devoured books, a few a week, and the best thing in the world was library loan. I went to a shit tier rural public school K-8 (my 8th grade class of 20 kids, half of us could speak English, and only half of those could read), but that didn’t matter because I read so much on my own anyway that made up pretty much the entirety of my early education.

When I went to high school (I lived so far out in the sticks that was an hour and a half bus ride every morning, which was actually awesome for me, because that was time I didn’t have to work with cows, and could read more books) I was actually super pumped for history class… and they all turned out to be super lame, because we’d spend 45 minutes tops talking about a topic that I’d already read an entire book about.

And the other kids were friggin STUPID. Like holy moly, dumb. Yes, this was the California Public Penal Academy For Gifted Drive By Shooters, but still. Nobody gave a crap. They paid no attention. They were bored. They just didn’t care. Fuck school. Let’s get high. (my high school also had the second highest teenage pregnancy rate in America my senior year, so we had that going for us too)

Thirty something years later and I get to watch these exact same mouth breathers bitch on Twitter about how they didn’t learn about (topic X) so clearly that’s a conspiracy by the man to keep them down.

Most of the history teachers I had knew less than I did about most of the topics and it was pretty obvious they were just phoning it in because their real job was coaching. Total waste of time.

I had one amazing history teacher though. Mr. Guerra. Great guy, actually loved history, was obviously totally burned out by teaching listless dorks the same thing over and over for twenty years with them being too dumb to listen, but he tried. I loved his class because he actually knew stuff and liked to research the stuff he didn’t know.

Every Friday Mr. Guerra would have a trivia game about the topic of the week. He’d break the class into two halves and we’d compete Jeopardy style. Winning side got bonus points for the test.

How much of a nerd was I? After the first few sessions he had to make a new rule. Larry can’t answer every single question. He can only answer every other question. When that was insufficient it was Larry can only answer one out of every four questions. Eventually he just gave me permission to just skip class and screw around on Fridays.
One of the best educational experiences I actually had in high school was the few days we had on the war in the Pacific, but not because I learned anything about the topic. Instead, Mr. Guerra recognized that was my favorite nerd fixation at the time so he asked me if I’d like to actually teach the class for a few days. I jumped at the chance… and realized that wow, high school kids are fucking stupid and apathetic, and it shattered any illusion I ever had that I might want to be a teacher… which was has been great for me long term. 😀