The 5th book in the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior series, Graveyard of Demons, will be out in November. However, Baen offers what is called eARCs, which are electronic advanced reader copies. These are the early, not quite finished versions which usually go out to book reviewers, but Baen saw that some fans are eager to get the book early, so they make them available to the public.

https://www.baen.com/graveyard-of-demons-earc.html

The reviews so far are great. The final book in the series, Heart of the Mountain, will be out in February.

This one definitely needs to be preserved…- Jack

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On Rocket Man’s site I wrote: Assassination attempt on one candidate. Coup on the other a week later, leaving a puppet with dementia under the control of a shadowy cabal who really runs the government… If I put this in a thriller novel you guys would get mad at me for being too cliche.

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Somebody asked “If we’re going purely by cliches, then what comes next?”

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Oh boy, good question… Okay, professional writer hat on (and yes, I’ve got a trilogy of thrillers) after the assassination attempt and coup, here is how I would write this election story if I was going as ham fisted cheese as possible. Let’s see what actually comes true-

While Dementia Potato is being kept in the closet, heavily medicated while the government is run by a shadowy cabal (the Harvard prom committee), THROATUS locks up the nomination at the Democratic National Coup, err… I mean Convention. In a shocking turn of events, her running mate is a another woman. So that way if you’re against it you’re an extra misogynist. Also, it’ll be a white woman, because of the How Dare You Factor of bringing up all the DEI stuff. It’ll be a senator/congresswoman from a swing state.

But what’s more important than voting for the first All Female Power Team? Voting to REELECT the first female president! That’s right. A little while after the coupvention the news cycle will have tired of endless BJ jokes and will need to mix things up. So Dementia Potato has to go.

And by go, in a kind world it would be “retired due to health issues to spend time with his family”. But since I’m writing a ham fisted thriller, that’s not good enough. They’re gonna call the guy who snuck into Epstein’s cell and request something “dignified and tasteful”.  A state funeral and National Time Of Mourning would be way better than skulking off into retirement. And also, that way if the old man is dead, then it would be So Rude to bring up pesky stuff like his actual record of total and complete failure. And instead he would be remembered as a Great Statesman Unifier, and not a corrupt child sniffing goober.

So now you aren’t just voting against a woman, but you are voting against First Female President and all the historical melodrama which accompanies this. The stage is set. The media goes 110% on the gas lighting. NOW the left is super worried about having a really old man running for president. Trump slept with hookers. Kamala is a basically sainted Mother Theresa and SUPER SMART.  

Now if I’m writing an action thriller, this is where there’s another attempt on Trump, though probably way more subtle with fewer chances for positive optics. If you’re trying to destroy a guy have him go absolute gangster rap fist pump defiance in front of a waving flag and screaming bald eagle isn’t the way to go (In the book I’d even have  a member of the shadowy cabal insisting that they use an AR-15 the first time because it helps their gun control initiatives).

In my book the PoV would either be the last honest non-DEI hire at the Secret Service who gets a couple bad ass fight scenes before the action finale set piece. But since this particular book is clearly being written by a dork who burned out his brain with too much cocaine who now struggles with writing good characters and satisfying conclusions, like Stephen King, then it’ll probably be something lame. Like a fake heart attack, food poisoning, autoerotic asphyxiation, or hell… give him Covid. Lol. If we’re going absolute ham fist, the left would love that storyline. It has come FULL CIRCLE.

If I’m writing this, the good guys would win, and the left would slink off in defeat… for now. (that way I could write the sequel) But in Stephen’s version Kamala will turn out to be the most popular candidate in history and get 94 million totally honest votes at 2 AM, but like I said, we all know he’s shit at endings.  
Hell, I’m gonna bookmark this cliché thriller story outline to see how much of it comes true.

Another one Larry did on the Book of Faces- Jack

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What are your favorite bits of Chevron powered government overreach that you’d like to see get sued into oblivion now?

In my various jobs I’ve seen unelected bureaucrats make up all sorts of goofy nonsensical shit we had to obey or else.

When I was young and working on farms, factories, or construction I saw OHSA regulations that made job sites LESS safe. “Why are we doing it this stupid way?” “Because that government asshole who has never done this himself said we’d get fined if we don’t.” “Oh cool, let me unnecessarily insert my hands into this thing that can chop them off for the mandatory safety check then.”

I’m a rural westerner. Dear Lord, don’t get us started on the BLM. 90% of their bullshit isn’t law. They just make up wacky shit on the fly. Ignorant fucks who live in cities hundreds or thousands of miles away think they “protect the environment”. Lol no. There can be some obvious terrible problem, but some fucker in DC will say nope, you have to leave that terrible problem there to grow bigger or else we’ll fine you or shoot you if you try to fix it. If you’re in the west and you see some land that’s got some obvious issues or is about to burn down it’s government land.

Then I went into accounting, and the dirty secret of that industry is 3/4 of what companies pay accountants for is to do government mandated paperwork to send to the government which nobody in the government will ever read, and to respond to government audits which are usually useless. IRS just makes shit up as they go. And the shit they made up last time? They changed it this time. Either way, shut up and pay your fine.

But it isn’t just the agency that takes your money directly. Oh no. (honestly, the IRS was one of the more professional agencies I dealt with in my career! Not even joking. The others are worse.) Then there’s the dozens of other agencies that meddle in your industry who you also have to appease, even though sometimes they contradict each other, and all of them can fine you.

Then I worked in the gun business, where I got to discover the wonderful world of ATF inspections, where holy fucking shit, the dumbest people in the universe who don’t know how anything works at all, pretend to be mechanical engineers and lawyers. But Chevron said they’re “experts” so clearly that must be true, and if you disagree they’ll shoot your dog and burn your house down. The list of dumb shit the ATF makes up on the fly could fill a book (literally. I did write this book).

But surely, the ATF is the worst right? Oh no. Not even close. Because then for my next job I went into military contracting! Where the rules are whatever the DCAA or DFAS say they are today. And sure, you violated that secret impossible to know rule on accident, so we’re going to ruin your company and put hundreds of people out of work… but the big megacorporation did the same thing, only on purpose, and a million times worse? Oh well. Fuck you. Lockheed builds missiles. You don’t.

On that note, as an accountant I got companies through audits from probably eight or ten different federal agencies. The DCAA audit is by far the most annoying. This is the industry where the customer actually knows exactly how much profit you expect to make, and then you have to guess what everything will cost in the future, and if you guess wrong, they will fine you. Hell, if you guess in a way that actually SAVES the government money, they will fine you. If you charge the government too little, they will fine you. They will fine you for bookkeeping errors. They will fine you for typos. (keep in mind of the hundreds of government spreadsheets I saw, I never saw a single one that didn’t have serious computational errors on it… which I got to fix for them for free… or they’d fine me).

I once actually had a DCAA auditor sit behind me while I typed on my computer for about 4 hours to WATCH ME TYPE. At the end of this month long colonoscopy which cost the tax payers tens of thousands of dollars in government employee salary, they had found one mistake where I had UNDER CHARGED the government something like $16.

Keep in mind, none of this shit was a law passed by congress. It’s all stuff that the agencies made up based upon a vague idea congress gave them.

But the worst, the absolute worst, dumbest motherfuckers in the entire US government? The SBA.

The motherfucking SBA who I will despise with the fire of a thousand suns until the end of time. This is an agency congress created to HELP small businesses, and instead its a wretched hive of scum and villainy, who because they can just make up the regulations as they go, will always find a way to reward their friends and punish everybody who competes with their friends.

And they make up these arbitrary rules, which their employees don’t understand, and then if you fail to comply with the rule correctly, but they understand it wrong, they will actually actively try to destroy that small business, RATHER THAN ADMIT THEIR MISTAKE. I’ve got a saga about this particular one that would take ten thousand words to tell, where I fought with the SBA making shit up on the fly and lying about it for 6 straight months, and the only reason we got it solved was my company brought it to the attention of @BasedMikeLee who then stomped on their heads (with glee, which is why that dude has earned my vote).
So how has Chevron fucked you? 😀

-Jack here, copying this post of Larry’s over from the Book of Faces so they can’t bury it as easily. Given the nature of things, I’m going to copy the relevant part of the code of conduct here before they memory hole it. Until they do, you can read it HERE. Pay special attention to section 1.5

Code of Conduct

The CRIT Awards is committed to fostering a positive and inclusive environment that celebrates creativity and recognizes outstanding achievements in all aspects of the TTRPG industry.

To ensure a safe and respectful experience for all participants, we have established this Code of Conduct, which outlines the standards of behavior expected from all nominees, attendees, organizers, and partners involved in the CRIT Awards.

1. Inclusivity and Respect

1.1. No Racism: We do not tolerate any form of racism, racial discrimination, or xenophobia. Treat all individuals with respect and fairness, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or cultural background.

1.2. No Homophobia: We embrace diversity and do not condone any homophobic behavior or discrimination against individuals based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

1.3. No Ableism: We are committed to being accessible and accommodating to all individuals. Avoid ableist attitudes or behaviors and strive to make the CRIT Awards inclusive for people of all abilities.

1.4. No Sexism: Gender-based discrimination, stereotypes, or harassment will not be tolerated. We promote gender equality and a supportive environment for all genders.

1.5. Individuals who identify as Zionists, promote Zionist material, or engage in activities that without a doubt support Zionism are not eligible for nomination.”

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This new anti-Semitic crap from GenCon reminds me of a story. This is a story about cowardice and hypocrisy. Names redacted to protect those without the moral fortitude to do the right thing, the kind of people who all this weak social shaming and peer pressure nonsense one side of the political divide uses as a club actually works on.

Many years ago there was another writer who I considered a very close friend. We did lots of stuff together. I’m conservative or libertarian depending on the issue. This dude was moderate to liberal, but we were still friends.

As you guys know how I roll, I like to promote other writers. My career was doing great. His was struggling. So he asked me for a promotion. (this was back when Book Bombs were still a thing, before the algorithm strangled them). I had it scheduled.

But then something happened in the news that week in politics. I wrote a blog post about it. The topic was gun related. It was actually a very funny blog post, obviously tongue in cheek, silly, but still filled with good pragmatic advice. It went viral.

The next day I get a message from my friend, begging me to cancel that week’s Book Bomb for him. I was confused. Back in those days BBs would sell between 200-1000 books over the week, mostly to new readers, which is a fantastic promotion.

Why?

Because “he can’t be seen associating with someone like me”.

Huh?

Well it turns out that my viral blog post was deemed SUPER OFFENSIVE by some of his liberal “friends”. In fact, one of them declared it to be ANTI-SEMITIC. And he couldn’t be seen associating with such a horrible racist who hates Jews.

Now this baffled the shit out of me, because there was literally nothing in there about Jews. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Zip. Plus, when it comes to the Arab world vs. Israel, I’ve been openly Go Team IDF the whole time. (There was literally a Merkava with an MHI logo on it!)  And I’m genetically part Jewish! (on my maternal side which makes it even funnier!)

So I was confused, because all it took was some leftist asshole to declare something I wrote to be anti-Semitic and boom. There it was. I was an awful bad horrible evil person who needed to be shunned and thrown under the bus by all proper liberal goodthinkers.

I gave him the response you guys would expect, which I won’t repeat because the bots are already going to be throttling this post anyway because of all the politically charged words, and that would totally kill it. But half the words started with the letter F.  

Ironically a few days later, one of the most respected leftist publications in America, the grand old lady herself, the New York Times, made me an offer to buy that blog post to run as an OpEd, because even though it poked fun at libs and their silly beliefs, the advice in it was actually super solid. I told them no of course, because I don’t want to be associated with that dishonest rag. (which is saying something, because it turns out their OpEds pay pretty good!) But I share this part just to illustrate how profoundly NOT racist this blog post of mine was.

Didn’t matter. Some libs declared a post that had absolutely nothing negative about Jews in it, no matter how hard you squint at it, to be bad, and boom, I was a bad guy. Cancel. Do not associate.

That insult, and the fact he was too stupid to grasp why it was an insult, pretty much ended our friendship. I even helped his dumb ass out behind the scenes a few years later, promoting him as a writer, and he never even knew I was involved.

But the reason I’m reminded of this now, fast forward like 8 years, the EXACT SAME PEOPLE who were condemning people as anti-Semitic even though they clearly weren’t, and shaming the spineless into compliance, have gone all in on the Jew hate. They’re out there supporting terrorist murderers. They’re cheering the beating of Jews at synagogues in LA. They cheering as Jews are having to hide from protestors in universities. They lie their asses off without shame and repeat propaganda so ham fisted and illogical that it falls apart with like two seconds of scrutiny, but they just don’t give a shit. They’re chanting river to the sea slogans about literal genocide. They’re the evil mirror version of what they claimed to hate just a few years ago.  

These people have no honor, dignity, or shame. They’ve got no spine, no chest, and no soul. They’re miserable assholes and their only goal is to make everybody else as miserable as they are. They’re Wormwood and Screwtape without the brains.

Ten years ago I defended the normal attendees at GenCon from goofy (and super vague) accusations of racism from a race hustling grifter (son of a billionaire ironically) who weaseled himself into some social justice “advisory” position. Four years after that my “attack on this PoC” got me booted from another gaming convention.

And today? GenCon is hosting a event that explicitly bans people who think Israel has a right to exist… yet I guarantee the same kind of invertebrate squishes who condemn people like me for nothing, won’t say crap about that.

None of these grifter scumbags actually give a crap about racism. It’s always a political weapon, nothing more. I can at least respect them for their hustle. It’s their willing dupes, the cowards, the quislings, the useless one-way virtue signalers who can only speak up when their masters say it’s okay, who are too scared to go against the rigid group think of their deranged cult, who’ll let evil shit slide because they’re scared their team will get upset at them… Those people I despise.

The 3rd and final book of Steve’s Jack Bishop series (Residue, Parasite, Catalyst) just came out. If you guys haven’t read Steve’s stuff you really should, because he’s extremely talented. There’s a reason he’s my cohost on WriterDojo!

Catalyst