We got a #1 spot already and the book doesn’t actually come out until the beginning of October.
This is a really fun anthology, and I hope you guys like it. I loved it.
Thanks to my co-editor, Bryan Thomas Schmidt (this anthology was his idea to begin with), and a whole bunch of really good authors who turned in fun stories. Well done guys.
I’ll be at Salt Lake City Comic Con for the next few days.
Larry Correia Signing :: Bard’s Tower – Booth 301Thursday September 21, 2017 :: 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm |
Friday September 22, 2017 :: 11:00 am to 12:00 pm
Learn to build a better world. Join NYT bestselling author Larry Correia (Monster Hunter Nation) as he walks you through his process for creating interesting settings for your fiction.
Larry Correia Signing :: Bard’s Tower – Booth 301Friday September 22, 2017 :: 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm |
Saturday September 23, 2017 :: 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Some of the genres top fantasy authors gather an epic debate/cage-match about all the overused (and underused) fantasy tropes/cliches: orphan farm boys with a destiny, plucky princesses, dark lords, wizard schools, prophecies of doom, quests and fellowships, talking animals, ninja-like elves, ninja-like assassins in dark cloaks, magic talismans that save the world, this magic systems, that magic system, MAGIC SYSTEMS! Enough with your unique magic systems already!
Jim Butcher
Larry Correia
Brian Lee Durfee Moderator
Matthew J. Kirby
Brian McClellan
Patrick Rothfuss
Saturday September 23, 2017 :: 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm
Saturday September 23, 2017 :: 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Action scenes are the cornerstones of many genres of fiction. So how do you make the reader feel the blows, smell the sweat, and hear the bones crack? Come and hear or panel of experts reveal their secrets.
Larry Correia
Robert J. Defendi Moderator
Peggy Eddleman
Emily R. King
Brian McClellan
Eric James Stone
Recently I was approached about using my logo on on bullets. Long story short, it was right about when Houston was flooding, so I agreed, but that my share would go to the Houston Food Bank. (Houston is the home town of CorreiaTech’s marketing daimyo Jack Wylder, so he picked the charity).
As of the end of last week they had already sold 60,000 bullets, and that was off this post on Facebook. I just realized I forgot to put this on the blog. (but on the bright side I got a ton of writing done last week!)
Here is the post from Jacob Wilcox of RMR:
Just finished the first batch of these! For those who are just joining, we at RMRbullets have collaborated with Larry Correia to bring you this new 9mm 124 grain Match Flat Point MHI bullet! Larry requested that we sell this bullet for a little more than our regular flat point and donate the extra money to the Houston Food Bank. So, not only are they awesome in looks and quality, but when you buy these bullets 10% of the total sale will go to a good cause. I want to thank Larry for being so generous and giving us this opportunity to help others. Furthermore, I want to thank him for giving our small company this opportunity and for letting us ride his coat tails to get the word out. Also, please feel free to share this far and wide. The more that get purchased -the more money that goes to the Houston Food Bank. This is a great way for you to help out and still get something awesome in return.
You can purchase them here. https://rmrbullets.com/…/9mm-124-gr-rmr-fmj-flat-nose-mhi…/…
Prices are as follows
$92 for 1,000 shipped
$52 for 500 shipped
Larger and smaller quantities available. The more you buy the more you save.
These are just bullets for handloading. This is not loaded ammunition. Also, be aware that this design is on the front of a 9mm bullet. It is VERY small and serves no purpose other than being really cool. Please do not expect anything magical or supernatural from them. They are just bullets with an awesome stamped logo. Though the lead we sourced does contain trace amounts of silver, it isn’t enough for serious hunting. They are to be used on nothing larger than a gnome.
*For those who do not load their own ammunition we have loaded ammunition in the works. Packaging is slowing us down but we expect to have some for sale in the next two to three weeks.
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And to save time because I’ve seen the kinds of questions that popped up on Facebook, no they don’t have other calibers or grain weights yet. And no, these aren’t made out of silver, though there is trace amounts if that makes you feel better. 🙂 If you’ve got any technical questions direct them to RMR because I’m just the dude with the cool logo.
Bridget and I flew back from Atlanta on Monday. This was (if I recall correctly) my 5th DragonCon and her first.
If you’ve not been to DragonCon, you should go at least once, just for the spectacle. I love it. It’s a 70,000+ person four day nerd party. Ask people who have been to both, it is a bigger party than Mardi Gras. At one point the costume parade takes over all of downtown Atlanta.
No matter what geeky thing you are into, there is stuff there for that. Movies, TV shows, comic books, books, video games, whatever, there’s a track for that. There are panels for everything. And unlike some cons, DC panels aren’t stuffy. They tend to be big, loud, boisterous, and fun. Some are educational, some are just goofy. Sometimes both, like on a survival panel where they ran cheap Costco tequila through a water purifier to A. show the science of how water purifiers work and B. make good tequila. I don’t even drink and I thought that was cool.
If you’re part of the Baen family, DragonCon is one of our big gatherings. It’s kind of like a family reunion for our gang of misfits and miscreants. I got to hang out with a lot of friends, too many to count off because I’d be bound to miss some of them.
DC likes to put me to work, so I was on a ton of panels on a bunch of different tracks. Between panels, signings, and various business meetings I had about 8 or 10 events per day. So for me, I go to DC to work, but it is really fun work.
Because Son of the Black Sword won the first annual Dragon Award for Best Fantasy last year, they asked me to be a presenter for this year, and I was able to give out the award for Best Military Sci-Fi or Fantasy, a very competitive category with a bunch of excellent authors in it. The winner was Richard Fox, who I spoke with afterwards, and it turns out he’s a really nice guy.
John Ringo and I won the Dragon Award for Best Fantasy for Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge. In this case I did the opposite of campaigning (for the record, the Dragon is awesome and WANTS authors to campaign for their stuff!) because I won last year I kept telling everybody not to nominate me again, because I wanted to share the love. But Grunge got nominated, only it was a collaboration, and in this case, it was Ringo’s baby. It was his idea, and he even wrote the rough draft before I was ever involved. So I was really happy to win, just so I could hand the award to John to see the look on his face. The guy is awesome, has entertained millions of people, and it is damned nice to see him get some award recognition for once. Congratulations, man, you earned it.
The Dragon Awards were great, and one of the things that I noticed was that every group in fandom was represented. There were nominees from big publishers to indy, living legends to new guys, and everything in between. There were winners who are total bad asses who have traditionally been snubbed by other snooty awards. This was all about the fans and their enthusiasm.
This was truly a popularity contest rather than a politics contest. DragonCon set out to create an award that represents what is beloved by all of fandom, and that’s what they’re doing. They had twice as many voters this year as last year, and I hope they double it again next time.
There were many highlights. We had one panel just for the Monster Hunter Files anthology which is coming out next month, with Jim Butcher, Jonathan Maberry, Jody Lynn Nye, Faith Hunter, and Quincy Allen. I got to hang out briefly with my friends Laurell K. Hamilton and her people. I got to meet Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven. I got to be on a panel with a bunch of bad ass super stars and I got most of the audience to Hooon (Jim started it!). I did a late night improv comedy panel, where a member of the audience got super drunk and kept F bombing us from the front row, so I just worked him into the act as our ship’s extremely angry repairman, named Popcorn.
Though if there was one thing that I was proud of, it was on the Magnificent Men of Fantasy panel, where it was a bunch of bestsellers talking about their work, in one of the large panel rooms with a big audience. I got there early for some reason and was the first panelist to arrive, so I just stood in front and started talking to the audience. Then the moderator came in, and made an announcement about how the DragonCon charity this year was the Special Olympics (plus they sent a bunch of money to Houston too) and how they were passing a donation bucket around, (and this is the important bit) about how the Young Adult Track was neck and neck with the Lit Track (the one we were currently on) in total donations so far.
You guys have to know that I will gladly beclown myself for charity. So I then went on a giant rant declaring war against the YA track, and how THIS WILL NOT STAND! Are we going to let ourselves get pushed around by a bunch of YA authors? They’ve already stolen all our shelf space in stores. Now some wizard kid with a lightning bolt on his head thinks he is going to out charity us? HELL NO! Down with Percy Jackson! A couple minutes into this, the DC staff brought me a microphone so I could really go on a rampage.
At the very end of the panel they were asking us for a single piece of our most valuable writing advice we could possibly give, and since I was last I said the most important key to success at being a pro author is GIVE MONEY TO DEFEAT THE AWFUL YOUNG ADULT TRACT! Out came the wallets. Somebody ran up and dropped in a big bill. I shouted HER NEXT BOOK WILL BE A HUGE BESTSELLER! After the panel they called me over to see the stuffed to overflowing charity bucket. Because nothing motivates my fans like laughter and spite.
I’ll have to email the organizers once they get home and see if we actually did beat YA. 😀
This was the lovely Mrs. Correia’s first ever DragonCon, and she had a blast. Plus this was the first DC I’ve ever been to where the weather was nice. Normally it is like 100 and humid, but this was like 75 with a nice breeze. It was downright abnormal for Atlanta. People could actually wear their costumes all day and not die of heat exhaustion and dehydration.
Dragon has an absurd amount of cosplay. I’m not a good photographer so I don’t take very many pictures myself, but just plug DragonCon costumes into Google and you’ll see what I mean. It is truly a spectacle.
Thousands of volunteers worked their ass off to make this thing run. If you know any con volunteers, thank them, because they are bad asses.
I’ve seen where there are some perpetually outraged whiners whining about the Dragon Awards on the internet today, and doing their best to dismiss or insult DragonCon… Here’s the thing, when seventy thousand nerds gather together to party so hard they take over four blocks of a major US city for four days, they truly do not give a shit that some random snoot thinks they are having fun wrong.
So for all the detractors, rather than waste my time arguing about how your butt hurts, my entire response to you is summed up in this photograph:
Rock on, DragonCon. Keep on being awesome.
The new anthology Forged in Blood is out now.
This was a fun one to work on. All of the stories are set in Mike Williamson’s Freehold universe. The neat part is that the stories are in chronological order, and follow the main character’s sword from early Japanese history through modern times, out into space, into the regular Freehold timeline, and then beyond.
I have the 2nd story in the anthology, because love writing samurai drama. And since it is Freehold, I wrote about a surly old ronin who just wants to be left alone, but who then has an altercation with tax collectors. It is pretty darned good.
The first story was written by my friend Zach Hill, about my character’s ancestor. Zach passed away shortly after writing this story, so he never got to see this come out. It is excellent. Zach was an extremely talented author, and I would love to see lots of people exposed to his work. Here is a great chance.
The story after mine was written by Mike Massa, and jumps ahead to the early 1900s, Imperial Japan. So on and so forth, with the sword being the one continual element that unites the stories. The stories range from dead serious to light hearted.
Check it out.