Audible is doing a promo right now for their most popular narrators. I’ve been so damned lucky getting good narrators.

For Bronson Pinchot http://www.audible.com/mt/NarratorsGreatestHitsVol4_Pinchot Hard Magic is the chart topper. (Seriously, the audiobook sales numbers on the Grimnoir series are amazing) Dead Six is also on his top 10 list. I’ll tell you, Bronson is such a pro to work with, and he brings the performances to life.

And Son of the Black Sword is up there for Tim Gerrard Reynolds. He’s got this really cool voice that brings gravitas to an epic fantasy series. http://www.audible.com/mt/NarratorsGreatestHitsVol4_Reynolds

And the one that started it all for me, they’ve got Monster Hunter up there for Oliver Wyman. Oliver has such an incredible range, and he’s just gotten better and better narrating the MHI series as he’s gotten into the characters. http://www.audible.com/mt/NarratorsGreatestHitsVol4_Wyman

Ray Porter is also up there as one of their best narrators. He is the guy who did my Warmachine novels, but those are my least known books, and didn’t make his top ten list. I’ll tell you though, if you’ve not read them, they’re really pretty good. And Ray is an extremely fun narrator.

Now I just need to write more Tom Stranger so we can get Adam Baldwin up there as one of their top narrators.

That title isn’t joking. This post is aimed at my liberal readers. I’m a libertarian leaning Republican and gun expert, who thinks you are wrong about a lot of stuff, but I’m not writing this to gloat about your loss. For the record, I disliked all the presidential candidates.

Judging by your social media over the last few days many liberals have been utterly terrified that your government might turn tyrannical or that evil people will now be emboldened to hurt you. I’m going to let you in on a little thing the other half of the country is familiar with to keep those unlikely, yet catastrophic, events from happening.

And that my lefty friends, is 2^nd Amendment.
Having just gone through a war against a tyrannical government, the Founders understood that governments can go bad, so they made sure to note our God given right (or we’ll say naturally occurring right, since a bunch of you are atheists) to keep and bear arms in order to defend ourselves. The 2^nd Amendment isn’t about hunting or “sporting purposes”, it’s about having weapons that you can fight with. As an added bonus, being able to protect yourself from a tyrannical government means that you’re a lot better equipped to deal with any common criminal who decides to hurt you.
Before I get into the details about how to enjoy your newly discovered 2^nd Amendment rights, let me just say that I get you’re sad, angry, bitter, and fearful. But just like my people over the last few elections, you’ll get over it. The really hyperbolic freak outs about Literally Hitler make you sound just like the Alex Jones crowd worried that Obama was going to herd Christians into FEMA camps last time. So take a deep breath and relax. Your friends and neighbors are the same as they were last week. The vast majority weren’t voting because racism, they voted against the status quo and a really unlikable Democrat. And no, they aren’t going to round you up into cattle cars.

But in the off chance they do, let’s get you prepared!

WHAT GUNS ARE FOR

I’ll start out with the far more likely threat, violent criminals who would assault, rape, or murder you, and how to deal with them.

Many of you have been sharing every second hand account, rumor, and urban legend about some random doofus in Somnambulant, Wisconsin or Bumfight, Louisiana, shouting an ethnic slur or spray painting a swastika on a wall. Newsflash, in a country with a third of a billion people, some percentage of them are going to be assholes. I hate to break it to you, but the assholes were there before, and they will be there forever. Just right now the news has a self-serving incentive to report about these assholes in particular.

But Correia! You’re not a marginalized Mexican transsexual Muslim! What do you know!?

I know that anybody can be “marginalized” if they walk into the wrong neighborhood. Violence can happen to any of us, and it does, all the time. Whether your odds of being a victim are good or bad, it still sucks when you draw the short straw and somebody tries to hurt you. Whoever you are, you are correct to be concerned for your safety. Anybody can be attacked, and everybody should be prepared to deal with it.

Since this is addressed to liberals, spare me the usual nonsense about “Victim Blaming”. We don’t have time for silliness. If you’re banking on the goodwill of evil people to keep you safe, you are a sucker. If I urge you to look both ways before crossing the street, I’m not victim blaming, I’m trying to keep your stupid ass from getting hit by a bus.

Whether you are being attacked because some jerk doesn’t like your head scarf and you voted for Hillary, or getting pulled out of your car and beaten because the local hooliganry thinks you voted for Trump, or some dude with no coherent political philosophy beyond the voices in his head told him to murder you and rape your dog, it doesn’t matter… There are evil people in the world, and they will hurt you simply because it amuses them.

So there are bad people who want to hurt you. Now what do you do?

Regardless of what you worship, who you love, or you skin tone, you have the unalienable right to self-defense. The 2^nd is an equal opportunity amendment.

Calling the cops is awesome. If they get there in time they will be happy to save your ass, but that’s assuming they get there in time. Violent encounters usually happen very quickly. Good police response time is measured in minutes. You can be dead in seconds. Plus, your side is the one that doesn’t trust the cops anyway. It isn’t Republicans out there protesting the police. So why is it you expect agents of the state to risk their lives to save you? Gratitude?

What most of us in the right side of the country understand is that responsible adults need to be able to defend themselves. That means owning guns and learning how to use them. (To be fair, many on the left have also come to this same conclusion already, but they have to keep that opinion to themselves so the rest of you don’t yell at them).

Unarmed self-defense is great, when it works. I’m a fan. Less-lethal devices like pepper spray are great, when they work. But trust me on this, everybody who does this professionally, who has spent years learning about how violence really works, we all have guns.

You’ve probably been taught that guns are frightening murder rods, just itching to go shoot up a school. You want to survive, get over that nonsense. I know that most of the stuff liberals think they know about firearms is flat out wrong. I’m here to tell you as a retired professional firearms instructor that sadly everything Occupy Democrats memes have taught you is incorrect. Whatever you think you know, check those preconceived notions at the door, because it is probably biased garbage.

Firearms are not magic. They are neither evil nor good. They are just tools that throw a projectile. That’s it. There’s no voodoo involved. They are items that allow a physically weak person to survive a confrontation against somebody who is stronger, or there’s more of them, or whatever other nightmare scenario you come up with. I know many of you are scared of guns, but just think of them like fire extinguishers, but for murderers.

HOW SELF-DEFENSE WORKS

Just because you have a gun doesn’t mean that you can just go and shoot whoever you feel like. I see this pop up all the time amongst my liberal friends. Like if a redneck sees a black dude, he can just blast him because the redneck felt uncomfortable. First off, no, that’s not how the laws work. Second off, maybe if you’d quit proclaiming everybody who isn’t part of your clique is a racist murderer, you’d win more elections.

Here is another article where I go into a great deal of detail about when it is legal to shoot somebody. https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/11/25/the-legalities-of-shooting-people/ I taught this stuff for a living. Trust me, I know more about this than the staff writers at Salon. Almost everything I’ve ever seen from a liberal publication concerning self-defense laws is incorrect. And I’m not just talking like I enjoy guns and they don’t, I mean they have such a basic, elementary misunderstanding of the legalities of shooting people that we aren’t even inhabiting the same reality. My reality is the one that the jury instructions will be issued from.

The short version is that in order to be justified in using lethal force against another human being, they need to be demonstrating the ability to seriously harm you, the opportunity to do so, and acting in a manner that a reasonable person would believe they are an immediate threat.

So no, you can’t just shoot somebody walking down the street in a Trump hat. That would be Murder. Or considering most liberals don’t understand basic marksmanship, more likely Attempted Murder. However, if somebody dressed entirely in Confederate flags walks up, screams DIE GAY ABORTION VEGAN and tries to stab you with his commemorative Heinrich Himmler SS dagger, it’s game on (don’t blame me, I’m basing this hypothetical scenario on what most of your facebook feeds sound like).

Go read that article. As a bonus once you understand how use of force laws actually work, you won’t be able to get as spun up with outrage over every shooting that makes the news.

LEARN HOW GUNS WORK

Now that you’ve decided that you should be able to protect yourself from sexist war bands, and you know the basics about when it’s okay to shoot people, you want to go get strapped. But hold your horses there, Che. Guns are tools, but they are also very unforgiving of stupidity, and the last thing I want to have happen is one of you liberals shoot somebody on accident, because then you’ll be trying to pass more laws to punish people like me. First you need to learn how to be safe.

Seek out your local gun range. Sadly, for those of you living in deep blue areas, this will be difficult because the politicians you have voted for have run off most of your local gun ranges. Now that you’re afraid the state can’t/won’t protect you, I hope you realize that was a bad call.

But if you do have one in driving distance, most ranges will have ads posted for upcoming basic classes. Contrary to what you’ve been told about the ultra evil National Rifle Association, the majority of what the NRA does is conduct basic safety training to keep newbies from shooting themselves in the foot. They will walk you through the fundamental rules of gun safety, mechanics, and storage.

Here is another mind blowing factoid for you liberals, the NRA was actually started by Union army officers to train recently freed blacks how to defend themselves from the Democrat KKK. The first gun control laws in America were racist in origin, and aimed at disarming “undesirables” like blacks or the Irish. So in that respect, not much has changed.

For those of you in the LGBTWTFBBQ community, in the aftermath of the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting, a transsexual friend of mine started Operation Blazing Sword. https://www.facebook.com/OperationBlazingSword/ It is a network of firearms instructors across the country who are volunteering to help out gay and trans people who are new to guns learn about basic safety and firearms familiarization. I helped them get started. Check their map. They’ve probably got somebody near you willing to help.

If you haven’t blocked all of them yet for having dissenting opinions, you can ask your gun owning friends and family for advice. I would still recommend talking to actual experts though, just because we know what we’re doing, and we personally haven’t had to listen to you talk about how we’re all baby murdering psychopaths over Thanksgiving dinner. But if they love you, they’ll be happy to help you learn about how guns work. If you don’t have any friends who own guns, you may want to ask yourself how you live in such an echo chamber.

Again, most of what you’ve been told about the gun culture is a myth. We want you to be able to defend yourself, and we want you to be safe and responsible doing it.

HOW GUN LAWS WORK

Now it gets really complicated. And that’s entirely your fault. See, traditionally Democrats don’t like the 2^nd Amendment and historically have done everything in their power to screw with it. Your gun laws are going to vary dramatically based upon where you live. It might be really difficult and expensive for you to exercise your 2^nd Amendment rights, or it might be relatively easy.

But you’re scared right now! Well, that’s too bad. Because for the most part Democrats have tried to make it so that citizens have to abdicate their responsibilities and instead entrust that only state can defend everyone… That doesn’t seem like such a bright idea now that you don’t trust who is running the state, huh?

You might get attacked in your home, but let’s be realistic, you’re way more likely to be attacked out in public. Accordingly, democrats have made it way harder to have a gun where you are most likely to need it. If your state is red or purple, you probably have an inexpensive way to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon so that you can be armed everywhere. The bluer your state, the more unlikely/expensive that becomes, and in the most exclusive cities, unless you are a politician, movie star, or body guarding a politician or movie star, you are basically out of luck.

Oh yeah, it kind of goes without saying by this point, but most of what you think you know about what gun laws do is wrong. I know you think you’ve been helping with your demands to Do Something, but you aren’t. I wrote this article a few years ago in the aftermath of Sandy Hook. It is one of the most widely read articles on gun control laws ever written. https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/06/23/an-opinion-on-gun-control-repost/

I am a big fan of concealed carry, and if you are honestly worried about murderous racists being emboldened, then you should be too. If your state has a concealed weapons permit, I would recommend taking that class. Even if you are not personally ready to take that big step of actually keeping a firearm on your person, the class should provide a great primer on your state and local laws.

There are thousands of onerous little gun laws. I won’t overcomplicate this, but you guys have been sticking extra gun laws on the books all over the country at every opportunity. In your area you might not be able to buy certain guns, or you’ll have to lock them up in a specific manner, or you’ll have to register them with the state. (now that you’re worried about the state rounding you up, having a registry of which of you own guns seems kind of dumb huh?)

HOW TO BUY A GUN

 

Now that you understand basic safety and marksmanship, let’s get you armed.

Contrary to what Barack Obama told you, Glocks are not easier to get than books. Hell, I’ll trade an autographed copy of each of my published novels for a Glock if you’ve got any spares lying around.

If you haven’t completely alienated all of your pro-gun friends by blaming them for every mass murder that’s ever happened, now would be a great time to ask them to come shopping with you.

Find your local gun store. Go there. Ask the nice people behind the counter questions about what is the best gun for you needs. They are usually very helpful, however, don’t tell them that you are a liberal, because since you’ve previously tried to ban everything you’re now buying, they will probably laugh at you. That’s expected, because your people do kind of malign them constantly and have repeatedly tried to ruin their livelihood. Oh well, live and learn. You know better now.

Shockingly, you will quickly discover that the gun best suited for your home self-defense needs is probably one of the guns that the news would call “assault weapons”. In reality that’s a gibberish term to scare newbs, but remember, most of what you’ve been taught is complete bullshit. You want the best tool for the job. Yes. It looks scary. That’s kind of the point.

If you live in a place with concealed carry laws, you will probably want one of those deadly high capacity assault pistols too. In regular America we just call those handguns. Have the experts help pick one out that suits your lifestyle and manner of dress. Then make sure you get a good holster to carry it safely. Common newb mistake is to get a decent gun and a crap holster. Don’t do that.

Once you’ve picked your firearms, you will need to fill out a federal 4473 form, provide ID (gasp! Racist!), and the shop will call in your background check to make sure you aren’t a felon, illegal alien, or otherwise prohibited person. Since this check is computerized it only takes a few minutes.

Now that is how it works in most states. If you are lucky enough to live in a blue state liberal paradise, then you may have to deal with extra laws. Like mandatory waiting periods, special permits, or you’ve got to jump through a bunch of other onerous hoops before you are allowed to defend yourself… But hey, you voted for that. Suck it up, buttercup.

GET BETTER

 

Now you need to learn to shoot. It doesn’t work like the movies.

There are a lot of people out there who do what I used to do, so find the professional firearms instructors in your region and take some classes. Your local ranges and stores will know who is teaching or will have ads posted. A good instructor won’t just teach you how to hit the target, but will teach you basic tactics, and when/how to use your gun. I spent a big chunk of my time teaching people how to avoid fights and not make stupid decisions.

The more you shoot, the more you train, the more comfortable you will become. Your confidence will grow. If something awful happens you can be part of the solution instead of just another victim. You won’t rise to the occasion, you will default to your lowest level of training. So get trained.

Oh yeah, this training part gets expensive too. Government regulations have driven up the cost of ammunition. You get one guess which party is responsible for that. And around the blue cities you’ve closed all of your shooting ranges because guns are scary and loud (oh yeah, we could fix that, but Democrats made it illegal or really expensive to make guns quieter), so you’ll have to drive further in order to train. Let me check… Nope, I’m still fresh out of pity.

WHAT ABOUT DOOMSDAY?

Now the elephant in the room. I’ve seen a lot of you going on about how terrified you are for all your “marginalized” friends, that the government is going to turn tyrannical and genocidal, and murder them by the million. I don’t think that’s actually going to happen, but let’s say it did. We’re talking full on Gestapo Stasi jack boots and cattle car time. Bear with me through this hypothetical situation, that stuff about ability/opportunity/immediate threat is actually happening, but it is systematically being carried out by agents of the state against its own citizens. I’m talking war in the streets.

I keep seeing you guys saying that you’re going to “fight harder”. No offense, but bullshit. What are you going to do? Call more innocent bystanders racists? Post more articles from Salon even harder? Have a protest and burn your local CVS? Block more freeways with your bodies? Guess what. If the government has actually gone full tyrannical they’re just going to machinegun your dumbass in the street. They are going to drive through your roadblock, and your bodies will grease the treads of their tanks.

That’s what actual tyrants do. So despite your bitching, virtue signaling, and panic attacks, we’re a long way off of that.

There is a saying that has long been common in my half of the country. There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty, soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. You can debate, vote, and go to court in order to get things changed. You only go ammo box when those other things no longer work, because once you do, there is no going back.

God willing, America never gets to that point, because if we ever go to war with ourselves again, then it will be a blood bath the like of which the world has never seen. We have foolishly created a central government so incomprehensibly powerful, that to stop it from committing genocide would require millions of capable citizens to rise up and fight.

Congratulations. Now you understand why the Framers put the 2^nd Amendment in there. It is the kill switch on the Republic, and everyone with a clue prays we never have to use it.

Right now you guys are angry and talking a lot of shit. This is all new to you. My side is the one with the guns, training, and the vast majority of the combat vets, and we really don’t want our government to get so out of control that this ever happens. Only fools wish for a revolution. But that big red button is still there in case of emergency because if a nation as powerful as America ever turned truly evil then the future is doomed. As Orwell said, if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.

That’s the real meaning of the 2^nd Amendment. So don’t screw around with it. If you do you’re no better than the fat wannabes running around the woods in their surplus camo and airsoft plate carriers… You don’t get that, but all my gun culture readers know exactly who I’m talking about. They are the morons CNN trots out whenever they need to paint all gun owners as irresponsible inbred redneck violent dupes for your benefit.

And spare me the typical talking points about how an AR-15 can’t fight tanks and drones… It’s way beyond the scope of this article, but you don’t have a flipping clue what you’re talking about. Every HuffPo guest columnist thinks they are Von Clauswitz. They aren’t.

This Doomsday option is something we never want to use, but which we need to maintain just in case. It is also another reason Hillary lost. One motivator for Americans to vote for Trump was that Hillary hates the 2^nd Amendment. Her husband put the biggest gun ban we’ve ever had in place, and she has been exceedingly clear that she hates guns and would get rid of all of them if she could.

And doing that would push that big red button.

When the already super powerful government wants to make you even more powerless, that scares the crap out of regular Americans, but you guys have been all in favor of it. Take those nasty guns! Guns are scary and bad. Don’t you stupid rednecks know what’s good for you? The people should live at the whim of the state!

But now that the shoe is on the other foot, and somebody you distrust and fear is in charge for a change, the government having all sorts of unchecked power seems like a really bad idea, huh?

Absolute power in the hands of anyone should terrify you. The 2^nd Amendment is there to make sure some of that power always remains in the hands of the people.

CONCLUSION

So that’s it. That’s how you go down the path of responsible gun ownership.

I don’t care how marginalized you think you are. Get armed. Get trained. Be prepared to defend yourself and your loved ones. That’s part of being a responsible adult.

And quit trying to disarm the rest of us.

##

As a rule of thumb authors should never respond to their negative reviews on Amazon. No matter how stupid the review, that is the customer’s opinion. But sometimes I just can’t resist. The following are all one stars for my first novel, Monster Hunter International. And yes, I did actually post these comments.

1.0 out of 5 stars
Sorry, I don’t believe in Vampires of any sort or werewolves or orks or fairies. I read the book because it was free, and I deleted any requests for future Monster Hunter books.

AUTHORS NOTE: That is because it is fiction.

 
1.0 out of 5 stars
15 year old me would give it 4 stars. So, there’s that. Kudos.
I had to stop reading when my eyes rolled out of my head.

So what you are saying is that 15 year old you was way cooler than you are.

1.0 out of 5 stars You will love this book if you are Glenn Beck
Completely agree with all of the one star reviews here. You will love this book if you are Glenn Beck.

Then it would be very thoughtful of you to give Glenn Beck one of the nice leather bound editions for Christmas.
1.0 out of 5 stars Give it a skip
Want to read a long novel about an unrealistically humble badass who turns out to be the chosen one, complete with love at first sight, getting the girl in spite of the stereotypically obnoxious other guy, the most cliché monsters you can think of, and the libertarian gun-nut author reminding you of his political views every three pages? Then you’ll love this book.

AUTHORS NOTE: Holy shit. You make this book sound awesome.

 

1.0 out of 5 stars Should have been a comic book
Monster Hunter is great if you are a 12 yr. old boy, hooked on graphic, gory video games and your mom says you need to start reading. Just don’t do a book report on it for school.

AUTHORS NOTE: Great book for young adults. Gets youth to read. Would make a great comic book. Thanks!

 

1.0 out of 5 stars I do not recommend reading this book.
This is not a good book. I am a huge fan of urban fantasy. I’ve read all the Dresden File books, I’ve watched every season of Supernatural. I get it. This book reads like the revenge fantasy of an angry 14 year old. Yes there are monsters and guns, but it’s tied together with a pathetic, loathsome main character. I couldn’t finish it. The cover art is the best part of this book.

AUTHORS NOTE: Luckily Jim Butcher must enjoy the revenge fantasies of 14 year olds, because check out his Monster Hunter International short story in the upcoming Monster Hunter Files anthology.

 

1.0 out of 5 stars This book reads like a bad Dresden Files fan fiction written by a …
Awful. Truly, stunningly awful. The characterizations are bland and frankly nonsensical, the plot is slow, and the author describes the guns in terms of makes and models and it is still the single most detail he puts into anything in the book. This book reads like a bad Dresden Files fan fiction written by a right-wing conspiracy theorist. Which, come to think of it, is precisely what it is.

AUTHORS NOTE: If you love Dresden Files, check out Jim Butcher’s short story in the upcoming Monster Hunter International anthology for right wing conspiracy theorist gun nuts!

1.0 out of 5 stars Don’t bother
Poorly written and edited. Stick-figure characters, bad plot. I suppose if you’re really crazy about gun stats it might be worth reading – nah. Better to get a subscription to a good magazine.

AUTHORS NOTE: For a good magazine I would recommend Cat Fancy.

 

1.0 out of 5 stars Yawn
This book is full of transparent characters and situations. Every plot point and joke is telegraphed pages ahead like the worst of a SNL skit. I’m not sure why it gets so many good reviews or even why it was published.

AUTHORS NOTE: It was published in order to make obscene sums of money. But I too love SNL, so thanks for the compliment!

 

I wrote the following post on Facebook yesterday morning:

Time to vote for Brain Cancer vs. Colon Cancer. I can vote for Ice Cream, but that’s just a protest vote, because we’re getting cancer either way.

Some of you may think that Colon Cancer is the lesser of two cancers. I can respect that choice. Because Brain Cancer really sucks.

But if you think either of these is actually going to be good, you’re smoking crack. I truly don’t get the cheer leaders, who are like Yay Colon Cancer! Colon Cancer is going to be AWESOME!

In the primary we could have voted for Ham Sandwich or Tolerable Rash even, but oh no, we said we wanted Cancer like the other guys. Sure, the tumor kept proclaiming it was actually All You Can Eat Shrimp, but it was pretty obviously a tumor on a colon.

In the unlikely event Colon Cancer wins (Colon Cancer isn’t polling well in most swing states) then I will cross my fingers and hope that it turns out to be a mild case of Colon Cancer.

 

##

 

And then after voting, I played videogames and didn’t look at election returns until around midnight.

Best moment of the night, my wife was lying in bed next to me, also reading her phone, and says “Hillary came in third in Utah.” And then we both started giggling for like three minutes straight.

As somebody who didn’t really have a horse in this race, who had to come to terms with not getting what I wanted months ago, I’ve got some comments for the rest of you. (for the record my primary vote was for Ham Sandwich, only All-You-Can-Eat-Shrimp/Colon Cancer supporters declared that was actually Canadian Bacon because they didn’t understand how the Naturalization Acts work, and his dad killed JFK)

I’m not happy Trump won, but I’m ecstatic that Hillary lost.

From what I heard this morning (haven’t looked to confirm yet, and woke up late) Trump got fewer votes than Romney, but Hillary got WAY less votes than Obama. So people decided they wanted colon cancer instead of brain cancer, but I don’t think very many of us were super enthusiastic about either. They just wanted the other crappy one to lose.

This election turned into “My authoritarian New Yorker is better than yours!” And shockingly enough, a authoritarian New Yorker won. Yay! Go cancer!
I did not see a Trump victory coming (apparently, neither did any of the professional pollsters). It is a testament to the sheer, banal, corrupt, unlikable nature of Hillary that she couldn’t beat the guy they picked as the most beatable. Maybe the painfully biased media has finally worn out its welcome, and people distrust their narratives too much for them to carry the day. You can only call cry wolf so many times before the villagers quit listening. I mean, come on, they portrayed mushy squishy Romney as the second coming of Satan-Hitler. When everybody who disagrees with liberals is a racist hatemonger of evil, people start to tune them out. So when somebody actually says something outlandish, and it gets reported, everybody is tuning them out or assuming it is nothing blown out of proportion, like usual.

Way to go media. You’re bigger losers than Hillary.

So we get Trump… Now I can only hope that I’m completely wrong about Trump’s character, and that he won’t govern like a thin skinned authoritarian. That would be nice, but I won’t hold my breath.

In fact, I would love to be wrong. I pray to be wrong.

I would like to get a good replacement for Scalia and repeal Obamacare (I’m sure everybody seeing their super jacked up health insurance bills at the end of the year didn’t help Hillary much either). But again, I’m not getting my hopes up. How those two things shake out should tell us a lot about how the next few years are going to go.

The president can’t know everything. Trump will either surround himself with good professionals who know their shit and he’ll listen, or he’ll appoint sycophants and yes men.

Either way, I don’t know how it’s going to go, so I’m going to keep stockpiling canned food and ammunition. Not panicking, mind you, that’s just what I’d be doing anyway.

I’m also seeing a lot of liberals this morning talking about how now is the time for reconciliation and “reaching across the aisle”. Ha! Remember when Obama got in, and “Elections have consequences”, and he had a “mandate” and you shoved Obamacare down America’s throats even though a lot of us didn’t want it? Yeah… It is probably going to be like that.

(and we were right. Obamacare sucks. It mathematically sucks. You idiots set Trump up to look like a rock star right out the gate, because simply getting rid of that thing will cause an economic boom)

All that stuff I’ve heard over the last few years about the OBSRUCTIONIST republicans blocking your sainted president from doing what he wanted? No shit. That’s how our government works. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, and there is a president who wants to do stuff you don’t like, you’re going to expect the people you voted for to try and stop him. And then Trump will probably still cram through some Executive Orders you don’t like. Yep. We know exactly how that feels.

On that note, this is why if the idea of an executive power in the hands of That Other Asshole terrifies you, maybe then the executive shouldn’t have that power at all. Because eventually The Other Asshole Team is going to win, and do to you, what you did to them.

So liberals, remember laughing off and excusing things like Fast & Furious or the IRS targeting political opponents? Oh, silly republicans, the president has a phone and a pen and shut up! Uh huh… That kind of behavior seems terrifying now that somebody like Trump has it, doesn’t it?

Serves you right.

For the liberals flipping out this morning about getting loaded into cattle cars, chill out. There are plenty of legit reasons to dislike and distrust Trump without getting hysterical over memes and conspiracy theories. Yeah, he’ll probably suck and do things you hate. Welcome to what the other half of America has gone through for the last eight years. We lived. So will you. Probably.

On that note, if any of you hysterical melting down types actually believe Trump is Literally Hitler who is going to gas all the Gay Mexican Muslims in concentration camps, your local gun store is thataway. The nice men behind the counter will be happy to teach you about basic gun safety, how self-defense laws work, and then sell you one of those evil black rifles you’re so scared of. And then in the unlikely but catastrophic event the government did ever turn tyrannical and genocidal, you’d be in a position to do something other than cry about it on Facebook… But  I see a mass liberal run on guns to be about as likely as Trump turning out to be Reagan II, but hell, I’ve been wrong a lot this year!

 

 

Hey all, Jack Wylder here. With Larry pushing hard to get Monster Hunter Siege out the door by Christmas he hasn’t had a whole lot of time to blog here lately so I figured the time was right to start a new thing- writer interviews!
This week we’re talking with Mike Kupari- author of Her Brother’s Keeper and co-author of the Dead Six Series with Larry. Questions in bold, responses in italics.

To start with, how should Kupari be pronounced?
KOO-pa-ree

What inspired the Dead Six series in the first place?

From 2004 to 2005, I worked as a security contractor at a US base in the Gulf Emirate of Qatar. I lived there for a year, and I actually lived in the city of Doha, not on base. It was a unique experience, and taught me a great deal about how the Middle East actually is vs. what you hear about in American media. Being over there got the creative juices flowing (it’s not as gross as it sounds), even though, at the time, I had no aspirations of being a novelist.

For those who don’t know, how did Larry get involved?

Way back in 2003 or so, I wrote a story on an internet gun board called The High Road. In 2006, having just moved to Utah, I wrote a sequel to it set in the Middle East. I didn’t have a plan or anything; I’d write a chapter, then write the next a day or so later, making it up as I went along. At the time, I didn’t really know Larry, though I’d transferred a handgun through his gun store.

Also at the time, Larry wasn’t the International Lord of anything. He was another aspiring wannabe with big dreams and a stack of rejection letters. He’d had absolutely no luck selling Monster Hunter to anyone, but wasn’t giving up.

Well, he was reading my story, and messaged me and asked if he could write scenes from the perspective of another character. That was how Lorenzo was born. The back-and-forth shtick, with two competing first person narratives, became the signature of the series. It’s still fairly unique, I think. I don’t know of a whole lot of other novels that have used this technique.

During this time, though, Larry self-published MHI, and heavily self-promoted it. He eventually got it accepted by Baen, it became a runaway success, and the rest is old news. After MHI, he was looking for another book to publish. We’d been planning a sequel to my last story online, and he did one of his binge-writing sessions and cranked out something like ninety thousand words (that was eventually mostly incorporated into Swords of Exodus). Not wanting it to go to waste, he started bugging me to agree to clean up the story we’d written together and submit it to a publisher.

This was 2008 or so. At first I told him no way. I thought it wasn’t fit to publish, and given that the POV character was originally intended for a not-at-all-serious first-person story, I was worried people would think the story was some kind of self-aggrandizement (TV Tropes didn’t exist back then, and “Mary Sue” wasn’t in widespread usage). Plus, I’d just enlisted in the Air Force and was beginning my career as an EOD Technician.

You know what finally convinced me? Larry read me a passage from a novel from a huge, big-name thriller author. I mean, this guy has books in airport bookstores and gets interviewed on TV. Larry read it, and I was like, “seriously? I can do better than that.”

Turns out, even the most successful guys in the industry don’t churn out Pulitzer material every time. Sometimes you just need a good story to tell. Besides, I told myself, writing seemed to be my only real innate talent. I seemed a shame to let it go to waste. Eight years later, here I am.

I owe Larry a great deal for talking me into pursuing this. But, to be fair, I paid him back by giving him the idea for Grimnoir and Tom Stranger. YOU’RE ALL WELCOME.

What was the most challenging part of writing it?

The hardest part of writing Dead Six for me was my own inexperience. Writing a novel can be an intensely frustrating endeavor, and often you’re your own harshest critic and worst enemy. At the same time, from June 2009 on, I was down at Eglin AFB, Florida, attending NAVSCOLEOD (Naval School, Explosive Ordnance Disposal). I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that EOD School was the most challenging and stressful thing I’ve ever done. It really put a damper on my productivity, and I’m pretty slow to begin with.

Working with friends can be difficult; did you and Larry have any problems working together and if so, how did you handle them?

Larry and I operate on pretty much the same creative wavelength. We had very few real creative differences along the way. The biggest frustration for him, I think, was waiting for me to catch up. Larry writes fast. I mean, he writes fast even amongst professional writers, and I write slow. Being in the middle of the hardest thing I’ve ever done, while working on Dead Six, certainly didn’t help matters any.

My life had its share of ups and downs over the next few years, while working on the sequels, and turmoil in real life really tends to stymie my creative process. I was gone a lot, too, for the Air Force, and was kept quite busy.

I’m fairly certain Larry has wanted to choke me sometimes. He’s even swore at me (it was adorable, I wanted to hug him). For my part, he’s so optimistic and happy that sometimes I want to punch him. I didn’t, because he’s way bigger than me, and really, he’s impossible to stay mad at. For all of the accusations of him being angry, hateful, judgmental, spiteful, or mean, he’s really one of the nicest people I’ve ever known.

He is also a very patient man, all things considered. One of the hardest parts of being a writer, the thing that discourages most people, is not believing in yourself. I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true. Most people who have the inclination to be a writer don’t try because, like me, they assume they’re no good. It’s a balancing act, of course; you can’t get so up your own ass that you can’t take advice or criticism, because even the best can churn out a dud. That said, you’ll never get anywhere if you don’t try. Throughout the whole process, Larry was very encouraging, and helped me along when if, on my own, I might’ve given up.

We do have very different personalities, though, and I think I make a good foil for him. Between his excessive optimism and my dreary cynicism, between us we make a fairly well-rounded individual.

What part are you most proud of?

My time as an EOD tech. Getting my Crab pinned on me was the proudest day of my life. I got to do some really cool stuff over the next few years, too: I traveled all over, I blew a lot of things up, I rode around in helicopters, and I shot all kinds of guns. I went through some of the best and worst days of my life with some of the finest, bravest men and women I’ve ever known.

My own EOD career was fairly short, and I only deployed once. Even still, I got to work with people I consider heroes, people who are among the very best in the world at what they do. Not to diminish how amazing and humbling being a writer has been, but being part of a community like that has been hard to top.

Oh, you meant of the books? I knew that. Um…I like how different the Dead Six series is compared to other novels in the genre. Valentine and Lorenzo aren’t your typical cookie-cutter, almost interchangeable action hero archetypes. Both of their story arcs are tales of redemption, albeit in different ways, and both of them grow as people throughout the trilogy.

For me, Valentine was partially an exploration of loss, depression, anxiety, and self-doubt. He’s been through hell and has lost almost everyone he cares about. Some readers have said that he comes across as mopey or whiny, and this was (mostly) intentional. (I think some readers are just being a little harsh on a guy who’s seen that much death.) He’s a reluctant, unlikely hero. He doubts himself. He fails. He makes mistakes. He has regrets. He has to move on with his life, unable to change the past, and having to live with all of that. He also had to come to grips with the fact that he’s an innately talented killer.

Lorenzo is a man on the edge of the abyss, and he gets pushed and pushed while trying to in some way be a good person. He was raised by Mormons and has worked for some of the worst people in the world, doing terrible things, usually rationalizing it to himself. That dichotomy, the conflict of impulses, the struggle with the monster he knows he can be, is central to his character. Eventually, he figures out who he really is.

Both of the walk difficult paths, and both of them suffer mightily along the way. But they also grow, adapt, and evolve, learning to deal with what they can’t change and working through the violence and chaos around them. Despite the dark tone of the stories, I think there’s a positive message in there, and I’m proud of that, too.

If they made a movie of this, who would you cast?

Oh hell, I’m so bad at this. When I first created her, I imagined Ling as resembling a young Lucy Liu, or Gong Li from the Miami Vice movie, but I don’t know of any actresses that match her age and character now, in 2016. Idris Elba, Larry’s unabashed man-crush, should play Antoine. He’d be perfect for the role, in terms of demeanor, screen presence, and physical appearance. I imagine Lorenzo as having the voice of the guy that did Roger Smith and Spike Spiegel, but I couldn’t pick an actor to play him.

I don’t think Dead Six should be a movie. I think it should be one of those violent anime series, where they pay close attention to all the technical details of the guns and gear. Larry and I could fly to Japan to be advisors (hint hint, Funimation). The original soundtrack would have to be in English, though, and possibly dubbed into Japanese.

Dead Six would also make a great first person shooter, in my opinion. License the Frostbite engine they use in the Battlefield series, but make the campaign missions more open-ended. Let the player try different strategies for completing the mission vs. making the whole thing a rail shooter like most Call of Duty games. Plus, having a left-handed FPS protagonist (Valentine) would make me happy.

What’s something most people don’t know about Larry?

He’s not an animal person. I don’t get it, either, but if I had to guess? He grew up on a dairy farm. I think having animals that you don’t eat is just weird to him. He thinks it’s crazy and dumb that I go on road trips with my dog and my bird. I say he doesn’t know how hilarious it is to pull up to a toll booth and have a Conure shout “hello!” to the attendant. (A Colorado county sheriff’s deputy didn’t think it was so funny one time, though.)

A lot of his detractors would probably be shocked to learn just how charitable he is, too. I’m not going to get into any specifics, but he really pays it forward. He’s personally helped friends, family, and fans alike when they fell on hard times, sometimes in big ways. It’s easy to talk about helping your fellow man when your idea of “charity” is voting for politicians who will raise taxes or vote for social spending. It’s another thing altogether to pony up your own money, take a chunk out of your own budget, and use your success to help another human being.

The petty, jealous, small assholes who tear him down in virtual effigy probably don’t see it that way, but they’re probably all terrible people, too.

With this trilogy finished, what’s next for you?

In the works is the sequel to Her Brother’s Keeper, tentatively titled Heirs of Ithaca. I’m under contract for more books after that, including story of a father-son team of post-apocalyptic bounty hunters who pursue mutant collaborators of a failed alien invasion, and something I can only describe as retro-futuristic, noir adventure inspired by the look and feel of Alien, Blade Runner, and Cowboy BeBop. I also have a short story in the upcoming Monster Hunter anthology.