John Brown and I went on the Blasters and Blades podcast to talk about writing, and working together on Gun Runner. We also talked about touring together and the joys of John being confronted at a Barnes and Noble by a guy trying to warn him about the Reptoids from the Hollow Earth. It was a fun show.
YouTube: https://youtu.be/ujQj-crWe-8
The first volume of my short fiction collection, Target Rich Environment, is available on Audible tomorrow.
The hardcopy of the collection came out in 2018, but because many of the stories had already had audio productions scattered across a bunch of other anthologies, Audible passed on making it. However, the audio producer Tantor picked up the whole collection and produced it an all new version of all the stories.
This is a new anthology of heroic fantasy stories, and I’ve got one that I think is pretty awesome called The Dregs.
Also, NEW BLACK COMPANY. Which if you read fantasy, is a pretty big deal.
Songs of Valor
This anthology was done in conjunction with FantaSci, so it has stories from a bunch of well known authors in it AND the winners of the FantasSci writing contest.
It has been a really busy month.
Writing Stuff – my last release was the sci-fi Gun Runner with John D. Brown, which is out now. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should, because it is awesome.
The rough draft for Monster Hunter Bloodlines is done and I’m currently doing an editing pass. It will be out this summer. This is another Owen book in the regular series timeline.
For my next release I have a short story called The Dregs in a fantasy anthology from CKP called Songs of Valor.
My next project to finish is the fantasy collaboration with Steve Diamond. Our working title for the project has been Grunt’s Eye View, but I don’t know if that will be the final title. (my working titles are almost always different than the finals).
I’m editing two more anthologies but I don’t think I can announce the specifics of those yet.
After that, I have another project that just moved up in the writing que, but I can’t announce it yet because contracts are in the mail. I will however tease that this is another Monster Hunter Memoirs book, about one Hunter from the past, set in an entirely different time period. So this one is with a different author, not John Ringo, but using the style that Ringo came up with for the Chad novels.
There are two more novels planned for the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior and I just need to figure out if the next one of those is coming before or after that Memoirs novel.
And the other Grimnoir trilogy is still in the works too.
2020 was my least productive year in a long time. I normally shoot for 10k words a week when I’m writing, but that number drops drastically for editing/touring. I still usually write 2-3 books a year though. There was no travel in 2020, but it made up for it with a variety of other nut kicks. In addition to the regular 2020 bullshit that everybody put up with, we also had to deal with cancer, and though my wife is fine now, that was still a stressful time suck. So I hit about half of my normal production rate for the year, and did about one and a half.
MHB is the first book deadline that I have missed in 12 years. Which is actually kind of impressive all things considered. My goal for 2021 is to make up for 2020 so I’m shooting for 4 big project turn ins. (as a workaholic I honestly don’t get how those one book a decade writers aren’t bored out of their freaking minds).
Appearances – this one might actually start happening again!
I am the guest of honor at FantaSci in North Carolina in a few months. That one is still kind of in flux, but right now it looks like it will be happening, and I plan on attending.
There will be a book tour for Bloodlines, but where that’s going to take place right now I have zero idea.
Dear WorldCon,
You are cowards.
Several years ago, because some of you were angry at me for getting a bunch of people you don’t like award nominations, us lowly deplorable outsiders with the incorrect kind of politics, you treated my publisher, Toni Weisskopf, like garbage. Years later, after you thought the controversy had safely died off, you felt bad about how you acted and tried to make amends. You invited her to be the Guest of Honor. Only you have no concept of honor. And you screwed her over again.
I’m not here to debate what I did for the umpteenth time. I’m not here to talk to the woke mob you bend the knee to. I’m talking to the regular WorldCon people. I’m here to talk about how you’re fucking pieces of shit who turned your back on someone who was once one of you, someone you called friend, and how after you felt guilty about it years later, you tried to make amends. But the instant it became uncomfortable, you threw her under the bus again.
Toni had been participating in WorldCons for decades. She grew up in your scene. She volunteered. She hung out with you. She helped out. When she got into the publishing business she kept on helping out, whatever you needed, she was always there for you. She became an editor, and a damned good one too (and you fucking know it).
In fact, she became one of the best and most successful editors in the history of the genre… yet year after year, she got no prestigious award nomination, and instead you just kept giving the award to the same assholes from the same publishing house, over and over and over, as you ignored Toni because she was at that publishing house. The uncouth one. You talk a big game about “honoring strong women” as you took turns rotating through the same cadre of old white dudes for best editor.
It took me, the barbaric outsider, to rally the barbaric outsider fans to finally get Toni some recognition in your sainted halls. And even though your bleating social justice contingent threw a fit, you know what most of you old time, old school, long attending WorldConners told me in private? Good. About time.
Because even though you hated me and my friends (and trust me, we’re cool with that) you knew that Toni deserved it. Toni had earned it. She had long since put in the work. As George R.R. Martin so haughtily proclaimed when he finally admitted I was right all those years ago, and that Hugos were not for everybody (as long claimed) but rather only for your elite select body of special fans, only people who had served their time deserved your fancy awards. Except by every fucking measure in the universe, Toni had served her time.
Then along came the awards, and you snubbed her. Hell, you didn’t just snub her. They openly mocked her, said all sorts of hateful shit, and you people who claimed to be her friends, you old timers who claimed to be all about the sainted dignity of WorldCon, you sat there, silent and afraid, as they did their little high school mean girl games. Toni got up and left the awards ceremony because she wouldn’t give the sicks fucks the satisfaction of watching her endure it. Unlike you, Toni has dignity.
You fuckers talk a big game about tradition. But then the instant there was heat you crumbled before the woke mob that doesn’t give a shit about your precious traditions either. You even renamed one of your awards just to placate their tantrum.
And when those assholes fucked her over last time, you did nothing. Some of you put up some timid posts, but overall you cowered before the mob you helped create, the same one you mocked me for warning you about. People who claimed to be Toni’s friends sat there, silent, worried that if they did the right thing the mob would come for them next. At least they had the decency to stab her in the front. You stabbed her in the back.
Then several years later, after the old controversy I caused had died off and most of us barbaric outsiders had said screw cheesy WorldCon and moved on with our lives, some of you still felt guilty for how you’d treated Toni, so you extended an olive branch. You offered her the Guest of Honor spot at your little convention. How nice. How fucking magnanimous.
Toni, being a far better human being than any of you could ever aspire to be, thought the offer over. She knew there was risks. She knew that she’d take heat from people on the right (and she has). Morons on my side of the political would call her a sell-out, quisling, traitor, boot licker, so on and so forth, and they did. She got attacked by the useless grifters on both sides, looking for hate clicks. But unlike you, Toni ignores the baying mob and always does what she thinks is the right thing to do. She looked at your peace offering, and said fine, If you want to try and mend fences, okay, I’ll take the heat, I’ll be your guest of honor. She was the bigger person.
She talked to me about her decision. I told her I understood, I wouldn’t do it, but I respected her call, but that she’d surely get yelled at by the idiots on both sides. She already knew, but she thought it was the right thing to do anyway. Because unlike you, Toni actually has a moral compass. Your moral compass is a windsock. Her one mistake in all this was assuming that any of you old time Smofs would have a spine.
Then many months later, after a super contentious and questionable election, when the country is incredibly divided, some little fuckstick, bitter wannabe, alleged writer decided to beg for scraps on Patreon with an “expose” of the alleged evil hatemongery on Baen’s tiny web forum (which Toni has mostly kept around out of tradition, because unlike you fucks she doesn’t just pay lip service to the concept).
This wannabe released a report that was filled with distortions, half-truths, quotes taken out of context, misquotes, errors, innuendo, and outright fucking lies. (and spare me the defense of this dishonest dirtbag, because he’s published like half a dozen pieces of short fic over a decade and has a number of Amazon reviews you can count on your fingers, but with some snooty Nebula noms, so all you old time Smofs know damned good and well exactly what kind of bitter loser poser I’m talking about, because you’ve seen hundreds of them come and go over the years.)
For a far better and more eloquent dismantling of just what a disingenuous hit piece this is, you can read David Weber or Eric Flint’s very detailed takes. David is on the right. Eric is on the left. They can come across the aisle and agree that Jason Sanford is a lying sack of shit. As for me, I’m all out of eloquence. You fuckers are lucky dueling is illegal.
Of course, once called on his lies and obvious horseshit, the guy cries about harassment and plays the victim. Predictable as fucking clockwork. The crusade is picked up by the usual suspects. Worthless vultures looking for hate clicks, the lot of them, and again, you old timers know exactly what parasitic weirdos I’m talking about.
Once you discard the bullshit and stuff that was cherry picked from years ago from that report, at worst a handful of angry no names talked shit that wouldn’t even stand out on Facebook or Twitter (while Sanford acts like this is all happening in a vacuum and current events don’t exist). And if you think that’s bad then you need to get out of your echo chambers and get out into red state America because they are sick of your shit. I’ve heard more subversive conversations recently at my local small town grocery store between literal grandmas than that.
But this nonsense “report” comes out (and is immediately used to try and get the entire publishing house deplatformed off the internet, which would kill our ebook sales, which would financially fuck over hundreds of authors, bipartisan authors, many of which are also supposedly your friends, only you don’t give a shit about that), Toni takes the forum down in self-defense and says she’ll look into the posts in question, but the woke mob erupts as they always do, crying for Toni’s head… And what do you do in response?
You fold like a cheap lawn chair. You kick your guest of honor. So much for your olive branch. So much for your bullshit reaching across the divide.
You cowards disgust me. You’ve got no heart, no spine, and no balls. None of you are worthy to clean Toni’s toilet.
You’re also fucking hypocrites, because if the new WorldCon standard is “some random anonymous assholes said bad things in a space that is nominally under your umbrella, ever, you’re out.” we all know that if applied evenly, that bullshit standard would remove most of your guests. At least all of them who has ever been on the internet, because we’ve all seen the horrible, hateful, cruel, downright fucking evil shit posted in their corners for years.
Oh, but wait… Those comments get a pass. Those always get a fucking pass, no matter how outlandish. If you didn’t have double standards you’d have no standards at all. Re-education camps? Pass. Just drone bomb whoever won’t turn in their guns? Pass. Kill the racists and everybody I don’t like is automatically declared racist? Pass. How many lefty author pages have comments on them right now dancing in blood because a 70-year-old right wing celebrity just died of lung cancer? How about that for your “policy of inclusion”.
You’re about as familiar with the concept of inclusion as you are honor.
Speaking of your mealy-mouthed, wishy washy, double standards… Would booting Toni be more misogynistic? Or Anti-Semitic? Sorry. My bad. My side isn’t the one who gets to ignore every criticism because of identity politics. That’s also a one-way street.
Naw. It isn’t a street. It’s a river of shit that only flows one way.
Some of you know it, but you’re too scared to talk. You’re the ones who piss me off the most. The ones who come to me at events in confidence or send me sheepish emails about what goes on behind the scenes, and how you recognize the rot, the fucking cancer in the bones of your organization. But you do nothing, you say nothing in public, you never take a stand, and so you get bulldozed. Great. You fucking deserve it, cowards. You know who you are.
It’s kind of funny, actually (sad funny, that is). You rallied together to drive me and my people off, and once we were gone, you started eating each other. That’s because you’ve allowed the creation of a mob that is addicted to outrage, and addicts don’t just stop. You allowed it to grow, and now it’s bigger and more powerful in your organization than you are. So with no outspoken people with the wrong politics to attack, you attacked each other. Hell, you let them cancel John Campbell! Toni came back and that gave them a new target, but now that she’s gone (and no openly conservative or libertarian author or editor should ever be gullible enough to take your GoH offer ever again) the mob will go back to cancelling you Smofs. Have fun giving your awards to whoever gave last year’s angriest award speech about how you and everyone you’ve ever enjoyed reading was evil.
Toni is better than you. America is better than you. The world is better than you. On a deep and personal level, I’m glad you keep going out of your way to prove that I was right about you all along. As you ride your little canoe down your shit river into obscurity and irrelevance, the rest of us will say good riddance. We’ll be over here enjoying books and trying not to get cancelled, while you hang out with the book burners cosplaying an Orwell novel.
Good luck.
Sincerely,
Larry F. Correia
Yard Moose Mountain, Utah.
p.s. the “good luck” was sarcastic. You shit heads deserve each other.
