Paul Genesse is a great writer, editor, and friend of mine (also a member of Writer Nerd Game Night) so when he approached me about putting a short story into an anthology about demons that he was editing, I said that I would love to, but there was no way I could find the time right then. So Volume I of the Crimson Pact had an excerpt from Hard Magic in it.

This year, when Volume II rolled around, I was totally in. My buddy Steve Diamond (also of Writer Nerd Game Night) had an original story about an FBI Agent that literaally can’t die named “Lazarus” Tombs in the first edition. When we got to talking about it, I thought that he’d made a great character, and I wanted to play off what he had done. Only I wrote a guy that not only can die, but knows the exact moment of his death and how it will happen down to the second. He feels he is on a mission from God to fight demosn at the apocolpyse. So then I made him a Marine. 🙂

We ended up writing a short together. (sort of Dead Six style, where I wrote one PoV and he wrote the other).  If you know me on Facebook, this is the story where I had to bring in a bunch of Marines to proof to make sure I hadn’t screwed anything up too badly.

The story takes place during a demonic attack on Quantico. I think it came out great, and Steve and I are planning on doing another for Volume III.

You can get my story in the eBook, and a whole mess of others (like 500 pages worth!) for only $4.99 here http://www.amazon.com/Crimson-Pact-Two-ebook/dp/B005LXST8G/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1315581564&sr=8-6 

And here is a YouTube commercial that they put together for it that is pretty sweet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5UA1INIBX0&feature=relmfu

This was forwarded to me today:

—–Original Message—–
From: Clarkerry [REDACTED TO PROTECT THE STUPID]
Sent: Sunday, September 04, 2011 1:38 AM
To: Info mailbox; “<info”@baen.com
Subject: racist publishing habits of your imprint.

Larry Correra. Blatant racist! I’m a serial follower for many years but not this racist jerk! anyone on any of these panels hes on corner him on why he hates white men —- But still finds their women hot??

*

Uhhh… Yeah… Wow… You got me there. I certainly do find white women hot, which is probably why I’ve been married to a Viking girl for thirteen years.

As a politically opinionated novelist and blogger, I get a lot of hate mail, of which I only share the best with you guys. This one in particular really brightened my day.

I suppose this is what I get for being a Wise Latino. (a term stolen from Sonya Sotomeyor, since that was around the same time that I was filling out some EEOC worksheets at my Military Industrial Complex job and discovered that Portuguese was legally considered Latino by the Department of Labor). 

I remember sneaking across the border (out of California and into Utah) and crossing the desert (I-15, though I stopped in Vegas for lunch) and how hard it was to find work. (I sat in front of Home Depot and waited for somebody to pull up in a pickup and shout “I need two guys that can do tile and a novelist!”)  I’ve been taking all of your good jobs and stealing your white women ever since.

Edward James Olmos is going to play me in the movie.

Clarkerry, you’re a friggin’ idiot. The most racist thing I’ve ever written has been about Elves. My last book was about a heroic white guy from Alabama. If I hated white men then A. I probably shouldn’t choose to live in rural Utah. and B. probably shouldn’t be one.

And please do be careful not to catch your hood on fire at the next cross burning, dumbass.

And on that note, for the rest of you that actually like me, don’t forget that you can now preorder autographed copies of my next two books here: http://www.unclehugo.com/prod/ah-correia-larry.php  One is coauthored with the extremely white Mike Kupari (if he were any more caucasian he would be translucent) and the other one stars some dude with an Irish last name and an Okie girl.

And seriously, do preorder, because these are the only copies that are autographed by both me and Mike, since he will still be in Afghanistan (probably oppressing someone) during release week, and the more we can sell on preorder, the greater chance we can get onto a bestseller list, and then the greater chance that they’ll make that movie about me. (Mike will be played by somebody really white, like Matthew Broderick).

EDIT: I forgot to add, I’m now stealing your white women on Twitter. @monsterhunter45

EDIT 2:  Turns out he has sent more than one to my publisher:

From: Clarkerry [SO TEMPTED NOT TO REDACT THIS]
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2011 9:32 PM
To: Info mailbox; “<info”@baen.com
Subject: larry correia -monster hunter international
I am shocked that you published  this deeply, disturbingly racist author.  

Despite his undeniable talent at telling a rousing tail, his gift is perverted by his hateful stereotyping.

I am a loyal Bean fan, but you should hang your head for giving this bigot a forum.

* Well, I am really sad that he didn’t give any specifics, nor did he talk about my stealing of all the white women again. Personally, I would think that if you were so offended by something an author had done that you would send multiple messages to their publisher, you would at least maybe cite whatever it was that they ‘d done that was supposedly so awful. Because 4,000 of you have read this blog post in the last two days, and none of you seemed to have any idea what I had done wrong either.

Mad props for the improvement in spelling and grammar on this one though.

I got back from DragonCon Sunday night.

DragonCon is like Mardi Gras for nerds… So it is Nerdi Gras, only bigger and more awesome. There isn’t anything else quite like DragonCon. Cram 45,000 official guests into 4 hotels in downtown Atlanta. That’s official purchased a ticket types.  I don’t know how many thousand others just showed up and crashed the party.  I’m guessing a lot.

Then figure a quarter of those are in costume, some of which are damn impressive.  I’m talking, holy crap that is cool type of impressive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can say, “what kind of costumes?” All of them. Seriously, think of something that was in a movie, game, TV show, comic book, novel, or cartoon, and there was somebody dressed as that. And then sometimes a combination of two or more of those things.

And after dark, it was that, only in a g-string or pasties. You wouldn’t think that someone could pull off Colonial Space Marine in a g-string, but yes, it can be done. (uniform standards have changed a bit since my time in the Colonial Space Marines, I’ll tell you what)

I took 200 pictures over three days. Most of which didn’t turn out that good because I was using my camera phone. All of those photos were taken during my brief lulls of downtime while running from event to panel to event, so there were tons of others that I didn’t have a chance.  And sorry guys, I didn’t take pictures of any of the slutty costumes, because I planned on showing all of these to my kids when I got back…  And believe me, DragonCon costumes after dark are not like DragonCon costumes during the day. The day is PG-13. Night is in accordance with the minimum public decency law standards of the city of Atlanta… Mostly.  

I did several panels, a couple signings, a reading, some parties, some dinners, some lunches, a brunch, general schmoozing, and assorted stuff. It was a very busy weekend. I was on 10:00 PM panels two nights in a row, and a few spread out throughout the day. I was on one panel with Laurel K. Hamilton and Sherilyn Kenyon with about 500 people in the audience. Obviously, most of them weren’t there for me. I got to meet a ton of other authors for the first time, some of whom I was already a fan of, like Jonathan Mayberry. (I think my readers would like his Joe Ledger books). 

We did a Monster Hunter Nation flash mob on Saturday. Me and the Baen staff were handing out bright green MHI hats at all of my events and inside was a set of instructions on where to meet. (no, we didn’t sing or dance, I don’t think my fan base are the dancing types). We congregated in the lobby of the Marriott, and I used my range officer voice to get everyone’s attention over the hum of 10,000 people. I’ve still got it. (and apparently, my range officer voice saying MONSTER HUNTER NATION ASSEMBLE got all of the security guard’s attention too). Then we all put our hats on, took pictures, and handed out ads for MHI.  Considering that I was competing for attention against sexy ninjas with laser whips, I’d say we got a pretty darn good turnout.

Thanks to Speaker to Lab Animals for his donation of a hotel room to serve as the Baen Barfly area. I got to hang out with John Ringo and talk about our upcoming collaboration. I’m really excited for this one, especially after John brought up some of the new supporting character ideas. We are going to get our kung-fu on and punch some giant ants to death, because my life is awesome.  

DragonCon is now my favorite Con.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439134626/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=survivalcom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=1439134626 

Hey everybody. I should have posted this last night, but my brain was still recovering from DragonCon.  Atlanta is very moist.  So returning to zero humidity at 6,000 feet above sea level makes you a little bit loopy. However the Yard Moose seemed very happy to have me back.

My friend and fellow Baen author, Mike Williamson, has just released his latest novel. Most of you have heard of Freehold, and this is set in the same universe. Thing big sci-fi universe, big ideas, lots of politics, and then take it down to the nitty gritty dirty, punch the other space ninja in the face level. Full disclosure, I’ve not read this one yet, but I enjoy Mike’s work, and he has improved with everything he’s written.

Here is the synopsis:

Kenneth Chinran commanded the elite unit assigned to take out an entire planet in a terrible war.  Millions died; billions more perished in the aftermath.  One doesn’t send a sociopath on such a mission.  A sociopath might not stop.  Chinran did stop – but in the process nearly lost his sanity and his soul. 

But one of Chinran’s men was a sociopath going in.  Now he’s a trained sociopath with the knowledge and firepower to take out entire tactical teams, evaporate through security cordons and change identity at will. Who do you send after a killer like that?  There’s only one answer:  the man who trained him.  The man who made him.

Like I’ve explained before on book bombs, the key to getting on bestseller lists is all about velocity. The biggest number of sales in the shortest amount of time. So if this is something that you would be interested in picking  up anyway, this is totally the week to buy it.  If you think putting me on the NYT ticks the literati-elite off, imagine putting the dude that wrote Freehold (the Libertarian Space Manifesto) on there!

I’m back from DragonCon. Report to come later. It was AWESOME.

I’ve got 297 emails to read in my inbox. I will get back to you.

I’m out of patches. I thought I had more than I did, but should have another box arrive soon. So if you ordered in the 2nd half of August, they will be late.

No. There are no more DragonCon MHI hats. We handed out all 500 of them. I kept one for myself.