These pics were all sent to me yesterday. That’s right. I’m a trend-setter. Nobody at the high school year book saw that one coming.

Several years ago a film crew from the television news program PrimeLine was given unprecedented access to the staff of Monster Hunter International, a secretive company headquartered in Cazador, Alabama. Chief PrimeLine reporter, Leslie Bing, after learning of the existence of monsters was committed to educating the public about their dangers. Mr. Bing’s original plan was to broadcast the interviews as a series of public service announcements before Halloween. However, the tapes were later seized by an unnamed federal agency and the staff of PrimeLine was admonished to never speak of monsters publically. The only thing that remains from these conversations are the transcripts of the original un-edited PSA footage, presented here for the first time.

Reception Area, MHI headquarters building

PL:  I’m with Earl Harbinger, Director of Operations for MHI, a company that purportedly tracks down and destroys supernatural threats. So, Mr. Harbinger, this is your chance to tell the world about monsters. What does the public need to know to stay safe?

HARBINGER:  You know they’re never gonna let you show this, right?  Cold day in hell before that happens.

PL:  Thank you for your concern, Mr. Harbinger, but here at PrimeLine, we’re dedicated to getting the truth.

HARBINGER: Uh huh… Good luck with that. Agent REDACTED will probably feed you into a wood chipper. If I were to say, on camera, that monsters were real, I’d get shut down by the REDACTED so fast your head would spin.

PL: Well, hypothetically… For our Halloween special, if monsters were real, what would you tell everyone?

HARBINGER:  Hmmm… hypothetically? Buy guns. Lots of guns.

#

CUT TO:  A different office.

PL:  Julie Shackleford, MHI Contracts Manager, has agreed to speak with PrimeLine about a very serious threat. Ms. Shackleford?

SHACKLEFORD: The biggest danger to America’s youth is that whole emo-tween romantic vampire fiction crap that’s caught on. Movies, books, TV, its everywhere.

PL: Excuse me?

SHACKLEFORD: You know, Anne Rice started it, with her brooding, sensitive vampires. Come on, pre-crazy Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in one movie? That’s some man candy. Then you got Twilight, oh barf, where sparkly vampires don’t want to eat you, they just want to be loved and all that EXPLETIVE DELETED. It sends the wrong message to young women. What kind of hundred year old hangs out a high school to pick up dates? Weirdo pedophiles. That’s who. Real vampires love those books. It makes picking up victims much easier.

PL: Really?

SHACKLEFORD: Absolutely. Speaks directly to camera. Listen, girls. I know you like that whole ‘bad-boy-but-I-can-change-him’ thing, but real life vampires aren’t sensitive, they aren’t sparkly, and they don’t want to be your boyfriend. They want to eat you. Sucking your blood is not a euphemism, they literally want to suck your blood… out of your body. You kind of need that to, oh, not die. With vampires, when somebody says don’t forget to wear protection, we’re talking about body armor. The rates of vampire attacks have risen dramatically over the last few years against gullible teenagers because you’re just making this easier for them. Looks back at reporter.  Hypothetically.

PL: Of course.

SHACKLEFORD: Looks back to camera.  Vampires love you about as much as you love a Big Mac, honey. Deal with it.

#

Cut to: A very cluttered office

PL: Owen Zastava Pitt is the Finance Manager for Monster Hunter International. I’ve got to say, you don’t really look like an accountant.

OZP: Sorry, just got off the range.  I like to shoot at least two hundred rounds before lunch every day.

PL: Am I reading this right? Studies piece of paper. Why do they call you the God Slayer?

OZP: Sighs. Kill one god, people get all worked up. Go figure. Drops a giant pile of guns on desk. Hypothetically, of course.

PL: So Mr. Harbinger has already talked to you?

OZP: Sent a company-wide e-mail, but yeah, I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve got a public service announcement for you. Picks stack of papers off of desk.  This is valuable stuff and often overlooked by most people. Let’s say that you were to kill a monster, which could never actually happen, mind you, but say that you did kill an imaginary monster… How do you get paid?

PL: I have no idea.

OZP:  This, holds up paper, is a Treasury Form P-3506. You need to submit one of these within sixty days of killing a monster. As you can see, you need to put in your PUFF table numbers, which you can get by cross referencing column J from page 56 of table P.  I built a spreadsheet for this, but you can use the cross reference from ES-1920-B paragraph fourteen–

EDITORS NOTE:  Several minutes of explanation have been deleted here. It was believed that the accounting details would put most PrimeLine viewers to sleep.

OZP:  –then, and this is important, you still need to report this on your taxes. The 1040X is where you report PUFF income. Oh, man, the IRS will fine the EXPLETIVE DELETED out of you if you don’t fill out your schedule X every quarter!

PL: coughs politely. Thank you for your time, Mr. Pitt.

#

Cut to: outside of a workshop

Three individuals wearing baggy black outfits, masks, and tinted goggles have stopped the PrimeLine cameraman and are poking at him curiously. With sticks.

PL: Excuse me. Who are you?

?1: Stares. You… I seen on magic box.

?2: The Prime Lines?

PL: Why yes, that’s me on the… magic box.

?3: We be on magic box now?

PL: Maybe.  

?2: We for news!  Curious. You know the Bills Oh-Reillys?

PL: No. I’m afraid he’s on a different network.

?2: Sadness. Likes the Oh-Reillys.

?3: grunts. Possible laugh? Pinheads. He he he.

?1: Suspicious. You know the Keiths the Olbers Mans?

PL: No.

?1: Good. Skippy would eat the heart… of Keiths the Olbers Mans.

?2: Foul beast, the Olbers Mans.  #2 turns his head and spits on the ground.

The three mysterious individuals lose interest and wander off.

#

Cut to: Inside a very packed workshop.

PL: I’m here with Milo Anderson. MHI’s…. what is your title exactly, Mr. Anderson?

MILO: It’s just Milo. I don’t really have a title, though I’m thinking about putting Renaissance Man on my business cards.  Earl said you guys were coming and that I wasn’t supposed to talk too much. I think he said be helpful, but non-committal.

PL: Well, if you’ve seen our program, then you know that we pride ourselves on hard-hitting, fact-filled, journalism—

MILO: Nope. Haven’t seen it. I get all my news from Coast to Coast AM. I’ve got a public service helpy thing for you, though. Pulls sheet off of workbench dramatically.  Ta dah!

PL:  What’s all this?

MILO: Now, you might be thinking this is just a bunch of household cleaning products and some lawn-care items that you could pick up at any Wal-Mart, but oh no, what you’ve got here are the ingredients to take care of even the nastiest monster problems. I want to do my PSA on how to build improvised home explosives!

PL: I don’t think we can air that.

MILO: Aw, come on! One bag of REDACTED mixed with REDACTED of a pound of REDACTED and I can do this.  Milo picks up a sack, lights it on fire, and chucks it out the open doorway. You guys may want to cover your ears.

HORRENDOUS EXPLOSION

MILO: Waits for dust to settle. Coughs. Seriously. I think I should have my own show on the Discovery Channel. Each episode I could demonstrate all sorts of cool stuff. Now that would make for some good TV. How to build bombs and flame throwers for science! Could you pitch that for me?

PL: Thank you for your time, Mr. Anderson.

#

CUT TO:  Reception Area, MHI headquarters building

PL: Thank you for having us, Mr. Harbinger. It’s been an interesting experience.

HARBINGER: Glad to be of assistance, Mr. Bing. They’re never gonna let you show this, though. When you run into Agent REDACTED and he threatens you and takes your files, don’t resist too hard, it just gets him in a punching mood.

PL: Do you have any closing statements for our viewers in order to prepare them for Halloween?

HARBINGER: Kids, don’t eat too much candy all at once. You’ll get sick. For the grownups, don’t get too stupid at any parties. Everybody looks better in costume and you’ve probably been drinking too much. That can lead to some poor judgment.

PL: That’s it? That’s your advice?

HARBINGER: shrugs.  From everybody at MHI, have a happy Halloween.

 

http://www.michaelzwilliamson.com/news.php  Check it out.  Super Author Mike Williamson just sent me this. A charity event to help our injured troops. It has pin up girls AND food. 

NOTE:  I am 99% sure that this picture is NOT of Baen author Michael Z. Williamson.

EDIT:  Hmmmm… the charity things I’ve done so far as an author have involved wombats and red-shirt murders.  Apparently I am doing something totally wrong.

So last weekend was my Arizona signings.  Last year John Brown and I did the rounds, signed some books, and met some book sellers. This year John was unavailable, and I really didn’t want to go by myself, so Nightcrawler volunteered to come along for the ride.  Now that would have been a hilarious vehicle to attempt a carjacking on!

First thing first, I’m a little disappointed in you Arizonans. After months of bleating and squealing from the news media about the horrific terror of your racist laws, I was fully expecting (as a wise Latino) to have to present my papers at all of your many racist checkpoints (that MSNBC specifically told me would be popping up on every corner!) or face immediate beatings and deportation.  Sadly, my only dealings with law enforcement consisted of getting a friendly warning for breaking a traffic law and then a member of the Arizona Rangers gave me a t-shirt.

It’s like you guys aren’t even trying down there. Keith Olberman will be very upset to hear about this!

 I love Arizona. It would be on my list of states that I could live in, except for that whole getting up to 147 degrees in the summer thing you’ve got going on down there.  Though it was nice to leave the mountains of Utah (where it was snowing), to go hang out in 80 degree weather for a couple of days.  

Arizona is a long way from Utah. You wouldn’t think that, since they actually touch each other, but when you live in the mountains up at on the north end of Utah, and you drive all the way to Phoenix, which is sorta in the middle of Arizona, and back, in one weekend, it makes for an epic drive.  Last year when I did book signings there I just flew, but I really wanted to see what northern Arizona looked like, since I’d never been there before.  It sure doesn’t look like the rest of the state at all.

Flagstaff is actually very nice, kind of in the forest, and there was a surprisingly large number of hippies wandering around between stores that sold chakra beads, crystals, and hemp.  Luckily it turned out that the manager of the Flagstaff B&N was a huge fan, and they’d sold a pile of my books there. Very nice.

The plan in Phoenix was to hit as many bookstores as possible. Walk in, meet a manager, sign all the books in stock, try to find some staffer who could be a fan, repeat. Stores that I have a fan or two on staff tend to sell way more books than those where the staff has never heard of me.  I’ve got a few stores where they love me, and so they sell a correspondingly absurd number of books.  Those I love. So in the Phoenix area stores, my presence either merited a solid “woot” while others gave me a “meh” at best. 

The first one on the north end on the way into town was kind of embarrassing. They still had a single autographed copy of MHI from LAST YEAR.  D’oh! Talk about sad.  Luckily that only happened once, and just about everywhere else I’d been selling well, and a few I’d been selling great.  Just like in prior years and other states, B&N loves Larry Correia way more than Borders does. B&N usually stocked way more copies, their staff was much happier to help, and they were just generally a lot more chipper. Borders usually had a copy or two. That was it, and they weren’t usually very enthusiastic.  Compare that to some of the B&Ns or Book-Stars, who once they knew I was coming, they’d order many extra copies for me to sign so they could build an end-cap display. Autographed copies just plain sell better.

There was a single indy store that had never heard of me at all… But then again it appeared that most of their business consisted of beads and pseudo-Buddhist trinkets to sell to the local chai-swilling hipsters, so I probably wasn’t a real good fit anyway. 

I did a signing at the Tempe Marketplace Barnes & Noble on Saturday and was mobbed the entire time by a squadron from the Monster Hunter Nation. The two hour event turned into three hours of people trying to wheedle spoilers on the next couple books out of me. It was totally awesome.

Saturday night we did dinner at a Japanese steakhouse with the Arizona contingent of www.wethearmed.com Thurnlund even bought me dinner, which is saying something, because I got steak, shrimp, and sushi, all while the chef made big saki powered fireballs. Dinner ended up lasting from 7:00 until they tossed us out at midnight.  What a cool bunch.  

Sunday was the event at the Poison Pen. I’ve got to say that I love the Poison Pen. They are one of the neatest bookstores around, and getting to sign there is a real treat.  Last year was the first time I met them, and I think they were surprised by the number of fans that came in to see John and I, and also how much fun we all had. This year they were eager to invite me back. Also, I made their Top 10 list for the year, which was very neat, because these people read a TON of books.

There were five other authors present, S.S. Wilson (Tucker’s Monster), Weston Ochse (pronounced Oaks, Empire of Salt), Sam Sykes (Tome of the Undergates), and James Owen (The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica).  We had a two hour discussion/Q&A with the audience, and then signed an absurdly large number of books.  Poison Pen wanted to be stocked up because they said that the Monster Hunter series has been selling extremely well there.

The other authors were witty, fun, and there wasn’t a snob in the bunch, (which does occasionally happen with us authorial types) I bought copies of everyone else’s books.  

One interesting note for the many gunnies of the Monster Hunter Nation, S.S. Wilson is the dude that wrote the screenplay for the Tremors movies. Yes, I got to hang out with the man that created Burt “You broke into the wrong rec-room!” Gummer, patron saint of gun-nuts.  We ended up having a good talk afterward, because he wanted to quiz me about how he could get the internet gun forum/blog community to know about his novels.  (I have a bit of a rep, you know.)  My response was “BURT GUMMER! You created one of the most popular movies amongst my tribe EVAR! Go forth and register on the following forums and tell them I sent you,” and then I gave him a list.  Seriously, if anybody can pique the interest of gun forumite novel readers, it’s the guy that made up Tremors. “Why do you have cannon fuse? For my cannon.”

After shooting the bull with the other writers for awhile, Mike and I set out for home. No deer were run over, so I call it a win. Overall, considering how far I drove and how often I’d look down to see that I was doing 95 in a 75, I only got pulled over once, (for passing a tractor when I really shouldn’t have tried to pass) and I got off with a warning. Yay!  (I was very contrite, because it had been a bad call on my part, but I think the warning was because Mike had his backpack with his U.S. Air Force name tape on it in the back seat, so Go Air Force!)

So this year’s Arizona trip was a rousing success.  Next up, the Great Grimnoir Tour. I don’t have it planned yet, but I’ll be flying to Minnesota in May, and then after that I’m going to road trip it through six states, hitting a different city every single day.

http://dungeoncrawlersradio.mypodcast.com/2010/10/DCR_Larry_Correia_Interview-330307.html   I did this interview last week, and we had a great time.  The DCR guys are a blast to talk to.  We ended up talking for over an hour about just about everything.