This was a really fun project, and it came about in a weird way. Basically this novel is everything a 10 year old boy thinks would be awesome in a sci-fi story, crammed into one book.
John and I started writing about the same time, and we had gone on book tour together so we’ve talked a lot about writing. We were asked to teach a class on plotting. Now normally in those sorts of things the authors are given some story elements from the audience, and then they take those and use them to plot a book on the fly, live, to demonstrate the process. Problem is, the audience loves to give authors really goofy shit, which we inevitably make work, but that wastes a lot of time, and we only had two hours.
So John and I got together a few days before, and he suggested rather than use plot suggestions from the audience, we get some in advance from one person, so they’d be coherent. My (at the time) 10 year old son was nearby, so I shouted at him, “Hey Joe, what’s cool stuff to have in a sci-fi story?”
And he immediately came back with “space pirates, giant robots, war, and monsters.” John and I were like, okay, we can work with that! Then while we talked about a plot using those elements, Joe sat there and drew pictures of the giant robots. (One of which John kept, which we stuck in the back of the book as an illustration)
Then we did the class and plotted out a whole story live in front of an an audience of about a hundred people in two hours. At the end the two of us looked at the dry erase board that had a cast and list of scenes from beginning to end, and we both said, yeah, I could actually write this.
Fast forward a few years, and Toni Weisskopf asked me if I had any new collaborations to pitch her. I pitched this one and Servants of War with Steve Diamond (which comes out next month).
Another funny anecdote about this one, anytime I do a collaboration with another writer I like to pick out an actor or someone we know for various characters, that way we are both visualizing the same person as we work. It keeps the collaborators on the same page.
One of those was Captain Nicholas Holloway, who is basically in charge of the smuggling crew, and our main character’s boss and mentor. We decided that we would use Nick Searcy for that role. (all around good dude).
Then when we were trying to name the ship, we wanted to have it be something North Carolina based (that’s where the captain was from) so we asked NC residents on Facebook for name suggestions. We were getting bunches of them, but then Nick himself chimed in, and said he’d name it The Tar Heel… Boom. The Captain has spoken. Tar Heel it is.
Because I like this setting, I’ve actually used it for two other projects as well. Lost Planet Homicide (novella) and A Tank Named Bob (short) are both set in the same universe as Gun Runner. (totally different planets, but all the tech works by the same rules). There is also two Easter eggs in Gun Runner related to another one of my series, but I leave those to astute readers to find, enjoy, and then extrapolate out and go “Oh shit… So that’s how that works.” 🙂
Anyways, Gun Runner is in paperback now. It is also on Audible narrated by Oliver Wyman (who also does Monster Hunter and Lost Planet Homicide). I hope you like it.
I think this is going to become tradition. Every time I get off a 30 day FB ban (my next one will put me at 1 year in the gulag!) I can do one big post about all the news items I would have commented on had I been around. Like this –
This one was more of a 60 day though, since I came back from that one (where I had to work to earn it!) and almost immediately got banned for an innocuous joke (Internet Idiot Arthur Chu was praising communist China, and somebody asked but could I beat him in Jeopardy? and I said no, but I’d like to beat him with a stick, and boom, ban! Honestly, if I’d known that was gonna get me tossed for “bullying” I would’ve been way meaner).
So let’s see what’s in the news, and what I would’ve said about it at the time-
A. Canadian truckers are awesome.
B. It is amazing how shamelessly disgusting the news reporting on that has been (and every step of the way the useful idiots repeat this crap). First the news lied about why they were protesting, saying they were upset about “road conditions”. Then when it grew they flipped and tried to say it was small, and the length of the convoy was exaggerated because it was just a handful of trucks real spread out. The next day, okay, there’s a lot of them, but they’re all fascists. Today they’re an invasion of violent white supremacists (lots of Sikhs in there for some reason) who are causing irreparable trauma to twitter leftists with all their honking.
C. Justin Fidelito Trudeau “got covid’ and had to isolate at a super convenient time. Oh wait, narrative update, he didn’t, he’s had to go into hiding because of the giant mob of racist white supremacist death truckers. HONK. (in ye olde times fleeing like that is how kings got overthrown)
D. The media really hates Joe Rogan, because he’s taking CNN’s lunch money. They despise the guy because he doesn’t tell people what to think, he just brings on people from all sides of the spectrum and asks them questions so they can talk in depth for hours at a time. Which is the total opposite of what media is supposed to do, where they bring on approved “experts” in 10 minute segments to provide official narrative talking points which are easily regurgitated by useful idiots, so that anyone who disagrees can get beaten into submission. That’s real news!
E. What’s stopping Saint Fauci from going on Joe Rogan? It’s not like that malignant little tyrant doesn’t love going on “proper” TV.
F. When a petition of 300 fake ass doctors didn’t work, out comes Neil Young. Neil Young is a dipshit, who thought his foot stomping tantrum demanding government censorship would work. He’s now being joined by a bunch of increasingly less famous musicians like some dumbfuck virtue signaling drum circle. It’s funny how lefties are all “Fight The Man” until they are the man, then they obediently lick the boot.
G. It turns out Neil Young’s music is actually owned by a giant mega corporation, which also owns major news corps, led by a drug company CEO who directly profits off of all this censorious bullshit. So now I’m sure the CorpoUniParty will force the independent guy to cave. Way to fight the power and rage against the machine and all that, you fucking hippies.
H. In some ironic timing, because our news totally isn’t a crafted propaganda tool used to manipulate people, while the left was demanding censorship on Spotify, a small town in Tennessee nobody has ever heard of removed a book from one grade’s required reading list, so we could have hundreds of angry articles and millions of posts about how book banning is bad, and BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME.
I. Moral Equivalence Police aside, as a writer I am super sensitive to book banning (the left has tried with me, but thankfully they are super inept). But as soon as you look at what actually happened there you discover that pretty much everything on the news about it is hyperbolic horseshit. And I think Maus is an important work, and should be used in schools, but since I’m not a leftist I don’t claim to know what’s best for everybody else’s kids.
J. Breyer is retiring. Meh. We’ll trade a reliable leftist for another reliable leftist. The real story here is that this is confirmation the democrats know they are about to get fucking steamrolled at the midterms, because they have totally sucked and even the world’s most advanced propaganda engine can’t hide how shitty democrats are at governing.
K. In a related note, we’re now up to like 30 democrat congressmen retiring rather than running for re-election. Even the news that primarly exists to prop up democrats keeps using the words “red wave”. Reap your whirlwind.
L. Joe Biden talked for 2 hours, and did such an awful job that he made a war more likely, and tanked the stock market. Just stop. Give that creepy old man a pudding cup and stick him in a closet. If he talked for 3 hours the country would disintegrate and he talked for 4 a giant meteor would hit the earth.
M. True story, I checked my RobinHood account after Biden’s speech. And in that moment for over a hundred stocks every single one was in the red except for Lockheed Martin. Oh shit, that’s funny.
M1. Heh, a couple related things. Lots of morons were trying to say that Spotify’s stock had tanked because of them choosing Joe Rogan over Neil Young, except I own Spotify. It tanked like everything else did after Biden’s talk (down 18% for the month) and it’s up 3% this week. Holy shit the left can’t meme.
N. Unlike everybody else on the internet I’m not going to pretend to be some military/political geostrategy expert on the Ukraine. All I know is that I wouldn’t trust the Biden Administration to not fuck up opening a can of cat food, let alone running a war with another nuclear power. This is the same cadre of geniuses who screwed the pooch in leaving Afghanistan.
O. If a CDC truck full of lab monkeys crashes, DO NOT PET THE MONKEYS.
P. Even as countries all over the world finally throw in the towel on pointless, do nothing, Covid theater, my local con (LTUE) decided to double down on vax passes, tests, masks, and social distance. So I told them I was out. I’m tired of humoring hypochondriac shitlibs (Judging by K, I’m not alone).
Q. A poll came out showing that some truly alarming percentages of democrats were totally cool with concentration camps, or taking away the children of non-believers. I say alarming, but considering the democrat party’s history, not surprising. These people also act baffled at the idea of why the rest of us want to own guns to protect us from them.
R. Patton Oswalt was forced to apologize for saying he was friends with Dave Chappelle. Come on. Nobody believes Patton Oswalt has “friends”.
S. Jussie Smollet is found guilty of what is possibly the dumbest fake hate crime ever. I can now go out and edit out the multitude of “allegedly” the lawyers forced me to put into the last Tom Stranger!
T. Since the only border our administration cares about are the ones next to Russia, there is a really interesting video going around of Border Patrol agents arguing with the BP chief. I would encourage everybody to watch it. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing. The cracks are showing.
U. The Olympics are here! I’m sure this will be a fine celebration of mandatory anal swabbing. I look forward to events like the concentration camp fence pole vault, the thousand meter monk toss, and the cross protestor tank slalom. If our social credit scores are high enough we might get a medal!
V. Related, I don’t know anything at all about basketball, but this Enes Kanter Freedom guy seems like a badass.
W. M&Ms are now more diverse and inclusive. FINALLY. This was keeping me up at nights.
X. The FBI wouldn’t come out and admit under oath how many agitators on January 6th actually work for them or are CIs. And how dare you insinuate that feds would ever do crime, you crazy conspiracy theorist! Seriously, I am super offended, and HOW DARE YOU ask about UCs or CIs, even though the FBI just got caught doing that a few months before in Michigan, and that’s pretty much the entire modern history of law enforcement, and they’ve even made movies about all the most interesting cases.
Meanwhile, at every single gun show in America – “Hey buddy, could you help me cut this shotgun barrel down to 17.9 inches?”
Y. Speaking of my gun store owner PTSD, I bought a Springfield Hellion/Croatian VHS-2 rifle, but that’ll get its own review post.
Z. Even though the world seems to be falling apart, I’m actually really optimistic about the future. I think we’ve hit Peak Woke. I believe we are seeing a critical mass of people finally getting fed up with the lies, bullshit and fuckery. For the longest time too many regular folks have kept quiet because of social pressure, but once the dam bursts, and a sufficient mass of people realize they’re not alone, it’s over.
Full disclosure, I’ve not read it yet. I just really like Peter’s writing, and he did this one for Nick Cole and Jason Anspach, who are two other guys I really like. Check the link and see if it looks interesting to you.
Dead Acre is a bad ass supernatural western. It’s like the Witcher goes to Tombstone. When an outlaw gunslinger gets murdered because he tried to do something honorable, God gives him a second chance. Only this second chance involves killing monsters and hell spawn across the wild west. Bruno and Castle nailed the tough guy western vibe with a protagonist who would have fit in a Louis L’amour novel, except for the part where he’s dead and still killing werewolves.
Even better it’s narrated by the actor who played Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption. He kills it with that familiar voice that’s perfect for an undying gunslinger.
I met one of the authors at 20Books in Vegas, and he wanted to hear what I thought about this because I had written MHI and the Bubba Shackleford old west monster hunting stories. I liked Dead Acre enough that since the first full length novel in this same series is coming out in May, called Cold As Hell, I’m going to go ahead and plug it with a preorder link.
This got shared to a wrongthink writer’s chat this morning and we all started playing bingo. Even though I’ve declared that I have Super Privilege and have awarded myself extra privilege points, I don’t think I could get a bingo on this one, which kinda pisses me off. I’m competitive like that.
For those of you who live in a cave in the forest without internet and have managed to avoid the plague of Social Justice, you might be unfamiliar with the concept of PRIVILEGE. I think originally it had some academic basis, but then the left dumbed it down and ran with it. I’ve talked about privilege a lot on this blog before, but basically what it means is that you’re always wrong about everything, and leftists are always right, all because of some nebulous concepts about your past. You are always bad and they are always good. Simple.
For example, I once mocked the illogical and inane writings of a left wing race hustling grifter who was baselessly accusing an entire convention of racism with zero evidence. Even though it turned out that he was literally the son of a billionaire, it was declared that I was “punching down” from my “position of privilege” and I got kicked out of stuff because of my rampant hatemongery.
The left loves this shit. Like how a newspaper (it was either the Boston Globe or New York Times, I can’t remember) wrote about a debate between me and George R.R. Martin and the newspaper described us as “bestselling novelist Larry Correia” vs “George R.R. Martin, son of a longshoreman.” Why not, Larry Correia, son of a dairy farmer and George Martin, one of the wealthiest authors in human history? Nope.
Because remember, if you’re on the right, you’ve got privilege no matter what. It doesn’t matter if you grew up in a straw hut in a jungle and you hunt wild boars with a sharpened stick to pay for your cholera medicine, if you are arguing with a suburban liberal with rich parents who paid for their gender studies degree at NYU, you’re the representative of an oppressive system and the leftist is the real victim here. So shut up, racist.
This gets more complicated when it is left vs left, because then they have to carefully compare victim points, until the loser gets killed and eaten in a cannibal feeding frenzy.
Looking at this list, even though I doubt I can get a bingo, I’ve still had an extremely successful life by any reasonable standard, and have lived the American dream, getting more opportunities than my parents, and giving my kids more opportunities than I had. It’s almost as if the very concept of Privilege, as used by the left, is defeatist horseshit designed to make some demographics feel like helpless losers and others feel like terrible monsters, all so that they can be more easily manipulated by their elite liberal betters… Naw… That would be super evil.
Anyways, let’s play bingo!
Native English Speaker –Yes. This is important. It’s also why when my grandpa came to America, he insisted on speaking English in the home. My dad was bilingual, but didn’t speak Portuguese while I was growing up at all, so I learned very little of it. The downside of this is that it kinda sucks to be the only Portuguese kid in an immigrant Portuguese town who didn’t speak the language. Oh well! Boom! PRIVILEGE! One down.
Both Parent Went To College – Nope. I’m the first person in my family to do that, and I went thanks to an academic scholarship for knowing a whole lot about dairy cows. DENIED.
Never Worried About Food – Oh hell no. We had a lot of terrible years and were incredibly broke most of the time. Farming is not for the faint of heart. Sure, we might not have been able to buy actual groceries, but we had all you can drink milk! And when we got really desperate, I got to shoot an elderly Holstein in the head so we could eat extra chewy hamburger. BOOM! SUPER PRIVILEGE! That’s two.
Drive/Get Driven To School – Ha! I was the first kid picked up by the bus route in the morning, which meant that I got to spend about two hours a day back and forth on the school bus. However, I used that time to read hundreds of library books, which educated me far more than my shit tier public education ever did. So I actually came out ahead because of this supposed hardship… but nope. Rules are rules. No privilege on this one.
Employed – This one is bizarre to me, since most of the questions seem to be aimed at your childhood… However, I went to work doing adult level, back breaking, filthy, dangerous manual labor as a child, so I am extra blessed. I had childhood employment, so PRIVILEGE! Seriously, if you didn’t grow up rural poor on a real working farm it’s hard to even sorta comprehend the dirty, scary shit you have to do, even when you’re really little. Hey, you’re ten, go move that 2000 pound bull. Make sure to not show any fear! So actually, I’m gonna grant myself DOUBLE PRIVILEGE on this one.
Comfortable Working Outside Alone – Yes. For thousands of hours, usually moving things which were heavy, rusty, sharp, about to catch on fire, or alive and actively wanting to kill me. Good times. SUPER PRIVILEGE!
White – Eh… Mostly? Sure. I’m swarthy and vaguely ethnic looking and the government declared my ancestors to be “Latino” for some baffling and inexplicable reason that probably had to do with bumping their arbitrary racist numbers, but I’m gonna forsake my dad and claim my mom today for MEGA PRIVILEGE!
Parents are Married – Yep. Got this one… Though I find it fascinating that they don’t have a thing in there for “happily”. Sure, you could live in an abusive, alcoholic nightmare, but by golly, that leftist you are arguing with had a single mom, so count your blessings, you right wing hatemonger. PRIVILEGE!
Born In Country of Residence – I love the softcore racism of the left on this one. They simply can’t help themselves. Sure, some immigrant communities are killing it in America, or some people come over so young that it really doesn’t matter, but nope. You all go in the same big dumb box labeled Piteous Immigrants. Sorry. So I get this one. Wait… Is California still considered part of America? Hmmm… Nominally. I’ll take it. PRIVILEGE!
No Speech Impediment – Damn it. Thwarted on the horizontal bingo again. I did actually have a speech impediment when I was a kid. Like most people who do I figured it out and worked through it as I got older, and now I hardly ever think about it and I’m an excellent public speaker who has been on radio and TV. But apparently this is going to hold me back forever and doom me to failure. Oh well. And I was having such a good run too.
Heterosexual – I’m boring vanilla. I’m not even vanilla bean. MEGA HETERO PRIVILEGE! But wait… isn’t this no big deal in a great many groups in the US, and being homosexual is actually considered a perk in many social/career circles now? To the point that leftist moms are getting caught on video pressuring their five year olds into declaring some manner of LGBT identity so the mom can get privilege? But that would never happen. The bingo card has spoken.
Christian – Eh… Depends on who you ask. I’d say so, only I belong to a religion most Christians think of as oddballs, and it’s totally cool for hip liberals to mock us relentlessly in media and Hollywood, and you can even have Broadway plays insulting us, and that’s totally fine. SUPER MORMON PRIVILEGE!
Free Space – I’m offended. How dare this school assume this space’s identity? What if the marginalized person didn’t get a free space? I am literally shaking. (also the school missed a real comedic opportunity when they didn’t call this one Safe Space)
Feel Safe Around Police Officers – I *almost* made bingo this line, because since I don’t routinely do stupid shit, in stupid places, around stupid people, most of my interactions with cops are relatively uneventful… But I’m fucking terrified of federal agents. You think you’ve had a bad time with law enforcement? You think regular cops are unaccountable? Get back to me after the first time you’ve had the ATF raid your business! THWARTED.
Mentally Healthy – Very much so actually. But considering that there is one demographic in America which has FAR more mental problems than all the others, they should have just made this one the free space for white liberal women. (I’m not making that up either. Their stats are bonkers.) But anyways, PRIVILEGE!
College is the Expectation – Ha! Not even close. I got called a pussy for learning to read! But this one is interesting because it once again shows the bigoted nature of our elite liberal betters, as they look with sneering disdain upon blue collar jobs. Plumbers, electricians, and truck drivers aren’t nearly as important to society as their masters degree in interpretive dance.
Never Been Racially Profiled – Nope. I’ve had that happen a few times. Both with law enforcement, and one really nasty shakedown attempt by a business who saw my last name and thought I was one of the illegals they usually took advantage of, until I showed up at their office in a suit telling them to lawyer the fuck up because shit was about to get real. Good times. Ironically I look back on these as learning experiences and they never really held me back, but the bingo card has spoken.
A side note on the racially profiled bit, you know what’s actually worse, but never makes these stupid lists because libs can’t see past skin tone? Being big and scary looking. When I was young especially, I got shit all the time with purse clutchers, and had the cops called on me, because I looked like the kind of dude a loan shark would send to break your thumbs. Only because I’m not pathetic, I don’t dwell on these sleights, and I don’t hold it against those people for their very human nervous reactions. It’s like when Barack Obama talked about his youthful presence making white ladies lock their car doors. Bitch please. I could curl you, Barack.
Feel Represented in Media – Yes. AS THE BAD GUY! Seriously, when is the last time a right wing, gun nut, capitalist, from the military-industrial complex was the good guy in something? Adam Baldwin on Chuck? As far physical appearances, I look like the 6’5″ love child of James Gandolfini and Khalid Sheik Mohammed. The last actor I saw who looks just like me was the terrorist arms dealer/human trafficker on season 1 of Jack Ryan. So yeah, I see guys who look like me on TV all the time, usually trying to kill John Wick. HOLLYWOOD POWER PRIVILEGE!
Able-Bodied – Yep. How else do you think I did all that child labor? This is another one white liberals use to out victim you though, because I swear 90% of the ones I argue with are either land whales or noodle armed soy creatures. I’m not that physically fit, but some of these people are just sad, so NOT A TOTAL FAT BASTARD PRIVILEGE!
Military Kid – No. But hang on… How the hell is moving a dozen times during you childhood, and not seeing one of your parents for months or years at a time, all while worrying they might be horribly killed, a privilege? But the left has spoken! Enjoy your super awesome Tri Care, you privileged bastards!
Have Your Own Bedroom – I shared a tiny room with my brother growing up. That room would fit in my current bedroom closet. Ironically, my brother has also worked hard, been very successful, and has a great career making mid six figures doing one of those blue collar non-college jobs the progs sneer at. Go figure. It’s almost like this square is total nonsense which has absolutely zero bearing on life. I’m sure the mentally ill single child of two mentally ill white liberal professors (who are both having affairs with grad students) will be way better off because she didn’t have to share a room.
Involved in Extracurricular Activities – Does crime count? Because then there’s gonna be a whole lot of kids who didn’t think they were very privileged who actually are! As for me, I was allowed to do all sorts of after school stuff… as long as it involved farming in the hopes it would make me more useful on the farm. I wasn’t allowed to play sports because I might get injured and be unable to milk cows. FFA PRIVILEGE!
Cisgender – Oh good, a square so privileged that it only applied to like 99.9% of mankind until the Woke came along and decided that sexuality is now a confusing spectrum of whatever they want it to be that minute, and then impressionable kids started calling themselves a bunch of made up words on their twitter bio to get social justice validation and victim street cred… and I’m sure this one has nothing at all to do with the previous one about the epidemic of mentally ill white chicks, but regardless I’ve got NOT A PAN DEMI GNOMESEXUAL NONBINARY MERMAID TODAY PRIVILEGE.
Never Lost A Loved One – what the fuck is this one? Elf privilege? We all live in the mortal world, dipshits. The only people who can get this one are the super young, because the longer you live, the more people fucking die. Duh. But hang on… if this bingo card is aimed at the super young, why does it have multiple squares about their sexuality on it? What kind of weird groomer shit is going on at this school? Only I better not ask those kinds of questions or Joe Biden will send the FBI after me, and we’ve already established that I’m scared of federal agents!
Male – You hear that ladies? The school board says you ain’t shit. You can’t even win your own sports anymore! I’ve got WOMEN’S SWIMMING/WRESTLING/BASKETBALL/CYLING/RUGBY/JEOPARDY CHAMPIONSHIP PRIVILEGE!
Now hang on… Don’t men die earlier? Go to prison more and for longer? Have higher suicide rates? Doesn’t modern leftist society treat men with scorn, while mocking traditional male roles, and declaring that fatherhood is an archaic concept, while huge swaths of our young men grow up confused and adrift, to be preyed upon by gangs who at least offer belonging, or grifters selling some distorted version of manliness? Leftist society doesn’t even allow men to be friends anymore without trying to twist it into a gay romance. Sam and Frodo, gay. Any portrayal of any two dudes ever? Gay. Let’s shame young men into fearing basic human camaraderie.
If you talk about any of these obvious problems in society, leftists are going to come along and call you an incel, neck beard, misogynist. Schools teach boys they are disposable trash who should feel bad for existing. Men grow up not knowing how to be proper men, so they fill the gaps with the teachings of dirtbags and internet porn. The left has tried to destroy the concepts of marriage and family to the point that America has one of the highest rates of single motherhood on Earth, and yet the left won’t be happy until every “archaic” institution that got us to this point is destroyed, all in their suicidal rush to end “privilege” in order to make us all equally miserable and bitter as they are.
Through all this women are getting screwed too, because they’re the ones being abandoned or mistreated by the idiot man-children created by leftist doctrine. Men and women are both vital and necessary, and tearing down one to build up the other in a vain attempt to correct past wrongs will only result in destroying us all.
But nope. Can’t be that. Testicles are where it’s at. Social Justice has spoken. TESTICLE PRIVILIGE.
Oh my gosh, and with those testicles, I’ve got BINGO!
Diagonal Bingo. I knew it! Thank goodness for my Safe Space. I really am privileged and guaranteed success in life. For a minute there I was worried I was going to have to become a democrat and wait around for the government to come save me.
