A lost colony planet, a perplexing murder, and a dogged homicide cop in this Audible Original story from best-selling author Larry Correia.

When the biggest colony ship in human history was sent to settle a paradise world, an accident hurtled it deep into uncharted space. A thousand light years from Earth, with no way home and no way to call for help, the colonists’ only hope for survival was the one barely habitable planet in range, a nightmare world they named Croatoan. Landing on the only five mountain peaks tall enough to rise above the lethal acid clouds, the settlers carved a civilization from the rock.  

A hundred years later, Five Points has grown into a city of corruption and violence. With powerful corporations ruling the surface domes and criminal syndicates running the caverns below, murder is just the cost of doing business.

So when a Special Magistrate is found dissolving in a protein vat, it barely registers – until DCI Lutero Cade, the last honest cop in Five Points, catches the case. What he finds could threaten the colony’s very existence.   

Or, at the very least, Cade himself.

FAQ – it’s an Audible Exclusive, meaning audio only for a year but then after that I can put it in print.

I know who the narrator is, but I don’t think I can announce that for sure, but it’s one of my regulars.

It’s novella length.

It is set in the same universe as Gun Runner (same as a Tank Called Bob, so this has become my go to setting for scifi stories!), but these events are completely unrelated to what happens in Gun Runner.

I had a ton of fun with this one. Gritty Cop Shows are one of my favorite genres, but not something I normally work in. But sci-fi it up, and I’m all in! I really hope you guys enjoy this because I would love to do more with this one. Five Points/Croatoan is a cool setting.

Coming soon, from all the regular places you get your podcasts.

Writer Dojo is a new podcast by writers, for writers. We’re going to talk about writing, business, and the nuts and bolts of creating. It’s for aspiring authors, people who already write but want to pick up tips and tricks, and anybody who just want to listen to a couple of nerds talk about books for thirty minutes every week.

It’s hosted by me and Steve Diamond, produced and edited by Jack Wylder (and a special shout out to Craig Nybo for letting us use his recording studio).

If you’re on this page you probably know who I am, but if you’re new, I’m the New York Times bestselling, Dragon/Audie award winning author of 25 novels, 3 collections worth of short fiction, and a bunch of other stuff. I’ve been doing this for 12 years, the last 8 full time.

Steve Diamond has written a few novels and a pile of short stories, but he also sold books for a living, ran a big book review site for many years, and has read more scifi/fantasy/horror/thrillers than 99.999% of the human population. Not joking. I helped him move. The sheer number of books nearly killed us all.

But most importantly, Steve and I have worked together for a long time so we can riff off each other really well. Plus, between us we’ve been on a few hundred panels at various cons talking about writing topics. Usually on the fly, because Steve is the guy the cons always drafts at the last second when the moderator doesn’t show up.

The two of us have been talking for the last couple of years about the need for some good writing podcasts that are A. actually useful, B. fun, C. not insufferably woke. That’s right, we’re here to talk books and writing, not intersectional blah blah blah which always boils down to how artists should walk around on egg shells terrified of offending the perpetually offended. Nope. Screw that.

However we didn’t get around to it until now because neither one of us had the bandwidth to go learn all the technical stuff about how to edit/podcast. Which was when the indomitable Jack Wylder stepped in to save our bacon. He knows all this stuff, but mostly I think he just wants the chance to use his Radio Guy announcer voice.

Craig Nybo (check out his books on Amazon!) was kind enough to let us use his actual recording studio, so this doesn’t sound like it was recorded at my kitchen table (with Faust barking in the background).

We’ve recorded our first few episodes, and we’re just going to get a few more in the bag before we go live. We had a lot of fun with these. The hardest part was not swearing or trash talking authors who annoy me.

Writer Dojo will be available on all the regular places you normally get podcasts. Dates to be announced.

No Game for Knights is the follow up to Noir Fatale. Once again Kacey and I have put together an anthology of noir sci-fi and fantasy stories from a team of fantastic authors. Our last anthology stuck to the theme of The Femme Fatale, and this time the stories are about The Detective.

Now that all the contracts are in we can officially announce the line up of stories.

Kacey Ezell and Griffin Barber

Larry Correia

Laurell K. Hamilton

Sharon Shinn

Robert Buettner

Christopher Ruocchio

Craig Martelle

Chris Kennedy

S. A. Bailey

Rob Howell

Michael Haspil

D. J. Butler

Christopher Smith and Michael Ferguson

Most of these are done already and it has been an absolute pleasure to edit them. They’ve been excellent across the board.

No Game For Knights will be published by Baen, I do not know the release date yet. I can’t comment for sure on audio yet, but Noir Fatale did great in audio so I expect we’ll see that too.

Book plug away!

https://amzn.to/3paQlrt

Scott Huggins is such a good writer that he’s the only person to ever win both the Baen Fantasy Award AND the Jim Baen Memorial Science Fiction Award.

If you aren’t familiar with those contests, they are blind judged, short story submission contests. Meaning that the judges don’t know who wrote what. The judges just get a giant stack of stories with the author information missing, so they’re judged entirely on how good and enjoyable they are.

I first read Scott when I was a judge one year, and his story was awesome (he was the runner up that year). In the years since he’s just kept practicing, until last year when he had the winning story in sci-fi AND a different winning story in fantasy. To put that in perspective there are hundreds of entries in each, and many of them are REALLY GOOD.

Scott released a new novel at FantaSci. Check it out.

Cover art by Alan Pollack

This is the novel I’ve been telling you guys about that’s a sort of WW1 in a world with dark fairy tale magic “trench fantasy”, think 1917 meets the Witcher. The main character is on what’s basically a tank crew, only instead of a tank, it’s an armored suit made out of dead golems. I’m currently working on this now (it is bad ass), and I believe the release date is early 2022.