For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, an eARC is an Electronic Advanced Reader Copy. The actual book release isn’t until February. These are the things which normally would only go out to reviewers, but Baen makes the ebooks available for customers who can’t wait.

https://www.baen.com/house-of-assassins-earc.html?fbclid=IwAR3wPu4cSBl659QmXjWwnuSmfLVfTelUB_DnQLVEWDloP5lBBs6_6-XvWcU

House of Assassins picks up right after Son of the Black Sword. I’m really proud of this one. Jim Minz has been my editor for a bunch of my novels. He told me that in his opinion, he thinks this is the best book I’ve ever written. I don’t know about that, but I really am proud of it and this series. Book three is Destroyer of Worlds, and I’ll be working on it for the rest of the year.

Here is the cover for the 2nd volume of my collected short stories.

Usually when Baen does short fiction collections for its authors, they have the artist put the author on the cover, like they’re something from one of their stories. In the last one Kurt Miller painted me as a bad ass monster killer.

This time around,  I’m a barbarian. 😀

My publisher Toni was inspired by a spontaneous pose that my wife and I did at a book signing in Dallas where I was Atlas Shrugging a manatee, and my wife ran out of the audience to do a Boris Vallejo/Frank Franzetta hold on my leg.

Luckily my wife thought it was hilarious.

Wendell was content to take the back cover.

And here you can see the background of how Kurt had us model for the cover (he sent us the 3D mock ups first) and also the original book signing pic from last year that started it all.

My merchandise guy, Jack, emailed me today to say that we had a ton of these Manatee Party stickers in stock. https://mhiswag.myshopify.com/collections/whats-hot/products/hoon-party-sticker

There is an election coming up.  As a devout capitalist I realized that the best way to move these awesome stickers was to write a post detailing the political platform of our eloquent candidate Wendell T. Manatee of the Libertarian Space Cowboy Revolution Party* (as heard about in the Adventures of Tom Stranger, Interdimensional Insurance Agent, available on Audible.com or in Target Rich Environment).

* warning, the LSCRP may not exist in your dimension. If you in a dimension stuck with squishy republicans and lame democrats, sucks to be you. But you can still buy an awesome sticker.

Aquatic-American, CFO of CorreiaTech, former Ghost of Christmas Future, and decorated veteran of the Deep War, Wendell T. Manatee  is currently running for the senate in Florida. So I sat down with Wendell (well, he was floating in his tank) to interview him about the hot button issues of the day. I did my best to translate his answers from majestic manatee into boring old English.

What do you think about the budget?

Manatees are known for their fiscal responsibility. Cut everything. They are called budget cuts because they are supposed to hurt.  If they didn’t hurt, they would be called budget tickles or something.

Taxes?

Taxes are stupid. Keep as much of your money as you can. Spend it on lettuce or Xbox. Wendell does not care.

Gun Control?

From my cold dead flippers.  (when I asked this question, Wendell just chuckled and showed me that his tank was fitted with a nuclear powered plasma cannon).

Social Security?

Why would you trust your retirement to the one entity in the universe which couldn’t turn a profit on a legal whorehouse?  Foolish land mammals.

Immigration?

Immigration is great when it’s legal. Make the process more efficient. Just not dolphins. Dolphins can go to hell. Those guys are the worst.

Healthcare?

 I’m not fat. I just have a protective layer of blubber because I live in the ocean. Mostly I have to watch out for speed boats.  I’ve actually got great cholesterol.

How? I just watched you eat a fifty pound tub of Cheetos? No, I meant the Affordable Care Act. 

Oh that? Obamacare was really dumb. I warned you that your premiums would go way up for crappier insurance, but nobody wanted to listen to the professional finance mammal.

Defense?

Stay off my lawn.

You live in the ocean. You don’t have a lawn.

It’s an idiom. It means I am very nice to everyone and will leave them alone, but if you mess with me, I will blow up your house.

Sounds legit. What about the unsubstantiated allegations that you had an inappropriate relationship with a lady manatee back in 1987?

Bitch be crazy.

What do you think about how even though we are talking about a part of the world where there are no good guys, just degrees of bad guy, and Saudi Arabia has been our “ally” under Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Bush, their current prince is trying to drag their country kicking and screaming into the 1950s, by going against hard core fundamentalists who disagree with his “non-traditional” policies like letting women drive or not blowing up Jews, so even though he’s been disappearing his terrorism supporting relatives for the last couple of years, his  recent ham fisted murder of a Muslim Brotherhood supporting journalist in Turkey, has caused America’s democrats to want us to all of a sudden declare war on Saudi Arabia?

That was one long ass question.

Well, it’s kind of complicated.  I did kind of write a book about this exact sort of thing.

(ponderous shrug) If the Washington Post didn’t want their reporters to get murdered by Saudi secret police, then maybe they shouldn’t hire reporters who got an I Heart Osama Bin Laden tattoo on their butt?

What do you think about all the left wing outrage over NPC memes?

Didn’t you write a movie review a couple of weeks ago because they were calling everyone who disagreed with them a Russian Bot?

Heh… Yeah, that was a good one. https://monsterhunternation.com/2018/10/02/my-russian-bot-review-of-the-last-jedi/

I need more Cheetos.

If elected, you are going to have to work with Senate leadership. What do you think about Mitch McConnell?

He looks like a sea turtle. I know many cunning sea turtles. You can work with sea turtles, but they are never to be trusted.

What do you think about Nancy Pelosi?

She is a Deep One hybrid. You must cast out the spawn of Dagon. During the Battle of Sunken R’lyeh I destroyed many of her kind.

That’s pretty bad ass.

Yes. I am awesome.

It is Book Bomb Day!

A Book Bomb is when we pick out a deserving author who could use a publicity boost, and get as many people as possible to buy their book in the same day on Amazon. The more people who buy, the higher it goes in the sales rankings. Once it gets on some bestseller lists, that gets it in front of even more new eyes. Success breeds success, the author gets new readers, and most importantly, the author GETS PAID.

Today’s Book Bomb is for Primordial Threat, by M.A. Rothman.

I’ve known him for several years, before he launched his own writing career. If you’ll recall the Israeli archaeologist who gets his ass kicked by the ghost of Sextus Bassus  in Monster Hunter Siege was named Dr. Rothman. 🙂

He’s a great guy, and even though he’s just starting his writing career, he’s very talented. I’ve been listening to the Primordial Threat audiobook and it’s really good.

It’s old school, big idea SciFi, man against nature, I’m talking end of our solar system kind of danger, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.

So please tell your friends and share the link. The key to a good Book Bomb is getting as many new eyeballs on a deserving author as possible.

This time we are trying something a little different. This is the first time I’ve ever run a weekend Book Bomb. Normally when I schedule a book for a Book Bombing it is way further down the best seller lists, too, and this was when we put it on the calendar. But Rothman asked me to shoot for this date because he was going to be doing a bunch of publicity himself beforehand and drop the eBook price all the way down to 99 cents.

And oh boy, is it working.

Right now, Friday at 8:00 MST:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #263 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

• #2 in Colonization Science Fiction eBooks
• #2 in Colonization Science Fiction
• #4 in Terrorism Thrillers

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #248,906 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

• #1398 in Hard Science Fiction
• #3842 in Military Science Fiction

EDIT:   Saturday afternoon, holy moly.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #38 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

• #1 in Military Science Fiction
• #1 in Hard Science Fiction
• #1 in Hard Science Fiction

EDIT: Because it was Saturday I wasn’t around my computer as much to update, but Primordial got to #9 in the ENTIRE KINDLE STORE.

It was #1 in every genre it was listed in.

It’s going around Twitter that apparently I got black listed again. That by itself isn’t shocking, because at this point of my career whining dipshits have tried to black ball me from a bunch of things. (most recently social justice howler monkeys got me kicked out of a gaming convention, and then tried and failed to get me kicked out of DragonCon).

However this is the first time I think I’ve gotten black balled from an industry I’m not actually in.

There is some list going around about “ComicsGate” and all the badthink people who should be banned from proper, politically correct, goodthinking comic books, because as you know, like all forms of art, comic books should be politically homogeneous to promote social justice, yadda yadda yadda. And if you disagree, obviously it can only be because you want to drag homosexuals to death behind your jacked up truck, something something Handmaid’s Tale.

So I’m on the banned list.

Okay… Only problem is that I don’t work in comic books.

I’ve never written for a comic book. I’ve never had a comic or graphic novel made of any of my properties. I talked about it once with a company a couple of years ago, but nothing panned out, and I kind of forgot about it.

Okay, to be fair, I have been a GI Joe character. But they can’t ban Spreadsheet! Who will take care of GI Joe’s budget?

My only connection to “ComicsGate” is that I’m friends with Chuck Dixon (who is apparently kicking ass and making piles of money doing independent stuff). I’ve never once commented on whatever this latest controversy is, because frankly I’ve paid little attention to it.

As far as I know, it’s more of the same thing we’ve seen before, where an industry gets taken over by a bunch of bossy liberals who assume everybody good in the world thinks the same as they do, and if you are tired of all your entertainment turning into preachy boring virtue signalling, then obviously you are Evil Fascist Hitler who should be shunned and never work again until you starve in a ditch. When actual creative types–who just want to make fans happy so they can Get Paid–get loud and upppity against the establishment circle jerk, then it’s the end of the friggin’ world, racist/sexist REEEEEEEEEE x 1000.

Hell if I know. That’s just a guess. But apparently by just existing I’m part of this terrible evil movement, and I am now black balled from the comics industry.

Well whoop de fucking do. That would probably hurt if I knew anything about comic books.

Seriously, you assholes need a new hobby.

Normally when the Screaming Harpies Of Tolerance try to get me banned from something, it’s regular book publishing, or pitching a fit until I get thrown out of anthology I’d been asked to be in, or getting me kicked out of a con that I’ve been invited to be a guest. That at least requires our noble social justice types to pay a little attention, but now you’re just phoning it in.

You know what though? This REALLY makes me want to make a comic book. Because nothing makes a American want to do something more than having a bossy busy body tell them that they can’t.