Truth glared at the forest draping itself around the Great White Mountain. It looked fine. He didn’t trust a single splinter of it. The memories of Happori Village and the deep, multilayered defenses around it were firmly lodged in his memory.
Oh, happy thought- the magic storm must be pl...
2024-01-25 17:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostTruth was two hours north of Nailad when the blue sky turned pink. It was the pink of a boiled shrimp, Truth thought, though he admittedly felt a bit lightheaded. There was a sudden feeling, a sudden absence of pressure, leaving him lightheaded and almost dizzy.
The carriage stopped. The po...
2024-01-24 17:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostThe trip to Nailad was blood-stoppingly dull. The checkpoint sucked, but he knew how to manage those now. After his stint in the chamber with the Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, his ability to seal up his energy had massively improved. It did make him wonder how many divinations just slid right ove...
2024-01-23 17:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostTruth grinned mirthlessly at the communication altar. He couldn’t see Merkovah, but he could certainly imagine the “old man” shock on his young face. Looks like he knew. Well, I wouldn’t have believed him if he denied it.
“Oh, you know me. I take an interest in people, an...
2024-01-22 17:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostAll news this time. Vol. 3 got wrapped up on Thursday. So. Hooray. And once I have regained some reasonable fraction of my usual energy, I will actually be excited about that, but what I am right now, mostly, is tired. My project for the next little while is consolidating the book into a single w...
2024-01-20 13:38:40 +0000 UTC View PostThe laughter bubbled up in Truth from the bottom of his belly, tickling his guts and squeezing his lungs. What could he do but laugh? He wanted to fight a higher reality entity that was compounding the torture of humanity inflicted by a literal stellar eminence, all while God disdained to look on...
2024-01-19 17:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostTruth wasn’t sure if he had lost yet another gear, or was integrating a new one. “The whole planet hates humanity and wants us to suffer.”
“That is how I see things, yes. Although, fair to say, the hatred has been intensifying rapidly over the last few hundred years.” The Abbot’...
2024-01-18 17:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostTruth gave the Abbot a hard look. Then another. The Abbot couldn’t see him, of course, but that didn’t stop the alarming chuckles coming from the giant deer head.
“I really thought I was the only one who imagined humanity as rats.” Truth grumbled.
“No chance of that. The met...
2024-01-17 17:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post<<Ow ow fuckity OW YOU BASTARD. I hope that memory was of you being torn apart by weevils. Billions of boiling maggots just shredding your still alive and terribly conscious flesh apart.>>
I was… a sailor.
Truth stared up at the polished wood of the cei...
2024-01-16 17:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostIt was a bright, blustery day in the Downs. The anchored warships were all busy, patching, repairing, resupplying. Waiting to sail out and protect England’s budding dominions in far flung places like the Carolinas, Jamaica, or Tangiers. The echo of Dutch cannons was still loud in the ears of th...
2024-01-15 17:00:12 +0000 UTC View PostNews: End of book grind is very real. Symptoms are similar to burnout, but I’ve been here before. It’s a reinforcing cycle of bad habits triggering off anxiety. “I need to get this thing written, but the writing is slow. I don’t have time to exercise/make good food/read s...
2024-01-13 17:16:40 +0000 UTC View PostThe meat hung in the cold, dark, box. The barge took them past the judges, who looked down on them and distained them. The box of meat was carried down the river, on to that place of long knives, where children learned a bloody truth- they were the least important component in a machine for pigs,...
2024-01-12 17:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostThe dorm room had gone quiet again. Truth’s alarmingly detailed explanation of just what the System was, and why the national enrollment was near suicide, had rocked her. As had the idea that all of it was just Starbrite stepping up his escape plan. Or that the Starbrite her brother had worship...
2024-01-11 17:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostTruth slowly blinked at Sophia.
“Could you just… walk me through that idea?”
Sophia grinned a little. “System Astrologica, the work tracking and spell delivery system for Starbrite. Starbrite employees can be found everywhere on the planet, in orbit, and even on the moon, but ...
2024-01-10 17:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostSophia didn't even blink. The asp wand flicked up and she tried to shoot from around knee high. Incisive saw it coming. Between the warning and her concrete-slow movement, he flicked it away with an outstretched foot.
“Glad to see I raised you right.” His voice was bone dry. “Wh...
2024-01-09 17:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post“The season very sickly everywhere of strange and fatal fevers.”
Truth had no idea where the words came from, or why he thought of them as the explosion drove him towards Sophia. She looked like she was ducking in slow motion, a sleepy bird in front of Truth’s terrifying reflexes. He ...
2024-01-08 17:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostA bit delayed and very brief-
News: Nothing of substance to report. Basically things are chugging along. I yo-yo between freaking out that there are only 116 (or whatever) reviews for Vol. 1 on Amazon and reminding myself that I was the one who wanted to write web serial pr...
2024-01-06 19:00:22 +0000 UTC View PostTruth woke, having slept poorly. He had opted for a vacant office in a mostly empty office building. It looked like the previous tenants hadn’t even cleaned out the place when they left. All the office furniture was there. All the old files. Strange that the landlord hadn’t disposed of it eit...
2024-01-05 17:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostTruth awoke, cold and sticky.
“The Hell?” He pulled at his fragile pants and watched them come away in a gooey mess.
There was a metaphorically pregnant pause.
“No. No way!”
<<Evidence suggests that, yes way. And once more, you have managed to overachieve...
2024-01-04 17:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostTruth spent the morning doing moving cultivation. He had the space now, and just sitting around had never felt right to him. Every few hours he checked the scry- lockdown still in effect. It turned out that people were being allowed out to buy things, but you had a fixed time of day to do it at, ...
2024-01-03 17:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostTruth slept on the floor of the main room of the apartment. It was sort of like the apartment he grew up in- there was a bathroom, a bedroom, then a combination living room, diningroom and kitchen. It wasn’t large, but for a single man, it was entirely enough. It wasn’t decorated, exactly. Th...
2024-01-02 17:00:12 +0000 UTC View PostTruth’s eyes were glued to the Scry. They didn’t get his face exactly right, he thought. It was a drawing. Must not have caught a clean picture of him on a recording talisman. Thank you Blessing of the Silent Forest? Or maybe they just wanted people looking at the drawing instead of the pictu...
2024-01-01 17:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
So... I don't love it, but I think it gets the vibe. It won't be the book cover, so I thought I would share it with you all.
I hope you enjoyed the first five chapters of Starling. Right now,...
2023-12-29 21:22:31 +0000 UTC View PostNews: 2023 was a year worth remembering for me. It was the year I became a professional author. I sold my books. They are a physical thing you can pick up and hold, download on a phone or tablet, even listen to in the car. It’s a mind blowing thing. Just in Slumrat R...
2023-12-29 21:13:10 +0000 UTC View PostI started the day as I meant to continue it- with energy and positivity. I therefore performed for [[Lavinia]] my absolutely show stopping a cappella rendition of the Hu’s Wolf Totem. The moral lessons are sound, and it’s got a wonderful sense of drive to it. Mongol heavy metal on motorcycles...
2023-12-29 17:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post<<Wake up! WAKE THE FUCK UP!>> Truth could vaguely hear the System screaming at him. The crushing pressure of the serpent above made it almost impossible to focus. The sense of his body being pressed into pulp encouraged him to shift himself. He tried to sit up and almo...
2023-12-29 17:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostIt was a tiring but productive day. I returned to [[Marti]]'s feeling better about myself. Marti wasn’t home yet- probably boozing it up somewhere. Ah well. Can’t knock a millennia-old girl for liking to party. Wait, is that the plural for millennium? What even were the rules of grammar...
2023-12-28 17:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostFor I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
...
2023-12-28 17:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostThe night passed peaceably. It had been an active and productive day one, but I was pretty tired. [[Marti]]’s sofa was no more comfortable than I remembered, and the dreams I had were gory and dreadful, hunter and the hunted through the ancient dark woods, rutting wildly coated in the thin wast...
2023-12-27 17:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe serpent turned, forever eating its own tail, forever grinding down, refining and returning to life- refashioned into something new. Better. Whether it wanted to be destroyed and remade or not.
Truth didn’t want to be destroyed. He had died once already. At least once. He didn’t enjo...
2023-12-27 17:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post