Per Amazon's KU requirements, I have the bits of Vol. 1 that were up on this site. Vol. 2 will be up for several more months yet, so no rush there. Vol 1 will release on Kindle, KU, and I believe audio on November 7th. Thank you all very much for your support, you make all this possible. I would not be able to write as much as I do without my subscribers, so, again, thank you.
Warby
2023-09-25 16:13:02 +0000 UTC View PostTruth was strolling out of the office building when Incisive started blaring an alarm. His own eyes were very nearly as fast- police cruisers were swarming up the street, smashing aside any carriage or wagon too slow to clear out. Flying platforms decked out in black and gold were incoming faster still, and he could hear the shriek of some great bird overhead.
It seems that the ritual had been detected. He could only hope it wasn’t intercepted. In the meantime, he would run like Hell....
2023-09-25 16:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post“Green Five Delco Pumpkin.” Truth was determined to do things properly, even if Merkovah was in a mood.
“Oh, and you remember the procedure, too! Such a diligent, attentive person. How wonderful. Fai Alsho Seven Seven Wolly.” Merkovah’s voice was desert dry. “Is there a particular reason you vanished midway through your transit?”
“Yeah. I didn’t want to get sold out by Comrade whoever. And let’s be real, he was one hundred percent a rat.”
“He is so he...
2023-09-22 16:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostTruth floated in the tub. He wasn’t particularly bothered by the lockdown- he certainly needed a rest and didn’t fear the manhunt finding him. It was something else completely different that had seized his attention- what did Jeon look like before Starbrite arrived? He had some idea of how Siphios looked; Merkovah and Etenesh would hardly shut up about how wonderful it had all been. All the strange wonders and mysterious delights of the nation most favored by God. But then, they were look...
2023-09-21 16:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostThere is one thing everyone knows about demon summoning. Even if you don’t know anything about demon summoning, you know this for the same reason you know not to have sex with a wasp’s nest. There are ideas so intuitively stupid and dangerous most people don’t need the logic spelled out. So even if you don’t know anything about demon summoning, you know that you never, ever, summon fire and air demons at the same time.
But then, stupid and dangerous was exactly wh...
2023-09-20 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostI have been using my brain too much.
<<You can’t set me up like that. It’s not fair. I’ve been trying so hard not to shit on your inadequacies, and then you hand me a line like that. You deserve everything you get.>>
No, I mean, thank you for being less of an asshole, but no, I mean, I need to be more direct. I have stirred the pot here and there, but it’s time to add more serious teeth to the threat my imaginary mastermind presents. Stop ...
2023-09-19 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostLight came in a dim, narrow column from the open door, across the carpet of teeth and putting a shine in the eye made of eyes. The Ghūl seemed to coat every surface not given over to worship, clinging to the walls and ceiling as easily as they knelt on the floor. Their flesh withered or rotted, or simply flaked away, long bones jutting from finger or toe, long nails on those hands complete enough to hang on to them. Some with eyes, most with teeth, some with far too many teeth. All gathered ...
2023-09-18 16:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostHe knew it was coming, and yet, the answer still threw him. Odd.
“You want to share this world with demons as equals. As a way to combat despair and the diseases of despair.”
“Sounds like a leap?” Terry smiled.
“Just a smidge.”
“It should. Demons are dangerous, no question about it. Like fire and cosmic energy, used carelessly or maliciously, they will certainly be fatal. Or worse.”
“Right. That is exactly the concern.” Truth nodded, ...
2023-09-15 16:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostSeveral things clicked all at once. Gullvar was a Holdout, or at least Anakson was. This Project Golden Dawn was intended to activate once the planet’s magic collapsed. The Hyperthaumic Chamber must be conditioning her body to endure whatever the Giant Seed required. She was either sent to the restaurant to trawl for other hidden powers, or the conditions of being in the program were so horrible she wanted to be rescued. In any case, she had jumped on the lead Truth had given her. The myste...
2023-09-14 16:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostTruth slowly walked around the roof, examining the circle of chests and the metal coffin at their center. The blue mists rising out of the chests were thin and cold, like smoke from a dying fire. The mist was being pulled through the air by the array and saturating the coffin. From what he could see, there were intakes in the coffin for the mist to seep into. He squatted next to one, trying to get a closer look at what it was exactly. The spellwork wasn’t familiar to him. There were structu...
2023-09-13 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostTruth rolled his shoulders. In theory, The Meditations of Valentinian should be keeping his body supple far beyond what mere stretching could do. On the other hand, working hunched over a bench for a whole morning left him with a stiff back and aching shoulders. It was probably all in his head, but it felt real.
Not a wasted morning. He had a nice little selection of tools here, most of it fairly stock stuff from the big box talisman supply store. Just a few little modification...
2023-09-12 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostThe staff of the mansion assembled on the steps, Madame Gullvar at the top. They bowed as one. The descended deity was worthy of that much respect. Truth pegged the large man at Level Five, but that wasn’t the source of the oppression. It was his sheer presence. If Truth had a local superreality edge on almost everybody, this man was the “almost.” Truth moved out of sight, went very still, and ran the Incisive as hard as he could. He didn’t bother trying for total imperceptibility. He...
2023-09-11 16:00:59 +0000 UTC View PostTruth lay sprawled on the roof of the restaurant, trying to bring his heart rate under control. What the Hell was that?
He knew that Incisive was impacted by the beliefs of others, and he was running the scales damn hard while he was in the restaurant. He knew who he was the whole time. But why the Hell did he start acting like one of the arrogant young masters he used to bodyguard? Actually, no, he was acting even more high-handed.
He needed someone to get out there and ...
2023-09-08 16:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostTruth decided that he would combine his job with his hobby and hunt for pawns with his dinner. The concierge had been quite happy to arrange a reservation at Number 5 Laurel- debatably the best restaurant in Gwaju but indisputably the most expensive. The concierge couldn’t quite remember what room Truth was in, but that was clearly the concierge’s problem, not the honored guest’s!
Truth was depressed to see how effective Incisive was at persuading people he was a...
2023-09-07 16:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostSlumrat Rising is coming out in Audio, eBook and paperback November 7, 2023. Podium Audio is the publisher, and they have done incredible work on editing and cover design. I haven't heard the audio yet but I can tell you that the reader is Todd Haberkorn, a name you may know from some of the biggest anime (he was freaking Natsu in the English Dub of Fairy Tale) and videogames of the last few years. Including Starfield, if you are playing that. So... yeah. It's a big deal.
As you m...
2023-09-07 14:58:52 +0000 UTC View PostTruth returned to the Hanging Orchid Hotel. The Grand Deluxe Supreme Diamond Suite remained unused. Inexplicably, it seemed that luxury business travel had completely fallen off. The hotel’s guests, while all dressed neatly in business clothes, had a certain tightness of the eye and stiffness in the shoulders. The bar was doing a brisk trade. Very brisk. Truth had seen people drinking to get drunk often enough that he didn’t have to guess why.
He took a shower, scrubbed thoroughly, ...
2023-09-06 16:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostTruth collected Thrush and walked out into the traffic jam of wagons outside the distribution center. He figured that his primary goal might be a failure, but his secondary goal- drawing Starbrite resources away from Harban, might yet work out. Unfortunately, a parking lot full of long-haul transport wagons, or at least this parking lot, does not provide a lot of comfortable seating options. No matter. He would just take the walk for now.
“What happens to souls when the body dies?”<...
2023-09-05 16:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostThe involuntary revolutionaries smashed through the gate. The hinges had been cut; the heavy wagons rolled right over it. The metal shrieked and rumbled under the wheels of progress. The revolutionaries were coming up from an access road, bypassing the queue of wagons waiting to load and unload into the distribution center. This was a high-speed operation. Lines were for honest folk.
Truth was perched on the top of the lead wagon, waiting as Thrush led the column across a wide parking l...
2023-09-04 16:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostTruth was in an odd mood as he drove back to De’Ponte’s club. He had more or less ignored the club the first few times he went in, still in his “drifting ghost” mentality. Now, he could confidently say it was crap. Not as good as the Garden Club Etenesh had taken him to in Xandre, and definitely not as good as the clubs his clients preferred in Harban. Not an entirely fair comparison- high-end clubs in two major capitals versus a club in a third-rate city. Still, some things ...
2023-09-01 16:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostTruth took a moment to enjoy the sun streaming in through the window of the stolen wagon. It was, to his mild surprise, spring. He had lost track of the seasons between the well and the eternal summer of Siphios.
Spring in Jeon meant “Winter 2, Revenge of the Mud.” He hadn’t really noticed all that much. This far south in Jeon, it was comparatively mild. Give it another six weeks or so, and it would be blazing hot and unbearably humid. Maybe not at the level Siphios was, but he co...
2023-08-31 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post“Some good news and bad news, from your perspective- Good news is that we are no longer in Siphios, and the scary exorcists are on the other side of an ocean from us.”
“That is good news.” Thrush’s voice flowed like tar over velvet. He was once again in the form of a small bird with crimson eyes. There was a shimmer and a texture to his wings, black on black, making you want to look closer to see the curious patterns the vanes formed. An elegant look for an imp of no true shap...
2023-08-30 16:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostTruth sat on a bench, watching the people pass. Nobody looked happy. Most looked indifferent. Truth was from Jeon, though. That wasn’t apathy. That was their mask. The thin lips, stiff shoulders, and quick steps. The way people shoved in front of each other over minuscule advantages, like the first to cross the street when the light changed.
Then the mask slipped. People shoving each other, screaming to get at time-limited sales. Yelling at their kids, their families, or lovers. He sa...
2023-08-29 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostTruth dreamed he was sitting in a small room, an office lined with books of mathematics and red-jacketed books of philosophy, heaps of papers on the desk, and heaps more in the rubbish bin on the floor. He was wearing a suit and tie. The Professor was too.
The Professor’s hair would only feign obedience to the hairbrush, flying away when unattended. The hair was wiry, white with that unfortunate tinge of yellow to it that made one wonder if it was the final echo of natural color or if...
2023-08-28 16:01:00 +0000 UTC View PostA few thoughts occurred to Truth at high speeds. The first was that never in his life would he have associated the words “lax security” with anything Starbrite actually cared about. The second was that he had gotten maybe a little cocky. A third thought had started to form but was interrupted.
The glowing, growling, shaking box disintegrated. A sphere of utter blackness emerged, faint blue-green worms of electricity crawling over it. Truth could feel the cosmic rays in the ...
2023-08-25 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post<<You know you just used up all your good luck, right? This is it. The rest of your existence will exceed the already impressive degree of “cursed” you have established. Any day you survive without being crushed to death by deorbiting hippopotami can only be acknowledged as God taking the time to perfect something really cruel.>> The System kept its tone conversational, as though it was discussing the inevitably of ants at a picnic.
Hippopotami is not a real...
2023-08-24 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostIt was time to report in. There was just too much going on, and the window of time to act had shrunk from “about a year” to “about a month. Siphios Intelligence, or whatever shadowy bunch Merkovah was part of, had been playing spy games with Starbrite and Jeon intelligence for centuries. To say they knew each other’s go-to moves would be an understatement. Still, there are some methods that, by their very nature, are almost impossible to detect.
Truth went out and bought a postc...
2023-08-23 16:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostTruth found the news with a bit of trouble- the old joke about eight thousand performances but nothing to watch seemed to be getting truer by the day. Eventually, he found a local news performance being broadcast.
The presenter was, of course, shockingly beautiful. Her every feature was perfectly symmetrical. The tone of her skin was set to the most fashionable and flattering color. Her eye color was adjusted to contrast nicely with her skin and the delicate blues and lavenders of her h...
2023-08-22 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostTruth didn’t pride himself on being decisive in combat. He never hesitated, so quick decision-making didn’t seem impressive. The current situation was, therefore, new on several levels.
He propped his elbows up on the wall, looking down from the top of the garage. It was a pretty ordinary city street. The street next to a multi-story garage near the city sanitation headquarters will never be lively, but it wasn’t dead either. Gwaju was a dense little city, so the street was covere...
2023-08-21 16:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe countryside in Jeon felt different than in Siphios. Truth couldn’t put his finger on it, but it was different somehow. His usual loathing of farms did trigger, but none of the people he saw triggered his loathing of farmers. It took him an embarrassing amount of time to connect the dots. He didn’t hate the farm laborers he met back at the Garage in the Free State. They were really great. And these poor bastards doing the harvesting didn’t make him feel anything but depressed.
...
2023-08-18 16:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post“Mr. De’Ponte! Sweet ride, that new?” The Green Tiger boss ran over to greet the “big shot.”
“Just out of the shop! The stock interior was trash. Daddy needs his upgrades.” De’Ponte’s smile was bleach white, with a blue tint to his mirrored sunglasses. A crisp white shirt tucked into sharply creased slacks. The tattoo of a one-legged crane seemed to shimmer and move on the side of his neck, almost flying out of his collar. The red blaze on the top of the bird’s head ...
2023-08-17 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post