FREE SHORT: Blood Stained Cliffs of Dover: A Love at First Bite story

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My, doesn't that look shiny? Isn't that interesting? Who's the classy dame?

.... Okay. If you've read the novels, you probably know the answer to the last one.

Here's the short version. Remember Bad Date? It's now for sale for $.99 over on Kindle. See, you could have had it for free.

Sign up for my newsletter, and you'll get this short story completely free. No joke. Automatically.

What's the plot? you ask, savvy reader that you are.

In World War II, the allied invasion of the continent hinges on them keeping one secret absolutely secure.

Tonight, German spy Konrad Achterberg is about to discover what that secret is.

He's also about to discover that the Nazis aren't the scariest predator in the night. Because something in the dark is colder than the dark, and it is hungry.

Sign up right here, right now, for free. You'll get access to it immediately.

And while I think about it....

Over at Silver Empire Publishing's Lyonesse streaming short story service, today is the live launch of my short story Zombie Jamboree. It stars a new character, as well as an old character.  If you've read Live and Let Bite, you know about NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Wilson (who was in Chapter 5, Blue blood), and he's got a large role in this one.

And yes, this is my take on Zombies. And here's a hint: it has nothing to do with The Walking Dead.

And here is the rest of the Love at First Bite series. 

And my other novels

    

Destroying our heroes -- William Lehman on Captain America, a Guest Post

After my little piece on Steve Rogers going Hydra agent from forever ago, (because you know, that makes such perfect sense), William Lehman wanted to take a crack at it, too.

For those of you who may not recall Mister Lehman, he made a brief appearance in Sad Puppies Bite Back. He's also one of the folks I work with over at Otherwhere Gazette, and he's the author of Harvest of Evil, and the upcoming sequel, Keeping the Faith, which I've had the honor of reading for review (it'll come up after the book hits on Amazon).

The really short version is he's a former navy man (submarines) and has been reading SF since forever. And I'd like to thank him for putting this much thought into a guest post.

Enjoy.

Destroying our heroes

So now, I’m told that Steve Rogers is, and always was, a Nazi. Ya know, in the great circus that is life, such a little thing as this, and compared to a possible war with China, the disaster that this presidential election is, a Submarine nuclear missile capable North Korea, a president that's selling our country down the unsanitary estuary, the trials and tribulations of my own life etc. et al. This is really a little thing, should not bother me, but it does.

I quit reading comic books in fourth grade or so (that would have been in the 1970s) so it's truly only of academic and theoretical interest... But it still pisses me off, and way more than it should.

The thing is this: we (and by we, I mean society and specifically you rat bastard self-designated keepers of society's values, IE the media) have gone about utterly destroying anything like a good role model, first:

By destroying any dead man's legacy, if they were the sorts of role models that existed in the era prior to 1970, which could be found.

Then by making sure that everyone knows the failings and falling short of any living man who might step up to be a hero.

Now because that isn't enough, we're going to destroy any FICTIONAL character that may be considered a role model!

Then we (again that societal we) will sit around and wring our hands at how the criminal element is so strong, the men are brutes, the women are sluts, drug addiction and crime in the streets etc etc etc.

The author of this particular bit of buggery says: “We knew it would be like slapping people in the face," confessed Brevoort. "The idea of Captain America means something very primal and very strong to the people of this nation, and they have a very visceral reaction when you get to something like that. You want people to feel and react to your story. So far, so good.” OK so he admits that he’s trying to piss off his audience…

Now I am aware that there is a certain section of the artistic community that feels that if they’re not offending and shocking their audience, they’re not making “art”. As an aside, I note that this same set of Avant Guard morons can’t figure out why they aren’t making any money, and write it off to “the fools just can’t understand my work”. This mind set has however, no place in Comic books for pity’s sake!

I can’t say that I’ll make the coffers of Marvel any smaller by boycotting their work, because as I mentioned, the last time I bought a comic book it was with lawn mowing money. Still, I think this goes to damn far.

Further I see this as part of a grand conspiracy. Now, hold on, before you tell me my tin foil hat is too tight, I’m not saying that the members of this conspiracy ACTIVELY conspired, each and every one of them, to tear apart the values of the nation. It’s not that simple. What I am saying is that the news headquarters for all the major news networks, newspaper conglomerates, publishers, etc (the self-designated arbiters of culture) are clustered in two relatively small areas (I’m talking 40 miles square or so each) and they all know and party with each other. They all go to the same schools, send their children and protégés to the same schools, and have a “group think”.

We saw our first evidence of that group think back in 1968, when someone that I had admired, and as the child that I was then, believed, told me that the Tet offensive was a horrible defeat, and we had lost Vietnam. I was raised thinking that Walter Cronkite was “the most honest man on TV”, so when he says we got our butt kicked in ‘Nam, well of course I and my family believed him. As we know now, that was bullshit. The Tet was a massive disaster militarily for the NVA, and in fact we never again faced them on the field of battle. The Tet should have been their Collodion Fields. It wasn’t, because after we destroyed over half their troops on the field, in exchange for casualties that were damn light in comparison we allowed ourselves to be told we had lost the battle and the war.

It was shortly after that, we started seeing the rise of the “anti-hero” in the media, and on the screen, and we started reading articles about how Audi Murphy was an alcoholic and general dirt-bag, Babe Ruth was an alcoholic womanizing racist, Captain O’Kane and Adm Burke where genocidal, etc…

Oh I’m sure that there’s no one guy sitting back in a room somewhere orchestrating this stuff (though if I had to list a suspect, George Soros leaps immediately to mind) No it’s more of a group think thing, done by conversations at dinner parties, and over drinks. It’s created by contempt for the masses of this country that live in what these folks dismissively call “fly over country”.

It’s an attempt to “fundamentally change” America (now where have I heard that before?) And now that they’ve destroyed all the living and dead heroes that they can, they’re going after those that exist only in our imaginations, because in spite of everything they’ve done to date, there are still those that cling to their values of honesty, loyalty, patriotism, liberty etc… and these things are anathema to the left.

There seems to be this idea that if we can just get the kids early enough, we’ll have achieved our goal of making the nation over in our image. So suddenly we get dark and brooding superman, who wonders if saving the nation and the whole “Truth, Liberty and the American way” thing is right after all. And we get THIS SHIT, a Captain America who’s secretly a Hydra agent. (of course all of his story to date would indicate that he’s the WORST secret agent in history, as he’s foiled more plots by Hydra, and stopped more global domination schemes by them than Michael Moore has eaten cheeseburgers) I say ENOUGH. These clods have not only declared a social-political war for the heart of America, they’ve decided to use my children and grandchildren as pawns in the fight.

Folks it’s time to fight back. Fight with your wallet, fight with your stories and tales of heroism and bravery, and if it comes to it, fight with that fourth box we really don’t want to break open.

On Brussels, or Kill Them All

My apologies for not commenting on this sooner, but I wanted more data to work with.

Terrorists should die.

All of them.

The Geneva Convention says so.

Didn't know that, did you?

In the great old tradition of the, well, Traditional Rules of Warfare, anyone who wasn't in a uniform, but acting on behalf of an opposing enemy, caught in your territory? Those were spies. You shot them. No trial, no rules, you just shot them in the head, or the chest, or in the gut if you're feeling vindictive.

The role of spies and keeping them alive is a relatively new concept, brought to you by the Cold War. Everyone wanted to get their spies back. Spies became political chess pieces. They became useful beyond spying.

Before that? Spies could have had anything done to them, and no one would have blinked.

A lot of the Geneva Convention seems to be, at least superficially, a codification of the traditional rules of warfare.  Only the language that they use is "illegal combatants" -- does that term sound familiar? It should. That's what almost every terrorist is. If one is not clearly labeled as one side or another -- or if clearly and deliberately mislabeled for purposes of shenanigans -- then that person is toast. Because Illegal combatants HAVE NO RIGHTS under the Geneva convention. Sadly, Saddam's army would have had better luck if they kept their uniforms on ... well, those who weren't in hiding because a war crimes tribunal would have strung them up.

Let's be clear here, shall we? The Islamofascists want us to die. They won't be happy until either we die, or they do. I'd rather it be them.

That's pretty much it. Now I don't generally advocate the standard "kill them all" approach, but I do prefer that we climb the tree. It worked for Osama bin Laden. We got a high ranking commander, we got a courier, poured water down their nose while hanging them upside down, terrified the crap out of them, and climbed the ranks.

My only suggestion would be find a terrorist, find the next step up the chain of command, confiscate as much of their cash as possible (because money buys all sorts of explosives), kill that level of the chain, move up to the next round. Or kill them later, either way.

If you want the really short version, read Tom Kratman's Desert Called Peace and Carnifex, which are two solid books on the nature of this enemy and how they should be fought. And killed.

As for other countries, well, I won't say "If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists," but if you're gonna be neutral, be ACTIVELY neutral. Swiss-level neutral. And the Swiss do NOT like people screwing with their neutrality. Act on behalf of some other country while in Switzerland, they will throw you in jail as fast as they can get their hands on you.

So too should "neutral" countries if they want to be truly neutral. "Hey, France, you've got jihadis in your suburbs? Throw them out. You don't even need to arrest them, just don't harbor the little bastards. Okay? Thanks."

But there are no de facto neutral countries, not realistically, and definitely not in the long run. Think about it, the standard Islamofascist has two categories: themselves, and everyone else. You're either with the terrorists, or on their target list. Hell, even ISIS and al-Qaeda hate each other. If they can't coexist to kill non-Islamofascists, what makes anyone else think that they won't be next?

Realistically, no one can be neutral in a war against Islamofascism. Either these guys die, or they kill you. Normally, there would be a third option for forced conversion or being taxed into poverty UNTIL you convert, but ISIS doesn't seem to have that on the agenda. They just seem to be in raping and beheading. (Most Islamofascists don't seem to be interested in anything that might benefit them. When Israel left the West Bank and Gaza, the locals trashed everything of value left behind. Because "It's Israeli." No one thought to use anything for their own benefit, because they'd rather die than use Israeli technology or shops. Because they hate Israel and the West more than they like themselves. They would sooner buy weapons than food.)

And for the record, I know that Islam considers an infidel becoming a Muslim a "reversion," as they believe everyone is really a Muslim to start with, but no. I'm Catholic. Always been Catholic. Will probably always be Catholic. If you have a problem with this, feel free to come visit me at 938 West 35th street, Manhattan, New York. Otherwise, take it up with someone who cares.

No one who takes the enemy at its word can be logically neutral. But the amount of people who had dismissed Islamofascism for most of the 20th century are legion.

Or, to paraphrase the immortal words of John Adams: "Islamofascists have declared us in a state of open and total war. Why the bloody hell can't we?"  This is not The Mouse that Roared, where a country the size of the Vatican declares war on us and then fights with bows and arrows. These people strap bombs to their women, their children, their brothers and their sisters, and gleefully send them to their deaths.The Islamofascist is one who believes in dying more than they believe in living, and all I suggest is that we accommodate them. Is that so much to ask?

With Brussels, Europe is once more reminded that they're not neutral. And no, don't blame the refugee crisis, this goes back so much further than Syria and ISIS. Two of the bombers were born in Brussels. This was a seed planted long ago.

But, unlike the Swiss, Europe generally treats neutrality as something that happens because they say so. Switzerland has only been able to stay neutral because everyone banks there, and the entire country is a natural walled off location (their walls are called "The alps") and everybody in the country has a freaking NATO automatic rifle. Screw with the Swiss, and they just go into the mountains and snipe at you until you run out of either money or blood.

The rest of Europe? They don't have that defense.

The first thing Europe should do is establish border control and create Ellis Island. Yes, I said Ellis Island. Remember, Ellis was created to quarantine folks coming into the country, screen them for diseases, and to find out if the people coming in were the people they wanted to come in. Step 1 would be to do that for the Syrian "refugees." Yes, I put that in quotes. The UN says that they're mostly women and children. The individual countries say that they're mostly fighting-age men.  In the event that the individual countries are right, they should really screen the refugees carefully. Once it has been decided that the individual in question is A) really a refugee and B) not someone who will blow the place up, then and only then should they make the decision to let them back into the country. And all the interrogators should be women. Let's face it, if the men object to the women interrogating them, and get violent over that, send them back to deal with ISIS. If they can't put up with the "discomfort" of a female authority figure to escape the ISIS rampage, they can go back and deal with ISIS on their own.

Step two is to start actual investigations of organizations suspected of supporting terrorism, or tracing funds of same. This isn't rocket science, people. It really isn't.

E3 Roundup

If you don't already know, I'm on a blog called The Catholic Geeks.

As opposed to my radio show called the Catholic Geek, singular.

Anyway, I did a whole bunch of blogs on E3 this week, that make for a nice collection of upcoming games.

Enjoy.

Microsoft Opens strong at E3
Halo 5: Guardians
Recore   New IP
New controllers
Dark Souls III: Die Hardest.
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2
Tom Clancy’s The Division

Rise of the Tomb Raider Gameplay at E3
Dedicated to one game. Only.

Fallout 4 at E3
Yup. Fallout is back.

E3 Is Doomed.
YAWN.  Doom is back

Dishonored ... Again

Super Smash Bros.

Playstation Event Fights Back with Exclusives

The Last Guardian -- new IP .... first announced 8 years ago.
Horizon: Zero Dawn -- new IP
Hitman
Street Fighter V
No Man’s Sky -- new IP
Dreams -- new IP
Firewatch -- new IP
Destiny: The Taken King.
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate .... sigh.  AGAIN
Final Fantasy 7. The Remake.
Call of Duty: Black Ops III
Star Wars: Battlefront
Uncharted 4

Ubisoft wages war For Honor

War For Honor -- a new IP

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands.

EA Brings back Mass Effect and Mirror’s Edge

...And Star Was: BattleFront

Square Enix Blows Up E3

Hitman

Just Cause 3

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Kingdom Hearts

Deus Ex

Nintendo isn't dead yet, With

Xenoblade Chronicles

Star Fox Zero

Super Mario Maker

Taking a stand, for the last time.

Last week, I said that A Pius Stand is coming.

It's finally going to be over.

If you've been with this blog since the beginning -- or if you've read "Pius Origins" link on the sidebar -- you know that this started out as a history paper gone amuck. It was a graduate paper in which I examined the truth behind Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust.

SPOILERS FOR A PIUS MAN, but, what I learned from my research was simple. Pius XII did more than any one person to save people in Europe during World War II.  More POWs. More Jews. More refugees. Because life was precious, and if they didn't like it, they could just come and get him.

But if you read any media around Pope Pius XII, you get Hitler's Pope. And Susan Zuccotti. And John Cornwell. And Gary Wills and Michael Phayer. The Wiki page on it has become more balanced, but still incomplete. You don't even want to know what it looked like when I started writing.  All of these great big names trying to spin a story I know to be false, and I spent a whole four months looking at primary documents as a grad student in America. They were journalists and historians. They should have known better.

I don't like liars.

The Pius Trilogy started out as a devotion. One that I tried to make readable for everyone. I wanted the opening to be dark and ominous to trap anti-Catholic to reading on, until they are so hip deep in the book that by the time that the revelation is given, the trap springs shut.

END SPOILERS.

The short version is, this was a devotion.  This was to sing the praises of God and His followers. This was a devotion to the truth, and a war on lies. At the same time, I was making it readable for other people. Heck, one of my friends on Facebook became a friend of mine BECAUSE of A Pius Man, and she's Jewish, I can't make it too much more open and readable than that.

The reason my cast was so big was simple -- I wanted to make it clear that the truth was not some subjective moving target. I needed a doubter, a neutral party, two red herrings, confirmation of the mystery ... well, you'll just have to read it to perform that matching column.

But my premise was that of philosopher Peter Kreeft -- this was an ecumenical jihad, a war against one very specific force of darkness, and one that the religions in A Pius Man could get behind. Because the liars I've been fighting since the beginning all have one thing in common.  What is that thing? Read A Pius Legacy.

But then I couldn't get the Catholic Writer's Guild Seal of Approval for APM. Why? Because the book was too violent, and some poor little dear was squeamish. I know this happened because I had officers of the Guild come up to me and suggested that there needed to be changes in the was the Seal of Approval was handled. Devotion to truth? Devotion to God? Who needs it? I've got a gun-toting Catholic! Run!

Then I had one or two of those officers write positive reviews. I'll take it.

The reason I kept going was that some things needed to be said. Some things needed to be put out there and thrown at people's heads until they either take notice or are bludgeoned to death.  Because the truth is not a game, or a weapon, except against lies. Truth is what happened, and maybe we can speculate about reasons, or about the why of things, and sometimes people will leave a diary detailing what and why they did. Then we hope the poor schmuck isn't a schizophrenic or a pathological liar.

And I kept going because I had to. Because writing is all I have.

This trilogy has been my life for ten years. And now it's time for me to say goodbye.

Fighting and writing workshop, day 5 and 6: military fight scenes

This is the online workshop in writing fight scenes that I did for the Catholic Writer's Conference.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.

Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.

Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.

So, here is day five and six.... Day five was merely an assignment. Day six was more interesting.

 Day Five: Putting It Together

At this point, you should have an idea of what you're doing. Take assignments three and four, and put them together. Whether you start from a weapon and go to hand-to-hand, or vice versa, is up to you. This is the assignment.

Like with most writing, practice makes perfect. So don't be discouraged if you're not writing full-scale battle choreography by now.

Day Six: Writing For Military Fights

Writing a military fight scene is no different from any other, when you get down to it. Do some research on terms, maneuvers, etc., but don't overstress that part. It's mostly just a matter of vocabulary.

But, seriously, there's little difference from warfare fighting.

Character: In describing filming for Lord of the Rings, and the Battle of Helm's Deep, director Peter Jackson discovered a basic law of fight scenes – Jackson had hours upon hours of stuntmen beating each other to a pulp, but the battle was boring when the camera was not on the primary characters.

The important thing you need to know is, no matter what, you need to focus on the individuals involved. The more modern your setting, the more things are done by groups of individuals, squads and fire teams, and not massive lines of fire, one against another.

However, no matter how many people you have fighting whatever enemy, you need to have individuals the audience can focus on and care about. Writing about a line of tanks is boring. Writing about someone the audience has met, and is invested in, is much, much better.

For great examples of this, read the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell – he has, on average, about six players in any battle that he focuses on, as well as a massive, historical battle taking place.

Setting: If you want to focus on a full-scale battle, in whatever age and setting, one thing you'll want to focus on is the field of battle. You're going to want to focus on the sounds, and the sights, perhaps even the smells. You want to recreate it as though the battlefield is a character. A loud, monstrous, messy, rampaging character, with lots of property damage.

The best I've ever seen of this type of recreation is John Keegan's The Face of Battle, where he recreated the battlefields of Agincourt, Waterloo, and Verdun.

Hand-to-hand combat and weapons: Depending on the scenario, military battles do not start with close combat, unless it's a type of covert infiltration, where getting in close and killing people silently is important. And, let's face it, the use of weapons will vary wildly depending on what time period and setting you're using. For the most part, it boils down to individuals.

Catholic Conspiracies: The Illuminati Polka and the attack of the Vatican Ninjas.

 

I have decided to make this a comedy posting. Why?

Recently, I went looking for a book on one end of the crazy spectrum. The book had been (loosely) based on an episode during World War II, and it was supposed to “prove” that Pope Pius XII could not qualify as “Hitler's Pope.” Instead, this conspiracy theory had Pope Pius XII using the Jesuits to assassinate Adolf Hitler in World War II.

It was called Vatican Assassins.

On the one hand, it really covered an actual incident during the war: where German Generals who wanted to kill Hitler had expressed a desire to use Pius XII as an intermediary. The Generals thought that Pius XII could be a neutral party when talking to the British, laying the groundwork for a truce after they had assassinated Hitler. Obviously, the plan didn't work, since Hitler killed himself years later.

Vatican Ninja, by Matt

On the other hand ... Vatican Ninjas?  Are we serious?

Okay, Vatican Ninjas would be cool, but that's next week....

Or I can show a very well done photo by Matthew Funtime, for extra gratuitous coolness....

As for Vatican Assassins, I had originally stumbled across this work six years ago, when I first researched the entire matter of “Hitler's Pope” for a graduate paper. This was a few months before I even started writing A Pius Man. Perhaps an entire year before the book.

Recently, I wanted a laugh, and I wanted to see if anything had happened with this particular nutjob and his Vatican Ninjas.

So, I put Vatican Assassins into an Amazon search, and then Google …

Oh my dear God, the results I got…