Checking out for the day

Over on the Superversive SF blog, I did an article on GOOD Strong Female Characters. Basically, it's where I defend every female action hero I grew up with.

You can click here for the details.

But I'm still feeling a little fuzzy, and I blew most of my brain power on that article.

Pictures! Shiny!

Yeah, I'm that brain dead right now. It's less a matter of insisting that you be content with keys being rattled in front of you, and more a matter that "rattling keys" is about as high as my brain functions will go right about now.

Yeah. Sorry about that.

Yeah. Sorry about wasting everyone's time like that. 

Be well.

Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

I've been told that Amazon really starts to help authors once they hit fifty reviews.

Well, I'll believe that when I see it.

Right now, though, I know that reviews, in general, help. Yes, I've seen spikes every time that I've gotten new reviews....

And that's all I have. I was going to do a nice, neat breakdown of what books have how many reviews.

But the short version is I've come down with some sort of illness that has my head filled with cotton and something is breaking up in my chest every time I cough, so I can only spend so much time looking at the computer screen before I go cross eyed, and literally lose every thought in my head.

Anyway. I bring up reviews because one of the reasons that Murphy's and Live and Let Bite came out so close upon the heels of each other is that I had a lot of people demanding sequels to Honor At Stake.  Honor has 56 reviews right now, more than any other novel I've ever released. I figure demand would be as high for everything else.

Murphy's? 16 reviews

Live and Let Bite? 11 reviews.

These reviews aren't even 10% of my sales on these novels.

So .... I'm going to ask you, faithful reader, if you could take five minutes, stop by, and leave a quick review about how awesome these two novels are.

You can quickly access any book by clicking on the cover below.

But, if you're one of the dozen or so people who have already left me a review, I'll mention that The Dragon Awards are open and ready for nominations. If you don't have any thoughts on what to nominate, I have a list of suggestions you might want to take a look at. If you already  have a good idea of what you want, just click here to go and vote for them immediately. The instructions are right there.

Or: sign up for my mailing list in order to get free stuff.

Until then....

Puppies.

Pardon me while I drink down another half a bottle of NyQuil, and expire.

Be well.

The Love at First Bite series. 

    

Thor: Ragnarok, a Teaser falls

For all those women who have been awaiting the latest in the Shirtless Hemsworth series, I give you: Thor: Ragnarok

In the original comic books, the Ragnarok storyline was all about getting Thor off the map for the Civil War event of 2005.

Mysteriously enough, at the same time, also before Civil War, Hulk was shipped off planet, via rocket ship, to land on an alien world where he would eventually rise to become ruler.  The title of THAT event was Planet Hulk.

I guess that the films decided that they were going to do two of them at the same time.

For those people who remember, when we last saw Loki, he was taking over Asgard disguised as Odin. And here, we see Hela, queen of Hel trashing Asgard. This version may or may not be related to Loki, like the original myths, but it's a really long story or Marvel doing whatever they like with mythology.

So, Hela trashes Asgard. Thor becomes a gladiator on an alien world but by Jeff Goldblum, and runs into Hulk. There will be smashing.

I suspect that the three act structure of this one will be-- Asgard is toast at the 40 minute mark, Thor, Banner and Loki are able to get away from the alien gladiator world by the end of act 2, and act three will open with Strange consulting/

Yes, Cumberbatch is confirmed to be in this movie as Doctor Strange. In fact, if you look at the IMDB page, the cast list starts with Loki, then Strange, Idris Elba's Heimdall, Cate Blanchett's Hela, and THEN, Chris Hemsworth.  He's getting fifth billing and he's the title character? Oy.  Obviously, this will not be in the credits for the film, they'll have a different arrangement, but still....

SPECULATION: As I said before, just going off of the title, this will enable Thanos to get his hands on the Tesseract / Cosmic Cube from Avengers. Or, as I said,

This means that Ragnarok will either have Thanos attacking Asgard, or will have Thanos in a final, post-credit scene in which he goes through the wreckage of Asgard, coming up with the gauntlet, and probably the Tesseract.

Now that we know Thanos is not attacking Asgard (directly), I expect that his post-credits scene from Age of Ultron will be the actual end of Ragnarok. 

With Thor going to other planets in this one, will Marvel take this opportunity to has him run into the Guardians of the Galaxy? I would, if only to bring them more into the fold.

Also, right now, we have five Infinity gems accounted for, there's one outstanding. When last we looked, Dr. Strange has one, Vision has one (putting two on Earth), The Collector has one, Asgard has one, and the Nova corps has one.

Guardians 2 and Ragnarok are perhaps the best opportunity for Thanos to get three out of six -- but there is Captain Marvel and two more Avengers films that should provide ample opportunity. At the very least, I expect to see the final infinity gem revealed this year. (Yes, I also said that it's possible it could show up in Wakanda. If it doesn't show up in the main MCU films this year, that's the only option left)

But we'll see.

Speaking of superhero like topics
My books
The Love at First Bite series. 

    

On Being Interesting

Why do you read my books?

This is an honest question, and I'd like you to consider the answer as you read my post.

A lot of people try to tell me that having a blog is to make people care about you. To invest in you as a person, they buy your work.

But I'm told that blogs are all about making you, the reader, give a darn about me, the author.

.... I have problems with that.

I mean, on the one hand, yeah, sure, I usually like Peter David doing his stand up at conventions (he has kept it apolitical), but you'd have to hold me at gun point to read another Sir Apropos novel.

I haven't even seen Larry Correia for more than a few minutes at LibertyCon. I like his work, but will tell most people to skim MHI: Alpha until it gets interesting.

Now, sure, people who piss me off will turn me off of their work. I never got into John Scalzi, and never will, now that I've interacted with him on Facebook. Couldn't get into George RR Martin's Game of Thrones, and hated his Beauty and the Beast TV show, and will roll my eyes if I ever pass him in person.

But I don't recall a single author who I have bought because I liked the person. I just read the stories and see if I like them or not.

In some cases, I'll read, for review, a book for someone because I like them, but I'll run, screaming, from the room if they're terrible enough. There are some novels I've never finished that you'll never hear about because I like the author, but not their book.

Think about it for a moment, shall we? You are reading my blog. If you are a long time reader of my blog, have you ever bought a novel of mine because of my:

• Traumatic high school experience?
• Counseling nearly a dozen rape victims? (More than that now)
• Video game playing?
• Music choices?
• Hatred for Twilight? (That hardly makes me unique)
• Love of Babylon 5?
• Public nervous breakdown?
• I hate Valentine's Day?
• Gun shop visit?
• I live in New York?
• Being a Catholic / Conservative / both?

I suspect the answer to all of the above is most likely "No." But if I'm wrong, tell me, I'll post on them more.

My money would be that you read my books because you saw a post on how I developed the novel. Or that you went to Amazon, read the premise, or the reviews, or both, and purchased it.

Granted, you might read try my novels because of the last point, but that's only if you're also politically conservative OR Christian, and you want to read a book by someone who will not insult you for your beliefs.

But that's it.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who came here, laughed at the whole Hugos thing, and decided to give my books a shot. Maybe they're as funny as that stuff.

But yeah, I have problems wrapping my mind around "This person is likable, I will read his stuff because I like him."

I can see:

• "I like how s/he thinks, I wonder if the books are similar?"
• "Hey, s/he's a smartass / funny / witty / writes real good."
• "Huh, this thought here should be interesting if s/he puts it into practice in X-book."

....Yeah. I can't see too much more than that being a factor. And that's not biographical. That's a little bit about how the inside of my brain works -- poorly, infrequently, and with great difficulty.

Heck, the list of things that you don't want about me, I'm sure, are legion. Several of them would probably strike you blind if I mentioned them. Think about this a moment, would mentioning my prayer life / sex life / relationship status / cash flow influence anybody into purchasing my work?

I think we all know the answer to that.

As I said once before, I'm boring.

That's right up there was saying: Puppy!

Yes, he's cute, but that's not the point. I expect nothing from posting that photo aside from "He's cute."

I expect people sign up for my mailing list in order to get free stuff.  Not because I'm cuddly.

I expect people to vote for my books in the Dragon awards because they like my books, not because they like me.

And, if I'm wrong, seriously people, you're going to have to tell me these things. But I can't think of one thing you'd care about that isn't already in my FAQ section.

And now ... look at the Dragon Awards and consider voting for me, sign up for the mailing list, and oh, here are some interesting novels.

Be well, all.

The Love at First Bite series. 

    

The Catholic Geek: Escaping Infinity with Richard Paolinelli 04/09

The Catholic Geek: Escaping Infinity with Richard Paolinelli 04/09 by We Built That Network | Books Podcasts:


Author Richard Paolinelli joins host Declan Finn as they discuss Classic sci-fi, Star Trek, and writing Sci-fi In 2013,


 Richard retired as a sportswriter and decided to return to his fiction writing roots. He released two short stories - The Invited and Legacy of Death - as well as a full-length sci-fi novel, Maelstrom. In 2015, Richard completed nearly two years of research and interviews and published, From The Fields: A History of Prep Football in Turlock, California, chronicling 95 years of high school football in his hometown. One month later, the first book of the Jack Del Rio series, Reservations, was published by Oak Tree Press. In 2016, Richard was one of a dozen authors selected to participate in, Beyond Watson, an anthology of original Sherlock Holmes stories and was one of 20 writers involved in a second Holmes Anthology, Holmes Away From Home, released in December. Perfection's Arbiter, a biography of National League Umpire, Babe Pinelli, was released on October 8th. W & B Books acquired the Jack Del Rio series and released the second book, Betrayals, in November. The remaining two books in the Jack Del Rio series will follow in 2017 & 2018. In January of 2017, Richard returned to his science fiction roots with the release of the novel, Escaping Infinity, and hopes to release another sci-fi novel, When The Gods Fell, later this year.

Love at First Bite 2 and 3 reviewed at Book Readers Heaven

Glenda Bixler reviewed Honor At Stake quite some time ago, back when the book first came out.

While you can see the whole review at the link above, the review can be summed up in the following.

Finn easily handles the fight scenes as required to handle vampires. In fact, he's handle this entire book in such an exciting, unusual fashion that I was totally fascinated. Except for the "vampire" villains, the book reads like a great thriller. All in all, I loved the book. Finn has jazzed up the story line sufficient to please readers of romance, thrillers and the horror fans who crave that blood-drinking stranger who attacks and destroys through one bite...LOL Actually, that doesn't happen according to this author's information...so plan on learning a lot if you're into the whole vampire lexicon.

And now, she's gotten around to the others. 

For Murphy's Law of Vampires....

The book is fast-paced, full of action, a true page turner, with a laugh or two to lighten the blood-curdling events that just...don't...stop! A break in reality that won't give you nightmares...Cool! With one surprise character that leads toward the climax! Into vampires? You really need to check out this series!

And she also got around to Live and Let Bite around the same time ...

Though I recommend you watch out, there are spoilers laden throughout these.

Be prepared for escalation of the war waged by one woman and her minions, against those who battle for good! Wow, readers will begin to believe that nobody is going to come out alive in this war!

But... Well, you'll just have to read it to believe it! Sure would make an exciting, unbelievably fantastic movie to see the action described. In fact, I wonder whether the action could actually be done since it is sooo farrrr outttt! What a story! I know one thing...I'm not ready to give up on this series

And .... that's about it. Go, read her reviews, see if you'll agree. Brace for spoilers.

And if you've seen enough, just click below.

And from now until July, I should highlight that The Dragon Awards are open and ready for nominations. If you don't have any thoughts on what to nominate, I have a list of suggestions you might want to take a look at. If you already  have a good idea of what you want, just click here to go and vote for them immediately. The instructions are right there.

And here's the Love at First Bite series. 

    

Music blog: Amaranthe - Boomerang

This is an interesting video. I suspect inspired by caper films. And at least one Mission Impossible movie.

You can tell the lead, Eliza Ryd, is a trained dancer. Wow, can she move.

I should probably make a point of mentioning from now until July that The Dragon Awards are open and ready for nominations. If you don't have any thoughts on what to nominate, I have a list of suggestions you might want to take a look at. If you already  have a good idea of what you want, just click here to go and vote for them immediately. The instructions are right there.

Here, some books that are too good for the Hugos.

But not too good for a Dragon. Heh

Starting with the Love at First Bite series. 

    

Return of the 770 Trolls

To no one's surprise, over at File 770, the comments section doesn't seem to like me.

Awww, do the poor widdle babies dislike opposing opinions?

Perhaps it was my opening line of yesterday's blog post on the Hugos that started their ire, but they devolved into their usual venom-spewing high school cliques. Deriding Goodkind (hey, guys, you know he's still producing books in his universe? You know, the series you don't like and "isn't eligible" for anything), and calling me a special snowflake because the Hugo award choices were either crap, or stuff I've never heard of.

Let me spell something out for these douchebags, because they seem to have a slight inability for comprehensive reading.

I'll start by only quoting my own blog.

This once again boils down to a, "If anyone still cares about the Hugos anymore" story.

Yeah, that's right. No one gives a flying f*** about your crap anymore. If anyone in 770's comments section had looked at Vox Day's blog around Rabid Puppies, they would have noticed something odd: He told his followers to NOT buy tickets this year, and only really vote if they had the nominating ballot from last year. 

So, in small words: even Vox things the Hugos aren't even worth trolling anymore.

I'd ask the twits in 770s comments section to think that over, but that would require that they think in the first place.

Heck, the only reason I bothered with a Hugo post is because, well, this is probably my last chance to make fun of these losers. I mean, no one cares anymore. Larry, Brad, Vox, everybody has stopped caring.

Had the commenters noticed, even the Hugo voters are beginning to not care. But that would require the trolls be able to do math.

But, yes, I had expected yesterday's post to be the last drop of entertainment that I could get out of the Hugos.

Thankfully, 770 trolls were nice enough to give the horse just a little more juice so I can beat it to death some more. Thanks, guys. Your inability to grasp simple concepts is much appreciated.

Now, you will note that I'm talking specifically about the comments section. One of their trolls (I assume, he commented under a handle with no connecting URLs) broke their leash and decided to whine on my blog yesterday, that Honor Harrington isn't eligible!!!

Then a commenter who goes by "Migly" stepped in, and calmly corrected him.

Said troll proceeded to go on an incoherent rant for several other comments, ignoring that he'd been soundly chastised in one sentence.

So, today, I'm going after trolls.

NO PICARD
TURN BACK BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE pic.twitter.com/6jcXGVZ07F

— Swear Trek (@swear_trek) April 3, 2017

But since I must once again use small words to be understood by small people, let's go over my own blog. People who already grasped the concepts of yesterday's blog might want to skim over this section, since they might get some mild entertainment value over it.

we were all told that This Person would have almost certainly have won the Hugo award for best editor, but she lost because she was a Puppy Pick.

If you said, "Who is Toni Weisskopf, Alex?" you'd be right.

But strangely enough, Toni isn't here. But she's not a Puppy Pick this year. We were all told that she would have won if she weren't a Puppy Pick.

Guess what: she wouldn't have even been NOMINATED if she weren't a Puppy Pick.

They lied. Shocking, isn't it?

Or, in smaller words: oh, look, every Puppy kicking little douche bag who supported downvoting one of the most popular science fiction editors in history claimed that if Toni weren't a Puppy pick, she would have easily won. Heck, Toni had more votes as a "loser" than most winners. I'm reliably informed that Toni's "loss" STILL had more votes than every win of Patty Hayden.

But I guess the comments section has long abandoned their need to cover up both their sexism and antisemitism, and decided to just go full bore into it.

...I joke, of course. We all know that Toni wasn't No Awarded because of her gender or faith, but because she's an evil Libertarian, or because she edits evil military SFF, or worse, edits Larry.

I enjoy the hypocrisy here, I really do. In an age where their battle cry is "womyn!" et al, the Hugo voters deliberately went out of their way to deny one of the premiere female editors a win award. I love it. It's beautiful that they lie so blatantly and so obviously, and they bellow that they are the champion of all women everywhere... except for the ones who disagree with them, those women are obviously sub-human and therefore don't count. Seriously, these trolls should just start handing out little yellow stars and skip all the subterfuge, it's not working.

The funny thing is, my next like after "Shocking, isn't it?" was that I can't convey enough sarcasm without going overboard. Apparently, the trolls can't read THAT part either.

After that, I went through the "best series" category, and noted that Honor Harrington, Goodkind and Ringo seemed to not even get a nod. The nimrod on my posts claimed that Honor and Goodkind were ineligible ... wrong about Honor? Nevermind, scream about Goodkind!  I guess they didn't want to mention Ringo, lest he appear in a puff of smoke and destroy them. That man can type.

But, no, a lot of the trolls focused on Goodkind for some reason. Perhaps because his bad guys resembled Jihadists or communists, depending on the novel. Perhaps he had one book dedicated to the intelligence industry, and like all good leftists, the trolls simply hate America.

If the trolls dislike that I don't know who Foz Meadows is .... tough.

Maybe they don't like that I hated the Ghostbusters movie from last year.

Guess what? Neither did anybody else.

Warning on the video: Rated R for language. Rated F for funny as heck.

But OF COURSE it's going to win a Hugo. Because "Oh! It's womyn! If you don't vote for it, you're a sexist!" Heh.

Then I looked at the Best Related category, and the "womyn" bullet points were an obvious theme. I can see Carrie Fisher as an in memoriam vote, but I suspect that it's not political enough.

At that point, I got bored. Why? Because it's the Hugos. Duh. It's a small, cliquish little award, given out to a small, cliquish band of closeted fantatics who'd rather give awards based on checkboxing instead of on merit. I'm told that a few nominees I never heard of are actually worth it,

To be honest, I'm bored now making fun of the 770 trolls.

It's amusing that, at the end of the day, I hopped onto this particular train because Arthur Chu called Brad Torgersen's wife and kid "human shields." At that point, I knew which side I was going to join before I knew anything else about it. Why? Because anyone who would let a comment like Chu's get through needs to be taken down a peg or two.

But these folks have no sense of humor. They're your basic, boiler plate ideologues. But they're so uniform, in such lockstep, they goose step in sync.

To my readers, I hate to break it to you, but I'm starting to agree with the rest of the crowd. It's not fun to beat these guys up anymore. In 2015, the Hugos were obviously a circle jerk. In 2016, there was still entertainment to be had.

Now it's the Black Knight sketch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, only in internet discussion.

[EDIT: It occurs to me that I should probably make a point of mentioning from now until July that The Dragon Awards are open and ready for nominations. If you don't have any thoughts on what to nominate, I have a list of suggestions you might want to take a look at. If you already  have a good idea of what you want, just click here to go and vote for them immediately. The instructions are right there.... moving on]

Here, some books that are too good for the Hugos.

But not the Dragons

Starting with the Love at First Bite series. 

    

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

Here's a new enticement to have you sign up for my mailing list.

Free stuff.

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