WorldCon Melts Down

[EDIT: Brian Niemeier has all the details. It's so, so stupid.]

It's funny. Because Monday was going to be a post where I discussed social media whining and how Facebook and Twitter have lowered the level of discourse to the sewer that used to be dismissed as "the comments section."

Then James Gunn gets taken down by social media, so I figured I needed at least a little editing on that post before it went live.

Before I could get to editing THAT, World Con melts down.

Now, I'm not entirely up on all of the details, but I've got enough to make my head

So far, the gist is this: a typo in a World Con bio led to one of their guests being "Misgendered." According to the rules of conduct of WorldCon, the con ITSELF violated their own rules by misgendering this person.....

In short: the SJWs at World Con can't SJW ENOUGH for the SJW "masses" at the convention. This means the SJWs melt down online, while sane people sit back and laugh at them, because we saw all of this coming years ago. By "we" I mean Larry Correia, Brad Torgersen, and everyone else kicking around in 2015 who were shaking their heads at the slow motion train wreck that has apparently kicked into fast forward.

Meanwhile, middle aged white guys like John Scalzi noted that he was only allotted one panel at WorldCon, and the morning coffee meeting. His only comment at first was "Huh." He, of course, seemed to realize that he did not show sufficient enthusiasm for the Party, and stated later on Monday that he was happy to give up all of his panel time...  I wonder if that's code for "I'm taking my ball and going home."

Meanwhile, as Jon del Arroz has pointed out, Scalzi seems to have been spurned in favor of .... well, any local writer of whatever random minority status they could get, and throwing them on every panel, whether or not they have any relevant experience. Because apparently, experience is racist because it's "a white thing."

.... That last part is supposed to be a joke. Time will tell if it becomes the latest drivel about racism.

It has been a glorious train wreck in the making. Time will tell if this really does become the end of World Con.

Heck. I don't even know how Jon del Arroz's lawsuit is going. If that kicks into high gear soon, things will become even MORE entertaining.  Heh heh heh.

Meanwhile, enjoy some books that are relatively politics free, and all about action, high explosives, and true love .... with some violence and bloodshed thrown in for fun.

Honor at Stake & Demons are Forever

Live and Let Bite

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

    

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.

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…