This is what I sell to augment my living. Some day I hope to make a living at it. Enjoy.
Well, it is very nearly time, at last. The second volume in a series that got started almost four years ago.
All Creatures In His Thrall, which picks up the adventures of the newly-married James and Harriet, is coming out in just ONE WEEK! That’s right, we have a Black Friday release! It will start out with the story that appeared in No Game For Knights, but after that, it lauches into a full, novel-length adventure!
Thanks go out to all my fans who have waited so long.
Preorder your copy HERE.
LibertyCon is absolutely my favorite con of all time. And the reason is simple: they know who I am and they care that I’m there.
So, on Thursday, I made the difficult, but all-things-considered wise decision to avoid air travel and drive from Wisconsin to Chattanooga, TN, which is an 11-hour drive. This was because a) I was bringing, and would be returning with, books and swag, and b) I was going, for the first time, to the annual LibertyCon shoot, facilitated by J.F. Holmes. I’d really like to thank him for running an awesome shoot and being so welcoming to newbies like myself. I was also very happy to meet Brian Griffin, who rode to the shoot with me and kindly trained me on the proper use of a .45 ACP.
This shoot was a writer’s/history nerd’s dream come true. I got to shoot more guns than I can remember, including a lever-action .45-70, a 1917 Enfield, a 1942 M-1 carbine, and a Savage Arms 7.62×51 rifle. I discovered that I am actually capable of consistently hitting a man-sized target at 50 yards, which I thought was decent for the first time I ever touched a rifle. I managed half the shots inside the 9-ring at 300 yards with the Savage, and felt pretty good about that, too, though most of the credit must go to the rifle’s owner, a gentleman whose name escapes me at the moment, but who was a trainer on Parris Island for five years, and whose instruction I am deeply grateful for. I did rather less well with the pistols, and I now understand why people who have never touched a gun before can, in fact, miss at insanely short ranges with such weapons.
The rest of the Con… it’s hard to explain. But things happened that I’ve been waiting all my life for. Just a few of them:
People showed up with my books. That they wanted ME to sign. They had read them.
People talked up my books to other people. Because they had loved them.
People came to the table where I was selling my books, and they stood in a line. A LINE! (Two people still counts as a line!)
People told me they had read my Baen Award stories and enjoyed them.
Publishers invited me to play in their universes. And they said good things about me, and so did other authors, authors like Larry Correia and Kacey Ezell.
I really… I actually have fans.
Okay, but to get more specific: On Friday, I had a panel about Heroic Fantasy vs. Sword and Sorcery where I disagreed with everybody. Needless to say, I was right, and there was a lot of confusion about whether it was Heroic Fantasy or Epic Fantasy, but regardless: The Epic of Gilgamesh is sword and sorcery, not epic fantasy, and so is Beowulf. At least that’s what people said.
Saturday was the Big Day. Had a great advance reading of ALL CREATURES IN HIS THRALL, followed by holding a sotto voce conversation with Larry Correia throughout the Baen Roadshow. Fun fact: despite them being VASTLY different universes, Larry and I came up with extremely similar magic systems in the Responsibility and Son of the Black Sword books. And we never had a single conversation on magic. Weird. Finished up discussing Chicks In Tank Tops.
Sunday, D.J. Butler was kind enough to invite me to City Cafe’s very last breakfast service with the Chileses and Sean Patrick Hazlitt. And during autograph signing I learned that I REALLY need to find a way to accept Visa. Sorry, fans I made go running after cash! I learned my lesson.
So, last week I asked if anyone would read a “Choose Your Own Adventure” format book if I wrote one.
I am pleased to announce that “On The Menu Stains Of Madness,” a Mythos – style short story (which was my original attempt to get into THE CACKLE OF CTHULHU anthology from Baen Books) will appear in STUPEFYING STORIES on March 18th, just ten days from now. I’m honored to appear there, and especially with this aberration of a story, which I never really thought anyone would buy.
I understand why Alex Shvartsman rejected this one. It’s not quite as funny as the one he bought, but it is much, much, weirder. Bruce Bethke is going to have fun with this one, I bet. And I hope you all will, too.
So, I’ve wanted to share these for a long time, but life has meant that I have very little time for hobbies I used to enjoy a great deal, like model and miniature painting. I must first of all thank my dear friend and fan Ralph Seibel of Germany — who I have known for far longer than I have been writing — for designing these minis on Hero Forge and sending them to me. It has been years, but I finally managed to break off some time to paint them, and I really wanted to do a good job, so here they are:
Dr. James DeGrande, calming down a fire lizard, his No. 75 dragon scalpel at his side, and Paralyze and Painless at his back.
His assistant, Harriet Templin, witch and all around animal wrangler, fresh from some activity that involved blood and less savory fluids.
When Ralph sent me Harriet, he apologized(!) that he hadn’t been able to give Harriet the hunchback that she is described as having, but he DID send her with a backpack, and a little work with a Dremel and some paint fixed that problem up easily.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this vizualization as much as I did. Unfortunately, my eyes aren’t what they used to be, so these did take awhile. But they were worth every second. Great thanks again, Ralph.
To celebrate the release of CHICKS IN TANK TOPS, an excerpt from my story, “Jeanne d’Architonnere!”
Even inside the armor of the tartaruga that she was preparing for battle, Gia could hear the bellowing of the Florentine leaders. Them, and the crunching thunder of the siege guns.
“This is your army? You are trusting the fate of the Republic to a blind man and a crippled girl?” shouted Soderini.
“It’s better than trusting the mercy of that son-of-a-whore Borgia and His Profanity Julius II!” hissed back Machiavelli.
Gia inspected the turret. Bearings, greased. Springs and gun-track, polished to a shine. She snapped the slats of the viewports up and down on their hinges. She saw the Florentine militia wavering in their ranks, the dust and smoke where mortar stones had fallen, and finally, the sour, square face of Gonfaloniere Soderini, red jowls flapping.
“You call him profane!” he cried. “But you’re the one dealing with a sorcerer!”
“Well, if he can conjure up a spine for your militia, then he is no wizard, but a worker of miracles and therefore a saint!” growled General Machiavelli. His smooth face was a saturnine mask. Gia was not fooled. The man’s rage was hotter than the copper of the architonnerre. And that shone with heat, steam venting from its valve.
“They’re your militia!” roared Soderini. “You trained them! You led them! You led us all: to this!”
“And you refused to let me train them more,” Machiavelli went on, implacably, “You and the rest, so worried that I might declare myself a prince that they are now – as I warned you! – unable to save us from the devils beating at Prato’s gates!”
Gia snorted. At least she and her fellow tartaruga crews had drilled. They’d had to learn the machines inside-out.
“Have faith,” said a voice with an odd accent. French? A short man in blue uniform under a breastplate stepped into view. “Gaston de Foix comes from victory over Spain at Ravenna, and though wounded, he rides to your aid. But he cannot retake Prato if it has already fallen, and Prato is the key to Firenze. Better to fight now than beg Christ’s mercy from the black hearts of Pope Julius II or Borgia.”
At that name, rage mounted in Gia’s belly, spreading even to the legs she could not otherwise feel. She looked at the Florentines with disgust: they’d wanted to wait like princesses for some dashing French officer to ride to their rescue without having to fight. She’d never had any such illusions. She looked down into the belly of the tartaruga.
“Carlo, are we loaded?”
“Si, donna.” The squat man gestured to the long trough of cast-iron balls.
“Gun-breech?”
He grinned. “Smooth as a whore’s passage.”
“Don’t talk dirty about my baby, Carlo. Gun-barrel?”
“Hotter than Borgia’s soul in Hell.”
Gia listened to the Florentines’ cursing and said, “I think it’s time for a valve test, don’t you?”
Carlo’s smile turned wolfish. “Si, Donna.”
Gia looked out, making sure that the gleaming muzzle was turned well away from the arguing lords. The general’s hand was drifting slowly toward the hilt of a large dirk at his belt.
“Lock breech.”
“Locked and empty.”
Gia reached over and slammed the valve shut. The steam hissing through the turret vent cut off. Boiling water rushed through its siphon tube and hit the barrel of the gun, heated by its cage of coals. It flashed instantly into steam. The copper barrel loosed a jet of vapor with a roar that silenced the shouting Florentines.
Today, I get to announce the release of my story, “Jeanne d’Architonnere,” in the anthology Chicks In Tank Tops from Baen books. This is an especially fun story to announce. If you are a regular follower of mine, it will come as no surprise to you that my day job is being a history teacher at a local high school. Despite this (or perhaps because of this) I rarely delve into the arcana of writing alternate history. However, when I was invited to participate in this anthology by my editor, Jason Cordova, I very much wanted to bring one of my favorite daydreams to life.
Most people know that Leonardo da Vinci drew up blueprints during his lifetime (okay, sketches really) for a war cart ringed with cannon that would later become popularized as history’s first idea for the modern tank. Of course, da Vinci’s version had no engine beyond the feet of the soldiers who would presumably man it, and it was conceived of as a purely anti-personnel unit.
What fewer people know, is that da Vinci also conceived of a breech-loading, steam-powered cannon. This weapon, which he called the architonnere, worked by superheating the barrel and breech of the gun. After each round was introduced into the breech, and the breech sealed, a bell would allow water to enter just behind the breech, where it would instantly flash into steam and thus fire the round.
I will hasten to add that as a historian I do not consider it terribly realistic to speculate that the real Leonardo da Vinci would, in any conceivable set of circumstances, actually be able to marry all of these ideas together along with a flywheel drive to create the tank, or (since that word was the result of a code name given by the real armored fighting vehicles’ British inventors) the tortoise, as it is described in the story, but that’s where fiction comes in. I hope you will all enjoy the story of Jeanne d’Architonnere and those of my fellow authors.
I thought I’d celebrate the launch of the book by giving you the full piece of art that adorns the cover. Isn’t it wonderful?
The book is doing quite well, considering, having made it up to 4th place in the Amazon New Releases in Action Adventure today. If you’d like to try helping me make it to #1 and the coveted Orange Tag, please feel free to purchase it by clicking the book link below!
So, the novel launch should have been today, but my editor was doing very important things at 20BooksTo50k, a wonderful Las Vegas conference that I hope to be able to attend someday. That means it gets pushed back just one week, so not really a big deal. But, to tide us over, I’m going to give you a sample snippet of the book. I’d also like to point out that those who receive my newsletter (hint, hint!) have already seen this snippet. You can be added to my newsletter here.
| Azriyqam lowered her voice. “I do have news, but not from my father the Crown. I assuredly want your attention, but I do not want it overly focused on me. The dragon that I arrived on, do you know his name?” “There are so many dragons, who could name them all?” said Tselah. “He’s one of the Knights-Commander, I believe,” said Elam. “I’m going to get this wrong, but I have trouble with your right name, too. It’s… Coo-ree…ark, isn’t it?” “Almost. Sir Cooriarh. He is one of the chiefs of the Throne’s guard. He is circling us now, and will land in a little less than two hours unless I walk out before that time.” Elam sat back and folded his arms. “You know, Haraad used to threaten people before they’d offered him any harm, too. I’m not going to flatter you by pretending that I ever particularly admired you or thought of you much at all when you were just the Responsibility, but I never thought you one to be like him.” A spike of icy rage shot through her at that, but when she saw Tselah’s smile at her reaction she bit down on the angry response she felt coming. “I would prefer you to consider it less a threat than a warning, in case you should be tempted to consider… desperate courses of action.” “And why should we be tempted to do any such thing?” asked Elam, quietly. “Is your father or the throne planning something that should make us despair?” “No. Or at least, that very much depends on what you say next. You wish to know why dragons have been stopping and examining your ships. I will tell you: they are looking for a missing dragon.” Azriyqam watched closely for their reaction… |
This is my first ever sequel release, just over a year after the release of the original RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CROWN.
It comes out one week from today, available at Amazon.com and from New Mythology Press, an imprint of Chris Kennedy publishing. There are no preorders, but I will blog again when the book is up.
There’s no way, here, to explain how much I have learned in the writing of this sequel. It is completely different from writing an original novel. It’s like balancing a whole future on the tip of your finger while dancing. The book that will release a week from now is not the same book I started writing in July of 2021. That book will be – well, to be honest, it won’t ever be written, because I discovered about 40,000 words into it that it was fragments of the third book in the series, which, by the time book two was finished, I realized would be changed a great deal by the events in this novel.
Right now, I am working on yet another sequel, specifically the long-awaited further adventures of James and Harriet, which will be titled ALL CREATURES IN HIS THRALL. Progress is slow, but steady. I’m afraid that one of the reasons it has been so long in coming is that I started writing book three of that series as well. I think that book will, indeed, be published someday, but first I am going to have to finish this one. It turns out that I am still pretty new at this author thing.
One funniest things that has happened during the blog hiatus is that this blog has gotten an insane amount of traffic from a completely facetious post that I did about a year ago concerning my completely fictional and humorous take on the script for Top Gun: Maverick. It seems that there are many many fans and possibly pirates who have been trying to get their hands on the script for this movie, and a number of them have found their way to my blog. I hope it gave some of them a laugh. And, if they were pirates, I hope it wasted their time and frustrated them. In any case, I would like to say thank you to all my fans for hanging in there and for giving Responsibility life. I am so glad you have enjoyed flying with her.
G. Scott Huggins 