The Kickstarter is Live! (You have three weeks)

Tuesday October 16, 2018 • Howard Tayler

Here’s the two-book Kickstarter for Broken Wind and Delegates and Delegation, volumes 14 and 15 of Schlock Mercenary.

Everything you need to know about the project is over there at the project, and there’s even a FAQ for those things that you need to know, but which we didn’t know you needed to know until your need to know was made known.

Electronic versions of both books are included with your pre-order, and should the project over-fund sufficiently, we have some stretch goals. They include new challenge coins for the fleet of Tagon’s Toughs vessels, an ebook collection of some of my short fiction, and some stretchier goals which we’re keeping hidden for the time being.

We’re excited to finally be putting these two books into print. I love the stories, and I’m pleasantly resigned to the fact that with each book we release we get better at this thing we do. Once Broken Wind and Delegates and Delegation are bound up and laid down on paper they’ll be the best two books we’ve made.

Go get them.

Kickstarting BROKEN WIND and DELEGATES & DELEGATION

Friday October 12, 2018 • Howard Tayler

This Tuesday, October 16th, we’ll be opening a Kickstarter for print editions of Broken Wind: Schlock Mercenary Volume 14, and Delegates and Delegation: Schlock Mercenary Volume 15.

Each volume has a bonus story at the end, lots of margin art in the middle, and the same top-shelf quality of binding, printing, and glossy paper that Schlock Mercenary fans have come to expect.

The bonus story in Book 14, a tale of the terraforming war, was written by Howard Tayler and illustrated by Ben McSweeney, with colors by Travis Walton. The bonus story in Book 15, a story of mixed greens, parenting, and pirates, was written by Sandra Tayler and illustrated by Natalie Barahona.

We’ll post more details next week when we launch.

WXR18 – Amazing, Yet Again

Thursday October 4, 2018 • Howard Tayler

Sandra and I have returned from the 2018 Writing Excuses Retreat. This was the sixth year the event has been held, and it was the fourth year it’s been held aboard a ship.

It was wonderful.

Sure, I got to see the ship’s medical bay¹, and I’m nine pounds heavier than I was two weeks ago, but it was totally worth it. I ruined comedy for all the students by showing them how the sausage is made, I saw a sunrise take shape across the Gulf of Mexico, and as an unexpected and delightful bonus I got back just in time to celebrate NASA’s 60th birthday on stage for an episode of Houston, We Have a Podcast.²

We’ll open registration for next year’s event sometime in the next three weeks, but you can pencil in some dates on your calendar now.

WXR19 runs from September 13th to the 25th of 2019, starting in Houston, and progressing to Galveston, then setting sail. I think it’s around $1,900 for nine days of writing, instruction, networking, and flash-mobbing one of the bars on Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas. 

I’m already looking forward to it, but I’m also quite happy to be home. I’ve got comics to draw, and (at least) nine pounds to lose.

¹ Laryngitis. Very annoying, but at least I was done teaching by that point.
² Our episode will air in mid-October. I’ll link to it, because holy crap I was in the auditorium in NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and they gave me a live mic.