’til Death Do Us Part

I have a really poor track record for putting together anthologies. It’s something that I want to do, and feel that I should do, but I’m not good at administrative details.

Image by Storyhack

Nonetheless, I am going to give it another try. I have enough contacts that I can call upon for advice that I am willing to make the effort. So here goes.

The anthology will be called ’til Death Do Us Part, and will be a collection of Action/Adventure stories featuring married couples as the heroes and heroines.

Specifically heterosexual, monogamous, committed marriages–and the fact that I have to specify that is a big part of why I feel the need to do this project.

I am looking for stories that show men and women working together as a team to overcome adversity, complementing their strengths, compensating for their weaknesses, and putting their family first, no matter what.

I intend to do this through Draft2Digital, on a royalty share basis, with nothing to the authors upfront. Sorry, but I thought it best to put that out there to prevent anyone who is not comfortable with those terms from reading further. I will be paying for the proofreading and book design out of pocket. I really don’t want to try crowdfunding and fulfilling pre-orders.

Submission Guidelines: I am looking for stories from 5,000 to 10,000 words, but am willing to consider both longer and shorter works. I’d like to aim for 80,000 words total, so probably 10-15 stories. Focus should be on action and adventure rather than introspection. I want the overall tone of the anthology to be light and exciting.

Submission Window: The month of October, 2024. If you send me something now I won’t delete it unread, but I’m not planning on spending a lot of time on this until next month. I figure that gives people time to work on something.

Publication Goal: Early 2025. I’d like to aim for Valentine’s Day.

Content: I expect violence, but not explicit gore. No splatterpunk, and no scenes of graphic torture. Remember light and exciting.

Since the main characters are married couples, I expect them to have an active, healthy, sex life, but behind closed doors. Fade to black if you want to go there.

The couple’s children should not be put in direct peril, although threats to them could exist. With grown children, there’s more latitude.

Setting And Genre: 21st Century Earth, but not necessarily the 21st Century Earth we know. Horror (again, light horror), Weird Tales, Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction (in the sense of unknown science operating in our world), straight Crime Fiction, and Thrillers are all acceptable. I want readers to be able to see the world of these stories as something that could be lurking outside their windows. Traveling to other worlds is acceptable, provided they start here.

How To Submit: Send the file as an attachment to mjb63114 at gmail dot com. I prefer the Shunn format, if you don’t know what that is, do a quick internet search. Times New Roman is my preferred font. I hate Courier fonts. They give me a headache.

Any of the common document file types are acceptable, .doc. .docx, .rtf, .odp. Everything is going to get converted to Open Office once I get it.

PDF Files will not be opened! Converting them is a pain.

Feel free to send me an email with any specific questions, at the same address for submissions above.

The Record Shows He Took The Blows And Did It His Way!

Verger Satanis, the man behind Kort’thalis Publishing, is a celebrity in Indie RPG circles, inspiring both adoration and loathing in roughly equal amounts. His current Kickstarter, Primordial Chaos: Gonzo Like A Fucking Boss, as of this writing is about 2/3d funded with more than a week left to go. He’s run a successful gaming convention for the past few years. He has nearly 50 products up on DriveThruRPG. Now, he has made the decision to close down the publishing business.

MB: You’ve briefly discussed various reasons why you’ve made the decision on your blog. I am more interested in how you made the decision. What was the process? What benchmarks let you know that it was time? Was it a gradual realization, or did it come to you all at once?

VS: There were several factors that went into my decision…

1) The money drying up – certainly, that’s a big one.  The less profit Kort’thalis Publishing makes, the less I can do.  I’d like to do more, not less… but lack of funds makes that virtually impossible.  At least, with the current paradigm I’ve been working under.

2) The enthusiasm for general, middle of the road (vanilla?) products can be felt everywhere in the hobby.  The more I specialized, the more niche I became… until that niche became a sort of nesting-doll of design goals that took me further and further away from the mainstream.  My thing, discovered after 6 years of “finding myself” in the RPG self-publishing wilderness, is CHA’ALT.  That means eldritch, gonzo, science-fantasy, post-apocalypse, humor, sleaze, pop-culture, and grindhouse exploitation.  Since I don’t want mainstream success if it means running away from CHA’ALT, I’m happy to walk away from self-publishing.  I’ll simply keep creating for myself and my home games.

MB: It’s a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless that many independent creators find themselves in this same position. What advice would you give on the process? What do you feel a creator is obligated to reveal to his audience about a shutdown, and what should be kept private? Were there any lessons you learned, either positive or negative, from observing other creative businesses closing their doors?

VS: Every creator should ask themselves the hard questions, like why am I doing this, how much loss or lack of profit can I sustain before I quit, is there enough room for compromise and commerce based on my design goals, can I, in good conscience, divorce myself from politics and the culture war as a non-divisive sales person?

My biggest advice would be to go after and attain self-knowledge.  Be honest with yourself and go into the process or business with your eyes open.  Personally, the only thing I’d do differently is make more of a meal out of a few middle-period “appetizer” projects that didn’t really satisfy anyone.  But that learned lesson helped me to dig deeper and reach for the soft black stars.  Everything happens for a reason, that includes the mistakes we make along the way.

MB: You’ve said that you won’t be producing new material, but I assume that material already created will continue to be available for sale? Will the Kort’thalis storefront on DriveThru still be available? What about hard copy books already printed? Can we buy those through your blog, or other venues?

VS: Yes, I’m leaving everything up and available for sale on DriveThru, Amazon, and via direct sales, like the CHA’ALT trilogy in hardcover.  Everything I have that never made it into a previous release will probably get squeezed into Primordial Chaos (assuming that funds – it looks promising since we’re almost three-quarters of the way there).  When I create new stuff, I’ll either keep it to myself (on my computer or in a notebook or whatever) or release it for free on my blog.  At least until I see a viable path forward and open the gates of Kort’thalis once again.

MB: Lastly, let’s talk about VergerCon. 2024 is, I believe, the con’s third year, and you’ve already announced that there will be VengerCon ’25. All of the reports I’ve read have been positive—a bunch of gaming geeks getting together and having a good time with a minimum of drama. Are you planning on expanding for ’25, or keeping the same venue? Any big names in the works? (Aside from you, of course.) Any particular activities, events, or panels you intend to put on? 

VS: Yes, VENGER CON IV: Post-Modern Apocalypse is happening Friday, July 18th – Sunday, July 20th 2025 in Madison, WI (splash page coming in about 2 weeks on the Tabletop Experiences platform).  The expansion happened just this past convention as I rented space in a newer, nicer, and more expensive hotel.  That switch, unfortunately, meant that I lost a bit of money since attendance came in at around 30, about 10 people shy of breaking even, but I’m hopeful that next year we’ll hit 50 or even 60.  I don’t actually want any more than 100 attendees (the current limit) so VENGER CON remains exclusive and special.

It looks like Chris Miller from Mad Scribe Games is going to return, which is awesome.  I know Double-D from Diversity & Dragons had a great time and is hoping to come back, but that depends on his schedule.  I’ve asked Jeff Rients if he’s available, but don’t think he is.  So, that’s a big fat TBD when it comes to special guests.  The activities pretty much only revolve around playing games, but I’d like to continue the tradition of merging CHA’ALT with existing, obscure, and dare I say ridiculous RPGs.  At VENGER CON III we added Dallas The Roleplaying Game with CHA’ALT, and next year I want to do the same with the Rocky & Bullwinkle RPG.  I’d say Encounter Critical, but that’s already so close to CHA’ALT that it would be like combining Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 together to get one amazing super extravaganza (spoiler alert: they’re virtually the same movie, with only a few major differences).  

So, I don’t know what’s next for me, Kort’thalis Publishing, or CHA’ALT.  I just know that we need to get Primordial Chaos: Gonzo Like A Fucking Boss off the ground, as a capstone to a weird wild career that all began with a love of sword & sorcery pulp like my initial product Liberation of the Demon Slayer.

Thanks for the interview, hoss!

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Starship Grifters

Full disclosure, I received a download code from the author for a free copy of this audiobook.

Robert Kroese’s Starship Grifters, narrated by Anne Marie Lewis, is a fun sendup of Space Opera tropes, written with, I believe, genuine affection for the genre. That is to say, I felt throughout the book that Kroese was laughing with Space Opera, rather than laughing at it.

Although a certain well known franchise is lampooned liberally, it’s not a parody of any particular work, but more of the genre as a whole.

The plot concerns Rex Nihilo (and if you get a chuckle from that name you’re likely to appreciate many of the book’s other puns) and his faithful robot companion Sasha. It starts with Rex winning a planet in a poker game and then gets rapidly more baroque from there. There is a galactic empire, and rebel forces, and a race to control ultimate weapons which may or may not exist, and interstellar bounty hunters, all of whom at one time or another are allied with Rex, trying to kill him, and getting scammed by him.

Rex is really kind of a sidekick to his robot, who is the narrator and main character. Sasha’s voice carries the novel. She (technically genderless, but built to resemble a human female) observes Rex’s blundering with a mixture of horror and affection, and somehow manages to always save the day, generally at the last moment.

All things considered, this is a fun book. I listened to it during my commute to and from my new job, and it was perfect for half hour snippets–easy to pick up where I left off. It’s not the kind of book where you have to concentrate to follow the action. You just go with the flow and enjoy the ride.

Recommended.

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