Some Imaginary Wars And a Real One
The re-release of Locksmith’s Closet and Locksmith’s Journeys, and the re-release of Locksmith’s War, is getting closer, although I don’t have release dates yet. I do have cover art, which is way better than anything I could have come up with. I’ll be ready to show it soon, once the purchase is finalized and the watermarks come off.
I was worried—and still am worried—because the artist who created this art is in another country. I give you one guess which country.
As it happens, Miblart is in Lviv, which is a city that hasn’t been hit as hard as the rest of Ukraine as of this writing, which is probably how they were able to finish the job at all. Still, I’m impressed both with the work and the fact that they were able to keep their minds on their work under the circumstances.
There are many charities you can donate to, but Miblart is encouraging donations to the Ukrainian Army. (Yes, we are crowdsourcing war now. Welcome to the 2020s. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I suppose it does give an edge to sympathetic underdogs.)
I’ve also been writing more of The Dead Skunk, which at this point is about as long as the Locksmith Trilogy and which I will probably be writing off and on for the rest of my life. Of course, most of it is about the “War of 1837,” which doesn’t really work as escapism right now. Epic battles, political maneuvers, nightmare weapons (okay, they’re pretty tame by modern standards, but they seem nightmarish to the people on the business end, and sometimes even to the people using them), vicious evil, pitiless justice and surprising acts of mercy… really, you could just watch the news. Still, I’ve got Edgar Allen Poe as a war correspondent. That’s something you don’t see every story.
Have I mentioned the Aethereal Engineer blog before? I’m not sure I have. Jason H. Abbott does a lot of microfiction compilations from Twitter and Instagram. My own writings have made it into some of them lately:
"Place"
"Wrap"
"One"
That’s all for now. More to come later.
