It's Alive!

 



Brigands of the Moon, the Secret Confessions of Gregg Haljan is now live on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Mutiny and brigandage stalk the Space-ship Planetara as she speeds to the Moon to pick up a fabulously rich cache of radium-ore! But while danger looms, the passengers and crew are found with their pants down—literally. Brigands of the Moon, the Secret Confessions of Gregg Haljan purports to be the true story of what really went on behinds the scenes of this notorious mutiny, in the words of the Planetara's third officer.

“I'll introduce myself. My name, Gregg Haljan. My age, twenty-five years. My original narrative of the mutiny and brigandage of the Planetara, the one suitable for family viewing, was broadcast with a fair success but my publishers have suggested that I record the true story, the one more suited for late-night reading with a scantily-clad friend of your choosing––the secret confessions whose sordid details have been scrawled upon washroom walls, whispered by naughty schoolboys, and whose scenes have been recreated, photographed and sold by enterprising salesmen of the back alley sort. It is my wish that these confessions be told properly and any erroneous details corrected––especially those concerning length and girth.” 

Brigands Be Done

I am officially done with all 62,000 words and something like 250 pages of my porny re-write of Brigands of the Moon. It's been uploaded and it should go live tomorrow.

Those last five chapters with the lamest battles ever were the worst to porn up but I think after hacking out 9/10ths of the original battle scenes and adding in my own crap I've solved the problem. I had fully intended on finishing it and uploading it last weekend but it was like 150 degrees and the last thing I wanted to do in that kind of heat was to write about nekkid sweaty people touching each other. Ew.

The cover has been slightly re-done, mostly just shifting the title around to balance it out a little better. I searched for a better image but most old science fiction pulp covers don't have much in the way of couples maybe almost making out so it was either stay with the weird giant nekkid space people or have a straight adventure cover. I'd rewritten it from straight adventure (with an awkward, sappy romance) to smut so I needed the cover to reflect that. I guess.

Here's my original from way back when it was meant to be a serial. No difference in the images but the new cover isn't all bottom-heavy like this one. The yellow titles visually weigh it down--I could've probably gotten away with the main title on the new cover being yellow since it was moved to the top, but I was too lazy to look up how to make outline block text in GIMP.

So there.

Back to writing Racy Rocket Adventures. I've got some Space Marines and the Moon Pope sitting around all impatient for something to do. Hope I can remember what it was I had planned for them.

Woops.

I also fixed the table of contents for the Spicy Science Stories Collection. For some reason the link to "Some Ill Planet Reigns" linked to "Too much to Handle" instead, which wasn't the worst mistake I could have made but it was way too stupid to leave in

Coming up: Two more Captain Futures and another crapload of wtf.

Brigands Be Damned

I had planned on finishing up the exhausting Brigands of the Moon this afternoon but it kicked my ass and I wound up building a lap desk instead. My laptop fan is now steadily blowing varnish fumes at me and I can taste colors, so there's that.

The main roadblock I had to blast through vis-à-vis Brigands was the last chunk of the original. When you have something like 30 pages (five chapters) of just battles, and not even exciting battles, it's nearly impossible to find places to jam in sex scenes, especially when I don't care anymore.

What I meant to say was, especially when all the characters are on the Moon wearing pressurized space suits. I think I finally figured out how to correct the lame battle dilemma by having the battles go on in the background while the hero is busy and a mite oblivious to them. Maneuvering him and his lady friend indoors and making it so they're not needed for battling Martian radium-thieves was the last monolithic obstacle I had to tip over but by the time I'd done that I had no brain cells left to tie up the loose ends. Well, that and the varnish fumes.

I did comedically crash a space ship into the Moon, though. 

The crux of the nub of the thing is I'm sick of these fucking Martian brigands though I am impressed the author completely refused to call them pirates despite their leader wearing a big stupid plumed hat and tall boots. Very un-Martian I thought.

Plumes, for fuck's sake. At least he didn't have a parrot.

I made a valiant stab at E.E. Smith's Triplanetary and got really annoyed by it, though now I'm seeing a lot of commentary from longtime fans that both Triplanetary and First Lensman should be read last or perhaps not at all since Triplanetary was a standalone story from the 30s that had some stuff added to it when it was republished in 1948 to make it a prequel to the Lensmen series. First Lensman was written in 1950 to bridge Triplanetary and Galactic Patrol.

Note: I found the two-volume Science Fiction Book Club hardback editions of the whole Lensman series on Amazon dirt cheap, less than a couple bucks per volume. Some eBay sellers seem to think these are worth 50 bucks. Ha.

So, I'll be starting on Galactic Patrol tomorrow on the damn bus on the way to my stupid job but since it had a huge influence on Babylon 5 it'll make me way happier than that first half of Triplanetary did. Coincidentally, I've been threatening to rewatch Babylon 5 from the beginning (again) but I still have a couple seasons of Lexx sitting on my coffee table mocking me. And yeah, I could've long since watched Lexx already but Brigands of the Moon has moved into my apartment and is eating all my food and not paying rent, much like a sucky unemployed boyfriend.