On breaking into imaginary buildings
Still working on the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story, which involves an art gallery heist. The thing about writing crime fiction is that you are constantly figuring out:
- why someone needs to get into a room,
- why they can't get into the room, and
- how they get into the room anyway.
At least one of those things needs to be something your characters haven't handled before, and ideally all three of them should be novel and interesting.
This is probably why most long-running heist serials turn into science fiction after a while; they've simply exhausted all the real-world security measures and countermeasures the writers can find and have to start making stuff up.
Well, that's what I hope happened to them.
Preorder: "Move Fast and Break Things"
There is something wrong with Victor Keane. This makes him the ideal choice to lead a team of mercenaries, hired to recover an oil baron's granddaughter from a tech billionaire's personal cult. But the job gets more complicated when the team encounters Adrian Yates, a kidnapped academic with peculiar insight into the darkness of Victor's own mind. And when things go wrong, Victor must make a choice between the success of the mission and Adrian's life.
My short story "Move Fast and Break Things" originally appeared in the Grendel Press anthology The Devil Who Loves Me, and will be available as a standalone work on September 3. You can preorder the ebook here.
Ko-fi supporters who subscribe at the Early Access tier ($5 CAD/month) can download the book for free, right now. If you'd like to read the story early but don't have a spare $5 kicking around, you can also get a free advance review copy over on Booksprout.
This Week's Links
Parody site ClownStrike refused to bow to CrowdStrike’s bogus DMCA takedown
McSherry pointed out that CrowdStrike's takedown notice came at the time when Senk's parody site would be most relevant as commentary on the fallout from the IT outage. Potentially, the two-week counter notice period could have helped CrowdStrike take down the parody site during the most heightened period of criticism, which could make it appear to be inappropriately using the DMCA to censor online criticism.
Palo Alto Networks execs apologize for 'hostesses' dressed as lamps at Black Hat booth
It's worth noting that at the start of my career in tech, just over a decade ago, marketing ploys like this were everywhere and largely immune to criticism. On the one hand, things change fast — on the other, things clearly haven't changed that much.
Disney wants wrongful death suit thrown out because widower bought an Epcot ticket and had Disney+
Court documents show that the company is trying to get the $50,000 lawsuit tossed because the plaintiff, Jeffrey Piccolo, signed up for a one-month trial of the streaming service Disney+ in 2019, which requires trial users to arbitrate all disputes with the company.
A bunch of what appear to be #booktok dark romance fans have signed up to review "Move Fast and Break Things" on Booksprout, and I'm a little worried they haven't realized what they're in for. I guess they'll find out soon enough.
-K
