Get the anthology I'm part of, The Crimson Pact, Vol. 2! Details and order links for Amazon, B&N, Apple's App Store, and more, are at http://thecrimsonpact.com/store.html#tcpv2.

There's an incredible mix of authors here, from New York Times best-sellers all the way on down to newbies like myself, and we cover pretty much every sub-genre of fantasy/dark fantasy I can think of. I'm honored to call several of my fellow CP authors friends (including three members of my writing group, Barbara Webb, Sarah Kanning, and Isaac Bell--who should also be congratulated on being named the next AboutSF director at KU) and some of those I call friends may not be too overly embarrassed to admit that they know me.

Once you've read it, if you could pretty please post reviews at Amazon and/or wherever else you can think of, I will love you forever. (Hyperbolically speaking, that is.) And the electronic edition is only five bucks--about the same price as a coffee shop latte, so me love you long time for cheap. (Note that if you buy it directly through the CP site, you get a zip of it in every major ebook format, and the authors get a larger cut. I'm just sayin'.)

Here's the promo copy from the back of the book (and since you're reading about this on my blog, I'm using that as an excuse to bold-ify references to myself):

The Pact is back and the demons are as devious as ever in The Crimson Pact Volume 2. Read 28 original stories, many of which are sequels to the stories in volume 1. Suzzanne Myers’s powerful flash fiction piece, “Withered Tree” continues with the exceptional short story, “Seven Dogs.” Chanté McCoy’s, “Inside Monastic Walls” is followed by the literally gut-wrenching follow-up short story, “Body and Soul.” Rising star Patrick Tomlinson is back with “Monsters in the Closet” and the urban fantasy mayhem is off the charts in his, and many other stories, especially D. Robert Hamm’s “Karma.”

The demon bots strike again in EA Younker’s steampunk apocalypse tale, “Stand.” If you want more steampunk, you’ll enjoy Sarah Hans’ sequel about professor Campion, “A More Ideal Vessel,” and the steampunk Western featuring automaton horses, “Wayward Brother” by Elaine Blose.

Sarah Kanning’s character, Danielle, from “Hidden Collection” must deal with the lingering effects of being possessed by a demon in “Dark Archive.” There are also fascinating sequels from Gloria Weber, “Crimson Mail,” and Justin Swapp, “The Merging,” and new stories from Lester Smith, Kathryn McGee, Adam Israel, Valerie Dircks, T.S. Rhodes, Elizabeth Shack, Daniel Alonso, and Nayad Monroe.

“The Long Run” by Isaac Bell is an indirect sequel to “Stained with Nightmare Juice” and features the tireless John Oldshoe, who must help a black teenage girl discover her superpowers and defeat the demons infesting the dying heart of a crumbling city.

New York Times Bestselling author, and Campbell award nominee, Larry Correia presents a wildly entertaining and exclusive short story, “Son of Fire, Son of Thunder” co-authored by Steven Diamond, about an FBI paranormal investigator and a bad ass marine who knows the exact moment of his own death.

Travel to the alternate history Earth of the “Red Bandanna Boys” by Patrick M. Tracy and find out how ruthless you have to be to survive the slums of St. Nikolayev. Follow “The Trail of Blood” by Alex Haig, a horrifying Western about a bounty hunter who wants vengeance, not money. Hunt for Nazis in a disturbing 1950’s America in “Hunters Incorporated” by Kelly Swails. Patrol the steaming jungles of Vietnam with a squad of soldiers in Lon Prater’s “Last Rites in the Big Green Empty.” Then enter the mind of a godlike demon in Donald J. Bingle’s ambitions tale, “Dark Garden,” or visit the creepy shadow world created by Richard Lee Byers in “Light and Dark.”

View some of the 23+ one minute story trailers on The Crimson Pact YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/TheCrimsonPact) to learn more, and most importantly . . . watch your back, the demons are coming.

It's volume 2 of the Crimson Pact series of anthologies, which is scheduled to come out around the end of August. (Volume one is already out. See http://www.thecrimsonpact.com for details.) They even made trailers for our stories. Here's mine (plus an excerpt, below):

Exerpt from Karma:

We hit the interstate like an unguided missile. Needles of frozen rain and jagged blades of wind beat my face numb and turned what was left of my dress into a full-body ice-pack. Even with the heater on 'incinerate,' I couldn't stop shivering, but the outside air was all that kept me from gagging on the smell of my own puke and the rusty stench of blood, so the window stayed down. Between the black pavement and blacker sky, the air was wet and gray. It sucked the vitality from my headlamp beams well before their natural time, but that was okay. I wasn't paying much attention to the little they revealed anyway.

The man in the passenger's seat either didn't feel the cold or was too stoic to show discomfort. The dashboard glow turned his short white beard to green and deepened the age lines in his face. Gods, I'd loved that face growing up. It was my grandfather's face. But right then, I could barely look at it, because this wasn't my grandfather; just a sad, confused spirit wearing his body. And even though he was one of the good guys, that didn't mean it was easy to take.

"You're going to catch cold," Not-Grandpa shouted over the storm.

"I'm... what?"

Since last night I'd been shot at, whipped, and electrocuted. I'd watched a good man beheaded and disemboweled before my eyes, and learned things about myself, my family, and especially my past, that had already driven other people into padded-room territory. I was marinated in a vile concoction of blood and various other body fluids, quite a bit of it my own, and had spent the last however-many hours fighting horrors that should never have existed. In the middle of all that--because I'm an overachiever--I took time out to kill a man I loved.

And this guy was worried that I'd catch a fucking cold.

Once I started laughing, I couldn't stop. The kind of deep, full-body laughter that doubles you over and makes your stomach muscles ache for days afterward. The kind that shreds the lining of your throat and rises in pitch to rapid staccato squeaks, like sneakers on a hardwood floor. I held back the worst long enough to wrestle the car onto the shoulder, then let go. The laughter turned to howling, the howling into screams, the screams into sobs, and the sobs into a quiet whimper that finally, gods finally, tapered off, and I could breathe again, in great, ragged gulps. I wiped away a rope of snot hanging from my nose and sat hunched over with my eyes closed and my forehead against the steering wheel, shaking, while the rain pummeled my back with tiny, ice-cold fists.

In shock? Probably. Hysterical? Definitely. Look, I make sandwiches at my family's restaurant for a living, okay? Sandwiches.

Not-Grandpa waited until I quieted down before speaking. "I'm sorry," he said. It was the dozenth or so time he'd said it. The line of his mouth stayed hard, but his eyes and his voice were soft and broken. I believed him. Had to believe him.

"I know." I didn't mean for it to sound bitter. He'd saved my life, after all; he deserved better than that. I just didn't know if I could forgive him for not being who I wanted him to be.

#

A little too "in media res" for you? Yeah, me too.

So here are the vitals: My name is Karma Miranda Rodriguez. I'm twenty-three years old, five foot six, with brown eyes, light brown skin, and dark brown hair that I keep boy-short. I claim to be a size five, and I dare you to say otherwise. I like strawberry daiquiris, support equal rights for supernaturals, am indifferent toward long walks on the beach, and...

And oh, yeah—Apparently, I kill demons.

Okay, I am by no mean a "real" developer, but I made a .deb file for the latest Scrivener for Linux beta (2.9) from the latest tarball. This should install on 32-bit Ubuntu 11.04 (and Ubuntu-based distributions) with a double-click. See below for instructions for installing on 64-bit systems. See the "attachment" link at the bottom of this post to download.

(Since OS X is *nix-based, some have asked why it wasn't ported over from the Mac long ago. Easy--It was originally written in Cocoa, meaning that it had to be re-written from the ground up for Linux and Windows, which couldn't happen until the creator hooked up with the right Windows/Linux developer.)

For 64-bit systems:
sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture scrivener_0.2.9_beta.deb

Important: if you want spellcheck to work on 64-bit systems, before installing Scrivener, download getlibs from here http://frozenfox.freehostia.com/cappy/ and install it.
Once getlibs is installed, run the following commands:
getlibs -p libaspell-dev
and
getlibs -p  libaspell15

Either way, it should also make a launcher in the office section of your main menu, but you may have to edit the launcher to include the icon.

EDIT: While the .deb I built installed and works just fine on my 64-bit Ubuntu 10.10, some others have had problems with it. If that includes you, download the package built by JG Starsoupsky at http://www.handsomeplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/scrivener_0.2.4.... His deb should install via Ubuntu's software center for 32-bit systems, but to install it on a 64-bit you'll need to run the command:
sudo dpkg -i --foreign-architecture i386 scrivener_0.2.4_i386.deb

Download link at the bottom (or if you're reading this on LJ, go to my blog). This is the most recent Scrivener for Linux beta, which I've packaged into a .deb. Ubuntu (or similar) software center will now install it with a simple double-click, and it should work for both 32 and 64 bit systems. This beta will expire on June 30, 2011, by which time another will be available. See my post at http://robhamm.com/legacy/primary-categories/scrivener-linux-21-beta-dow... for details.

Of course, as usual, the .tgz, the Windows beta, or the long-running Mac version can be downloaded at http://www.literatureandlatte.com.

The spell-check doesn't work on this beta (at least on 64-bit systems), but that is probably a problem with my packaging.

Download the .deb at http://www.robhamm.com/temp/scrivener-beta_2.4_all.deb

First off, what is Scrivener and Scrivener for Windows and Linux? Only, IMNSHO, the best writing software ever developed. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I've never found anything that's worked as well for me. Formerly Mac-only, it is now nearing the end of the beta cycle for both Linux native and Windows versions.

Here I'll cover some features and tell you how to install and run the Linux native version from the attached .deb package, as well as providing links for the tgz, the Mac version, and the Windows version (which works quite well in Wine, by the way). The Linux version is (for now) distributed via tgz files, but community members like Randy Wallace and I have been putting together .deb files for easier installation on Debian-based distros like Ubuntu. As of this writing, this is the only place to get the latest .deb, but please feel free to share by any and every means possible. And no, I don't get a dime for pimping Scrivener out or building debs--This is just about sharing something awesome. read more »

At the bottom of this post, you'll find the .deb file for Scrivener for Linux 1.9beta. Until recently, Scrivener has been Mac-only (it was written in Cocoa), and it is the one writing application that I could not live without after my switch to Linux. I even resorted to a virtual hackintosh so I could run it.

Now, finally, there are betas for both Windows and Linux. (And the Windows beta runs quite well in Wine.) If it's priced the same as the Mac version, the final Windows/Linux versions will probably be around forty bucks, and well worth the price.

IMPORTANT: You can't install this with the software center. Rather, open a terminal, navigate to your download directory, and type in:

dpkg -i scrivener-beta_1.9beta-10_all.deb

If you still have trouble with this, check out http://www.literatureandlatte.com/wiki/doku.php?id=running_scrivener_in_... or check the forums there.

This beta will expire on March 21st, 2011, at which time beta 1.10 should be available. At some point I imagine there'll be a PPA for it.
A .tgz of the Linux version can be found at http://www.literatureandlatte.com, as can the Mac version and the Windows beta.

Well, I said everything was changing, and that's even more true than I intended. I am completely re-doing everything from scratch--The blog portion first, but eventually Blue Crash Kit as well. I plan to leave what's up there (and here) now as archives to preserve all the conversations and comments that remain. Some of those conversations were (and are) important to me, and they're a reminder of BCK's glory days. (And for more BCK-specific news, check out http://www.robhamm/bluecrashkit.)

Why the drastic changes? Well, for those few of you who may care... We started off using a simple PHP script for the comic itself, and phpBB for the forums. Due to technical issues I won't go into here, we had to switch--literally overnight--to the Drupal 4.7 site I'd been developing as a learning project to teach myself Drupal. It was intended more as a proof of concept before I built the "real" site.

I made all the usual newbie mistakes and then some, and as we updated to 5.x, then 6.x, those mistakes remained--And some of them I didn't know how to fix without borking the entire site. (In fact, I did bork the whole thing once, to the point at which we had to re-upload all the comic images).

When I moved BCK over here and merged the databases for it and my blog, the problems increased. A lot of comments and other stuff got lost, and in trying to fix things up, I lost even more. Taxonomy was all screwed up, many of the links broke, a lot of images stopped working, and so on. By the time I realized that merging had been a mistake and split them out again, both databases were a frakking mess.

Now, COULD I fix all that? Possibly. But with what I've learned over the past several years, I think it's best to start over. Sorry for any inconvenience, but in the long run, I think everyone will be happier. I plan to implement things like the ability to log in with your Facebook account, simplify the navigation and categories, and just... Well, make things work better and make more sense.

For those of you still reading, I thank you for your patience.

Disclaimer: I in no way wish to denigrate Ms. Fawcett, Mr. Jackson, nor the pain and anguish of their families, friends, and fans. I feel for them, and I wish them comfort. But let's get some perspective. read more »

(This is not a comprehensive discussion of copyright law, but a summary of the facets that are of most interest to webcomicers and other online content providers. All of the proceeding is from research at http://www.copyright.gov, and applies to the United States. You should also read my trademark article, as that goes into much of what people confuse with copyright. I am not a lawyer, and--as usual--accept no liability if this information pees in your Cheerios, drinks all your beer, and eats your babies. You may also want to see my essay on the Orphaned Works bill.)

There is quite a bit of misinformation floating around the webcomic community about copyright, big chunks of which have changed over time. Here's how current (as of this writing) copyright law affects you, the webcomic creator or other online content provider. read more »

Note: At least two versions of this bill have come up, and future ones doubtlessly will, as well. All so far have been similar. I'll update this if something new is included in the next one.

There's been a lot of noise among webcomicers and others who post art and other content online about an "Orphaned Works" bill that supposedly "takes away copyright" from unregistered works. This is just noise. Those protesting most strenuously against the bill don't seem to have actually read it in its entirety. read more »