Well, let's get the bad news out of the way first: I didn't win the Scribe Award I was nominated for, and neither did Travis. One of the three Warhammer stories we were up against won. So that means I have to try again. Hopefully I can make this a regular thing.
The back cover blurb reads as follows:
REDEMPTION. RESISTANCE. RESOLVE.
A young Davion MechWarrior seeks to repay a debt incurred by the misfortunes of the Fourth Succession War. A tightly-knit farming community bands together to repel vicious pirates or risk losing their livelihoods...and their lives. A Kurita MechWarrior given a final chance to serve the Dragon stands alone against renegade mercenaries. And the survivors of a crash-landed Steiner command must hold the line against ravenous Word of Blake forces to protect the Allied Coalition's quest to wrest Terra from the Blakists' unyielding grip.
Kill Zone: BattleCorps Anthology, Volume 7 collects the very best of the short stories published on the BattleCorps website from 2010. Charge into the war-torn future to experience nine stories filled with BattleMech combat, heroism, betrayal, honor, and duty.
Veteran BattleTech authors Kevin Killiany, Blaine Lee Pardoe, and Jason Schmetzer, alongside fan favorites Craig A. Reed, Jr. and Jason Hansa are showcased in this anthology, which includes an all-new tale from Scribe Award-nominated author Travis Heermann.
My story in this collection is Reap What You Sew. It's a story about pirates and what's supposed to be a simple pirate raid against a bunch of farmers turns out to be neither simple not easy for the pirates. It was to be part of a pirate anthology Jason Schmetzer solicited for, but Reap was the only one that was submitted. Still, it's a great story about how some things are not as they appear.
Now, for the elephant in the room, the Clan Box Kickstarter....hooo boy.....
As I write this post, the current amount pledged is close to $940,000. Nearly a million dollars.
Let that sink in for a moment. Nearly a million dollars. For a tabletop game that's now old enough to run for President, a game that had reached it's seniority despite everything that's been thrown at it, with different companies and different offshoots of the game. A game that has been declared dead more times than Dracula but keeps going. A game that survives.
Over 4,600 people have backed this effort so far, and I expect to see that surge with Gencon coming up next week. To those who have backed this, I thank you. We the freelancers haven't gotten our marching orders yet, but there will be work for all of us for the next six months to a year. Right now, Catalyst's management is focused on Gencon and the Kickstarter.
By the end of the week, the total should be over a million dollars, with more than three weeks to go. My own prediction for the final total on August 17th will be between $1.75 and $2 million dollars.
What's been unlocked so far? Too much to go on here, but it is a lot of stuff to go over in detail. But were looking at close to a hundred minis, several novels, and oodles of goodies that makes me wish I could slap down five figures down without a second thought. (But like with Gencon, there this small problem called money preventing me from doing just that.)Right now, it's watching the Kickstarter total rise into the stratosphere and begin to prepare for the work ahead. That won't start to happen until the second week of August, as Gencon is foremost in Catalyst's mind. But I expect the company to hit the ground running once Gencon is over and everyone has had a chance to recovered from it. There's a lot to be done over the next couple of years, and I hope to be part of it. In case you need the link to the Kickstarter, it's here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/450703636/battletech-clan-invasion/description Be sure to read through it all, because there's a lot of digest.
Thios has been a long post for me, so I will end it here.
Later!
Craig
