Category: fiction

One Montague Portal, one Rats’ Man’s Lackey. Both exclusive to my store until I have enough of each to do a collection.

Yes, the cover art is correct. For Reasons. Having this story be exclusive to my store lets me do silly things like this.

Both Montague Portal and Rats’ Man’s Lackey were meant to be single stories, but the Muse got involved and she’s an absolute jerk. (Don’t go clicking around that site, Oglaf is decided NOT safe for work. Or children. The artist has never declared safety to be a design goal, so I can’t complain.) Anyway, these first person tales limit my ability to give an outsider’s impression of the hero.¹ Luggage is viciously competent and quite dangerous, but he’s so matter-of-fact about it that the reader doesn’t see that. With The 1846 I got to show that. I also got to show what would make Luggage immediately say “I’m not doing this” and nope out at full speed, so that was fun.

Anyway. New Montague Portal, new Rats’ Man’s Lackey. Enjoy.

If you need some fun reading, I have a book in the Escape From 2026 bundle. Fourteen ebooks, DRM-free, all about time travel, alternate worlds, and generally mucking with history. My book, Tiny Time Wars? It’s exclusive to this bundle. As in, when this bundle goes away, so does this book. It will never be reissued.

I’ve also done an interview about time travel, my take on time travel, and what it’s like to be an orc. Unlike my book, that interview will probably–probably–stay up a while after the bundle ends.

There’s some great authors in this, all hand-selected by Kris Rusch. Writers like DeAnna Knippling, Kathryn Kaleigh, Leslie Claire Walker, Lisa Silverthorne, Annie Reed, Jason A Adams, Kari Kilgore, Ron Collins, Robert Jeschonek, and Dean Wesley Smith.

Plus, part of the proceeds go to supporting World Central Kitchen. We shouldn’t need to live in a world where folks go hungry. The UN knows how to end hunger. Nobody will pay for it. WCK helps deal with the problem until someone with money develops a conscience. (Because seriously? If I was a trillionaire and the UN told me they could fix hunger for six billion dollars, I’d give them twelve and tell them to write me a nice thank-you note. I’d be the most popular person on Earth.)

Anyway. Escape From 2026. Tiny Time Wars will disappear like a ruptured timeline. Act now before it vanishes forever.

Every January, novelists announce their previous years’ releases that are eligible for awards. I don’t. The authors offer review copies to award readers. Again, I don’t. Awards give a nice warm fuzzy feeling, but the warm fuzzy feeling I prefer is “having heat and food in frozen Detroit.” I’m good. Peer recognition is great, sure, except for the part where folks notice that you exist.

Many people have designed their careers such that awards might give them a career boost. If you work through a traditional publisher and you win a Hugo or whatever, their marketing team will get you on radio and TV and in big newspapers. People Magazine might notice you exist. That might sell books! Your future books will all get “Award-Winning Author” slapped on the cover.

As I say elsewhere, I lack the infrastructure to leverage awards and have no interest in building that infrastructure on the minuscule chance that I win one. Sign on with a trad publisher? Forget the exploitative contracts and the loss of control; in the time it would take me to sell a book to, say, Tor, I can write, publish, and get paid for four novels (see above re: heat and food).

Sometimes, however, art overtakes reality.

I published one novel in 2025. It demands an awards eligibility declaration.

Go ahead. Nominate it for a big award. I dare you. I double-dog dare you.

The reviews have all been positive (Goodreads) (Amazon). A uniform five stars.

I triple-dog dare you.

Oh, and because someone will ask: nonfiction book awards? I’ve won one. Others exist, but they don’t help build writing careers. They do help build technical careers, though, so give them to someone they will help and don’t nominate me.

Life prevented me from releasing the Twisted Presents collection this summer, but here’s a couple stories from it. Both were previously published, but not by me and not in places my average readers commonly read. They went for free to all of my Patronizers, but each can be yours for a paltry $1.99.

First up is a Beaks tale, Sister Silence Night.

“Ten thousand dollars an hour, take it or leave it.”

Master criminal Beaks doesn’t charge extra for Christmas. She loathes Christmas. But for a friend, she’ll skip the fee and call it a favor.

Especially when the job’s at a shelter for runaway queer kids in Texas, under attack by an invisible hacker who’s ruined lives and driven the innocent to suicide. A hacker who’s abandoned cyberspace and getting physical. Beaks doesn’t care what kind of Grinch wants to ruin Christmas for these kids. All she cares about is making it stop.

Whatever it takes.

Then there’s the hard-boiled noirish The Last Multivariable Differential Christmas.

Why couldn’t my rep include “knows where to bury the bodies?”

That rep brings people to him. His awful talent means that sometimes, when nobody else can help, he can.

Firestone University, home of the toughest math program in the United States. Honestly it’s the most dickish, but that looks bad on brochures. After nine years an undergrad, with the final exam next week and the faculty gunning for him, it’s his last chance at passing multivariable differential equations. He must study. Those bastards will not beat him.

But another student brings him not just cheaters, but the kind of cheating that kills people.

There’s no reward for doing the right thing. Getting involved might throw away the struggle of the last nine years.

But some things are too wrong to live with.

And the right solution is as obvious as integral-of-one-over-log-cabin-equals-houseboat.

Perhaps I couldn’t put out the Christmas collection this year, but my shop has a burgeoning collection of Christmas stuff.

Many decades ago when I was but a bitter lad hanging around the library, a twisted geezer with mismatched eyes and one tattered tooth tottered up to me and hissed Your first fiction translation will be dick jokes. The jackbooted librarian-goons immediately hurtled him into the street. At the time I thought it was because he was being creepy, but it turns out that they were preserving the integrity of the timeline.

My Prohibition Orcs story “Woolen Torment” has been translated into German for the anthology Trolle.

Yeah, I know. Trolls, orcs, whatever. Different cultures have different brutes.

At this rate, my next translation will appear about 2065. You better grab this one.

On Christmas, my new book Beastly Virtues disappears forever. No, you can’t get it in my bookstore.

Beastly Virtues is exclusive to the 14-book Wee Beasties Storybundle. When the bundle runs out, this book runs out. The only way you’ll get this collection of critter tales is to back the Storybundle and get all 14 books.

I’ve read and enjoyed books by every author in this bundle, and even some of these specific books. Part of the proceeds benefit World Central Kitchen, a deeply worthy cause in this mayhem-laced age.

So, what is Beastly Virtues and why might you want it?

INHUMAN HEROISM

This collection from critically-acclaimed author Michael Warren Lucas proves that bravery comes in every shape, and not all of it is two-fisted or even two-legged. Maybe it’s orcs learning baseball, or a young boy absorbing wisdom from interdimensional bats. If the only animal in the entire universe looks like a harmless chipmunk, you better ask yourself why, and when a dog’s ghost starts reciting 19th-century French surrealist poetry, you’ll need a whole new kind of bravery.

No matter your wings, paws, or whiskers, you need courage.

But whatever you do, don’t piss off the rats.

It includes The Rats’ Man’s Lackey and the Half Gallon of Christmas Miracle, Pax Canina, Sticky Supersaturation, Face Less, Whisker Line, and Fair Balls.

Yes, you’ll get my orcs playing baseball. A careful look at the Storybundle will show that you’ll also get elves playing baseball. There’s no way this can go wrong…

My copyeditor got the manuscript back to me last weekend. I’ll be getting it into production this week and next, amidst finishing the new Networking for Systems Administrators. Once the book can be purchased both print and ebook will be exclusive to my store for a month or so, then I’ll release it to the wider public.

I was hanging out with ZZ Claybourne and a couple friends, so we picked the movie we’re going to watch and review for the Kickstarter stretch goal. It is… drum roll, please…

Evil Brain from Outer Space.

I see no way this will end well.