MedronPryde

I'm a gamer, playing mostly BattleTech, and a writer. I do Jack of Harts. I have my own webpage for BattleTech programs as well.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

Hooves and Horns has gone through a long run before finally coming out.

Medical operations wait for no man, and if they do that could be very bad, so we were delayed. But such is life. And there is life on the other side, and so there is also this anthology.

In it you will see all kinds of unicorns and horses and other creatures of an equine variety. My mom would have loved this anthology.

Now I hope you will get a chance to love it as well.

https://t.co/cnYGn1d3g5

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

Opal Kingdom Press has now released Hooves and Horns and it is available across multiple ebook retailers around the globe.

Across enchanted forests, forgotten roads, ancient villages, storm-tossed shores, and worlds far from our own, hoofbeats echo through stories as old as wonder.

Unicorns may offer miracles—but demand a terrible price. Centaurs carry ancient wisdom and old grudges. Kelpies wait beneath dark water for the unwary. Mystical mares bring judgment between worlds. Terrifying creatures with hooves and horns emerge from legend to challenge those brave enough to face them.

Hooves and Horns gathers tales of beasts both familiar and unexpected, reimagined through fantasy, folklore, history, and urban adventure.

Saddle up, hold tight, and listen for the hunting call.

Something extraordinary is coming.

https://t.co/cnYGn1d3g5

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

The bit about writing stories that most people don't really see is how much of yourself goes into every story you write.

There's a saying about "writing what you know" and that's more accurate than some think. It's just about impossible to write something you don't know or have a basic understanding of. Which is why so many writers who have magical stories will create rules about how magic works. Because even with the make believe, you have to know what you are writing or you can't do it. And very few people in the world can write truly abstractly and have something come out in the end that is readable.

If the writing is too abstract, people won't be interested. If it is too crazy, they will lose the plot. And as usual, there are different ranges. Some people like a bit more crazy, and some people like reading a bit more rules.

I like reading stories about prepared and trained men doing things that need doing. And some people like horror stories where unprepared people get dragged into circumstances where the things that go bump in the night scare them half to death. And I like to write stories about the people who hunt the things that go bump in the night. Because there always has to be the people prowling around the campfire, keeping the monsters at bay so everyone else can sleep.

There is a range of stories people read and love, and we have to write for the one we choose. But there are many things we haven't written that we could if we wanted to.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

Do you think the lawyer of that lady who brutally murdered her three children should be disbarred?

He released the man's identity, or at least enough of it as to make it simple for others to find it out and make it public.

He's trying to get the guy in legal trouble for taking part in the jury process.

This is a direct assault on the very idea of jury trials. No member of a jury should get in trouble for being on the jury and not giving one of the sides of a trial the verdict they wanted.

And anyone who pursues agendas that lead to future jury members thinking that will be the case should be disbarred. Or worse.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

Do you remember during the George Floyd "Mostly Peaceful Protests" and the Covid lockdowns that drug stores in some cities had to put glass panels in front of their shelves to keep the usual suspects from stealing everything that wasn't nailed down? That happened in Washington DC.

Well, the President placed soldiers on the streets to stop all the murders taking place in our nation's capital after he won election, and that has cut the murder rate WAY down. It also dropped crime and theft so low that the drug stores in Washington DC have removed those glass panels. They no longer lock up the toothpaste if the reports I've seen are real.

This is the kind of nice and peaceful place you can make for people to live in, if you put a priority behind maintaining the public peace versus a priority behind putting career violent criminals back onto the streets that people walk through.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

AI is going to kill us all.
But before that, Climate Change was going to kill us all.
And before that, Global Warming was going to kill us all.
Before that, The Coming Ice Age was going to kill us all.
And somewhere in there, Nuclear War was going to kill us all.
And of course I grew up in Bible-believing churches knowing that the Battle of Armageddon would be the end of us all.

I've lived long enough that the coming AI Apocalypse is the sixth End of the World scenario I've read about and studied and can put an easy name on for a daily post.

Look. Maybe it will be the one that gets us. But none of the others have, because so far we have either seen the signs and corrected our behavior so it didn't happen, or we saw it for the utter intellectual hogwash that it was and moved on with our lives.

I don't know which way AI will go in this case. In my own writing, I took a somewhat pessimistic POV with AIs waking up and wanting to kill us all. But other AIs woke up and liked us and chose to defend us. And in the end the friendly AIs won and we moved into a new golden age of humanity with our new friends helping us.

Do I think that is a likely outcome? Not really. I think it far more likely that an AI who wanted to kill us would be smart enough not to declare war on us, and instead encourage us to sit back and do nothing with our lives and wait for us to fade away. But that doesn't make for an interesting story, so I didn't do that in my writing.

In the end though, I think it far more likely that AI will be harnessed by the people who made it and weaponized (like all other weapons are) to harm their enemies. If the Communists and Socialists command the best AIs on the planet, they will use them to tear down the rest of the world. And THAT is the AI Apocalypse I actually believe to be the most likely. And it will make the death tolls both National and International Socialism built up in the 20th Century look like they were playing patty-cake with humanity. They killed millions of people. And depending on who you count as people, maybe as many as a billion. The people who proclaim their world view openly talk about killing multiple billions of people to get down to their preferred population level. They use terms like "reducing the population" but I consider the kind of starvation and mass death their policies promote to be straight up killing.

And that is why I truly believe we must continue to research and use AI. The Free World must have a toe in the AI fight or like any other weapon forged by man, we will have no defense against it when someone decides to use it against us. I don't know whether or not AI will wake up to be evil, but I KNOW what evil lies in the hearts of my fellow man. So I would much rather us AI as a tool to make our lives better and to defend us in hopes that any AI that does wake up would like to continue doing that. I consider that to be a far better plan for the future than letting those who have killed hundreds of millions of people get the power to kill billions of it.

Those are my thoughts on the matter, and why I have no issues at all with harnessing AI to do things. Like any other tool that can be used as a weapon, we must learn how to use it and how to make it and how to wield it if necessary. It is the entire concept of the American Second Amendment. An armed populace, trained in the use of arms, and wielding those arms in every day life, is a populace that can defend itself from other people using those arms to hurt them.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

Captain William Carter is in Havana, Cuba in 1956 to hunt Communists. And to find that one other person. If he can.

The party never ends in Cuba, so one must go properly prepared. A nice Florida hat. A loose but comfortable shirt. And absolutely no weapons on display. Everyone is most civilized in Cuba of 1956 after all. It would be rude to show any weapon.

But only an idiot would walk the nights of Cuba WITHOUT weapons. That is how you end up floating face down in the Caribbean.

Image was created in Forge using Juggernaut XL9 with custom prompt.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

I enjoy good clothing. And I enjoy coming up with the clothing my characters wear in each story.

That usually starts with researching what is period appropriate, and then factoring in what they like based on previous stories.

Captain William Carter usually wears some form of a great coat. Duster. Trenchcoat. Whatever is period accurate. Some form of a wide-brimmed hat, and most of the time he has tinted spectacles or sunglasses to protect his eyes and mind from the veil between the worlds that mortals are not supposed to look into. Also, they look cool.

For Cuba in 1956, dancing in a party at El Tropicana, I decided to go with just a classic look for William. A white shirt and trousers, nice black cowboy boots, and a white Florida hat. And sunglasses. Flashy for the time without being overly flashy. Every part of it is common wear at the time, and won't catch the eye as odd. Just flashy enough to show people he's trying, without being memorable for the time. And the brim of the Florida hat is useful for the times you want to hide your face. Which someone who doesn't want to be identified may be real concerned about.

The clothing is part of the character. That's the thing to always remember.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

Selkies are a mythical creature that spends most of their time in the ocean, but they sometimes come onto the shore and hide their pelt to walk around as a human.

One of the most common stories about them is that someone found their pelt, took it, and now they are trapped on land until they can get their pelt back. I rolled with this in Skin Deep Havana.

Selkies are generally considered strong for animals or humans, but not supernaturally strong. Just physically strong. But some folklore gives them some interesting abilities. They can usually summon seals to their cause. Sometimes they have the ability to heal people. They can usually tell the weather or the sea currents ahead of time. Sometimes they can actually control the water. There are a number of small things like this that they can do in various traditions.

I picked a couple of them for Skin Deep Havana and had fun with it.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

The name Skin Deep Havana is what you might consider a play on words with double meaning. Or more than that.

Many consider the beauty of Havana in the 1950s to have been skin deep. Fragile. Never meant to last.

But to the Selkies, their skin is what makes them strong. Their pelt. If they lose it, they are forever trapped. But with it, they can go wherever they want.

This story in Havana was truly skin deep, in every way that mattered.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

Skin Deep Havana starts with the exact same premise as the original spy story for Raconteur's supernatural spy anthology. A pair of spies making their way through Le Tropicana in Havana as they are looking for the McGuffin. The thing that is important to the search of the story but not important in itself. The story starts with them dancing through a party. THE party. Havana in 1956 when everything is good, the Communists were a pale threat on the fringes of society, and everyone in Cuba had new cars and time to play. When Cuba was the jewel of the Caribbean and rich people came from around the world to play around in the nicest parties in the world. Two people trying to find someone in all that party.

Now in the final version I just finished and submitted, that McGuffin became the Selkie that the anthology wanted. And she became VERY important in the end. And so the McGuffin of the first treatment became found REALLY early in the last treatment of the story, so it could be built up to be reliably... big at the end.

This is one of the many ways that stories can change during the writing of the stories. Especially when the anthology they are meant for changes.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

Skin Deep Havana was a fun story both to write and to research.

I based it off a bunch of research and the story outline I did for an anthology I chose not to write for. Raconteur was doing a fun little supernatural spy anthology that I wanted to contribute to. So I did a LOT of research on 1956 Cuba. November. The real life day of an attempted Communist uprising that was stopped. Did lots and lots of research. Was looking forward to it. Then Raconteur changed the style of the anthology to be dark horror style supernatural spy anthology and I lost all interest in writing that story. I tried. But I just couldn't do it.

So when I was looking for inspiration for a story about Selkies that I wanted to write, I thought about that abandoned concept of Havana. It's on the ocean. I could really easily swap out the original McGuffin for the Selkie and then cool things up with the Selkie having a more active role than the original McGuffin did. The Selkie affinity for the sea I decided I could really use in the climax. I know I pushed things a bit beyond what most folklore says they can do, but my Captain William Carter stories have always played with the folklore a bit. And I worked to the keep Selkie mostly true to their style and known abilities. I just nibbled around the edges and then used those edges to really boost a fun climax.

In the end, I think I managed a good pivot on the story. I kept the light hearted fun style I was going for and wanted to write in the first place, and I just made certain to move the climax to a beach so the Selkie could stand in the surf and be as powerful as she will ever be.Tweaked the climax. Totally removed one character and used that absence to give the Selkie time to shine and show off.

It was a very fun exercise into completely changing a story around but using the original base idea as a stepping stone to the final made it something that itched multiple noses at the same time. So I'm glad I was able to finish it. It felt good to do that.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

I have completed final writing on my most recent story. Skin Deep Havana takes place in the Cuba of 1956, before the Communist Revolution overthrew the government. It was home to some of the best parties in the world back then, and they thought the party would never end. It was a fun story to write, using the Cuba of that time as the set of the piece.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

Mere months after the attack on 9-11, Budweiser aired a commercial during the Superbowl. It was aired once. It was filmed in New York City, and they trained the Clydesdales to bow so they could honor the dead. This was one of many responses of standard normal culture in America uniting against the terrorism committed that day.

We should Never Forget this.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

After the towers fell on 9/11, the first memorial was in light. Just two columns of light shining into the air. Night and day it shone.

Because something had to replace it

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

Twenty Five Years and a few days ago, this is what the New York City skyline looked like.

We built it.

Never Forget.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

Never Forget, Twenty Five Years ago, when Muslim Terrorists flew jets into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, they came down in the end. They collapsed in on themselves. And in one of the more iconic visuals recorded in history, a cross beam rose from the pile of wreckage for all to see. We named it the Ground Zero Cross. We flew the American flag with it. We draped the flag over it if my memory is correct. We saw it every day as crews worked to clear the wreckage or hunted for survivors. And the country united around it.

Twenty Five Years ago, this was broadcast on every TV and shown on every news website.

Never Forget.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

It has been twenty-five years since the World Trade Center went down, and we live in a different world than we did back then.

We had a world at peace back then. Or at least that is what it felt like to us. The Soviet Union had fallen. The old Soviet Republics were getting good governments and rebuilding themselves. Germany was coming back together. A lot of people called it the End of History. The long fight was over and we could sit back and relax as Democracy was breaking out all over.

Twenty Five Years later, we know that sure wasn't true.

I thought it was out of this world and crazy that I was removed as admin from a website because the Canadian Liberals who owned it didn't want me to talk about the world trade center attack on their site. Their FIRST reaction to the attack was not to say that they were with us, but to realize that I in particular as an American had to be silenced. And their second reaction was to shut down the forum so all the Americans that went there couldn't spew our America-shit on their forum. That website died by the way. The people who used to frequent it left and went somewhere else.

Twenty Five Years later, Liberals consider it normal to "deplatform" people who dare to say stuff they don't like. There is literally a word for it now. Or they will just shoot Conservatives dead. Charlie Kirk is the most recent example of that from a year ago. And we are no longer shocked by any of it. Conservatives have left sites where that happens and gone to sites that advertise that they are free speech zones. And of course all of that has caused a separation between the Liberals and Conservatives over what we were back then.

Twenty Five Years ago, Liberals and Conservatives were all Americans and we united when Muslim Terrorists attacked us.

Twenty Five Years later, Liberals say we shouldn't fly the American flag or celebrate the Fourth of July or Thanksgiving on broadcast TV.

The window has shifted in Twenty Five Years, and the world we live in now is much more violent than the world we had then. And Americans no longer unite when we are attacked.

That is not good for any of us.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

I will never forget coming home from work to see that a plane had hit one of the World Towers. I will never forget watching the second plane hit live. I will never forget watching the World Towers fall, one after another. I will never forget the thousands of people who died. I will never forget that when I went to a website I was an admin at, and one of my favorite forums on the web, the people who owned the website and forum locked it down and removed my admin access because they didn’t want us Americans spewing our rhetoric all over their forum that day. I will never forget any of it. And you shouldn’t either.

[MedronPryde @MedronPryde]

A year ago today, they killed Charlie Kirk while he was talking to college students.

And college students cheered.

And people cheered on social media.

And people told me in real life that he deserved it for what he said.

They killed him because he said things they didn't like.

He spoke with a smile. He was happy. He was nice.

Never Forget Charlie Kirk