Habitabilis facta et condita anno MMDCCCX, Ryshalan mundus insignis in regione Kantillona prope extremos fines Dominationis Terranei Maioris celeriter fiebat. Propter locum pollentiorem ipsa saepissime oppugnata victaque erat dum, anno MMCMXXXV, facta sit mundus liber a Pronavarcho Classis Beze Davenant, imperatore Classis XXIo Imperii, qui erat primus Dux Ryshalanis. Post Seditionem Machinarum Divinarum anno MMCMXCIX et natum Unitatis, Ryshalan primum destinatum victorum administratorum et nationalum et mundanorum fiebat. Quartus Dux, arbitrans haec crebra proelia infinitum numerum exsulum opulentorum creatura, primus morem Asyli praebendi instituit.
– “Annales Ducum Ryshalanis” scripti a Thucidean Marcel
QUANTUM MORTIS: The Scholar’s Edition. It’s certain to be a classic in the mode of De Bello Gallico.
We already ran into one major translation issue. The primary Latin endearment used in the sense that we English-speakers use “baby” is cara. If you’ve read the book, then you can probably see the problem there. But, as it happens, RG managed to resolve the issue in an exquisitely appropriate manner worthy of William Weaver himself.
This is a very high tone blog, you see. Don’t forget to keep your pinky out while you’re reading.
In not-entirely-unrelated news, the QM hardcovers are at the printers and should be shipping this week to the preorders. Thanks very much for your support!
Well, I think this should suffice to explode any remaining vestiges of the perceived importance of the SFWA concerning one’s prospective career in writing science fiction. Barely one week after the release of QUANTUM MORTIS: A Man Disrupted, Amazon has ranked me as the ~1* author in Science Fiction. First time that’s ever happened.
It also demonstrates, to a certain extent, the lack of an absolute need to distribute books through bookstores. As it happens, the 96 94 ranking applies to all books; the ebook-only ranking is 77. Conventional print distribution is still desirable, of course, but it isn’t absolutely necessary anymore. And it is going to become even less important when Barnes & Noble finally goes the way of Waldenbooks, Borders, and B. Dalton.
The punchline is that in addition to relative nobodies like me cracking the top 100 Most Popular Books in Science Fiction, the #1 author in the category is someone nearly as well-beloved by the SFWA pinkshirts, Orson Scott Card. And the #3 author in Fantasy? None other than the SFWA-spurning master Monster Hunter himself, Larry Correia. Note that the SF author listed just above me, Aaron Johnston, is playing in Orson Scott Card’s universe.
Sure, the pinkshirts have still got George R.R. Martin to top the fantasy list and Tor will continue dutifully trying to push its dreadful Pink SF on everyone, but how long will that last? While it is still easier to make obeisance to the pinkshirts and their ever-changing PC standards, the point is that their approval is no longer necessary and will eventually become undesirable. By way of example, look at how rapidly and completely McRapey changed his tune with regards to self-publishers. Were we not all creators last year too? Now that the gatekeepers are crumbling and people are given a broader range from which they can choose what sort of science fiction and fantasy they prefer, I expect Blue SF to absolutely foxnews the hell out of Pink SF.
And setting aside new distribution models, just wait until the effects from the new shared revenue translation model begin to come into play. There are already no less than 10 translations in the works from Latin to Bahasa Indonesia; here is a short selection from one of them:
Vuonna 2810 ensimmäisen kerran asutettu ja terraformoitu Rhysalan kehittyi nopeasti tärkeäksi planeetaksi Kantillonin alasektorissa Terran Laajemman Keskusvallan reunamilla. Strategisen sijaintinsa vuoksi planeetta oli kiivaan sotilaallisen toiminnan kohteena ja vaihtoi haltijaa useita kertoja ennen kuin lopulta vakiinnutti asemansa itsenäisenä planeettana vuonna 2935 Keskusvallan 21. laivueen amiraalin Beze Davenantin, ensimmäisen Rhysalan Herttuan, alaisuudessa. — Thucidean Marc, ”Rhysalan Herttuoiden historia”
It was certainly a fascinating discussion trying to determine whether ‘valtapiiri’, ‘valtakunta’, ‘imperiumi’ or ‘keskuvallan’ was the best way to translate ‘Ascendancy’. As you can see, we went with the latter. Also, if you’re ever being chased by a Finn, just tell him he’s got an extra umlaut in a word and be sure not to tell him which one. It’s like scattering salt in front of a leprechaun. If the Russians had only known this trick back in the days of the Talvisota, they would have captured Helsinki in a week.
As one translator wrote: “I’m interested in being an active part in the Blue SF Revolution”. There are no shortage of languages still unaddressed, so if you’re a native speaker of one of them and you want to take an active part too, get in touch.
*For varying quantities of ~. To be more specific, No. 94.
Larry Correia totally feigns putting on a supportive face while pretending to play down the fact that Steve and I actually managed to OUTGUN the master Monster Hunter. But we are not fooled. We all know this has lit a fire burning deep within the man, the green-hot flames of fury fed by envy, disbelief, and outrage:
I know the author online. I’ve participated in many email chains with him, Sarah, Mike, and Tom. I’ve got a copy, but I’ve not had a chance to read it yet. I wanted to read the review copy, but I’ve got a deadline and I’ve been slammed. I’ve heard good things about it though…. I offend people on the internet for being an unabashed right winger. Vox sends them into hyperbolic rage spirals. He is their devil. They hate him more than Scott Card or George Bush, so that is saying something. Anybody who has caused that many panty twists is deserving of royalties just for the entertainment value of watching the literati have come aparts.
Needless to say, I’ll be watching my six with extra caution given the likelihood that Larry will be sending magic kanji-enhanced Shadow Guard after us. Now, where did I put that Benelli-Mossberg Area Suppression Expediter-5K? One of those city block-sweepers could come in handy right about now.
In truth, it wouldn’t be entirely unfair to describe Quantum Mortis as Alien Hunters Intergalactic in Space. We had a nice little SF murder mystery going, but after reading MHI and the Grimnoire Chronicles, I realized that it had two major flaws.
Too few bodies.
Too small guns.
That is how Graven Tower received a transfer from the Trans Paradis Police Department to the Military Crimes Investigative Division. My reasoning was that the police can only get away with so much collateral damage before the public refuses to put up with it. But the military, well, all they have to do is cry “planetary security” and they can get away with damn near anything.
Short review: Murder mystery with rayguns IN SPACE!
Longer review: Both works are set in the distant future, and center around one Graven Tower…. It has been interesting watching SF wrestle with the question of the ongoing IT revolution of the last few decades, especially since society as a whole has not yet figured out how to deal with the Internet. If you read older science fiction, the computers of the future were supposed to be the computer from STAR TREK, Wintermute, and Tron-style virtual reality. No one anticipated the banal reality of YouTube, Hulu, Internet pornography, and people Instagramming pictures of their breakfast toast. All of a sudden, science fiction novels have to wrestle with a future containing smartphones and the Internet, and this book does a good job of grafting the IT revolution onto a space-opera framework.
Of course, the book isn’t all deep thoughts – there are a lot of battles with particle weapons, lasers, missiles, more particle weapons, and flying cars. Graven uses a lot of guns – the book achieves the rare trick of writing gun porn about guns that do not actually exist. It is an interesting look at the IT-augmented warfare of the future (or the present, really), when attacking the enemy’s computer systems is just as effective, if not more so, as attacking his troops and food supplies.
Read the whole review there. Jonathan always has an intelligent take on things and usually somehow manages to observe an aspect of the novel that even the writer doesn’t realize is there until it is pointed out to him.
Also, for those who are interested, I’ve started a Quantum Mortis wiki to help Steve and I keep track of who is who and what is what. If you feel like pitching in and contributing to it, please feel free to do so. I’m also throwing together a Traveller-style sector map that I expect to post there sometime next week.
On the translation front, there are now Finnish (2), French (2), Bahasa Indonesia, and Latin works in progress. So, if you’re a native speaker of some other non-English language and you’re interested in receiving a bigger revenue share than Simon & Schuster used to provide to Dan Brown and me at the turn of the century, shoot me an email. I’m particularly interested finding translators for Deutsch, Schwyzerdütsch, and Italiano.
A few people have asked me what I mean by differentiating between Pink SF and Blue SF. Pink SF is the dominant form of science fiction today. Or rather, more properly, the currently dominant form of SyFy. It is necrobestial love triangles. It is using the superficial trappings of science fiction or fantasy or war fiction to tell exactly the same sort of goopy, narcissistic female-oriented story that has already been told in ten thousand Harlequin novels and children’s tales and Hollywood comeuppance fantasies.
Pink SF primarily concerns a) choosing between two lovers, b) being true to yourself, or c) enacting ex post facto revenge upon the badthinkers and meanies who made the author feel bad about herself at school. Pink SF is about feelings rather than ideas or actions.
Pink SF is an invasion. Pink SF is a cancer. Pink SF is a parasitical perversion. Pink SF is the little death that kills every literary subgenre. And Pink SF isn’t limited to SF; there is a very good reason the Sports Guy’s meme “Women Ruin Everything” applies so perfectly to most forms of literature. The one exception is the One True Female Genre, which is the Pillow Book. Read Murasaki Shikibu or Sei Shonagon; women have been writing the same thing over and over for more than 1,000 years now and very, very few do it as well as the Lady Murasaki did. Pink SF is the girls coming to play in the boys’ sandbox and then shitting in it like cats.
Consider the way Pink SF has now invaded even that most masculine of subgenres, War Fiction. Books 1, 3, and 5 on Amazon’s War Fiction Top 100 free list are not genuine “war fiction” any more than Pink SF is actual science fiction. It’s WereSEAL porn. It’s 50 Shades of Sexy Soldiers.
So what, in contrast, is Blue SF? Blue SF is a return to the manly adventure fiction of the past. Blue SF says “fuck that” to strong independent female protagonists who ride rainbow-farting unicorns and flex their nonexistent muscles when they aren’t being mounted by corpses and canids. Blue SF says “fuck that” to sexual equality, salutes la difference, and doesn’t deign to throw bones to women who might feelbad that their oh-so-tender feelingses isn’t being gently massaged. And Blue SF says “fuck off” to every idiot of either sex who whines about it being too this or not enough that.
Blue SF does not apologize for being male, for being insufficiently inclusive, or for refusing to fall in line with the dynamic demand for character quotas concerning sex, race, religion, and sexual preferences. Unlike Pink SF, Blue SF is sufficiently confident to be what it is rather than deceptively market itself as what it manifestly is not. Can you even imagine genuine science fiction trying to sneak into the romance market and pretending that it’s all proper romance when actually there is little more than action and technology and ideas under a very thin and superficial veil of romantic intrigue and self-centered drama?
At the Baen Bar, a retired airborne infantry master sergeant left a comment about QUANTUM MORTIS: A Man Disrupted that perhaps is not irrelevant in this regard: “I read it and enjoyed it greatly. Baen might want to talk to the authors because they would fit right in. These guys like guns and prefer big guns. Guns that leave big body counts and lots of wreckage. They like hand-carried particle beams, lasers, slug throwers and vehicle-mounted missiles, cannons and chain guns. MCID would fit right in with Monster Hunters International only with better weapons. But the attitude is there. The simple arrest in the park is an all-time classic. I’ll buy the sequels.”
That’s right. Quantum Mortis actually outgunned Larry Correia. And that, in a nutshell, is what Blue SF is all about. Masculine ideas. Masculine challenges. Masculine action. Masculine energy. And, of course, masculine competition.
Pink SF, on the other hand, is the female equivalent of writing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and somehow failing to realize that it is a parody.
To further celebrate the release of the first two QUANTUM MORTIS novels, JartStar, the cover artist of the newly published Gravity Kills, has created a wallpaper from the cover image and offered it to any VP readers who might be interested in downloading it. It presently adorns my desktop, and if you’d like to download it, just click on the image to the left, then right-click on the full-size image and “Save Image As”.
As I mentioned yesterday, the first 25 reviewers of the two QUANTUM MORTIS books will receive a free audiobook code from Audible. Make that 24 now, as Sensei was the first to claim one. But don’t rush through the books, I’m sure you’ll want to linger over every savory moment of the delicate, deliciously enchanting prose that dances across the pages with all the ethereal grace of a half-starved Russian ballerina.
Ah, who am I kidding? There are explosions and guns and futuristic technologies and guns and artificial intelligences and guns and Meteor air-to-air missiles and collateral damage and twin Degroet Tactical M165 20mm cannons. There are also, as it happens, guns. And possibly a mystery or two.
If you want pages and pages of thickly sensuous prose concerning which side of the pillow is more palatable to the semi-conscious senses, read Proust. If you are looking for deep insight into the psychology of the human mind, read Dostoevsky. If you would like a grand and sweeping tale of epic scope and grandeur combined with intelligent commentary on the human condition, read Tolstoy. If you seek snarky, sparkly adolescent dialogue and the inevitable triumph of the gamma male’s wit, read Scalzi.
But if you like murder mysteries and old school Mil-SF where the hero wouldn’t recognize self-doubt if he saw it and would shoot it on sight if he did, you might enjoy QUANTUM MORTIS.
Did I mention the guns? To quote one confirmed gun porn enthusiast whose blurb for A Man Disrupted was, regrettably, deemed to be a bit too enthusiastic by the publisher:
“That was a seriously satisfying ending. I loved every second of this. I sincerely did. I think it’s more enjoyable than A THRONE OF BONES… and I think it has broader market appeal. Seriously. Standing fucking ovation.”
Speaking of Selenoth, if you are interested, you may wish to note that the following three books are free on Amazon today:
The first two ebooks in the Quantum Mortis series are now available from Amazon. QUANTUM MORTIS: A Man Disrupted retails for $4.99. If you’re interested in obtaining it in epub format, you should be able to find it at Barnes & Noble or Kobo soon. Otherwise, if you send me an email with a copy of the Amazon receipt, I will send you an epub copy in return. QUANTUM MORTIS: Gravity Kills retails for $2.99 and is available only from Amazon. If you want the epub, send me a copy of the Amazon receipt and I will sent you your favored format. You can also just use Calibre to convert the file since the books are not DRM-protected.
In order to celebrate the introduction of the new Mil-SF mystery series, all three Selenoth novellas, A Magic Broken, The Wardog’s Coin, and The Last Witchking will be free on Amazon for the next two days, beginning tomorrow. So, if you don’t have all of them yet, this would be an excellent chance to complete the set.
And since ACX and Marcher Lord were so gracious as to give me 25 free audiobook download codes for A Magic Broken, I will be giving them away to the first 25 reviewers of either QM:AMD or QM:GK. (NB: this offer includes the early reviewers who received a review copy last week so long as they review the other book.) Send me an email with a link to your review and I will send you the download code.
You’ll need to have an Amazon account to use the code, but since you’ll need one to post a review there, that shouldn’t be a problem. And just to be clear, the free audiobook code is not contingent upon the nature of the review. As always, I encourage honest and serious reviews, I do not seek mindless flattery any more than I approve of witless criticism.
Baen Books author Tom Kratman, who most of you are aware comments here from time to time, provided QM:AMD with a blurb that is featured on the back of the book. He described the book thusly:
“What are we going to do when artificial intelligence becomes self-aware, self-willed, and maybe stark raving mad? The question matters because that day is coming…fast. With approximately as many twists and turns as China’s Tianmen Mountain Road, QUANTUM MORTIS starts fast and then accelerates, leading to a conclusion both shattering…and more than a little heart warming.” —TOM KRATMAN, author of A Desert Called Peace
As for QUANTUM MORTIS: Gravity Kills, being a pure ebook it has no blurbs, but the first reviewers on Amazon appear to have enjoyed the novella. Keep in mind that the first GK reviewers have not read AMD and vice-versa.
“This story is an effective and entertaining rework of several of my favorite SF and Mystery themes, with a result greater and more original than the sum of its parts. Let’s start with the homeworld, which is also a refuge for a thousand plus governments in exile. To quote Agent K from “Men in Black”, “It’s like Casablanca, but with no Nazis”. Like “Casablanca” and “Men in Black”, but unlike that prize turkey, “Barb Wire”, the authors make this trope a proper background to the story itself…. The result, shaken not stirred, is an entertaining story, which combines the best aspects of hard SF and ‘Tec novels. The best thing, though, is that this world shows the possibility of many more such stories. I am looking forward to them.” —BERNARD BRANDT
Today and tomorrow you can still preorder the hardcover of QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted for $14.99. This is a 35 percent discount from the retail price of $22.99 and it also includes a free copy of the $4.99 ebook, so if you even suspect you may eventually want a print copy, this would be right the time to do it. As you can see, Kirk has already finished the jacket, so it should be apparent that in addition to symbolically serving as the bluest of Blue SF, the hardcovers will arrive in plenty of time for Christmas.
As one of the early reviewers has observed, by modern standards A MAN DISRUPTED is an impossible book. It violates many, if not most, of the fundamental precepts of modern Pink SF. It is a subversion of the subversion.
The story begins with Tower offering his help to Hildreth, the beautiful policewoman in charge of the case. Both Tower and Hildreth are assisted by their respective ever-present AI ‘augments’. His interest in her is clear from the outset, creating a warm atmosphere that sometimes borders on adolescent merry naiveté. He is happy to go out of his way to lend a hand and she is happy to accept. But if you know anything about the authors you know that this cannot be the story of the white knight, the damsel in distress, and the happy ending that was in plain sight from page one. For the same reason it cannot be an ode to the strong empowered independent fighting female that needs no man. It cannot be the story of the loser antihero, or the invincible superhero, for that matter. So, obviously, this book is impossible; at least, inside the hegemonic frame of political correctness.
If you find Pink SF to be tedious and repetitive, if you wonder whatever happened to the exciting futures that were created by authors like William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, or you find it impossible to believe that novels like The Quantum Rose and Redshirts are truly the best and most intriguing that the world of SF has to offer, there is at least a reasonable chance that you’ll find QUANTUM MORTIS to be worth your while.
Confession: I am a control freak. You can ask anyone, especially my wife and co-workers. If a project is to be done right and done on time, I want to do it solo and want it done my way. In the past few years I’ve been learning, albeit slowly, to give up some control when necessary. I took part in a collaborative writing effort with my fellow authors from Marcher Lord Press. We started up a fantasy story that took a couple months to write, with each of us contributing approximately a short to medium length chapter. While I did do the intro and set up the characters, it was freeing to adapt to other writers’ imagination as they took the plot in directions I hadn’t considered.
Also, having five books edited for publication makes one give up control incrementally. It’s either that or you get really pissed off every time the boss-man tells you this is how it’s going to be in your book. Which I sometimes still do. In early February I approached Vox about writing stories for the game he had in development for the world of Selenoth. After exchanging a few emails, Vox phoned me with a different idea: a co-writing project in which we would create a sci-fi murder mystery.
I was intrigued. Never done something like that before, which meant I was excited about the challenge. Vox already had the politics, planets and religions of a story universe sketched out. That appealed to me because it meant less work. It took me a week to brainstorm ideas and whip up a first chapter.
I had no idea how he’d receive the idea. In a phone conversation prior to emailing him that first chapter, I found out that our visions for the overall story had about 75 percent in common, without even consulting each other on details. That’s when the lightbulb lit and I told myself, “I can work with this guy.”
So I hunkered down and wrote long segments, and sent them to Vox on occasion. He would change it as he saw fit, and we often overlapped, with him sending revised sections as I closed in on the finale. I don’t think I argued with any of his changes because when he told me them I went, “Well, that’s way cool!”
My only pet peeve was that Vox preferred phone contact, and I’m an email guy. It’s a minor thing and I got over it, about halfway through the process, because most of our calls ended with clear direction for the story and characters.Took me six months to pound out Quantum Mortis, and Vox another month and a half to write his portions and put on the finishing touches. Not too shabby.
I still shake my head and wonder, “How on Earth did I write a novel and let someone else change it into a finished product that was still part mine, yet not the same thing I came up with?” The trick was not being wholly wedded to the characters and plot from the get go. Told myself, “Relax. Have fun with the people, the places and especially the action . That way if things get rewritten or cut, it’s no big deal.”
And you know what? It wasn’t. The control freak had loosened his grip. Well, somewhat. Vox wasn’t too scary. I liked that our brains were on the same wavelength when it came to character development and blowing things up. We put together a great story, a hell of a fun thing to write, and hope you enjoy the result of our collaboration.
And yes, the second installment of Chief Graven Tower’s explosive investigations is well underway. – Steve Rzasa
QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted will be published on 2 December 2013 and will retail for $22.99 in hardcover and $4.99 in ebook. You can preorder the hardcover and receive a free copy of the ebook for $14.99 if you do so before December 1st.
UPDATE: If you’re thinking of preordering, here is a little more incentive. The page count turned out to be higher than estimated, at 326 pages, so the retail price of the hardcover will be $22.99, not $19.99. The preorder price is still $14.99 and the ebook price will be $4.99.
About twelve years ago, not long after writing the short story “Medal for a Marine”, I started writing another short story. This one concerned the murder of a man in exile from his home planet. I didn’t get very far on it before setting it aside, in fact, I didn’t even make it to the actual murder. Nevertheless, I had a very clear picture of the murder, the SF setting, and the detective. Heavily influenced by Fifth Frontier War, the story was set in a futuristic world that was a combination of the Traveller universe and the Space Lords universe. I should probably explain that Space Lords was a 1997 attempt to design a science fiction MMO that was a thousand-year extrapolation from the worlds of Rebel Moon Rising. We never really did much more than discuss it with Microsoft in a desultory manner, but for the next 16 years, the design document sat untouched on a hard drive.
In early 2013, I happened to run across the fragment of the short story. Having almost completely forgotten about it, it read as if someone else had written it. I thought it compared rather well to most of the SF I’d read since then, (China Mieville and Neal Stephenson aside), but realized that with four more 850-page TAODAL novels to write, there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to get around to that SF world for at least another six years. So, I contacted one of the guys who had expressed interest in publishing a Selenoth-related story through First Sword and suggested that we collaborate on turning that story fragment into a SF mystery series. Steve agreed, we wrote the novel together, and we are very pleased make the following announcement:
QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted will be published by Marcher Lord Hinterlands on December 2, 2013. It is 326 pages and will retail for $4.99 ebook and $22.99 hardcover. Those who preorder the hardcover by December 1st can do so for a discounted price of $14.99 and in addition to the hardcover will also receive a copy of QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted in either epub or mobi format (please specify) via email the day before release.
The independent planet of Rhysalan provides contractual Sanctuary to 1,462 governments-in-exile. It is the responsibility of the Military Crimes Investigation Division, specifically, the Xenocriminology and Alien Relations department, to keep a firm leash on the hundreds of thousands of xenos residing on-planet. Assassinations, revolutions, civil wars, and attempted planetary genocides are all in a day’s work for Chief Warrant Officer Graven Tower, MCID-XAR.
In addition to a missile-armed aerovar, his trusty Sphinx CPB-18, and MCID’s extremely liberal policies concerning collateral damage and civilian casualties, Chief Tower is assisted by his extreme xenophobia as well as a military-grade augmented machine intelligence that believes it has found God. So when the disintegrated remnants of the heir apparent of an alien royal house are discovered on the streets of Trans Paradis, the question is not so much whether the killers will eventually be found, but if it is the criminals or the crime investigators who will contribute more to the final body count.
QUANTUM MORTISis the new action-packed Mil-SF mystery series from Vox Day, author of the epic fantasy series The Arts of Dark and Light. Written with Steve Rzasa, author of The Word Reclaimed, QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted is the first novel in the series featuring Graven Tower, MCID.
However, as it happens, there is more. Steve is an unusually fast writer, especially in comparison with me. So, while he was waiting for me to turn the first draft into a final draft, he decided to make use of the time to write a short story concerning another of Graven Tower’s murder investigations. One thing led to another and by the time we were done with QM:AMD, we had also completed a novella that stood up rather nicely on its own. Since releasing A Magic Broken in company with A Throne of Bones worked rather well, Marcher Lord didn’t see any reason to not adopt a similar approach in the science fiction arena.
So, we are pleased to announce that QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills will also be published on December 2, 2013. It is the equivalent of about 50 pages and will retail for $2.99 in ebook-only. As those familiar with Selenoth probably suspect, Gravity Kills will be enrolled in the Kindle Select program and will be periodically available for free download in 2014 as an introduction to the many worlds of Quantum Mortis.
Speaking of Amazon, I am looking for one more volunteer to read and review QM:GK. If you are interested doing so and expect to be able to read one of the ebooks by December 2nd and post a review on Amazon, please send me an email with QM:GK in the subject and specify if you prefer epub or mobi.
UPDATE: Steve has also announced the book on his blog. If you would like to ask him anything about it, I would encourage you to do so there.
