Good badness. Essay. 900 words, 5-minute read. Good Bad Guys By Ray Tabler. There is an undeniable allure to the bad guy. The villain. The heavy. The antagonist. As a story teller, I feel that tug even more than the reader. As a matter of fact, the author is, in…
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Operation Bedrock Snippet
2000 words, 10-minute read “…Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. The chain guns fired with the rhythm Booker associated with an old blues song…” Snippet from Operation Bedrock, volume 1 of the Containment Protocol series. Coming soon from Cannon Publishing. Tanks versus dinosaurs. What’s not to love? https://raytabler.substack.com/p/operation-bedrock-snippet Posted below chapter 3…
In Defense of Rubber Suits
The alienness debate. Essay. 1600 words, 8-minute read. In Defense of Rubber Suits By Ray Tabler A perennial debate within science fiction concerns the alienness of aliens. Sentient species who evolve under other suns will probably not be very much like us. Environmental conditions on exoplanets are different, and will…
Books in Space
Orbital reads. Essay. 1100 words, 6-minute read. Books in Space By Ray Tabler. Recently, I visited an Air and Space Museum. Tucked away in one of the display cases was the unexpected gem pictured above, a copy of Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land read aboard a space shuttle…
Alien Booze
Alcoholic worldbuilding. 200 words, and some tables. Here’s a page from the appendices of Smitty’s Guide to Interstellar Bartending. http://nazcapress.com/product/smitty/NP/52/ A reader asked if any cocktail recipes were included. Part of the fun writing this book was coming up with alien spirits, then concocting cocktails with them. As a writing…
Snippet: Smitty’s Guide to Interstellar Bartending
“I hate this job.” Fiction. 1100 words, 6-minute read. Please enjoy a snippet from the 1st chapter of my recently released 5th, published novel, Smitty’s Guide to Interstellar Bartending. Smitty is an itinerant bartender. He just wanted to pour drinks and drift from town to town. Being abducted by aliens…
If You Give a Writer an Idea
One thing leads to another. Essay. 300 words, 2-minute read. If You Give a Writer an Idea By Ray Tabler If you give a writer an idea, he’s going to tell a story. If he wants to tell a story, he’ll have to write it. If he wants to write…
Operation Bedrock Cover Reveal
Tanks versus dinosaurs. What’s not to love? My next novel, OPERATION BEDROCK, volume 1 of the Containment Protocol series, will soon be available from Cannon Publishing (https://www.cannonpublishing.us/). The brass has ordered Lieutenant Booker and his platoon of Abrams tanks through the portal to another universe. Dinos, volcanoes, and sexy predatory…
Getting Too Close to Indie Publishers
A shining dream. Essay. 500 words, 3-minute read. Getting Too Close to Indie Publishers By Ray Tabler. “…Don’t get too close to people. You’ll catch their dreams…” – Martin Landau, Tucker: The Man and His Dreams I recently learned some interesting facts about independent publishers. There are nearly 70,000 indie…