Bonus plug: "Hunting Dogs"

Book plug: Idumea (a few parts of it are mine!) by Tomash on 2024-08-02 04:38:09 UTC Writing Plug Reply

So, the Kickstarter for getting Idumea published has just gone up. This is another work set in the Post-Self setting, but it's not part of the main series and doesn't necessarily require a lot of context from the other books.

To broadly summarize, the book as a whole is the story of someone trying to find ways to escape the cycle of suffering that they've been dealing with for a few hundred years now. It's written somewhat like a fairy tale, and ... the narrator is also having An Time, which makes things even more interesting.

And, uh, ... I'm a co-author.

The story behind how that happened is that I was reading some of the earlier drafts and got hit by an idea for how some of my characters could fit into the story ... so I wrote fanfic of a book that wasn't even done yet. This led to being asked if said fanfic could just be added to the book and I said yes, and then some more of my writing got pulled in to help with context, and here I am, plugging a book I wrote a few pages of. (And here's an earlier draft of one of those sections)

So ... this is your cue to get pre-orders in if you want a thing I contributed to!

Late, but I that's awesome. Good on you! (nm) by Linstar on 2024-08-23 18:12:48 UTC Reply
Woo! Contribution has been contributed! by doctorlit on 2024-08-05 02:53:19 UTC Reply

It's so exciting to get to see your name in an actual printed book soon! (Actually "books," since you have a story in that anthology that should be coming out soonish, huh?) I can hardly wait! I'm hoping this Kickstarter makes it past that $1500 point as well, so we can get the "fairy tales and fables" anthology, as well!

Did I read an earlier draft of "Hunting Dogs?" It feels familiar, but new, all at the same time. Cute story, either way; it's hard to imagine feeling like there's no purpose in an eternal computer program, but I'm glad Sylvia found something to try, at least! And that it involved doggos! Never thought about it before, but it's funny that folks in Lagrange still eat food, when they don't have stomachs, or burn calories, and the food isn't even made of calories but data, but I guess old habits are hard to break. Man, that really would be the life! No eating, no sleeping, live forever, work on projects forever . . . Post-Self may be where Agent Doc wants to retire to if/when he leaves the PPC! AND I WANT IT TOO

—doctorlit wants it too

Thanks for putting some cash in the hat! by Tomash on 2024-08-05 05:30:30 UTC Reply

And, yes, Marsh (with my "Sentences") is, as far as I'm aware, in pre-printing stuff (getting the cover finalized, one last check for typos, etc etc.), so hopefully you'll have that in a month or two.

And yeah, it's possible you've seen "Hunting Dogs" before - I linked an earlier draft of it in the Discord.

Re food ... well, you generally upload as yourself, and the System is kinda-sorta a big collective dream (insert vigorous handwaving here) so most people have their bodies and expect them to act like bodies usually though. Though, because we're dealing in computers and there's been some attempt to make being uploaded more controllable and more comfortable, you can absolutely do stuff like turn your sense of hunger off or not need to sleep. It's just that most people are rather used to being humans and don't want to mess with too much too consistently.

(I'll also note that I'm not currently planning for the fables collection if that gets funded because I'm low on ideas, but maybe I'll get hit by some inspiration)

Bonus plug: "Hunting Dogs" by Tomash on 2024-08-02 04:53:52 UTC Reply
This here's a one-off Post-Self thing I wrote a while back (and cleaned up for posting much more recently) featuring the Scouts. People have liked it, it shouldn't need much canon context (at least in that no one from canon appears and you won't need to be deeply familiar with setting mechanics) and the main reason it's not canon-canon is a lack of time to get around to that.

So, "Hunting Dogs" wherein a person who's a dog misses the bacon lady, and someone gets sent on a big pointless quest.
- Tomash