The Hot Mic - Mur Lafferty's Weekly Newsletter - Issue #3

I’m 48 now. I’m a big girl.

…I still hate adulting.

But luckily I am about to take some time off and relax and play a lot of board games. I’m going to be thinking about the status of my podcasts, streams, supporter rewards, and more while I’m gone. More info below.

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I did a poll of Patreon supporters asking what they would like to see added to my rewards tier. The overwhelming winner was unexpectedly a watch party that discusses writing style. I’m not sure how I will set that up, but I will figure something out.

One of the options was “tell me in the comments” and thanks to one suggestion, everyone got excited about a book club idea. So I’m noodling it over. There are a lot of different things to figure out. Newer or older books? Award winners or debuts? Opinions are welcome!

Even though I’m still being diligent about mask wearing and limiting trips out, I am starting to have more of a social life. And suddenly, when people want to have lunch with me, I CAN’T because I’m busy. Nearly every day.

You see, when you’re in lockdown for a year and have no social life, you can schedule things around lunchtime. I wanted to stream somewhere between 1-4, and suddenly, when life starts up again, I have no time.

So I’m going to be shifting some things around so I can have some more free time. I will think on this while I’m taking a break over vacation.

From WorldCon 2009: Conversations with Jay Lake, Laura Anne Gilman, John Kessel, James Patrick Kelly, and Pat Cadigan!

You can get this episode and the entire I Should Be Writing and Ditch Diggers archives if you support via Patreon, Jemi, or Ko-Fi.

And the Archives are nearly complete! Ditch Diggers has been uploaded, now I’m working on all the special Patreon-exclusive episodes.

Look, y'all, in this world, you have to take what you can get and hold onto what you have like a pit bull whose jaws are locked on a steak. Meaning, all the content on the Internet is up for grabs to be used in your work, on your site, in your podcast, etc. Look, if they didn’t want people to enjoy it, they wouldn’t have put it up there, right?

But when it comes to your stuff, you will need a watermark, your lawyer’s phone number, and the book How To Piss Away Your Final Years On Pointless Lawsuits Instead of Enjoying Life or, God Forbid, Actually Writing Something New by a very prominent and important author in this multiverse. It’s such a gripping read.

Do not waste your time looking into Creative Commons, which claims to give a way to license and share your work on the internet without getting stolen from. Who can stop a thief? That’s why laws are stupid.

–Aside from this world’s Mur: you can put a license on your work that will totally allow sharing and still protect your copyright, and it holds up in court. The best part is that Creative Commons makes a huge effort to be human-readable for those of us not lawyers. If you’ve ever wondered what BY-NC-ND means, you can find out there!

So what’s going on with that weird fake baseball horror sim I follow, Blaseball?

Last weekend, the sun exploded and let free a player who leaves instability in his wake, and instability means incinerations usually. Now we have supernova weather, and as of this writing we’ve had three players and two whole teams incinerated.

The upshot is that two previously incinerated teams took their place, and I love new things! We have the Oxford Paws (took me far too long to get that joke) and the Carolina Queens!

If you loved sports and grew up in North Carolina before the Panthers came, you knew the annoyance of never having a team for YOU. We could root for the Washington Team in football and the Atlanta Falcons in football and the Please Change Your Name Like Cleveland Did Team in baseball. But nothing for North Carolina. Then we got the Panthers and Hurricanes, so that was cool, but when Blaseball came along, again we were stranded again. (Although the Charleston Shoe Thieves were close.)

But now we have the Carolina Queens! I don’t have confirmation, but our largest city, Charlotte, is nicknamed the Queen City, so that’s what I’m assuming they got the name from. I still expect folks to invent drag queen personas for every player, which I fully endorse and encourage. I haven’t changed official allegiance yet (I do love the Hades Tigers) but you better believe the minute Doom Hammer and Zenith Fashion and B. Tugboat have merch at Blaseballcares, I’m spending some money.

And after adding rule after baffling rule to the splort over 22 seasons, making the learning curve higher and higher for new fans, now the Black Hole (Black Hole) weather seems to be devouring those rules one by one. We’ve already lost turntables (turned runs into unruns, wins into unwins), balloons (made the stadiums lighter, and heavy stadiums get more dangerous things going on), free wills (worst team in each league get an extra free boost at the end of the season), tunnels (players could hide in them and steal from opposing teams) and maximum sun (yeah…don’t ask about all the suns. Just be satisfied they seem to all be sucked down the black holes and won’t confuse you again.)

We are assuming that many of the current beloved teams will be incinerated as this week goes on. Which will be violent and tragic, but hey, new teams are exciting too. One interesting point is that when the Breath Mints were incinerated, Rodriguez Internet and Leach Ingram didn’t die, but went to the Oxford Paws’ roster. They’re both fireproof. Some other players around the league literally eat fire, so they can’t be incinerated, and many many months ago, the Hades Tigers got a modification that made the whole team fireproof. So what happens when someone tries to mess with the Tigers?

I can’t wait to find out.

You can support me on Patreon, Jemi, or just buy me a Ko-fi. That helps support my many creative projects.

If you can’t support via financial ways, I totally understand, it’s been a painful few years. You can still help by telling a friend about my work, or leaving a review of my podcasts or books, or forwarding this newsletter!

Just want to catch the podcasts? For I Should Be Writing, you can subscribe on iTune or take this RSS feed and plug it into your preferred player. For Ditch Diggers, use these links: iTunes, RSS, and Spreaker.

Or just search I Should Be Writing, Ditch Diggers, or Mur Lafferty on any podcast site.

Podcast credits: ISBW production by Summer Brooks, ISBW theme song byJohn Anealio, DD theme song by Devo Spice, art by Numbers Ninja, site design by Clockpunk Studio and hosted by Libsyn.

This newsletter is BY-NC-ND 3.5 Creative Commons licensed.

See you next week!