This morning at breakfast, at a little cafe in tiny town, Texas, JL Curtis, Peter, myself, and two other good friends were teasing LawDog. His book officially comes out on Monday, but in order for the book to be ready for all the publicity and scheduled boost, it’s already soft-launched and live. He’s already overtorqued and wound tighter than five dogs on leashes after the same ball.
He blames us all for the book being published. Which is kinda funny, because he’s to blame for all of us being where we’re at. Many years ago, there was an internet gun forum that had a little section set aside for people to tell stories. LawDog posted some wonderfully hilarious stories, which encouraged some other people to write their own stuff.
It was, in fact, his thread “Lines I’d like to hear in a Horror Movie”, that got another mod, Larry Correia, writing a book that was a wonderful take on gun nuts vs. horror tropes. (Seriously – Monster Hunter International is a great story if you don’t watch B-reel horror movies, but if you do, it’s hysterically funny, and full of “I know what movie you pulled that from!” and “You did WHAT to that trope?”)
When another moderator named Peter Grant was medically retired with a disabling injury, Larry’s success at first self-publishing then trad-publishing (this was before KDP and indie publishing like it is today) led him to tackle writing as a way he could support himself.
As well, that sucess propelled Marko Kloos, after countless rejections, to try indie-publishing Terms of Enlistment. He’s done awesomely, and has since been picked up by 47 North, Amazon’s SciFi imprint.
Meanwhile, LawDog had moved on to a blog, and kept telling stories there. That blog inspired others – in fact, the first time I went to Alma Boykin’s blog, I was amused and amazed to see LawDog up on the sidebar as “The Blogfather.” It’s a small world, sometimes!
His blog also led to JL Curtis, who goes by OldNFO here in comments, starting his own blog, and then writing his own books. Darned good ones, too! Latest release: A novella chronicling the last of our military trying to evacuate after CalExit. The Morning the Earth Shook!
And last and certainly least, years later when we’d moved from I’m-Allergic-To-Everything, Tennessee, to Tiny Town, Texas (Peter was homesick, and this looks just like some parts of the African veldt. Besides, it has LawDog and his lady.)… I was sitting on the couch in a sling bored and frustrated enough that I finally decided I’d publish a little something I’d been sitting on, because I couldn’t fly, couldn’t clean, couldn’t cook, couldn’t just about anything else. So why not? I blame Lawdog and JL Curtis for failing to talk me out of it, and my own darling man for not only aiding and abetting, but for fixing all the formatting after I… let’s just say there were painkiller-inspired decisions and attention span involved, and that’s not a good thing when formatting or copyediting. And that’s how Scaling The Rim went from a hard drive into the wild.
So it’s all LawDog’s fault. And now he’s finally publishing!
Check it out! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073XSYG63/
LawDog had the honor of representing law and order in the Texas town of Bugscuffle as a Sheriff’s Deputy, where he became notorious for, among other things, the famous Case of the Pink Gorilla Suit. In THE LAWDOG FILES, he chronicles his official encounters with everything from naked bikers, combative eco-warriors, suicidal drunks, respectful methheads, prison tattoo artists, and creepy silent children to six-foot chickens and lethal chihuahuas.
THE LAWDOG FILES range from the bittersweet to the explosively hilarious, as LawDog relates his unforgettable experiences in a laconic, self-deprecating manner that is funny in its own right. The book is more than mere entertainment, it is an education in two English dialects, Police and Texas Country. And underlying the humor is an unmistakable sympathy for society’s less fortunate – and in most cases, significantly less intelligent – whose encounters with the law are an all-too-frequent affair.
Mad Genius Club 
18 responses to “Ripples of Good Fortune”
C4c
6D6….
Roll for splash damage.
if you want splash damage, try this: http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/2008/07/arrgghh.html
😦 need linky.
I “met” Mr. Dog when Sib sent me an e-mail saying, “You have to go to this blog and read the mongoose story!” I did, and MomRed came into the computer room to see why I was laughing so hard that tears were rolling down my face. She and Dad had both been to southern Africa and India, and soon they were guffawing and howling right along with me.
He’d better get the Africa book out posthaste. There are people that need to read about the ratel and Something Angry In A Sack, so I can refer to them casually in conversation and be understood.
I really do think he inherits the mantle of Mark Twain. He’s got the storyteller’s instinct and a gift for language. Pink Gorilla Suit is right up there with the Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, in my opinion. (And if that doesn’t light up his ears a glowing scarlet, let me know, Dot! I can slather on another layer….hehehehe)
I just went and read the one about Bob and Something Angry in a Sack, because one of my friends has a story that may have been similar, but no, his was and Angry Skunk in a Suitcase.
There’s this minor problem when Peter and LawDog start one-upping each other with Africa tales of things that really happened: It gets hard to breathe, because the bystanders are all laughing too hard.
And when OldNFO starts adding in tales of his flying off that continent, man, it’s hard to remember to stop laughing long enough to draw breath.
Even better, when another friend came back from flying on a contract in Africa, and starts grumping over the campfire. “Peter gave me coordinates to go look at ‘some interesting ruins’. They’re all crashed planes and burned-out tanks! And destroyed bridges! But they were all still there!”
Tape recorder (Or the digital equivalent)
I am seriously tempted to buy RIGHT [BLANK]ING NOW!!1! but I fear I might damage Kindle or phone. However, I will most assuredly be buying the paper version.. and I might give it to $HOUSEMATE to read first (faster than ox…) and I kinda want to hear the gales of laughter that will result.
‘Dawg assures me print will be out (barring unforeseen disasters) Mid-August.
You can always tease Housemate with Bob the Not-Russian and Something Angry In A Sack: http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/2016/03/umm-what.html
Just what I needed. 😀
Egad, I recall hearing that story at LC now. Will relay.
Bought it, read it, left a 5 star review, noticed that it’s listed as a best-seller on Amazon already.
Gee, that forum sounds familiar 🙂
Congrats to LawDog!
Too late! I bought last night, after stopping by his blog.
Yep, pretty good when the ‘soft’ open puts it in best seller territory, because the word spread THAT quickly… 😀