"In The Black"-- an EMPIRES Novella by Kel Hausken (Pt. 1) (Patreon)

"In the Black" is a novella written by my friend, Kel Hausken, who would (if forced to) probably describe himself at the time as "an English major, a metallurgist, a cynic, a sarcastic, and a drunk; mostly in reverse order". I loved this story that he wrote for my book and enjoyed doing the art for it as well. 

Kel uses a lot of digression and rhetorical sidebars to set up his characters, so some people say that the story is "jumping around a lot", and that was exactly what Kel was doing-- making the characters' complexities and internal monologues available to the reader. 

I'm going to post this as a special feature for the course of this week while I am at military summer training. Enjoy!

--This will do for now. It is a long story, and there is more to come. Tune in tomorrow for the second part!

Until then... stay random