Tight Beam Volume 19 July 2025
Hello all, we typically release each issue of Tight Beam on the first weekend of every month, sorry the 4th of July holiday messed things up while the whole country was hung over. Sticking to are simple three part, past, future and lore formula, let’s start with the past, and what has happened since the last issue of tight beam.
The book was published, and released both as an E-book and paperback at many locations, on Amazon, and through the Draft 2 Digital distribution network, so Altar of Scales is available in a bunch of locations, Barnes and noble, smashwords, the apple store, on kobo and more. Here’s the links for all the different place you can get them.
We’ve had a few sales, and a couple reviews and with your help, we’ll have a lot more of both of those. Work on the audiobook has continued. The last two chapters were re recorded and the entire thing has been edited. But we ran into difficulty formatting the files to audible’s standard. That has delayed the release of the audiobook. However, we have figured out how to match the formatting, and now it’s just a matter of making all the files up to that standard.
It’s not all delay and frustration though, work has begun in earnest on the second book. Editing of the manuscript is advancing with the help of our editor and beta readers and progress has been phenomenal. Not as fast as we would like, but the quality improvement has been huge, it is, and will be worth it. With that, our announcement is, the cover is completed. Here’s the first ever cover reveal, for the second book in The Descendant Saga, Cave in the Sky. Specific release dates are still uncertain, but it will be as soon as humanly possible. First for the audiobook of Altar of scales, and then the initial release of the second book, Cave in the Sky. We have a lot of content to share, and we’ll have ISBNs on it and make it available to your eager, page turning hands as soon as it’s ready. We can’t, but we wish we could rush art.
Now for our third and final part, the last of our authors pre-written content, not so much a short story, but another thought experiment, called “Blood”
Blood
Human blood is a strange object, it can be harvested, ‘donated’ from the living and stored for some time to be reused later on other living humans, for a variety of medical purposes. For the preservation of other’s lives. This blood taken from the living can be stored for some time before being used. That blood being willingly given in controlled and limited quantities despite the owner’s personal need for it.
However, the blood can not be used from those who no longer need it. The blood of the dead cannot be reused to directly aid the living. No single answer as to why seems satisfactory.
Medically, they tell you that after death, the body starts shunting carbon dioxide and lactic acid and other undesirables into the blood as the body begins to decompose. Or they will cite the economy of effort. That difficulty in quickly, safely harvest the blood of the dead, to store it and clean it makes it impractical. But that answer feels incomplete, it’s only skin deep, and doesn’t delve deep enough into the matter to satisfy the inquiring minds.
Why can’t the blood of the dead be used to keep the living, living? How come even without any scientific illumination, the thought is already evoking visceral reactions felt in one’s gut. When discussing ‘uses for the blood of the dead’ we instinctively know it is wrong. Perhaps because it’s already used, in that the original owner’s soul has departed? Now it’s soulless blood, and putting something without a soul into something still occupied with a soul would surely cause problems. Or because the other person is no longer there to give permission for the blood to be taken and used? Or perhaps because something or someone else has already moved in and claimed possession and it is no longer human enough to be used? Objectively speaking, blood is blood, and any dead person needs that blood far less than any living person. Why can’t we use the blood of the dead?
The Descendant Saga 