[As usual, two weeks lag here, if you aren’t reading this on my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/blazeward). If you’d like your news fresher, and the monthly Anti-Stodgy/Redneck Chef newsletter, all I ask is a buck to help keep the lights on around here.]
Monsoonerating last night. And Fabulous Publisher Babe™ had to get up at 5m to go into Seattle for a doctor’s appointment. Was planning to get up with her, but I had a ROUGH night, so she told me to roll over and go back to sleep.
Woke up at 7. Still a little exhausted as the second coffee slowly disappears. Or quickly.
Didn’t go play with sharp sticks. Probably a wise and safe choice on my part. Didn’t go out for food. (Newly reopened place down in Enumclaw called The Kettle opens at 6, so I’d have been, but no.)
Starting writing the third Corsac Fox novel this morning. And need to start creating the survey for folks, so I can start sending ebooks as soon as Kickstarter gets all their stuff processed.
Then money. YAY!!!
Finished a story inspired by something the Babe wrote for the upcoming Boundary Shock Quarterly issue (Tramp Freighter Captains). Her story was based on something she wrote for another project. Deeply weird SF.
I spalled off chunks from a variety of inspirations and wrote something that is not horror, but has horroresque elements to it. The Monsters Down Below, with The Deeps being levels of hyperspace where things actually live. Or something.
Sea monsters, at least to the human mind, when filtered through the right cybernetic enhancements.
You’ll get to read it in a few weeks. Not sure if it is a one-off, or something bigger. Didn’t want to write a novel or story #1, so had to find a way to cut it short and I like how it ended.
And it leaves an opening for more things.
Dunno when I’ll circle back. Got too many other things to circle back to, and this is the year where I intentionally cut my productivity from 1.4m words to 1.0. Not quite 30% down, and I’ll probably be closer to 20%, but it takes stress off me, and lets me do other projects, like the new rpg. Or the sewing projects. Or the music.
More of all three coming. Dunno if you folks want to see lyrics instead of stories for the monthly thing. If so, yell. I’m slowly writing the melodies that go with, then figuring out the chords to hand off to English Paul. Fun. And Anti-Stodgy, because duh.
Not a lot past that. Brain’s having fun, working out rpg worlds. One will be medium-high fantasy, and I’m working out the history to that. The other is probably going to be a straight space adventure game (similar to Star Wars d6 from West End, if you are old enough to have played that) in scope. Tramp Freighter Captain and crew, off doing things. Smuggling. Piracy. Active Rebellion. Tomb robbing. Something.
I ^think^ I might base it in the Dominion universe. (Longshot Hypothesis, et al) And maybe write more Valentinian and Dave books. Or stuff in that zone.
The Babe fell in love with Glaxu, and always wants more Mondi stories. And the game works better with aliens (fantasy is just local aliens, so elf, dwarf, etc. translate easy enough). That universe had a lot of open space in which to work, and I’ve played enough SF rpgs over the years.
Cyberpunk is also an option. I might expand Owen and his friends into something as well, depending. The key is creating an engine, and making sure that the engine can handle all sorts of options from the ground up, so that I can plug and play later. (It all makes sense to old gamer nerds like me, so don’t worry if it doesn’t.)
Going forward, you’ll likely hear me talking about those things as well. And maybe writing some more short fiction to expand that space and generate the sorts of setting that is detailed enough for a campaign to work, without being so tight that it locks the game in and leaves Gamemasters without options.
Dunno. Don’t have to solve anything today, because I doubt that I would publish/kickstart the game before late 2024 anyway. Gonna need playtesters and playtest groups (all in person, likely), so if that’s you, or you know folks who might be interested, lemme know.
Past that, Monday. Corsac Fox #3, with many of you getting to finally read #1 in the next month or so. I can’t wait for your reactions.
Shade and sweet water,
b
West of the Mountains, WA
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