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[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.]

RPG news, because Monday. The Piper wanted to meet for coffee, so he and I did that after breakfast (long story) and just spent 3 hours deep diving on what we’ve come up with so far and how the math and style work out. Kinda excited because it is coming together, and we keep managing to keep everything modularized to a level that it extends sideways.

Used the phrase “Game Engine” yesterday with a young woman who could not envision what I meant, because to her a gaming (note -ing) engine was Unreal or something, and that was what she did as an artist. Didn’t have the heart to tell her she was just painting skins on somebody else’s engine, but she could not grasp creating something entirely new. It’s like those companies that come out with supplements for D&D 5th edition. You didn’t create an engine, you are making stuff for someone else.

I’m making a new engine. New dice. New rules. Reaching back 35 years to things that some folks were doing in the late 80s that are still better than some of what 5th Ed does, because those wizards think they invented roleplaying games. (And they kinda did, 45 years ago. The world has moved on, and some of my things I played in the late 80s/early 90s are still more sophisticated.)

Anyway: Having fun. Working it out. Gonna playtest soon and that’s where the rubber meets the road.

Also: I am two epilogues from finishing the fourth Air Pirates of Cyrenaica novel. And the current arc, while leaving it open for more novels in the future if folks really like what I’ve done. We’ll see. Probably publishing about a year from now, give or take, on the current schedule.

And, last night, as I’m laying there going to sleep, the first 500 or so words of the next Chace story came to me. I’ve got three done, including the origin you’ve read. This will be #4, and might be that third submission for Thrill Ride Magazine. In any case, I want to have a half dozen or more Chace stories, so that I have a catalog available for readers, assuming I can place some of them in Year Two. Will probably do some novels at some point as well, presuming that folks are enjoying my Action/Adventure stuff (Fugitive and Pacific Force, plus that first Fatima story you read in Thrill Ride #1, hint hint). Thoughts?

Today is non-fiction day. This blog. The monthly newsletter. The quarterly Boundary Shock newsletter. Tomorrow finish Air Pirates and pivot to Chace.

More stuff. Tai Chi proceeds well. Learning to play a few simple songs on the guitar as my hands develop the skills and flexibility.

All in all, a pretty good Monday.

How’s your May Day going?

Shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

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