Tag: Savage Worlds

What I’ve been doing while not blogging; and good novel news

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On February 21, 2013

In Metablog, Personal, Writing

Ugh, I hate having to get meta on the blog. Which usually only happens because I haven’t been on for a great long time. So, why? Some good, some bad–none of it a good excuse.

First of all, there’s my day job. I won’t get into it because I hate talking about my day job (here, at least. It’s a good job, but I hate the fact that I have a day job that’s not writing or the business of writing). Anyway, it’s been killing me lately with this big-ass project that I’m in charge of. Even though it’s not too many more actual hours at work, it’s been more brain-killing lately.

Then there’s the pencil-and-dice role-playing games. Now this is a good one! In the last few months I have been planning and prepping and running several games: A new regular Eclipse Phase campaign, a short-run Spycraft (converted to Savage Worlds rules) campaign, and the return of my 1st edition AD&D campaign. Oh, and a couple of convention games of EP I ran at Visioncon. Writing and prepping RPG games is a lot of hard work, but it’s so very much a labor of love! I adore game mastering RPGs! Given the choice between being a player and GMing, well, I like playing now and then, especially under certain GMs, but I pick GMing over playing by default any ol’ day. I love the world-building, creating plot and stories and characters, and then the facilitation of crating a shared experience where players get to play with these elements and create their own story with the tools I provide. Love it love it love it!

Writing, you say? Have I been doing any of it? Well, not much, I’m afraid. Once the day job project is essentially over in early April, and the Spycraft game is done, I should have more time and brain-power to spare to doing writing. I got well into my next novel before time and energy got away from me, and I need to get chugging on that. Especially since there’s been more call for a sequel to Singularity Deferred.

Speaking of my first novel, I got some good news there. I entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel competition, and mine has advanced to the second-round judging. If it doesn’t move on from there, I at least get an Amazon review out of it and can claim “third prize” (along with 399 other sf/fantasy novels). So that’s neat. (It doesn’t help the competition any; but, if you would be so kind, maybe buy and/or review the novel on Amazon?) 🙂

Okay, that’s as much of an update as I’m going to do now. I have the gumption I’m going to post, I think, two more posts after this on something not meta. Thanks for reading. 🙂

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Update the nth

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On March 3, 2012

In Metablog, News and Issues, Personal, Prose

 

Funny, it’s never occurred to me to post more regularly, like my heroes John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow, Patrick Rothfuss, and Charles Stross, so that I can just do regular posts and not silly, bloated “update” posts. Funny; I should really start considering that. 😛

But anyway, here’s a bloated “update” post:

I just updated this site to remove the option of buying individual short stories (silly idea in the first place) to link to where they can be bought for soopercheep on Smashwords in one collection. As of this writing, only $1.49 for all five stories. However, starting tomorrow (Sunday, March 4), you can take advantage of the Smashwords Ebook Week promotion and get 25% off ($1.12 if my maths is right–and if not, that explains my English degrees….).

Enough hawking. What else is going on? Well, as this wonderful, funny, and very very accurate post, “25 Things I Want to Say to So-Called Aspiring Writers,” so ardently proclaims: a writer writes! I’ve been… not writing as much lately, so much as, doing stuff around the subject of writing. That is, I’ve been editing my novel, and looking for publishers and agents. I’ve got a feeler out for one agent in particular that I would really like to work with and I’m eagerly awaiting his reply. But, if he, like So. Very. Many. agents and editors out there, aren’t taking on any more submissions — I’m pulling the trigger on self-publishing this novel with the help of Kickstarter.

The novel’s been heavily edited, it’s been workshopped, it’s ready to see the light of day. And I’ve been setting up the framework to get it done: pricing marketing materials, proofing services, Lulu versus CreateSpace, and recording the audiobook to put out as a free trial of the book itself. (A tactic heavily recommended by such self-made successful authors like Scott Sigler and JC Hutchins. (At least, I’m pretty sure they advocate it. I mean, they did it when they got started. It could have been another writing hero of mine, Michael A. Stackpole, who is, while also a NY Times bestselling author, a huge self-publishing advocate. And while he furiously reminds authors to never forget the self-marketing, I’m not sure he’d advocate giving something like an audiobook away for completely free. *shrug*)

Anyway, so I’m getting that all ready to go.

I’m also working on an “Inception” role-playing game rules set. It uses Savage Worlds as its basic rules, but then it incorporates a Jenga tower (as inspired by Chad’s “Lucid” RPG). My version is a lot more crunchy than “Lucid,” and I’ll be play testing it next week. When I’m done, of course I’ll put it out for free, considering all the copyrights I’d probably break otherwise.

I’m also working on a new story that’s been flitting around my mind for a while. It’s a tough little thing to write, though. I know how it must start, I know how it must end, and I know some stops in between, but getting the points to connect has been a challenge.

And I’m working on the outline for my next novel: a YA fantasy inspired by my daughter’s imaginings once as we hiked a trail. I’m sure people will want a sequel to the novel I’ve already finished (my test readers sure do!) But this one needs to be written first.

And, finally, I’m working on a “shard,” or adventure for the Fading Suns RPG. It’s essentially writing on spec: one writes a shard, and submits it for potential approval. If they like it, they may send something more my way. I so very much want to write for them, for this world! I fell in love with the Fading Suns setting and story when I discovered the “Emperor of the Fading Suns” computer game, circa 1996, and discovered it came from an RPG. Ever since, I’ve been semi-obsessed! I really want the shard to be my top priority; I desperately want to write for this system. Especially as their new edition comes out later this year! But, alas, I’ve all of the above to try to get put away.

And that’s my writing life right now. Hopefully I can start posting the cool and interesting things that come my way near daily. So, Until next time….

 

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