Status Report (29 March 2022)
Well, I was beginning to think March would be another month of not reaching my main goals, but the last few days have been more productive than I might have expected.
My primary project this month was to produce the initial partial draft of the “special and unusual cases” section for Architect of Worlds. At the moment, that section isn’t complete, and it probably won’t be complete before the end of the month. On the other hand, I expect it will have about 8000-9000 words of new material, which is right on the threshold of what I would consider worth sending to my patrons as a charged release.
I’m therefore about 90% certain that there will be a charged release for this month, probably appearing on 31 March, consisting of the first interim partial draft of this section of Architect. As with the other sections that I’ve been working on, especially the main design sequence, this is the only draft for which my patrons will be charged. Later additions and updates to that section will be free releases.
I should point out that this is very nearly the last section that needs to be written for Architect of Worlds. There’s still one section outstanding – the one describing how to design maps of interstellar space for a science-fiction setting – but I’m anticipating that section may be fairly short on word count. I may take a crack at that section next month . . . depending, of course, on what else might present itself as ready to spring from my brow, fully armed and with a mighty shout.
What’s really encouraging is that if that last section does get down on paper, virtually speaking, it means the book will actually be finished, at least in a rough draft. The very next step I would take at that point is to integrate all of the sections into a single coherent draft, after which my patrons and readers would be getting updates to the whole book at once. I anticipate a few months of further editing and polishing before the text gets finalized, and I move to actual layout and production.
There seems to be a reasonable chance that Architect of Worlds will actually be published before the end of calendar year 2022. After which I suspect I will be heaving an enormous sigh of relief.
5 thoughts on “Status Report (29 March 2022)”
I am ready for this!
I’m eager to get my hands on Architect of Worlds. Please consider making this book available on DriveThruRPG, not just Amazon. I am much less likely to buy it from Amazon.
Are you following the latest exoplanet discoveries and research as they’re published?
Oh yes, this is very much going to be a DriveThruRPG product. It may not be published on Amazon at all, to be honest.
I do try to keep up with exoplanetary research. The whole project is intended to take into account a lot of the new models for planetary formation that weren’t available back when I was writing for GURPS and Traveller. There’s certainly a lot to keep up with, though – I’ve literally been working on a real-world star system when new exoplanet candidates were published for it . . .
Awesome!
Yeah back before I found out about Architect of Worlds, when I was trying to update the Space system myself, I amassed a gigantic list of urls of research on everything from star formation to asteroid density and metal content, plus every new hypothesis and theory about exoplanet formation.
If alien life is discovered in your lifetime, there’ll probably be enough new knowledge to write a new edition of this book…