December was a refreshingly dull month. Aside from a couple of minor medical procedures, I didn’t have anything too disruptive of my schedule.

Well, my family took a couple of hits, all on 30 December – my wife was in an auto accident that totaled her vehicle (she escaped any injury, though, thank goodness), and my son lost his job and is once again looking for new opportunities. But that’s all survivable. We actually laughed around the dinner table that evening about how odd it was for all that to happen on the same day.

All month I just cranked out course-development work for my employer, made progress in my university courses, and worked on creative projects in my free time.

I got an Architect of Worlds star system writeup finished and published, as promised to participants in my workshop at Travellercon 2024 in October. I also got a second star system drawn up for the Human Destiny universe, and pushed that to my Ko-fi shop as well. That second item took more work than I anticipated, so it was pretty close to the end of the month when I finished it. I developed some useful workflows, though, so the next ones should be quicker and easier.

So new year, new directions. As I’ve mentioned, I seem to be focusing on the Human Destiny setting for the time being. I’ve promised myself that I’ll produce two items for the Atlas of the Human Protectorate per month. I also want to start revising the setting bible, and writing a draft for the next version of the tabletop RPG book. I have a story or two in that setting, percolating in the back of my head, so if one of those takes shape well enough I may get it written down too.

So here’s the list for January:

• Produce the writeups for two star systems for the Atlas of the Human Protectorate, post as a freebie for high tiers on Ko-fi
• Start work on revisions to the Human Destiny setting bible and core RPG rules
• Start (or resume) work on at least one new Human Destiny story
• Continue to collect and rewrite existing material for posting to Ko-fi

The first item is this month’s hard-and-fast objective, and the other three are “as time permits.” My biggest concern right now is that I’ve fallen behind on my university courses, so I’ll need to work hard this month to get caught up. We’ll see how things work out.