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Month: January 2026

Planning for February 2026

Planning for February 2026

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January was a fairly productive month, actually. I didn’t move out ahead on my university courses as much as I’d hoped, but I haven’t fallen behind, and so far my grades have continued to be exceptional. I’m quite pleased with my progress in the mathematics course, in which I seem to be succeeding with subjects that I failed to master forty years ago as an engineering student.

I made good progress on my creative projects too. I seem to be hitting my post-retirement stride – I’m having no trouble filling my days, and I seem to be exercising the discipline necessary to keep making incremental progress every day.

Here’s the tentative plan for February 2026.

University Studies

If I can do some advance work, that would be helpful at this point. If I hit the following marks, I should be about two weeks ahead at the end of the month.

Objectives for February include:

  • For my astronomy course: Read Topic 4, turn in the fourth graded assignment, and then read Topic 5.
  • For my mathematics course: Read Units 8, 9, and 10.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I’m continuing to work on “What’s Past is Prologue,” and I suspect that’s going to be an active project well into March if not longer. Definitely going to end up at short-to-medium novel length before it’s done. It’s getting good engagement from my usual readers, though, so that’s nice to see.

The objective for February is to complete “What’s Past is Prologue” at least through Chapter 16.

Architect of Worlds & Conductor of Cultures

I was able to complete version 0.4 of the Cultural Evolution Game, and playtesters and my collaborators have had a chance to look at it. Not a lot of feedback yet, so I don’t have a sense as to whether this version is a step forward or if I’m going to need to do a redesign. I do plan to produce a version 0.5, possibly in February, although that’s likely to be more fleshing-out and adding supporting material rather than changes to the mechanics.

I also got started on a formal errata list for Architect of Worlds, although I still need to track down a couple of items before I can release the thing. Lesson learned: keep a formal list of errata while you’re producing them, dummy, that way you don’t have to rack your brains months later to figure out what you were thinking at the time.

The objectives for January are:

  • Work on a minor rewrite and expansion (version 0.5) of the Cultural Evolution Game
  • Contribute to the initial design for other portions of Conductor of Cultures
  • Begin researching and drafting a new edition of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller“
  • Continue working on a formal errata list for Architect of Worlds, so readers can see what’s been fixed in each minor-version release so far
  • Continue to collect research for a potential second edition of the book, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

Personal Universes

Still continuing to collect notes and do game design for a version 0.60 of the “Human Destiny Sourcebook,” based upon FATE. Incremental progress means I’m a still long distance from being able to share any of this.

I did get some work done late in the month on something I call the “Tree of Worlds” setting. Think of this as a low-fantasy framework for alternate histories, with a generous helping of esoteric conspiracies in the mix. I’m actually writing this document as a GURPS supplement, of all things, and that’s probably how I’ll end up releasing it when it’s done.

Both of these will be posted to my Kofi, free for subscribers, when they’re presentable.

Planning for January 2026

Planning for January 2026

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December was a very quiet month. Most days I simply made incremental progress on game design, writing, and my university work, without hitting any big milestones. Truth be told, I was kind of taking it easy. So there’s not much specific to report about the month – I kept up with my obligations and a lot of second-tier projects just marked time.

So, without further ado, here’s the tentative plan for January 2026.

University Studies

At the moment I’m only a few days ahead on both of my courses, so I hope to do a little catching up. If I hit the following marks, I should be about two weeks ahead at the end of the month.

Objectives for January include:

  • For my astronomy course: Finish the third graded assignment, complete the first half of the course exam, and read Topic 4.
  • For my mathematics course: Finish the second graded assignment and read Units 7 and 8.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I was able to finish “The Spooky Season” in December, and start on what looks like a short-novel-length piece: “What’s Past is Prologue.” This is going to be a big work, rounding out the “season” of Star Trek: Lower Decks stories I’ve been writing since early last year. A lot of established Star Trek characters are going to appear, there’s going to be lots of intrigue, mystery, and starship battles, and Beckett Mariner is going to have her first no-kidding command with extremely high stakes.

The objective for January is to complete “What’s Past is Prologue” at least through Chapter 10.

Architect of Worlds & Conductor of Cultures

I was able to complete version 0.3 of the Cultural Evolution Game, and playtesters have had a crack at it. The assessment is that the mechanics work, but I’ve heard a couple of insights that are leading me to rethink the design almost from scratch. So version 0.4 is in the pipeline, and if my Muse’s rumblings are any indication, it’s going to look quite different.

The following list includes two top-priority items, the rest being “as time permits” (which may mean no progress).

The objectives for January are:

  • Complete a major rewrite (version 0.4) of the Cultural Evolution Game
  • Contribute to the initial design for other portions of Conductor of Cultures
  • Begin researching and drafting a new edition of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller“
  • Reconstruct a formal errata list for Architect of Worlds, so readers can see what’s been fixed in each minor-version release so far
  • Continue to collect research for a potential second edition of the book, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

Personal Universes

Still continuing to collect notes and do game design for a version 0.60 of the “Human Destiny Sourcebook,” based upon FATE. Incremental progress means I’m a long distance from being able to share any of this, although I may try to produce a short character-design document in January.

I’m also playing with revising a very old setting – I originally came up with this one for my personal RPG campaign over thirty years ago – for which I may write up a top-level overview. More about that once I’ve fleshed it out a bit.

If either of those (short) documents gets finished this month, I’ll post them to my Kofi, free for subscribers.

2025 in Review

2025 in Review

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This year was . . . an experience. Almost nothing went as I was expecting a year ago.

Personal Life

I began the year still employed by the United States federal government as a researcher in cybersecurity, an instructional designer, and an instructor. I knew the incoming administration was likely to disrupt my professional life, but I was in a wait-and-see mode.

Then the new administration came in and immediately demonstrated that it planned to be far worse than in the President’s first term. Federal departments, including mine, were being handed over to right-wing influencers who had absolutely no competence in the fields they were being asked to lead. Federal policy was immediately being oriented toward far-right-wing ideology, without regard to any facts on the ground. Critical elements of our national security were being tossed on the trash-heap. Personally, I was already being directed to do things that I considered ill-advised at best, abominably stupid at worst. I fully expected to be fired at some point for non-compliance with idiotic or outright illegal orders.

As it happened, I reached a critical age milestone about a week after Inauguration Day. My wife and I reviewed our finances, and concluded that although it wasn’t ideal for me to retire at that point, it was quite a bit more feasible than I had realized. So I started the paperwork to retire from federal service, and that evolution was completed in mid-May. I’ve been retired on my own pension, my wife’s Social Security, and 40+ years of savings ever since.

(The three months between “deciding to retire” and “walking out the door” were among the most productive in my federal career, ironically. I wrote two full-length graduate-level courses in cyber leadership in that time – not from scratch, as I had helped build earlier versions of the same curriculum in 2023-2024, but there was a lot of new material. God alone knows whether either of those courses will ever actually be delivered to students. I’m honestly not sure whether the department I worked in even exists today as more than a skeleton crew.)

Retirement has been fairly pleasant, actually. I’m eating more healthfully, I’m getting more exercise, and while my stress level is not zero it’s certainly much lower than it was before. I’m having no trouble at all filling my days, including spending a lot more time with my wife and my adult children. So that’s all to the good.

University Studies

I’m currently in my third year of working toward a second bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences (Astronomy) and a master’s degree in Space Science and Technology, all from the Open University in the UK. That program is likely to take until the spring of 2031 to complete, unless I pick up the pace at some point. So far I’ve passed all my courses with distinction, so I’m on track for my original plan. Don’t know if I’ll ever do anything with this education professionally – I’ll be pushing 66 by the time I complete my graduate work – but if I’m still capable, I might find myself an undergraduate teaching position somewhere. At the very least, it will be nice to actually have the formal training to back up all the astronomy I’ve picked up and used over the years.

To be honest, I’ve been glad I retired this spring, because my coursework in 2025 has been a bit more challenging. Had I stayed employed, something would have had to go on the back burner, and that might have been the bulk of my creative work.

Speaking of . . .

Creative Work

At the beginning of 2025, my tentative plan for creative projects involved re-releasing some of the original fiction I wrote in previous years, writing some new original fiction, and working hard on RPG material for the Human Destiny and Fourth Millennium settings.

Basically none of that happened.

In part that was due to a new book-length project: Composer of Cultures, which is likely to become the third book in the Ad Astra Games “insanely detailed worldbuilding series.” Architect of Worlds took me the better part of eight years to write, and we’re trying to produce the new book in less than a year, so it’s soaking up a lot of my development and writing time. Fortunately this time it’s a team of three writing the book: Ken Burnside, a paleontologist named Jess Miller-Camp, and me.

It’s been interesting work so far. I’m in the process of designing a “Cultural Evolution Game” which will likely be the last 40% or so of the book (Dr. Miller-Camp is writing a “Biological Evolution Game” which will come first). We’re hoping to have the book ready for the summer convention season, but we’ll see how things go.

Meanwhile, I may not have been writing much original fiction in 2025, but I did write just under 200,000 words of new fan-fiction.

Okay, when I wrapped up my first fan-fiction phase in 2017 or so, I swore I would focus on original work from that point on. My Muse isn’t always that easy to keep disciplined, though. Over the past few years I fell in love with the new Star Trek series Lower Decks, and when that had its finale in early 2025 I found myself wanting more. So I started writing not just fan-fiction, but Star Trek fan-fiction.

(Talk about getting back to one’s literary roots! I was reading – and writing, although none of that work ever saw the light of day – Star Trek fan-fiction back in the 1970s, and that era has had a significant impact on my literary life ever since.)

So far I’ve written ten complete stories, most of them novelette or novella length, and I’m currently at work on the eleventh. It’s been fun, I’m not nearly out of ideas yet, and I’ve acquired a fairly consistent audience. So this is probably going to be part of my creative output for a while.

Looking Forward

It’s difficult to make plans for the coming year, because let’s face it – my country and much of the rest of the world are currently in the hands of malicious incompetents, and I don’t think we’ve even begun to see how much destruction they can inflict on us. Just surviving with our integrity and sanity intact is likely to be a victory.

Still. Day by day I’ll have my household to keep together, my university coursework to stay ahead of, and many more creative projects on the stove than I’ll have time to bring to fruition. Most likely creative goals for 2026 will involve completing Composer of Cultures, and writing more Star Trek fiction. Pushing my own original creative projects forward will be on the agenda too. I’m improvising from one day to the next, but I haven’t fallen off the piano bench yet . . .

So for all of you who keep track of my work, many thanks and here’s hoping you’ll find some value in my output in the coming year.