A quick note to let interested parties know how the Architect of Worlds project is going, and where to get the most recent material.
In December, I finished the initial design of the Architect of Worlds design sequence. For the first time, the whole process was complete: designing a star system, its planets, and the surface environments for individual worlds. That version of the design sequence is still available for free on the Architect of Worlds page.
However, in December I also released that version of the design sequence as a charged release for patrons, with the promise that they would get free updates in the future. There have been several rounds of revision and improvement to the material since then, released only to my patrons. So while the version available for free on this site is complete – you could certainly design worlds with it – it’s not the latest and greatest.
If you want to keep getting the most recent updates to the design sequence, you’ll need to sign up as a patron at the Basic Support level or higher. Patrons will also see other sections of the draft as I write those. If and when the book is published – maybe this year, more likely sometime in 2022 – patrons at the Intermediate Support level or higher will be guaranteed a free copy. I’ll probably also hand out a few free copies for folks who have been particularly helpful in playtesting.
Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions.
New month, new set of objectives to be attacked over the next thirty days. April is particularly notable because by the end of this month, I expect to be fully immunized against COVID-19 and therefore back in my day-job office several days a week. This month, therefore, is the last time that I’ll have quite the same level of flexibility for my creative work, at least until I retire in another decade or so. I’d like to make the most of it.
Here’s the plan, more or less in order of priority. As always, the plan at the end of the month may not look much like the plan right now.
Architect of Worlds
Continued work on the current round of improvements to the existing design sequence.
Possibly an additional step or two at the end of the existing design sequence, to add some new parameters related to a world’s habitability and resource value for human (or other) settlement.
New sections for the book, on the subjects of designing maps of interstellar space and using real-world astronomical data.
Krava’s Legend
At least another 15,000 words on the first draft of The Sunlit Lands.
Some work to refine and improve my workflow for producing and promoting self-published novels. If I can develop a reasonable workflow, I might apply it first by re-designing The Curse of Steel and “re-launching” that book.
Human Destiny Sourcebook
Write a few thousand more words to fill out new sections of the partial rough draft.
Scorpius Reach Sector and Game of Empire
Develop more of the sector map and setting bible.
Begin assembling a third-edition draft of the Game of Empire rules.
Free updates for my patrons will probably include a minor-version release of the Architect of Worlds design sequence, and possibly a new minor-version release of the Human Destiny draft sourcebook.
This month’s charged release, if there is one, will probably be a combination of the first 10-12 chapters of The Sunlit Lands and some of the new material for Architect of Worlds.
I’ll also need to complete one or two book reviews this month.
Watch this space for status reports, and as always, if any of the above interests you, please consider signing up as a patron using the link in the sidebar.
Bird in a Snare is the first in a series of historical mystery novels, written by N. L. Holmes, set in the late Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt. This story may or may not work for the reader as a mystery, but it does give us a superb portrait of an Egyptian official, trying to serve his king under very trying circumstances.
Bird in a Snare introduces Lord Hani, an Egyptian scribe who serves the royal house as a messenger and diplomat. Hani is actually an historical figure, mentioned in the Amarna Letters which document many events of the late Eighteenth Dynasty. The story presents him as a decent and diligent man, as devoted to his wife and children as to his royal patron.
At the beginning of the story, we see Hani serving as host to Abdi-Ashirta, a Syrian magnate who is visiting Egypt in an attempt to gain the favor of Pharaoh. All seems well, but when Abdi-Ashirta returns home, he is murdered. Hani is sent as Pharaoh’s envoy to discover who committed the assassination, and to represent Egyptian interests in the region. This assignment proves far easier said than done. What with the schemes of various parties in Syria, the death of Pharaoh Amenhotep III, and drastic changes under the new Pharaoh (Akhenaten), Lord Hani’s life soon becomes very complicated . . . and more than a little dangerous.
N. L. Holmes is a trained archaeologist who is very familiar with the relevant history. Indeed, the plot and setting of Bird in a Snare reflect recent developments in scholarly study of the period. Political maneuvering, the religious revolution of Akhenaten, and the details of everyday Egyptian life all ring with authenticity. Best of all, her lead characters – Lord Hani, and his assistant Maya – are thoroughly likable and easy to sympathize with. Seeing the world of the late Bronze Age through their eyes is a treat.
I found that the story didn’t quite work for me as a mystery. Hani and Maya do take steps to investigate the murder of Abdi-Ashirta, and to follow a trail of corruption that leads all the way back to Pharaoh’s court. Yet for the most part the mystery seems to resolve itself, without much need for Hani and Maya to take action. Hani’s most important decision isn’t how to solve the crime, it’s what to do with the information once he has it. The result might be anticlimactic for readers who expect a fair-play “whodunnit.”
Another small issue: the book begins with many pages of historical notes and a glossary, rather than placing such material at the end. Some readers may find this useful. The story itself doesn’t pull any punches with Ancient Egyptian names and vocabulary, which may be difficult for readers not familiar with the period. Readers who prefer to jump right into the narrative should be prepared to riffle through quite a few pages before the story itself begins.
Still, these are minor complaints. Overall, the book was very well done with superb production values, and I caught very few copy-editing errors. The story worked very well as a window into an ancient and largely forgotten world.
I enjoyed Bird in a Snare very much, and I’m looking forward to later books in the series. Recommended for anyone who enjoys historical fiction set in the ancient world.
I think I’ve managed to set down enough material to satisfy my muse for the moment.
Attached to this post is a PDF with a first interim partial draft of what I’m now calling my Scorpius Reach setting – part of an original universe for the Traveller roleplaying game. It’s not very well organized yet, and far from complete, but it should be enough to at least suggest the beginnings of a Traveller campaign. If anyone feels like trying it out, I would suggest a style of play that centers on exploration, free trade, or maybe a small mercenary unit. This is a very undeveloped region of space, compared to most Traveller settings.
Where this goes from here remains to be seen. I’ll probably expand on this material as more ideas come to me, although now that my muse has been pacified I do have other projects that need to take priority. If and when I get the new Game of Empire rules worked out, this setting will probably serve as a test-bed scenario for playtesting.
I swear, sometimes my muse has the attention span of a squirrel.
My plan for March was to release a new minor update to the Architect of Worlds partial draft, and then write several more chapters of The Sunlit Lands so I could send out a good-sized chunk of that as a charged release for my patrons.
Architect of Worlds did get bumped up to Version 0.4 as of last week – a bunch of tweaks, some of them substantive, many of them driven by the flood of good feedback I’ve received from Brett Evill since the beginning of the year. With that out of the way, I was all set to buckle down and concentrate on The Sunlit Lands. I expected to be finished through Chapter Six or Seven and about 20,000 words by the end of March.
Meanwhile, I posted a couple of weeks ago about an old Traveller project, the Game of Empire rules that I originally developed about twenty years ago. At some time in the near future, I intend to revisit that project and produce a new version of those rules, possibly working toward publishing them as a paid product on DriveThruRPG. I hadn’t intended to work on that just yet, though – Krava’s story was calling me!
Yet early this week, I got the first hint of an idea for a Traveller setting that could act as a test-bed for Game of Empire. It’s a “Milieu Zero” concept of sorts, a single world striving to establish a new interstellar empire after a Long Night. Every day, while I worked on projects for my day job and made progress with Krava’s story, the Traveller idea kept growing in the back of my head, grabbing hold and not letting go.
Today I sat down to try to jot down some notes and get it out of my system, so I could get back to work on Krava . . . and new material just poured out onto the page. Over 3,000 words of it since I got up this morning. Not to mention that I’ve already come up with at least two or three ideas for short fiction, attached to this setting.
Well. I know not to argue when my muse is at work. Even if I wish she were more consistent.
Apparently, by the end of March, I’m going to have something new and worth sharing, it just isn’t going to be enough of The Sunlit Lands to meet my objective. Nor will this block of new Traveller material be useful as a charged release, since I’d like to share it widely and attract some attention to the potential project.
So here’s the (revised) plan for the last few days of March:
There will be no charged release for my patrons this month. (Again.)
I should have about 5-6000 words of new Traveller material that will be posted here, shared with my patrons, and possibly shared via social media as well. This will be a free release.
I still need to finish and publish a book review for the month of March. I’ve already selected and read the book, I just need to bang out the review.
We’ll see if April goes any differently. At least I seem to have gotten out of the creative slough I was mired in for most of February and the first week or so of March. There’s a good chance I’ll be able to produce a worthwhile amount of material next month.
One of the more interesting phases of my creative career was my involvement with the Traveller tabletop roleplaying game. Between 1999 and 2005, I wrote, co-authored, or edited at least seven books for the GURPS Traveller product line. In fact, for much of that time, I was effectively the backup Line Editor, assisting Loren K. Wiseman in that capacity, and even taking over entirely for a few months at one point. It was a neat experience; I kind of miss it even today.
In 2000, I was writing the Solomani Rim sector book for GURPS Traveller. I was also helping Loren to produce an online edition of Journal of the Traveller’s Aid Society (JTAS), the venerable Traveller fan magazine. One thing I did in that period was to help Loren wrangle Traveller News Service (TNS) entries, little scraps of “current events” from the Third Imperium setting that were meant to maintain the game’s meta-plot and suggest interesting adventures.
There was a side project I undertook, relevant to all of that activity: a set of rules with the working title of Game of Empire. This was a set of Traveller meta-rules, designed to allow “movers and shakers” roleplaying across a region of space. Instead of playing ordinary Imperial citizens, players could take on the role of very senior nobles, megacorporate executives, planetary political leaders, rebel-faction commanders, and so on. The actions and decisions they carried out would affect whole worlds. There was some resemblance to other Traveller products such as Pocket Empires or Dynasties, although the scale and emphasis were a bit different.
As part of the project, I wrote up a scenario, titled The Alderamin Scramble. The premise was that an Imperial duke’s title had fallen vacant in the Solomani Rim sector, and a number of notables were in a position to compete for an appointment to that seat. There were a lot of other events in the scenario – at least two local wars, a visit from Empress Iolanthe to the Rim, and so on.
I recruited 20 players from the JTAS message boards, and we spent several months “playtesting” the ruleset and the Alderamin Scramble scenario. It was a lot of fun – and along the way, we generated dozens of potential TNS items. I think most of the TNS entries from the in-game years 1119 through 1122 came out of that one game.
I often thought about building Game of Empire into something that could be published. I did write a second edition of the ruleset, based on our experience with the playtest, and thought about running more games with that. Unfortunately, with one thing and another, further development never happened before GURPS Traveller started dying on the vine a few years later.
In fact, I somehow misplaced my copy of the game’s files at some point. Fortunately, in 2017, I happened to be talking with Keith Alan Johnson when he mentioned he had a complete copy of both versions of the rules, the Alderamin Scramble scenario, and a bunch of his notes from the playtest. He was generous enough to bundle the whole package up and send it to me.
At the time, I still didn’t have any place to publish the game, but that may be changing. There’s an “open source” version of Traveller in existence now (a game called Cepheus Engine) and several independent publishers have released material through that venue. I’m already exploring ways to release other game material, as for example through DriveThruRPG. So a few days ago I got the notion of reviving this old project.
Yesterday I made a post on the Traveller Facebook group, describing the project and its history, and asking whether the audience would be interested. The response was a pretty resounding yes – so this certainly looks like something that would be worth moving to the front burner. I already have a lot on my plate for the rest of this month, but I may be spending odd moments looking at the old material and letting my subconscious mull over ways to improve and add to it.
A quick note today, to lay out my plan for the rest of this month. I seem to have pulled out of the creative slump I’ve been wrestling with for most of the last six weeks, so I want to strike while the iron is hot.
I’m currently working on a new minor update of the Architect of Worlds design sequence, which should start to reflect some of the feedback I’ve gotten from my patrons since the January release, and otherwise make some incremental improvements. I’m working on including a change log in this version, so people who are working with the most current draft know where the most recent tweaks are. The plan is to have this new version ready by Thursday at the latest, at which point I’ll send that to my patrons as a free update.
I’m also focusing on getting some more of the rough draft of The Sunlit Lands written, and if I can get to at least 15-18 kilowords of coherent material, that will be this month’s charged release for my patrons.
I’m also working through my backlog of book review requests, so I hope to have one or two more reviews out before the end of this month.
Those are my “must accomplish” items for March. Stay tuned.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and planning for the next novel I want to write and publish.
That may not be The Sunlit Lands. Work on that one is proceeding, albeit slowly, so it’s possible that will be the next book-length project I finish. It’s not the only possibility, though.
More likely is an extension of my short story, “A Fire in Winter,” published here a few months ago.
Portrait of Prince Hall in Masonic regalia, artist unknown.
I’ve conceived the notion of a novel-length collection of connected stories, laying out the history of an alternate-historical American Revolution, with the African-American Freemason figure Prince Hall as the protagonist. The collection would hint at an alternative United States that might be a little better-founded from the beginning.
“A Fire in Winter” would be the first story in the collection. I’ve already blocked out the plot and action of the second story – the working title is “Anabasis,” and it involves Mr. Hall accompanying an expedition into the New York and Pennsylvania back-country, led by a brilliant but troubled American general named Benedict Arnold. I’m thinking there might be six or seven stories in the collection by the time I’m finished.
An alternate-historical American Revolution: the situation in the Northern colonies as of early 1777.
While I mull over this idea, I’ve been working through the tabletop game 1776, generating an alternate history of the Revolutionary War to serve as a scaffold for the stories. The exercise has been unusually fruitful, giving me plenty of ideas as to where Mr. Hall might be at any given time, who he might meet, what conflict or danger he might have to survive. Before long I may have the whole collection of stories planned out.
The third possibility is an extensive re-work of The Master’s Oath, which I’ve mentioned earlier. This seems the least likely, even though I do have a complete draft of that novel. It would require a considerable rewrite to be publishable.
Whichever project comes to fruition most quickly, I’ve also been thinking about improving my plan for releasing and promoting the book.
Sales of The Curse of Steel have been disappointing, to be honest. After an initial surge of sales upon release, it’s fallen to zero since the beginning of the calendar year. So far, advertising on Amazon and Facebook has been ineffective and a net loss.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I made a number of unforced errors with that novel – not in its writing, but in the plan for its release and promotion. Things like doing my own cover art, not spreading the word before release or allowing for pre-orders, not arranging for editorial reviews in advance, not arranging for a paperback edition, relying exclusively on Kindle Unlimited for sales, and so on.
For the next book, I’m probably going to bite the bullet and set myself a budget for preparation and promotion.
The Curse of Steel cost me roughly $800 to release, most of which went to a hired editor who ended up recommending no changes to my draft. The biggest chunk of funding after that was for graphic assets for the book cover. All of this suggests that I might set aside a few hundred dollars for the next book, but spend it more wisely. Maybe hire an editor (or a sensitivity reader), certainly get a professional book cover done, budget more generously for pre-release promotion and post-release advertising, and so on. Hopefully getting better results.
Meanwhile, I’ve recently linked up with a couple of communities of self-publishing authors, and I’ve been lurking and listening to their talk. Some of their advice and common practices don’t fit my profile, but some of them do, and I’ve made note of a lot of resources that might be useful.
All of this means that my next book release, whenever that comes along, is going to be more carefully planned and supported.
One or two stand-alone books might help me figure out a better workflow and see more sales. Then, if and when I do finish The Sunlit Lands, I can always go back and re-release The Curse of Steel, applying some of what I’ve learned.
The Drowning Land is a piece of prehistorical fiction, set in northern Europe a little over eight thousand years ago. It’s an adventure story, a romance, and a disaster novel all rolled into one, set in a land that literally sank beneath the sea in the distant past. The result is an interesting and entertaining read.
This review is based on an advance review copy (ARC) shared with me by the author. The final published version may differ slightly from what I’ve read.
Edan is a young member of a Mesolithic tribe, dark-skinned and blue-eyed people, who live in what he thinks of as “the Summer Lands.” Edan’s tribe have lived there from time out of mind, migrating between the coast and the highlands every year in response to the seasons. Their lives are driven by ancient tradition, but they may soon be faced with a crisis that tradition will never help them solve. For the Summer Lands are sinking beneath the waters of the sea, and many are afraid they will soon vanish altogether.
This isn’t a piece of fantasy. The Summer Lands are, in fact, Doggerland – a region that once acted as a land bridge, connecting the British Isles to the continent of Europe. At one time, Doggerland may have been one of the richest countries inhabited by human beings. Yet as the climate shifted following the end of the last Ice Age, Doggerland was eventually submerged beneath the North Sea. Today, its remnants form the “Dogger Bank,” an underwater feature off the eastern shores of Britain.
At the beginning of the story, Edan and his tribe are already struggling to survive. Not only is the once-rich country being slowly poisoned by rising salt water, but other tribes are responding to the crisis by becoming fierce and aggressive. Edan’s people meet one such group, a band of renegades who have taken predatory wolves as their totem, led by a war-chieftain named Phelan. At first, the contact promises to be peaceful, but when Edan rescues a young woman from the other band and accidentally kills one of Phelan’s followers, the consequences are severe.
Edan and the young woman, Tara, are forced to flee together for their lives. Tara, it turns out, is a “troll,” not quite what Edan’s people would recognize as human. In fact, she is from a tribe that has significant Neanderthal ancestry. She is also a visionary, cursed with foreknowledge that the Summer Lands will be drowned within months, on a quest to see if the spirit world can be roused to prevent the disaster.
What follows is a small odyssey, as Edan and Tara travel from one end of the Summer Lands to the other, fleeing from Phelan’s people and the rising seas, visiting other tribes, and seeking a solution to the imminent end of their world. Along the way they both grow and change, and they fall in love. Their fate, and the fate of the entire Summer Lands, is bound up in the rest of the story.
Once I got past the first few chapters of The Drowning Land – which felt a little slow of pace – I found it a compelling story. Edan and Tara are sympathetic characters, and even villains like Phelan have depth to them. As a piece of historical fiction, the story is very thoroughly researched and plausible; Mr. Donachie has certainly done his homework. I was rather reminded of some of Jean Auel’s work.
The story shifts viewpoints with each new chapter, a technique I don’t always appreciate, although Mr. Donachie does take care to label each chapter so that the reader won’t be confused. The prose was also not quite as clean as I usually want to see, with a few typos, and occasional mis-paragraphing during dialogue. None of this rose above the level of a minor distraction, nor did it pull me out of the story.
On the whole, The Drowning Land should work well for anyone who’s interested in historical fantasy, or tales of human survival under punishing circumstances. Recommended.
The last few weeks have been a bit of a ride, so I have a few updates for everyone.
First, for some time now I’ve been dealing with some minor medical issues, and that seems to have come to a head in the month of February. Nothing life-threatening, by any means, but it was kind of hard on my productivity. Chronic headaches, lethargy, inability to focus or keep on task well into each day. I was having a hard time keeping up with work for my day job, much less my creative projects.
It turns out that my treatment regimen for type-2 diabetes has been throwing me for a loop.
Ironically, my lifestyle has been a lot healthier ever since the COVID-19 pandemic crashed down on us. I’m getting more exercise, my diet is much better, I’ve lost a significant amount of weight, and so on. However, until recently I hadn’t adjusted my medication routine to fit, and it’s looking as if my blood sugar was becoming chronically low in the mornings. Again, not low enough to be a serious threat, but more than low enough to account for the difficulties I was having.
The good news is that this is all correctable. Now that I understand the problem, I’m adjusting my treatment regimen, within parameters approved by my physician, and I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to recover my mornings.
The bad news is that working on this has taken up most of the month of February, with the result that I haven’t hit several of my goals, and probably won’t before the end of the month.
As a result, there will be no charged release or bonus release for my patrons this month. I also don’t think there will be any updates to Architect of Worlds or the Human Destiny draft sourcebook until sometime in March.
That having been said, here’s a summary of the creative projects I have under way at the moment, roughly in order of priority:
Book reviews, still at the rate of one or two a month.
An update for Architect of Worlds, revising some of the existing material and possibly adding a new section (on the subject of “using real-world astronomical data”).
Further progress on The Sunlit Lands, the second book in the Krava’s Legend series.
An update for the Human Destiny draft sourcebook, with some new material.
Development for a new book-length project, building “A Fire in Winter” out into a novel-length collection of short stories. More about that in an upcoming post.
Re-evaluation of The Master’s Oath, with an eye toward giving it an extensive rewrite and preparing it for eventual publication.
I’m also starting to think about how to improve my strategy for publishing and promoting my work. Sales of The Curse of Steel have been kind of disappointing – after an initial surge when the book was published, they’ve faded down to essentially zero since the new year. I’ve tried a few things to promote the book, with very ambiguous results. In the meantime, I’ve gotten hooked into one or two communities of self-published authors, and have been learning a lot about ways to improve presentation and promotion.
Within the next few months, I’m likely to have another book to publish, even if that isn’t The Sunlit Lands. I’m going to take that opportunity to prepare and apply a more aggressive publication strategy. If that works, I may go back and re-launch The Curse of Steel, using some of what I’ve learned. This is a long-term investment, but with luck, it will pay off.
