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Sharrukin’s Palace Now Secure

Sharrukin’s Palace Now Secure

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Just a quick note: at the suggestion of a reader, I’ve moved this site to operate under secure HTTP with an SSL certificate. That was surprisingly easy to set up, so I’m kind of kicking myself for not getting it done some time ago.

Old links should still work through a redirect, but an HTTPS URL is probably preferred from now on. Please drop me a line if anything doesn’t seem to be working properly.

Note that the old Sharrukin’s Archive site, or what’s left of it, is probably still non-secure, but that site is going away at some point anyway.

Where to Find “Architect of Worlds”

Where to Find “Architect of Worlds”

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Just a quick post today, while I continue to work on the next few steps of the Architect of Worlds design sequence. I’m noticing some renewed interest in this project, which I suppose shouldn’t surprise me given that I’m finally getting back to work on it.

It looks as if people are coming to the blog and doing a tag-search for old Architect of Worlds posts. That’s fine, but you should be aware that the earlier steps as originally posted to the blog may not be the most current version of the system. Not to mention, the blog posts aren’t always formatted so as to be easy to read or use.

For the time being, I maintain PDFs of the current “official” version of the draft on the Architect of Worlds page in the sidebar. If you’re interested in what’s been developed so far, you might want to look there rather than try to page through the old blog posts.

So long as everyone respects my copyrights, you’re welcome to download copies for your personal use. That will probably change as the book gets closer to actual publication, but that won’t be for some time yet. Of course, if you work with the system and get some interesting results, I’d be pleased to hear about that.

Minor Updates to Site Structure

Minor Updates to Site Structure

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I’ve made some minor changes to the page structure for this blog, in response to a trend I’ve been seeing in site visits. Some visitors have been clicking through to the top-level pages, finding nothing but stubs, and clicking away without looking at actual articles or stories.

I’ve flattened the page hierarchy a bit. There are now four top-level pages, and no additional level between those and individual articles. I’ve also made sure that each top-level page includes a link and a short description for each item below it in the hierarchy.

Now visitors should be able to browse through those descriptions and click through to individual articles. Should make site maintenance slightly easier and make the site more intuitive for visitors.

2019 in Review

2019 in Review

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Well, this has been a year. Twelve months of doing my best to pass by the madness that seems to be sweeping the world, keep my family prospering, excel at my day job, and keep making progress on my creative projects. With some success, as it turned out.

Let’s be honest, this is the year a lot of things seemed to come together, as I built workflows I could use to set up and finish creative projects. I designed my first full constructed language, one which is actually usable for literary work. I drew up several maps. I hacked my brain in such a way that I could do world-building work in service to an actual story for a change.

I managed to write (at least in the first draft) my first mature, full-length, original, publishable novel: The Curse of Steel. That’s a pretty big deal.

So while 2019 wasn’t altogether sunshine and roses, I do feel as if I’m in a reasonably good place in my creative life. Still more work to be done, to be sure, but I’m more confident that I once was.

This blog seems to have reflected that. I’m still not sure who is reading this thing regularly – most of you don’t have a lot to say – but traffic keeps growing, slowly by steadily. The top ten (new) posts for this year were:

  1. Architect of Worlds: Reality Ensues
  2. 2018 in Review
  3. Game Design Prospectus: The Wars of the Jewels
  4. “Architect of Worlds” Page Now Active
  5. An Interesting Result
  6. Status Report (11 May 2019)
  7. 2019: Looking Forward
  8. Reviving an Old Project
  9. Status Report (24 April 2019)
  10. New Creative Directions

As usual, about 40% of the hits on the blog just start at the home page and go from there. There’s also a lot of perennial interest in some of my old Architect of Worlds posts from 2018, as well as that extended exercise in world-building I carried out based on the Bios: Genesis and Bios: Megafauna games. That’s always in the back of my mind as I consider what to work on next.

As always, let’s hope that the coming year is prosperous and productive for all of us . . . and that the world manages to hang onto sanity in the coming months.

Proposing a Patreon

Proposing a Patreon

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I’ve been spending a lot of time over the last couple of weeks considering how to re-activate my Patreon campaign. It’s looking more and more like that will be a thing in the new year.

My objectives here are, in no particular order:

  • Offer patrons a steady and predictable stream of creative products that they will find entertaining, and (in some cases) useful at the game table.
  • Raise some money for my creative work, specifically to help offset the cost of professional assistance in editing, cover art, or other aspects of book production.
  • Build up the potential audience for my books and RPG products when those are released.
  • Possibly gather some feedback for my creative projects while they’re still under development.

That first bullet used to be a serious problem, as when I kept an active Patreon through 2015-2016. Back then, I tended to flit from one project to another as time and inspiration moved me, so I had a hard time producing work on a steady and predictable basis. I really couldn’t justify charging anyone money for that!

Now, however, I seem to be in a position to plan my creative work more decisively and effectively, sticking to a small set of projects and producing regular output for months at a time. So that obstacle may no longer be relevant.

So, here’s the rough draft of a plan for how to structure my creative output in such a way as to sustain a Patreon campaign.

I foresee three “product lines” from my workshop:

  • Original fantasy and science fiction: This will be centered around a series of full-length novels, each of which will be published (possibly with some hired professional assistance) via Amazon. I can foresee producing and publishing at least one novel per year. There may be occasional shorter pieces as well, from short-story up through novella length.
  • Tabletop-ready fantasy and science fiction world-building material: This will most likely shake out as a series of short books, in the area of 25,000 to 40,000 words each, published in PDF form by way of DriveThruRPG.com or a similar outlet. Naturally, these are going to be closely tied to whatever novel I’m currently working on. I can foresee producing two or three of these per year.
  • This blog will continue as an outlet for status reports, scraps of material that will eventually go into products for sale, one-off articles, maybe some short fiction, discussion of potential future projects, and so on. Pretty much the same content I produce here now. At most, I might commit to making sure I produce at least one substantive blog post per week. I’ll continue to post to this WordPress site, but cross-link posts to Patreon so my patrons can read there if they want.

Along with this structure, I think I’ll maintain a loose plan for future projects, so patrons will know what to expect. So, for example, when people come to my Patreon front page they’ll see something like:

  • The current novel in progress, with a plot synopsis, links to an excerpt or two, and a tentative release date, similar information for the next novel in the queue, and mention of two or three novels I might work on a year or more out.
  • Similarly, the current RPG product in progress, its status and tentative release date, the next one in the queue, and maybe a list of what might be forthcoming after that.
  • The “back burner” – a list of possible novels, settings, and other major projects that are in the stage where they’re just percolating in the back of my mind during spare cycles. May turn into releasable products at some point, but it won’t be soon.

With a dashboard like that in place – possibly as a sticky post that’s visible on Patreon? – potential patrons will be able to tell if I’m actively working on something they’ll be interested in, and make their level-of-support decisions on that basis.

Meanwhile, I need to think about how to structure the actual release of material to patrons. I’m thinking there will be a low-cost tier that’s basically the “thanks for your support” level and only gets access to this blog, a medium-cost tier that gets access to monthly partial drafts of both fiction and RPG material, and a high-cost tier that also gets free copies of finished e-books and PDFs. Still considering how to set that up, especially that middle tier – I want to be sure I can define a sustainable flow of output that will justify the cost to patrons.

Watch this space!

Minor Changes

Minor Changes

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A couple of minor tweaks to the blog format today:

  • I’ve added an “In Progress” widget to the top of the sidebar, to track current progress on any major projects. For example, work on the first draft of The Curse of Steel is being tracked there now. I’m not entirely happy with that widget – notice that the header isn’t using the same format or font as the others – but it will do for now.
  • I’ve removed access to the “Sharrukin’s Archive” site from the top bar. That site is badly out of date and I won’t be maintaining it anymore; the only content there that doesn’t also exist here is some outdated material for the “Human Destiny” space-opera setting. New content will be placed under the “Sharrukin’s Worlds” pages here from now on.
“Fermi’s Nightmare” Article Now Available on Sharrukin’s Worlds

“Fermi’s Nightmare” Article Now Available on Sharrukin’s Worlds

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One of the few blog entries I’ve ever written that I thought was worth preserving was titled “Fermi’s Nightmare.” This was a brief examination of a corollary to a well-known observation made by Enrico Fermi back in the 1950s. For the last few years, that’s been hosted over at the Sharrukin’s Archive site. As of today, I’ve moved it into a static page on this blog. It should be visible in the Pages sidebar on the right.

At this point, the only thing still sitting at Sharrukin’s Archive that isn’t available anywhere else is some draft material for the Human Destiny setting. Fairly soon, I may either move that content over here, or simply decide to take it offline until I do some redesign of the setting. To be honest, there are things about the current concept that have me seriously blocked – I’ve been struggling for a couple of years to produce more stories for it than the one I’ve published.

Either way, expect the Sharrukin’s Archive site to come down entirely as soon as I’ve figured out what to do with the remaining material.

“Architect of Worlds” Page Now Active

“Architect of Worlds” Page Now Active

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Recently I’ve noticed a big uptick in traffic to posts under the architect of worlds tag. I suspect someone out in the wilds of the Internet has called people’s attention to the project.

I’m up to my eyebrows in other projects at the moment, but today I took a few moments to create an Architect of Worlds page, accessible under the Sharrukin’s Worlds section in the sidebar. If you’re interested in the project, the advantage of that page for you is that it will include links to current PDFs of the completed draft sections. No more having to weed through old blog posts!

Incidentally, I do hope that people who find the material useful will let me know that, and provide any feedback they can as to how well or poorly the system works for them.

New Content Posted to Sharrukin’s Worlds

New Content Posted to Sharrukin’s Worlds

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I’ve started building out the Sharrukin’s Worlds section of the site, starting with a section on my planetary-romance setting Tanûr. I’ve retrieved my original article “Building a Better Barsoom” from the Sharrukin’s Archive site, and have now posted that here with some minor edits.

At the moment I’m working on the first Tanûr story as a break from working on the novel, so I may produce some more content for that section over the next few days.

I think I’ll make short announcement blog-posts like this one whenever I add substantive bits of content to the Sharrukin’s Worlds section. For now, at least, until and unless I see a better way to help readers find what they’re looking for there.

2019: Looking Forward

2019: Looking Forward

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So I’ve long since gotten out of the habit of making New Year’s resolutions. For one thing, life is too unpredictable to nail down that way, and for another, it takes more than a line on the calendar to change habits. Still, the first few days of the year is a good time to at least try and make a few plans.

I’ve got a fairly crowded agenda for my day job, where I have several course-development projects lined up for the coming calendar year. I’ll also be “on the platform” to lecture more than I was last year. So there’s one irony: out of all my writing output for the year, most of it won’t be fictional and isn’t likely to be mentioned here.

Meanwhile, I’m taking steps to improve my health in the coming year. I’m an overweight guy in my fifties, and a controlled diabetic as well, and that means I have to pay a certain amount of attention to personal maintenance. At least, I do if I want to live long enough to enjoy a few years of retirement, subject as always to the whims of our lords and masters downtown.

Recently I resumed my membership at a local gym, and while I’m never going to be slim and athletic again, I hope to build up a bit of strength in my legs and maybe lose a few pounds. Possibly more productive is a suggestion my podiatrist made, not long ago. Apparently there exist compact elliptical machines that are ideal for putting under a desk, so you can be working your legs and burning calories even while you sit at a computer. I’ve got one on order for my home office, and if that works out I may order a second one to take to work.

As far as creative writing goes:

  • First priority is going to be producing the first draft for the current novel-length project, a pseudo-Hellenic alternate-history fantasy with the working title of Twice-Crowned. As of this evening, I’ve got close to 11 kilowords down, which should finish one long chapter. The total length of the story will probably be about 120 kilowords in rough draft, and I’m hoping to have that finished by summer. Whether I’ll get the novel actually self-published this calendar year depends on how much revision it needs.
  • Second priority is going to be getting at least one Aminata Ndoye story out the door, and possibly another short piece as well.
  • Third priority is to get back to Architect of Worlds and push that project forward through another big section. I want to revisit some of the material I’ve already written – the model doesn’t seem to be handling “super-Earths” very well yet – but the main objective will be to write the section that describes individual planets in some detail. If I can get that finished and tested, the main “game mechanics” sections of the book will be done.
  • Fourth priority is to finish a couple of fan-fiction projects. In particular, I’ve got a Silmarillion fan-fiction piece that got started and looked promising, but which has been on hiatus for a while so I can work on those other bullet items. There’s also a Dragon Age story that I abandoned in 2018 but that won’t quite let go of my imagination, so I may go back to that at some point. Of course, all of this is subject to Zeigler’s Iron Law of Prioritization: “Any item that falls to fourth on the priority list will never be completed.” I can hope for an exception.
  • Fifth, any continued blogging I may find to do on worldbuilding, writing, or the state of my muse.

Another thing I’m considering is shutting down the Sharrukin’s Archive part of this site, in favor of just placing any “persistent” items in this WordPress framework as permanent pages. Honestly, the Archive as it’s structured is an enormous pain in the ass to maintain, and I’ve never managed to populate it as densely as I originally planned.

Honestly, that seems like enough to keep me busy for the next few months. Watch this space for progress reports.