Browsed by
Tag: blog

R-Day Plus One Week: Site Changes and Reviews

R-Day Plus One Week: Site Changes and Reviews

Comments 0 Comment

Well, The Curse of Steel has been on the market for about a week now. Sales have not been overwhelming, but I didn’t expect them to be. In any case, the book has already earned me more in royalties than my last two ventures into self-publishing put together. This is a slow business, which doesn’t reward you for obsessively checking your KDP reports.

(Have I been obsessively checking my KDP reports? Yes, yes I have.)

So, on to next steps.

I’ve started work on the first draft of the next novel in the series, The Sunlit Lands. Progress on that can be tracked in the sidebar.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on promotion for The Curse of Steel. One thing I’ve become aware of is that there’s a whole ecology of reviewers for new books, and especially for self-published books. New books that don’t have many professional or customer reviews don’t do as well, but as you might expect there are always more new books coming out than there are available reviewers.

After thinking about that problem for a while, I’ve decided to add a new thread to this blog: reviews of new self-published fiction.

I’m going to try to have at least one substantive review of an indie novel or series per month. Those reviews will be posted as blog entries here, and if the book(s) being reviewed are being published on Amazon I’ll cross-post the reviews there too. Look for the first of these by the end of October – I’ve already found a very promising novel series that will almost certainly get a review.

This is something of a departure for me; this blog has never done many reviews in the past. It will involve some formal work over the next few days as I set things up. I’ll have to develop and post a review policy, and I’ll also be advertising this blog on some of the review-clearinghouse sites to attract more attention to the project.

As another point, I’ve just taken some steps to (hopefully) make this site a little easier to navigate. You’ll notice the white top-bar now provides several menu options. These links will take you to some of the most important (or popular) pages on the site, notably the Architect of Worlds landing page. I’ll be expanding that menu a bit over the next few days, possibly converting a couple of the items into drop-downs to further improve navigation. There may be some tweaks and additions to some of the pages as well. Feedback is welcome as to ways to improve all of this functionality.

Sharrukin’s Palace Now Secure

Sharrukin’s Palace Now Secure

Comments 0 Comment

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”

Comments 4 comments

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

Comments 0 Comment

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.

Minor Changes

Minor Changes

Comments 0 Comment

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.
Status Report (10 August 2019)

Status Report (10 August 2019)

Comments 0 Comment

I’ve got a weekend more or less to myself here – no need to go into the office, and my wife and our daughter are out-of-state visiting family, so it’s just me and my son doing the bachelor thing. Good time to get some work done on The Curse of Steel.

The major project right now is a map of the main area of action for this first novel. Decent progress thus far:

Work in progress . . .

Still need to finish marking in terrain features, although the main line of the Blue Mountains is in place. Then it will be time to put down forest icons to mark wilderness areas. I think I’m going to be sparing with that, since almost the entire map is wilderness to some degree! Then a few settlements and place names, and I’ll have enough to push forward with the novel. I imagine the map will get filled in further as I write this (and hopefully future) stories.

Meanwhile, I’ve posted the first chapter of the draft novel – a short story titled “Kráva and the Skátoi” – to the “Free Articles and Fiction” section in the sidebar. Here’s a link to the page as well.

I think tomorrow I’ll continue to work on the map, and I might start looking for art assets I can use to create images of Kráva and her world.

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

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

Comments 0 Comment

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.

Status Report (24 April 2019)

Status Report (24 April 2019)

Comments 0 Comment

I’ve been radio-silent for several weeks here. Mostly this is due to the day job, which has soaked up a lot of my time, attention, and energy over the past month or so. What with teaching courses, writing new courses, going on business travel, mentoring my colleagues . . . I’m not having a lot of extra resources to spend on creative work lately. Which isn’t to say that projects aren’t perking along in the back of my mind in odd moments, which seems to be how I often make progress on things anyway. So I’ll certainly be back to this space and pushing things forward once the weather changes.

In other news, I learned something today that severely disappointed me regarding several individuals and a publisher with whom I’ve worked in the past. Not going to name names, but if you know something about my creative history and are aware of recent events in the tabletop gaming industry, you can probably put two and two together. Still not sure what decision I’m going to make about that. How do you respond when you discover you’re associated with, working with, actively supporting someone whose other activities you find reprehensible? How do you respond when, as here, the relationship is at one or two removes? That is, your associates aren’t carrying out the reprehensible actions directly, but they’re continuing to partner with and support, and generally seem to be okay with, someone who is.

I’ve been in this situation before. A few years ago I contributed to a product written and published by an individual whom I discovered later was actively involved in the alt-right movement. I generally avoid issuing political or social opinions in this blog, but you can take it as read that I am not fond of the alt-right. Still, it was too late to back out. My name was already attached to the product in print. Not that this was ever likely to be a huge deal – I was one of dozens involved, and my contribution was minimal – but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. I resolved at the time that I wasn’t going to be put in that kind of situation again, through my own lack of due diligence.

So I’m going to have to think about this. In the meantime, I’m going to temporarily set that publisher’s products aside and make no use of them in this space, until further developments have resolved the conflict or I’ve reached a more permanent decision.

“Architect of Worlds” Page Now Active

“Architect of Worlds” Page Now Active

Comments 5 comments

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

Comments 0 Comment

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.