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Where to Buy “Architect of Worlds”

Where to Buy “Architect of Worlds”

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Been meaning to post this for a while. Now that Architect of Worlds is well and truly on the market, it might be prudent to let everyone know where to pick it up. This post will be pinned to the top of the blog for at least a couple of months.

At the moment there are three distinct places to buy the book. Here are the links:

Ad Astra Games website (hardcopy version):
https://www.adastragames.com/products/architect-of-worlds
(Ignore the note that says it’s a pre-order link – that’s out of date.)

Ad Astra Games website (PDF version):
 https://www.adastragames.com/products/architect-of-worlds-pdf

DriveThruRPG:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/483143/architect-of-worlds

Enjoy!

Another Announcement Regarding Reviews

Another Announcement Regarding Reviews

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I’ve been doing reviews of self-published and indie novels for quite a while now, but for the moment I think I’m going to go on indefinite hiatus as a reviewer.

This is mostly a “need to re-prioritize” situation. For several months now I’ve been under considerable pressure, between the need to get Architect of Worlds out the door, a big project that’s come up at the office, and the university courses I’m currently taking . . . not to mention my other creative projects. It’s getting to the point that being obligated to do reviews on a regular basis is cutting into both emotional resources and time that I need to be spending on other things.

My current plan is to finish my commitment to the Indie Ink Awards for this year, but I’m otherwise not going to be doing any more reviews for at least the next few months. I’ve also dropped a note to the Indie View website to have them remove me from their active-reviewers list for the time being. My Review Policy page will also be updated to indicate what’s going on. I’ll post here if and when I decide to start up the review queue again.

Status Report (30 January 2024)

Status Report (30 January 2024)

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Just a quick note to let patrons and readers know how things are going.

Things are moving very quickly with respect to getting Architect of Worlds out the door. We have a book cover (see above), and Ken Burnside and I are doing our final editorial-and-layout-adjustments pass. I expect I’ll be handing a final-release draft off to Ken in no more than a few days, after which the book may be on the market in e-book format very quickly. I should have patron rewards ready to distribute almost immediately after that. Hardcopy will take longer, but that may be available for pre-order on the Ad Astra Games site fairly soon too.

I don’t have a tranche of new original fiction to release to patrons before the end of January, so this will probably be the last month in which there’s no charged release on Patreon. I may have a free reward to push out by tomorrow – a bit of fan-fiction I wrote a while back, which I obviously won’t be charging for. It will still serve as something to remind my patrons that I do actually write fiction from time to time!

Decent chance I’ll actually have a book review out shortly as well. I tripped over a book that’s surprisingly enjoyable, even though it breaks about every rule I have for “this is worth reading.” As I mentioned earlier, I’ll be serving as a judge for the Indie Ink awards for the next few months, but this one might get a quick review before I have to settle in and get working on that.

Otherwise, day job and university courses are keeping me at a dead run, but I’m somehow managing to keep ahead of it all. More news as we move into February.

An Announcement Regarding Reviews

An Announcement Regarding Reviews

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For the first few months of 2024, I’m going to be serving as a judge for the 2024 Indie Ink Awards. That means I’ll be reading and reviewing a bunch of books, but I won’t be publishing those reviews here until the 2024 awards are finished sometime in August.

If you still want your book to be considered for a review here (and on Amazon and Goodreads) under my usual procedures, feel free to drop me a line as you normally would. Just be aware that I’m a bit less likely to have time for additional reviews for at least the next couple of months.

Meanwhile, I may or may not continue to publish at least one review per month while the contest is under way. It all depends on my schedule for the contest and other work. Regular monthly reviews will resume once the judging period is over – I’ll make a post here when that happens.

2023 in Review

2023 in Review

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2023 was . . . kind of a rough year for me and my family. Things seemed to be moving along smoothly until mid-June, at which point a series of minor disasters struck.

Past as Prologue

First, my basement apartment and workspace flooded. We had to pack everything up and move it into storage, repair some of the plumbing, tear up and repair the house’s foundation, install a new drainage system and sump pump, put in new carpet and drywall, and finally move everything back in. Along the way we replaced the water heater. Then the house’s HVAC system went on the fritz, and we ended up replacing the furnace and air conditioning equipment. Then we discovered that we had an infestation of mice, which led to us having the insulation in the attic torn out and replaced – which also caused yet another outbreak of flooding, when the work crew broke open the sprinkler lines up there. Still more drywall repair and painting, although at least we saved the carpets that time, and the exterminators picked up the costs.

By my count, I spent somewhere between 40% and 50% of my annual salary on home repairs this year. Fortunately we had the financial reserves to call upon, but that still hurt. We’re probably not going to get back to our earlier savings state until sometime next year. Assuming I’m still employed by 2025.

Meanwhile, about the time we were wrestling with all of that, I decided to start on a second university degree. As of right now, I’m aiming for a new BSc in Natural Sciences from the Open University in the UK, with a plan to earn a graduate degree in astronomy or space science by the time I retire. All of which entails a fairly healthy commitment of time. Back in August and September that didn’t seem unreasonable . . .

. . . but then, in the September-October timeframe, the biggest course-development project of my entire public-service career came down firmly upon my shoulders, a commitment that’s suddenly pushing everything else aside and probably will throughout 2024.

Well. My time-management and stress-management skills, such as they are, are being sorely tested at the moment. There hasn’t been much relief throughout the second half of 2023, and I don’t anticipate getting to relax much until very late in the new year.

Still, I’ve survived the slings and arrows so far. I’ve even managed to get some good creative work done. I had hoped to have Architect of Worlds completely finished by now, but I can’t complain about that project’s status. As of this moment, the book is finished in final draft, and I’m putting the finishing touches on art selection and layout. I fully expect to have a complete production draft ready within a week or so. Which is a good thing, because Architect now has a publisher. It’s close to a certainty that the book will be on sale through Ad Astra Games and DriveThruRPG no later than March 2024.

I also got another dozen or so book reviews done, and I seem to be attracting a small reputation as a reviewer. I’m apparently going to be serving as a judge for an indie-press writer’s award in the coming year, which should be interesting.

Meanwhile, traffic to this blog remains steady, and I have about twice as many patrons as I did this time last year. Thanks to all of you for your support!

New Ventures

Once Architect is out the door, that means I’ll be free for the first time in over a year to think about other creative projects. I think 2024 is going to be the year I pivot back to writing fiction, with an eye to self-publishing as much of it as possible.

Previous ventures in that direction haven’t been terribly successful – I’ve got a novel and a couple of smaller pieces out there, but they’ve sold very poorly. After quite a bit of thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that my approach was just flat-out incorrect.

To be a successful indie author, you need to take on a lot of roles – editor, art director, communications director, marketing guru. If you don’t have the time, energy, or skill for any of those tasks, you have to hire someone else to do them for you. I’ve been very reluctant to do that in the past, because it sometimes seems as if the entire self-publishing industry is one enormous vanity press. If anyone out there was making money on the basis of my self-published work, it certainly wasn’t me. My editor made money, Amazon and Meta made money, Adobe and Tafi made money, I made not a dime. The only money coming my way was from Patreon.

Okay, time to embrace the reality. I’m going to get back to writing fiction, but I’m going to apply some new techniques for building an audience. I’m also going to bite the bullet and set up a reasonable budget for editing, art, and promotion for each new novel or collection I decide to self-publish. Still going to avoid the worst vanity presses out there, but that doesn’t mean I can’t benefit from professional help. Which may mean that I never get much past “writing as an expensive hobby,” but at least I’ll be able to get my work in front of more people. Who knows, the lightning may strike.

Most likely candidates for new fiction include work set in a re-imagined Human Destiny setting, and the novel Twice-Crowned and its adjacent Fourth Millennium setting. Both of which may also give rise to my next tabletop gaming projects as well. Human Destiny is a decent candidate for that – Ken Burnside, the fellow who will be publishing Architect of Worlds, has already expressed some interest.

The Year’s Blog Traffic

The top ten posts for 2023 turned out to be:

  1. “Architect of Worlds” Has a Publisher
  2. The OGL and the Palace
  3. The Final Burst of “Architect of Worlds” Research
  4. Planning for October 2023
  5. Some Insight on Oceanic Super-Earths
  6. A Choice of Game Mechanics
  7. Fourth Millennium
  8. Status Report (23 June 2023)
  9. Very Small “Habitable” Worlds?
  10. Status Report (11 June 2023)

The high-traffic posts seemed to be a mix of Architect of Worlds material, general world-building notes, discussion of possible future tabletop-game projects, and status reports about the year’s setbacks. Not unexpected.

So those are my objectives for the coming year: get Architect of Worlds out the door at last, pivot back to writing fiction on a regular basis, and experiment with new ways to get my work in front of interested eyeballs. All while keeping my day job happy, studying for my university courses, and hopefully finding a little time to unwind here and there.

Not expecting any boredom, that’s for sure. With any luck my health, the state of my finances, and the political climate in the country I have to live in will all stay favorable.

Review: The Wolf Queen, by Marie McCurdy

Review: The Wolf Queen, by Marie McCurdy

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The Wolf Queen by Marie McCurdy

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

The Wolf Queen is an historical novel, set in the time of the early Roman Empire, but focusing on the peoples of Germania across the Rhine. It’s a bloody and violent story about a major incident in the relationship between Rome and its “barbarian” neighbors. It’s also a very sexy and involving love story.

Thusnelda is the daughter of a chieftain of the Cherusci tribe of the Germani. As a girl, she was once betrothed to a young Cherusci warrior named Ermin, but he was captured by the Romans and taken, as far as Thusnelda knows, into slavery. Thusnelda grows up a warrior-woman in her own right, working behind the scenes to prop up her rather ineffectual father and brothers in their position as the leading family of the Cherusci. In fact, she rather despises her family, who are loyal clients of the Roman Empire, and secretly she burns for German freedom.

Early in the story, we see Thusnelda and another German girl assaulted by a Roman patrol. They defend themselves fiercely, killing several Roman soldiers, before being overcome. Thusnelda is brought before the Roman governor of Germania, Publius Quinctilius Varus. The governor reprimands the soldiers and lets Thusnelda go . . . but not before she sees her once-betrothed for the first time in years. Ermin is now calling himself “Arminius” in the Roman style, and he is not only a Roman citizen but also a commander of auxiliary troops under Varus.

Much of the novel is devoted to the efforts of Thusnelda and Arminius to foment a revolt against Roman authority. Thusnelda doesn’t trust Arminius at first, and the two of them often work at cross-purposes. Meanwhile, Thusnelda’s rebellious activities alienate her from the rest of her Roman-loyalist family. Her new fiancé, a chieftain of the Chatti tribe named Reimar, suspects she is becoming romantically involved with Arminius and becomes increasingly hostile. Thusnelda spends most of the story torn among conflicting loyalties, especially after she realizes she does still have feelings for Arminius.

The astute reader will know from the beginning how the historical story will turn out: the German revolt of 9 AD and the famous Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Ms. McCurdy’s retelling of these events is very well-researched and plausible, reflecting what little is known about German society and political culture at that time. She does a great job of taking the available sources – all of them Roman and not necessarily credible – and treating them with critical attention. In particular, her reinterpretation of the documented relationship between Thusnelda and Arminius was very credible.

If anything, I was surprised when this novel drew to a close, because I knew Thusnelda’s story was far from over. I understand Ms. McCurdy plans a sequel, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what she does with that.

The narrative flow here is very smooth. The story is told entirely from Thusnelda’s first-person viewpoint, and we get a good look at her opinions and reactions to everything that happens. Exposition is very gracefully handled; Ms. McCurdy rarely succumbs to the temptation for an “information dump,” instead painting a picture of the time and place entirely through Thusnelda’s eyes. Very nicely done for a debut novel.

Readers should be aware that the story is full of graphic language, explicit scenes of violence, and a few very explicit sex scenes. I caught a few copy- and line-editing stumbles, but they were rare and never had the effect of pulling me out of the story.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Wolf Queen, and I’m certainly looking forward to anything else Ms. McCurdy might create. Very highly recommended.

Review: Bookshops & Bonedust, by Travis Baldree

Review: Bookshops & Bonedust, by Travis Baldree

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Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

I wouldn’t normally be reviewing Travis Baldree’s second novel, because after the success of his debut story (Legends & Lattes) he no longer falls under the category of “self-published or indie author.” On the other hand, I did review the earlier book, and I really enjoyed this one, so . . .

Bookshops & Bonedust is light fantasy, set in a fantasy universe that’s clearly inspired by tabletop role-playing games, with a dash of Terry Pratchett in the mix. It’s a prequel to Legends & Lattes, focusing on the same protagonist: Viv the orc warrior. Here, though, Viv is at the very beginning of her career as an adventurer.

At the beginning of the story, Viv is a very junior member of an adventuring group called Rackam’s Ravens, who have been hired to deal with a necromancer. During a fierce battle against undead, her recklessness gets her seriously injured. Rackam orders her to separate from the group and take refuge in a nearby coastal town called Murk, where she can recover from her wounds.

Viv reaches Murk, and finds it to be a very quiet place. While she’s there, her injuries are slow to heal, which leaves her struggling to do things she would once have taken for granted. The combination is terrible for a reckless young orc, who very quickly finds herself bored out of her mind.

Almost out of desperation, Viv becomes involved with some of the townspeople of Murk, especially a bookseller named Fern. Fern recently inherited a bookshop from her father, and has been struggling to keep the business afloat in a backwater town like Murk. Yet Fern has a gift for finding just the right book for anyone . . . even an orc warrior who has never experienced the joy of reading.

Viv reads the first book, and comes back for more. Then she begins lending a hand as Fern fights to revive her business. She makes friends among the townsfolk. She even falls into a mystery that may have something to do with the necromancer she had been fighting in the first place. In the process, we get to watch her attain a little hard-won maturity, putting her on the path to become the world-wise veteran we met in Legends & Lattes.

Travis Baldree continues to show a very clean prose style, and the editing here is what I would expect from a traditional publishing house. I caught no significant copy or line-editing stumbles. The story structure remains very direct, told entirely in Viv’s close-third-person perspective.

The plot is a little less focused and unified than the earlier novel. There’s more of a sense of several plot threads moving at once, and some of them are more high-stakes than we’ve seen in this world before. That wider focus didn’t bother me, but it left the story feeling not quite as cozy as Legends & Lattes.

I thoroughly enjoyed Bookshops & Bonedust, and I really do hope to see more from Travis Baldree in this world. Very highly recommended if you enjoy light low-stakes fantasy.

Review: House Aretoli, by K. M. Butler

Review: House Aretoli, by K. M. Butler

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House Aretoli by K. M. Butler

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

House Aretoli is an historical novel which paints a vivid picture of the early Italian Renaissance. Our scene is the Venetian Republic, a city where merchant families rather than warrior-aristocrats rule, yet the schemes for power and influence are no less deadly.

In the summer of 1363, Niccolo Aretoli is a young man serving on the military staff of Leonardo Dandolo, the Venetian governor of Crete. When a sudden rebellion takes place among the native population, Niccolo soon earns a reputation as a military hero. He saves the governor’s life, and assists in the evolution of Venetian citizens from the island.

Alas, when the Venetian exiles return home, Niccolo soon finds his new reputation small consolation. His beloved fiancé has married in his absence – to his own brother, no less – and the family soon suffers a terrible loss at the hands of a rival house’s schemes. Niccolo is forced to plot and struggle for his rights, opposing even members of his own family. In the process, he uncovers a plot against the Venetian state itself.

In Mr. Butler’s previous historical novels, he’s shown a gift for writing stories that fit into the interstices of what little is known today about a given period. House Aretoli is a particularly good example. The titular family and its struggles are fictional, but utterly plausible for the late medieval world. Documented events from the period are woven into the narrative. On the other hand, the resolution of the story is tied up in one of the era’s minor mysteries; the events of the climax aren’t documented, but are surprisingly credible given what little we do know.

Once again, Mr. Butler brings history to vivid life, including the differences between the cultural values of the past era and our own. Character motivations make sense, even when they feel very alien to a modern audience.

The flow of the narrative here is smooth and easy to follow. The story occasionally leaves Niccolo’s viewpoint, but sections told from other perspectives are cleanly labeled and never confusing. Necessary exposition is delivered through character dialogue or internal reflection, and it’s never a distraction. The story’s political intrigues are easy to grasp, even when they become a little convoluted.

The only serious complaint I had about House Aretoli was in the mechanics of prose style. Mr. Butler’s past novels have been quite clean, but this one had enough copy- and line-editing stumbles that I found myself distracted more than once. This was never quite enough to overcome my commitment to Niccolo’s tale, but a less engaging story might have lost me.

As with Mr. Butler’s previous efforts, I thoroughly enjoyed House Aretoli, and I’m certainly looking forward to his further work. Very highly recommended.

Review: Majority, by Abby Goldsmith

Review: Majority, by Abby Goldsmith

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Majority by Abby Goldsmith

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Majority is the first in a planned six-book space-opera series, chronicling the struggle of a few humans and their alien allies against one of the most viciously malign galactic empires ever created in fiction. The book is marketed as a “progression fantasy,” but the tropes of that sub-genre aren’t overly distracting – the story here works very well on its own.

Thomas Hill is an enormously talented teenage boy. He suffers from crippling physical handicaps, and he has grown up in an indifferent foster-care system, but his intelligence is so vast as to be unmeasurable. Even more, he is a telepath, a mind-reader who can absorb knowledge from others at lightning speed. At the age of thirteen, he is already a world-class scientific genius. The one mystery he has never been able to solve is that of his origins – he knows nothing about his biological parents or any family he might have. His only allies are two of his foster sisters, Cherise and Violet, who do their best to protect and support him.

Thomas soon learns that his origins are stranger than he could have imagined. Strictly speaking, he isn’t even fully human. His mother, at least, was a citizen of the Torth Empire. The Torth closely resemble humans, in fact humanity may be an offshoot of their species. The major difference is that all Torth, like Thomas, are telepaths.

The Torth dominate the entire galaxy. In theory, their Empire is a perfect democracy. Every Torth is considered the equal of every other. Every law, every policy, is decided by the “Majority” of Torth minds, linked in a galaxy-wide network. Talented Torth can acquire millions or even billions of “orbiters,” lesser minds who watch their every moment and leap to their aid, like the followers of Earthly “influencers.” On the other hand, the Majority is an absolute tyranny, insisting on perfect conformity at all times. Non-Torth are kept as slaves, subject to torture and death the instant they step out of line. Even high-ranking or popular Torth are always being watched, and might likewise be killed if they show signs of deviance or unwanted emotion.

Incidentally, the Torth Empire works quite well as a satire of the worst elements of modern Internet culture. I suspect that was quite deliberate!

Early in the story, the Torth arrive and capture Thomas. Thomas learns that his mother was Torth, and because of his talents he is offered the chance to join the Empire himself. For a time he is tempted . . . but the Empire has also taken his human friends, reducing them to slavery. The story that follows pits Thomas against himself, against the friends who no longer trust him, and against the constant surveillance and vicious cruelty of the Torth. Thomas and his friends must fight to survive, much less regain their freedom.

Ms. Goldsmith’s prose style is very clean, with no obvious copy- or line-editing problems to pull the reader out of the story. Viewpoint discipline is fairly good; although the viewpoint does shift around among several characters, it’s always clear who has the narrative at any given moment. The plot is tense, suspenseful, and fast-moving. I found the story quite compelling, and I ended the novel very much wanting to know what would happen next.

About the only difficulty I had with Majority was with characterization and character development. These felt just a touch clumsy; there’s a lot of telling, not showing, when it comes to how major characters think and feel about themselves or each other. Changes in characterization sometimes seem abrupt and inorganic. This may or may not be a result of the “progression fantasy” sub-genre; I suspect the emphasis on a character’s skills and abilities may sometimes distract from subtle and compelling characterization. In the end, I was able to stay engaged with the characters here, but it was occasionally an uphill struggle.

Even so, this is a very promising opening to what looks like it will be a top-notch space-opera series. I’m very interested to see what Ms. Goldsmith comes up with next. Very highly recommended.

Review: King of Sartar, by Greg Stafford

Review: King of Sartar, by Greg Stafford

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King of Sartar by Greg Stafford

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

King of Sartar is a compendium of myths, legends, and faux-historical documents, centered around the mythical hero Argrath, set in the fictional world of Glorantha.

(Note: This review is for the “Revised and Annotated” edition of King of Sartar, published in 2016.)

The most important thing to know about King of Sartar is that it is not a novel. Some reviewers have labeled it as an “epistolary novel,” but even that is too suggestive of a single narrative with a unified plot. There’s none of that in King of Sartar. Instead, it’s a collection of many stories, sometimes multiple versions of the same story, all set in the same fantastic world. It’s a tour de force in world-building, and it’s well worth reading on that basis. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a single coherent narrative, with a more conventional plot, characterization, and dramatic tension, then this book is not going to work for you.

The central conceit in King of Sartar is that centuries ago, a hero named Argrath (the name means something like “savior” or even “messiah”) unified the tribes of the kingdom of Sartar, and led them against the oppressive Lunar Empire which had occupied the kingdom for a generation. The result was a period of conflict and cosmic upheaval known as the “Hero Wars.” The gods and forms of magic that had held sway for eons were cast aside. Even literacy itself vanished, as for generations people simply forgot how to read and write. Only in recent times have literate civilizations begun to reappear. King of Sartar is a collection of fictional letters, scholarly papers, and mythical accounts, all written as if academics are trying to piece together the truth about Argrath long after his death.

There are some brilliant intellectual jokes buried in this odd book, familiar to anyone who’s made a serious study of real-world ancient history or mythology. The Hero Wars and the dark age that followed are immediately reminiscent of the Greek heroic age, and the “Bronze Age Collapse” that brought the Mycenaean civilization crashing down. The book’s fictional authors constantly engage in euhemeristic speculation, trying to cut through to the mundane truth they assume must stand behind the magical stories they’re studying. There are debates over whether Argrath was a single historical individual, or whether several different hero-tales were merged into one. There’s even a dispute over whether a “long” or a “short” chronology is more appropriate, with a positively Velikovskian speculation about whether a few centuries of the accepted account simply never happened in the first place.

Meanwhile, the stories themselves are a treasure-trove of lore about the world of Glorantha, famous through decades of tabletop wargames, roleplaying games, and computer games. Fans of any of these, from Runequest to King of Dragon Pass and its sequels, will find lots of clues to that fictional world here.

King of Sartar defies classification – there just aren’t many books like it in the fantasy genre. The closest thing I can compare it to is parts of J. R. R. Tolkien’s legendarium. King of Sartar occasionally reminds the reader of the Silmarillion, or better yet the volumes of unfinished material later collected by Christopher Tolkien to document the evolution of his father’s creation.

All in all, this is less a novel to be read than it is an intellectual experience to be savored. Very highly recommended if you’re a student of ancient history or myth, if you’re a fan of the world of Glorantha, or if you’re simply interested in how fantasy world-building can be done. Keep your distance, though, if you’re looking for a more conventional narrative.