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Some Important Links

Some Important Links

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Since I have a fair number of new readers these days, I thought it might be worthwhile to reinstate a few cross-links in the sidebar and point those out. (Thanks to Jürgen Hubert for indirectly encouraging me to overcome inertia and get this set up.)

There’s now an Important Links widget at the top of the sidebar. The links here will point you to other places on the Internet where I maintain a presence:

  • Patreon page. Patrons get links back to posts on this site, and (at least for now) one article or piece of short fiction each month, all for free. In some months, I make one charged release of at least 10,000 words of new content (excerpts from a novel in progress, draft world-building material, and so on). Charged releases are based on whatever I’m working on at the time – there’s no overarching theme. Patrons also get free copies of some or all of the work I self-publish, depending on their level of patronage.
  • DeviantArt page. This is where I’m likely to post any character art, cartography, or other visual art I produce in support of other projects. Some of that will also appear here, but that’s not guaranteed.
  • Amazon author page for John Alleyn. Exactly what it says on the tin. Here’s where you’ll find my more recent, self-published original fiction.
  • Amazon author page for Jon F. Zeigler. You’ll mostly find links to my non-fiction work here, especially old GURPS books that are still on sale via Amazon. Also, at least one short-story collection to which I contributed under my legal byline.
  • Fan Fiction archive. This points to my profile page on FanFiction.Net, which has its drawbacks but is the only place you can find all of the fan-fiction I wrote during that period of my creative career (roughly 2012 through 2018). Mostly Mass Effect stories, along with a bit of fantasy fiction in several settings.

All of these links should be working properly, but if any of them look strange to you, drop me a note and I’ll see if I can fix them.

Status Report (28 April 2020) – Patreon Campaign About to Go Live

Status Report (28 April 2020) – Patreon Campaign About to Go Live

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As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been using my period of forced vacation to engage in an extended world-building exercise. Using a series of maps, I’m building the large-scale back history of The Great Lands, the setting for The Curse of Steel (and what may be a series of novels after that).

This has been a remarkably useful exercise. I went in with only a general plan for how I wanted the process to go. A lot of the details have been filled in with improvisation, guided by plentiful references to real-world history. As a result, I’ve been surprised by some of the details as they’ve emerged, and the back-story I’m developing feels coherent and organic. There may be many more stories to be found in this framework once it’s done.

At the moment, I’m planning to produce a total of 15 maps, with attached background text, a little over half of which is already finished in rough draft. That should give me plenty of material to work with moving forward.

Once that’s done, I have a couple of days’ worth of more focused work to do, redrawing a local map and reworking a timeline, before I can start writing the second draft of The Curse of Steel. I expect to have all of this under way by mid- to late May.

One consequence of all this is that, finally, I think I’m prepared to start my Patreon campaign going once more.

In May, I plan to release a PDF titled The History of the Great Lands, including cleaned-up versions of all of the maps, a timeline, and a pile of additional text. That will serve as a first teaser for the Great Lands RPG sourcebook I’m putting together. In June, I should be able to release a PDF of the first few chapters of the second draft of The Curse of Steel.

Shameless plug: both of those items will only be available to my patrons, so if you’re interested in them, have a look at my Patreon page and see if you’d like to sign up.

While you’re here, have a look at the sidebar for this blog. I’ve dropped the Chapterbuzz link, added links to my Patreon and DeviantArt pages, and switched the Progress Bar widget over to indicate progress on the historical-atlas series.

Now, back to the maps . . .