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Echoes

Echoes

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While I continue rooting through my basement, boxing up the last scraps of small items I don’t want to discard, I’m coming across some interesting items.

Back in the 1995-2005 timeframe, I kept many handwritten notes in small notebooks. At the time a lot of my creative thinking happened at the office, or in other places where I didn’t have access to my computer or the Internet, so handwritten notes were very useful. Apparently I still have all of those notebooks, salted away on low shelves or in boxes that haven’t been opened in many years; very few of these got water-damaged in the recent disaster. So, for example, just today I found:

  • An extensive set of notes titled “Life after Steve Jackson Games,” in which I started planning an independent creative career. Most of that plan doesn’t seem to have survived contact with reality, but a few of its features do seem to have been implemented.
  • Huge piles of notes from when I was helping to develop setting material for GURPS Traveller, including the Interstellar Wars setting. More piles of notes that eventually went into Transhuman Space.
  • My own version of the Aldebaran Sector for Traveller, along with a contract (never completed) to write a GURPS Traveller sourcebook titled Grand Frontiers.
  • Notes and hardcopy of the rules for the Game of Empire system I developed for realm-level play in Traveller. This is the game that I refereed for a bunch of GURPS Traveller fans about 2000, developing a ton of background information (including months’ worth of Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society news items) for the Solomani Rim.
  • Notes for a new generic RPG system. Apparently I was already thinking in terms of developing my own rules mechanics so as to publish game material without running into licensing issues. Probably never going to be developed now, but still interesting.
  • Notes for a realm-management game set in Bronze Age Greece. I think this did get deployed in a GURPS campaign I was running back in the day, although one of my players reacted so badly to the system in its first session that the campaign disbanded almost immediately afterward.
  • Extensive notes for at least three genre settings. One these eventually gave rise to my first complete original novel (the unpublishable one). Another looks very much like an early version of my Human Destiny space opera setting. A third was a fantasy setting I had forgotten about entirely and might now think about revisiting.
  • Extensive musings on philosophy and theology. I’m almost afraid to re-read these in detail. I’m a cheerful solitary regarding such matters, so it doesn’t concern me that my ideas aren’t in lockstep with any extant school of thought. Still, I suspect the me of 2023 might find the me of circa 2000 kind of hard to take.

Quite the treasure trove. Hard to say whether any of it will ever see the light of day again – it’s not as if I don’t have enough creative work to do already – but it’s still interesting reading. All of it’s going in boxes to be preserved.

Planning for December 2021

Planning for December 2021

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I think I may have diagnosed the long-period creative slump I was in for most of the fall.

About mid-November, I summarily ejected an unproductive activity that had been taking up some time every day since the height of the pandemic: playing one or another MMO online. Back when I was on extended medical leave, working from home if at all, spending an hour or two a day gaming wasn’t an issue. Once I was back in the office full-time, and especially given that my workload there has stepped up a bit since the summer, it was crowding out time and energy that could have been spent on creative work. One day I decided to shut the most recent game down cold turkey – gave away all my in-game assets, closed out my account – and almost the very next day I found myself getting unblocked. We often don’t realize what’s damming the creative flow until we find the problem and patch it.

So November was yet another month with no big milestones and no major releases, but December is already looking like a big improvement. I have a Human Destiny novelette that’s well on its way to completion in first draft, and I’m making good progress on a new section of the setting bible for that universe.

So, without further ado, here’s the outline for the month of December.

  • Top Priority (“this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful”)
    • Human Destiny: Finish the new novelette “Roanoke” for eventual collection and publication.
    • Human Destiny: Research and produce a timeline for the terraforming of Mars in this universe.
    • Human Destiny: Produce a high-level map of terraformed Mars for the Cortex Prime sourcebook and setting bible.
    • Human Destiny: Write a few thousand more words of the Cortex Prime sourcebook and setting bible.
  • Second Priority (“work on this as time permits”):
    • Krava’s Legend: Write a few new chapters of The Sunlit Lands.
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section of special cases and additional worldbuilding material that doesn’t fit into the design sequence.
    • Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
  • Back Burner (“work on this only if everything else gets blocked”):
    • Architect of Worlds: Return to improvement and polishing of the Introduction and Design Sequence document, leading to a new minor-version release. This work may involve updating all of the worked examples, and making mathematical notation more consistent.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
    • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller.

Clearly the Human Destiny material is going to get the lion’s share of my attention this month. I should be able to finish “Roanoke” within another week or so, and that’s likely to be at least 10,000 words of new material all by itself. The setting bible is going to get a big chunk of new material as well.

Most likely, my patrons are going to get a final draft of “Roanoke” as a charged release this month, with the understanding that there’s also going to be a free update to the Human Destiny setting bible that incorporates a bunch of new material. We’ll see what else might make progress as well over the next few weeks.

Planning for November 2021

Planning for November 2021

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I seem to be in a long-term slump when it comes to creative effort. For a couple of months now, progress has been slow and rather scattered on all of my outstanding projects – I’ve made some progress in several areas, but no one item has moved forward enough to generate a significant milestone. Neither have I generated any new content in a big enough block to justify issuing a charged release for my patrons. About the only real milestone I hit was to publish this month’s book review.

Hard to say what’s behind this. It’s probably some mix of needing to spend most of my creative spoons on my day job, getting distracted by day-to-day concerns, and some mild dysphoria that’s making it hard to focus. The upshot is that October, like September, was something of a wash.

Yet hope springs eternal, and part of my creative discipline involves at least taking stock and laying out a plan at the beginning of each month. So here’s the plan for November.

Not much change from last month, except that I think I’m going to move a new Human Destiny short story up on the priority list – I have a concept that seems to be pushing its way to the front of my mind. Also with respect to Human Destiny, I’ve been doing a lot of research and prep work to develop a timeline for the terraforming of Mars – I think several stories in that setting will eventually be tied to that piece of it. I might push that subproject forward this month.

  • Top Priority (“this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful”)
    • Krava’s Legend: Write a few new chapters of The Sunlit Lands.
    • Human Destiny: Research and produce a timeline for the terraforming of Mars in this universe.
    • Human Destiny: Write a new short story for eventual collection and publication.
  • Second Priority (“work on this as time permits”):
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section of special cases and additional worldbuilding material that doesn’t fit into the design sequence.
    • Human Destiny: Write a few thousand more words of the Cortex Prime sourcebook and setting bible.
    • Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
  • Back Burner (“work on this only if everything else gets blocked”):
    • Architect of Worlds: Return to improvement and polishing of the Introduction and Design Sequence document, leading to a new minor-version release. This work may involve updating all of the worked examples, and making mathematical notation more consistent.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
    • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller.

If I can produce enough new prose between The Sunlit Lands and a Human Destiny story, that will likely be a charged release for my patrons this month. If some of the Second Priority material makes progress, I’ll likely post that to my blog and share it with my patrons for free as well. I also have a couple of good candidates for book reviews for the month of November.

Planning for October 2021

Planning for October 2021

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Well, September didn’t go according to plan on any level, but I did manage to get a few creative tasks done:

  • I produced a new minor update for the main portion of Architect of Worlds, and shared that with my patrons as a free update.
  • I finished revising “In the House of War” and published it through Amazon and a number of other outlets. The workflow for that involved the Draft2Digital service, which worked out rather nicely – I think that will be the default for future fiction releases.
  • I published a book review.

Reviewing all of the open projects, I think I’m most concerned to get some new fiction written. Second Dawn has been hanging fire at six chapters since the Kindle Vella service went live. Even worse, it’s been over a year now since The Curse of Steel was released, and I’m no closer to having the sequel finished than I was in the spring. Time to start cranking out some chapters for one or both of those!

So here’s the plan for the month of October:

  • Top Priority (“this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful”):
    • Krava’s Legend: Write a few new chapters of The Sunlit Lands.
    • Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
  • Second Priority (“work on this as time permits”):
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section of special cases and additional worldbuilding material that doesn’t fit into the design sequence.
    • Human Destiny: Write a few thousand more words of the Cortex Prime sourcebook and setting bible.
    • Human Destiny: Write a new short story for eventual collection and publication.
    • Krava’s Legend: More research toward improvements to my release-and-marketing workflow.
  • Back Burner (“work on this only if everything else gets blocked”):
    • Architect of Worlds: Return to improvement and polishing of the Introduction and Design Sequence document, leading to a new minor-version release. This work may involve updating all of the worked examples, and making mathematical notation more consistent.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
    • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller.

Ideally, I’ll produce at least six chapters each of The Sunlit Lands and Second Dawn, that can be this month’s charged release for my patrons, and I’ll be able to polish and publish the Second Dawn chapters next month. If any of the Architect of Worlds documents or the Human Destiny setting bible make enough progress, those will turn into free updates. As always, I’ll want to complete one or two book reviews for self-published or indie fiction this month.

Watch this space for status reports, and if any of the above interests you, please consider signing up as a patron using the link in the sidebar.

Planning for July 2021

Planning for July 2021

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Well, I said I was going to spend the month of June focusing on writing new fiction. Apparently I wasn’t kidding. I produced about 22,500 words of new early-draft fiction in June, for an average of about 750 words per day all month. Pretty good work rate for me.

The new material included the first six chapters of Second Dawn, which is mostly likely going to be the first serialized novel in a series, all published on the Kindle Vella platform. Second Dawn is placed in my new Scorpius Reach space-opera setting, and I’m quite happy with how it’s turning out so far.

I also wrote “Derga’s Tale,” a roughly 10,000-word novelette set in the Iron Age setting of Krava’s Legend. “Derga’s Tale” is the story of how Krava’s parents met. It’s the first short piece in what’s eventually going to be a collection of 5-6 stories, all prequels to The Curse of Steel. Once I’ve written all of those stories, I plan to edit them into a book-length collection, which I’ll then use to practice the new publication and marketing methods I’ve been researching. In particular, the collection will serve as a “reader magnet” that I can use for promotion of the series.

Finally, I also released a minor-version update to the Scorpius Reach setting bible, and published one book review. Not a bad month in all, even if the month didn’t quite go as I’d planned it. Planning is essential, even if you don’t always stick to the plan.

Incidentally, June was also surprisingly successful on the social-media front. I appear to have lost a patron at the beginning of the month, but since then I’ve seen three or four new patrons come in. Welcome to all the newcomers! Surprising number of new Facebook contacts as well, given that I’m not taking any specific action to promote this site. I’m not going to question good fortune.

Now that I’ve gotten some fiction written, I think this month will be spent focusing on pushing Architect of Worlds a few steps forward. Here’s the priority list for July 2021.

  • Top Priority (“this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful”):
    • Architect of Worlds: Return to improvement and polishing of the Introduction and Design Sequence document, leading to a new minor-version release.
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write a few more chapters of The Sunlit Lands.
    • Scorpius Reach: Finish final editing of the first six chapters of Second Dawn, and post the novel to Kindle Vella so it’s available to readers when the platform goes live.
  • Second Priority (“work on this as time permits”):
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section of special cases and additional worldbuilding material that doesn’t fit into the design sequence.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
    • Krava’s Legend: More research toward improvements to my release-and-marketing workflow.
    • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller.
  • Back Burner (“work on this only if everything else gets blocked”):
    • Human Destiny: Write a new short story for eventual collection and publication.
    • Human Destiny: Write a few thousand more words of the Cortex Prime sourcebook and setting bible.

For my patrons, this month’s free releases will probably include a new minor-version release of the Architect of Worlds design sequence. This month’s charged release, if there is one, will probably be a block of new material for Architect of Worlds, and possibly another short story from Krava’s Legend or a few new chapters of The Sunlit Lands.

As always, I’ll want to complete one or two book reviews for self-published or indie fiction this month. I’m in the middle of a very good candidate right now, so two reviews this month seems possible.

Watch this space for status reports, and if any of the above interests you, please consider signing up as a patron using the link in the sidebar.

Planning for June 2021

Planning for June 2021

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The last few months have been very productive, and I think this pattern of posting a status report and priority list at the beginning of each month is helping. Not to mention that it’s likely to be useful information for my patrons, and anyone else who’s following my work.

May was a good month overall. I released an update to my Scorpius Reach setting bible, adding a fair amount of material to the initial draft. This gathered some good attention from the Traveller communities on Facebook and Reddit. I also released a minor-version update to the Architect of Worlds Introduction and Design Sequence document. Finally, I wrote and released the first draft of a completely new section of Architect of Worlds: the Working with Astronomical Data document.

I did not get any new fiction written, and I think I need to refocus on that in the coming month. Earlier this year I had a potential project to write and sell several stories, and for a while I was holding time and energy aside for that. Unfortunately, that seems to have fallen through, so I’m turning back to writing in my own original universes again for a while.

One very useful milestone happened this month. I’ve been developing my Scorpius Reach setting, not just as a test-bed for the Game of Empire rules, but also possibly as the backdrop for some serialized fiction to bring to market. Although the stories themselves are going to be entirely original to me, and I don’t plan to market them as anything but original fiction, there was still a potential IP problem there. I’ve been using the Traveller game rules to help develop the setting, and the “bible” for it is framed in terms of a Traveller universe. So I decided to approach Marc Miller, the owner and primary publisher of Traveller, and discuss how best to avoid stepping on his intellectual property. Once I described what I was planning to do, he immediately and graciously granted me permission to proceed without any concerns. So that’s a big potential obstacle out of the way. I plan to start writing the first Scorpius Reach serialized novel in June.

So here’s the priority list for June 2021. I’m reworking the format a little, to organize by a hierarchy of urgency first, rather than by overall project:

  • Top Priority, or the “this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful” level:
    • Architect of Worlds: Return to improvement and polishing of the Introduction and Design Sequence document, leading to a new minor-version release.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write a few more chapters of The Sunlit Lands.
    • Scorpius Reach: Write the first few chapters of a serialized novel to be published via Kindle Vella.
  • Second Priority, or the “work on this as time permits” level:
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section of special cases and additional worldbuilding material that doesn’t fit into the design sequence.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write the first short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
    • Krava’s Legend: More research toward improvements to my release-and-marketing workflow.
    • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules.
  • Back Burner, or the “work on this only if everything else gets blocked” level:
    • Human Destiny: Write a new short story for eventual collection and publication.
    • Human Destiny: Write a few thousand more words of the Cortex Prime sourcebook and setting bible.

For my patrons, this month’s free releases will almost certainly include a new minor-version release of the Architect of Worlds design sequence. This month’s charged release, if there is one, will probably be a block of new fiction from the Krava’s Legend and Scorpius Reach settings. I do hope to produce some new Architect of Worlds material this month, but there probably won’t be enough of that to bundle up as a release for my patrons, so maybe look for that in July.

As always, I’ll want to complete one or two book reviews for self-published fiction this month.

Watch this space for status reports, and if any of the above interests you, please consider signing up as a patron using the link in the sidebar.

A small administrative note: I spent some time this morning cleaning up the post tags on this site, merging a few tags and making sure they had consistent format. In particular, I merged all the tags that made any reference to my high-fantasy novel series into the krava’s legend tag. I also merged the tags that referred to the various Bios-series games by Phil Eklund into the bios tag. Might make the site a little easier to navigate.

Update: The Scorpius Reach Setting

Update: The Scorpius Reach Setting

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I’ve made a bunch of updates to the “Scorpius Reach” document. It’s up to about 13,000 words now, with extensive revisions to the material I published at the end of March, and a bunch of new material as well. Still a living document, but it’s a lot closer to a final release than before, and it would probably work quite well as the setting bible for a tabletop game campaign. This is a free release for my blog readers and patrons.

Here’s a link to the current draft in PDF form: The Scorpius Reach (version 0.2).

Planning for May

Planning for May

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Making a post like this at the beginning of the month seems to work, at least for certain values of “work.” Insert comments about plans never surviving contact with the foe, plans being useless whereas planning is essential, that kind of thing.

Biggest change-of-plans in April involved a sudden side project for both Architect of Worlds and the “Scorpius Reach” setting. This was the “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller” project, which ate up a lot of hours through the middle of the month. Still very productive, both by teaching me a lot of Excel Fu, and by helping me produce a document which attracted a lot of attention from Traveller fans.

So although progress on all the goals I identified at the beginning of April was a bit anemic, I’m not unhappy with how things went. I did a free minor-version release for the Architect of Worlds design sequence. I got unblocked with respect to Krava’s Legend and was able to write a few more chapters of The Sunlit Lands. I also picked up several new blog readers and patrons – welcome to all the newcomers!

Still, I think the plan for May is going to look a lot like the plan for April. As always, we’ll see how things actually go. One wrinkle is that I’m fully immunized against COVID-19 now, so I’ll be going back into the office starting Monday. That shouldn’t cripple my creative schedule – I’ve been fully on the clock, albeit working from home, for months already. Still, my daily routine is going to need some adjustment.

Here’s the agenda, more or less in order of priority:

  • 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 10,000 words on the first draft of The Sunlit Lands.
    • Write the first item to go into my “reader magnet,” a collection of short pieces telling some of the back story for the lead characters of Krava’s Legend. The idea is to release that widely and for free, and use it to attract readers to the novel series.
    • Do more investigation toward improvements to my release-and-marketing workflow: find affordable sources for professionally done book cover art, read about techniques for book marketing on a budget that won’t take away too much time from writing, and so on.
  • Scorpius Reach Sector and Game of Empire
    • Develop more of the sector map and setting bible.
    • Develop a set of characters and a rough story outline for serialized fiction, possibly to be released on the new Kindle Vella platform.
    • Begin assembling a third-edition draft of the Game of Empire rules.
  • Human Destiny Sourcebook
    • Write a few thousand more words to fill out new sections of the partial rough draft.

Free updates for my patrons will probably include a minor-version release of the Architect of Worlds design sequence, and possibly a piece of Krava’s Legend short fiction. This month’s charged release, if there is one, will probably be a combination of additional 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. Fortunately I’ve found a few self-published novels by way of this blog’s contact form, which may lead to reviews.

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.

Planning for April

Planning for April

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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.

The Scorpius Reach

The Scorpius Reach

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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.

Here’s the promised link: The Scorpius Reach. Enjoy!