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Planning for February 2026

Planning for February 2026

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January was a fairly productive month, actually. I didn’t move out ahead on my university courses as much as I’d hoped, but I haven’t fallen behind, and so far my grades have continued to be exceptional. I’m quite pleased with my progress in the mathematics course, in which I seem to be succeeding with subjects that I failed to master forty years ago as an engineering student.

I made good progress on my creative projects too. I seem to be hitting my post-retirement stride – I’m having no trouble filling my days, and I seem to be exercising the discipline necessary to keep making incremental progress every day.

Here’s the tentative plan for February 2026.

University Studies

If I can do some advance work, that would be helpful at this point. If I hit the following marks, I should be about two weeks ahead at the end of the month.

Objectives for February include:

  • For my astronomy course: Read Topic 4, turn in the fourth graded assignment, and then read Topic 5.
  • For my mathematics course: Read Units 8, 9, and 10.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I’m continuing to work on “What’s Past is Prologue,” and I suspect that’s going to be an active project well into March if not longer. Definitely going to end up at short-to-medium novel length before it’s done. It’s getting good engagement from my usual readers, though, so that’s nice to see.

The objective for February is to complete “What’s Past is Prologue” at least through Chapter 16.

Architect of Worlds & Conductor of Cultures

I was able to complete version 0.4 of the Cultural Evolution Game, and playtesters and my collaborators have had a chance to look at it. Not a lot of feedback yet, so I don’t have a sense as to whether this version is a step forward or if I’m going to need to do a redesign. I do plan to produce a version 0.5, possibly in February, although that’s likely to be more fleshing-out and adding supporting material rather than changes to the mechanics.

I also got started on a formal errata list for Architect of Worlds, although I still need to track down a couple of items before I can release the thing. Lesson learned: keep a formal list of errata while you’re producing them, dummy, that way you don’t have to rack your brains months later to figure out what you were thinking at the time.

The objectives for January are:

  • Work on a minor rewrite and expansion (version 0.5) of the Cultural Evolution Game
  • Contribute to the initial design for other portions of Conductor of Cultures
  • Begin researching and drafting a new edition of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller“
  • Continue working on a formal errata list for Architect of Worlds, so readers can see what’s been fixed in each minor-version release so far
  • Continue to collect research for a potential second edition of the book, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

Personal Universes

Still continuing to collect notes and do game design for a version 0.60 of the “Human Destiny Sourcebook,” based upon FATE. Incremental progress means I’m a still long distance from being able to share any of this.

I did get some work done late in the month on something I call the “Tree of Worlds” setting. Think of this as a low-fantasy framework for alternate histories, with a generous helping of esoteric conspiracies in the mix. I’m actually writing this document as a GURPS supplement, of all things, and that’s probably how I’ll end up releasing it when it’s done.

Both of these will be posted to my Kofi, free for subscribers, when they’re presentable.

Planning for August 2025

Planning for August 2025

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July 2025 didn’t go quite as planned, largely because of the new Symphony of Cultures project taking up a lot of space. I’m not dissatisfied with how the month went, by any means. These planning messages, and the project white-board I maintain in my office, are intended to make sure I stay creatively busy and don’t get side-tracked into unproductive channels. If a worthwhile new project crops up and pushes other items aside, I have no objections.

So here’s my current status, with the tentative plan for the month of August.

University Studies

I’ve learned that I passed both my physics course and my planetary-science course “with distinction,” which rounds out the 2024-2025 academic year nicely. I’ve successfully enrolled in two new courses for the coming academic year: a straightforward astronomy course, and a course on advanced mathematical methods. Tuition is paid, I’m good to go, but the courses don’t formally start until early October. No new objectives for this item.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I wrote a Star Trek: Lower Decks novelette titled “A Temporary Madness” in July. Be warned, if you’re considering reading that one – it’s mildly smutty. Fan-fiction leans that way sometimes.

I’m currently working on a new story, titled “Mariner’s Seven.” This is a pretty straightforward heist tale, in which Beckett Mariner and her friends are breaking into a high-tech casino on behalf of Starfleet Intelligence. Naturally, things are not going entirely according to plan. The objective for August is to complete that story.

Architect of Worlds & Symphony of Cultures

Ken Burnside and I (finally) reached an agreement on a “policy document” describing what we consider appropriate for projects to automate the Architect of Worlds design sequences. That document is located here.

The biggest development in this category was the new Symphony of Cultures project, in which I’ll be collaborating with two others to design and build a sourcebook for producing alien species and cultures for interstellar fiction. That’s going to be a big project, likely to take up a lot of my time over the next year, so it’s going to be prominent in my planning messages for months to come.

The objectives for August are:

  • Design a complete mini-game for the development of an alien society’s history based on its planetary environment and psychological traits, and begin writing that section of the Symphony of Cultures rough draft
  • Contribute to the initial design for other portions of Symphony of Cultures
  • Begin researching and drafting a new edition of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller“
  • Reconstruct a formal errata list for Architect of Worlds, so readers can see what’s been fixed in each minor-version release so far
  • Continue to collect research for a potential second edition of the book, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

The Human Destiny Universe

I had a burst of cartographic activity early in July, and was able to produce and publish two maps for the Human Destiny setting. The third map – a small scale map of the so-called “Human Protectorate” – is still on the drawing board.

The objectives for July are:

  • Build a revised map for the “Human Protectorate” region and release that to Ko-fi
  • Produce a one- or two-page document that describes typical starship designs and mission profiles, and release that to Ko-fi
  • Re-work the spreadsheets I have modeling the exploration and colonization of near-Sol space, now based on FTL assumptions
  • Revise existing “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” documents to reflect the reappearance of FTL in the setting, and release the new versions to Ko-fi
  • Resume producing new documents in the “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” series (most likely starting with the Alpha Centauri writeup) and release that for patrons to Ko-fi

Upcoming Conventions

Attendance at Travellercon this year is looking less likely, but there’s still time for me to get everything set up for that, so we’ll see.

Philcon is definitely a go, though – I’m already committed to being on the program for a seminar and some other panels, and I’ll be running a session or two in their gaming track. So that’s definitely on my schedule for a lot of prep work between now and November.

The objectives for August are:

  • Continue to attempt to register for convention programming for Travellercon 2025
  • Begin preparing a world-building seminar, tentatively titled “World-Building for Science Fiction: Getting the Astronomy Right,” for Philcon 2025
  • Begin preparing two tabletop game sessions to run at Philcon 2025
  • Sign up for up to 3-4 panel discussions at Philcon 2025

Re-publishing Earlier Fiction

I continued to make very little progress on this item in July, and it’s probably going to stay close to the bottom of the priority list. The objective for August will be to continue researching my options for re-publishing, and starting to develop a workflow for it.

Supplemental Khedai Hegemony Map

Supplemental Khedai Hegemony Map

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Another piece of cartography for the “Human Destiny” space-opera setting, related to the physical map of the Orion Arm neighborhood I posted a few days ago. This one is a simple “subway map” detailing the wormhole-bridge connections between interstellar cultures in the vicinity of Sol.

The idea here is that galactic civilization expedites travel between cultures (which are otherwise likely to be years apart even given the available FTL drives) by setting up wormhole bridges between them. The termini of these bridges aren’t placed in densely-populated star systems, in part as a hedge against an ambitious local culture deciding to capture and possibly destroy their local “stargates.” Instead, they’re usually placed in nearby red-dwarf systems that lack significant native life. Then the culture in charge – in this case, the Khedai Hegemony – fortifies the local system and builds way-stations to facilitate through-traffic.

Here’s a link to this new map’s page in my Ko-fi shop. It’s free for monthly subscribers.

New Khedai Hegemony Map

New Khedai Hegemony Map

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I’ve just completed and posted a bit of cartography related to my “Human Destiny” space-opera setting. This is a new version of a map I did back in 2018, describing (in this case, a small section of) the Khedai Hegemony, the empire that conquers Earth and uplifts humans into galactic society in the mid-to-late 21st Century.

I actually plan to produce two more maps detailing this setting as of the early 24th Century, since that’s where a lot of the stories I’ve already written are set and where the proposed roleplaying-game treatment will focus. I don’t have a timetable for finishing those, although I suspect it won’t be long.

Here’s a link to the map’s page in my Ko-fi shop. It’s free for monthly subscribers.

Planning for July 2025

Planning for July 2025

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It’s not quite the end of June yet, but I find I’ve made decent progress on all my objectives for this month, and I’ve discovered a couple of dependencies in my creative work that mean I need to move a few tasks up in the priority order. So I think I’m going to lay out the plan for July a few days early and get started on that now.

As I began with last month, the planning message for July is going to be organized around a list of high-level projects, with a few paragraphs for each. Note that for any item that has multiple objectives listed, those will be more or less in priority order, and I’m not making any commitment to finish all of them in the coming month.

University Studies

I successfully completed my two courses for the 2024-2025 academic year at the beginning of June. Haven’t seen the results of my finals or my overall grades yet, but I’m reasonably confident I did well with both courses. I’ve selected two courses for the 2025-2026 year, but those don’t start until September, which leaves the rest of the summer free. No objectives for this item.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I completed the Star Trek: Lower Decks novella “Panem et Circenses” a few days ago. Turned out pretty well, I thought – at least it’s been keeping my regular readers over on Archive of our Own happy and calling for more.

I haven’t come up with a title for the next story, which is going to involve character development, identity politics, and dealing with family issues, all of it happening on Vulcan. As I’ve observed, someday someone is going to write a story involving pon farr in which the characters involved resolve the situation without complications, and just end up happily married and ready for the next adventure. I’m not going to be writing that story!

The objective for July is to write the next story in my Lower Decks fan-fiction series.

Architect of Worlds

Today I had a lengthy conversation with Ken Burnside about a number of items having to do with Architect of Worlds. In particular, we had a long-overdue discussion about his vision for providing automation for Architect. We also talked about some possible follow-on products, most notably an expanded and improved version of the “Architect of Worlds for Traveller” document I put together a couple of years ago.

The objectives for July are:

  • Draft a one-page specification document for an automated utility for Architect of Worlds which can he hosted on the Ad Astra Games website, and get that approved by Ken Burnside
  • Begin researching and drafting a new edition of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller,” with the objective of being able to start final layout in August
  • Reconstruct a formal errata list, so readers can see what’s been fixed in each minor-version release so far
  • Continue to collect research for a potential second edition of the book, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

The Human Destiny Universe

I was able to rework my basic “structure of interstellar civilizations” document for Human Destiny in June, and published that for my Ko-fi readers. The next step in reworking that setting is going to involve some cartography, and some general notes on ship design. One I’ve finished those steps, I think I’ll be going back to the star system writeups I’ve already done and revising those, then starting to produce new ones.

The objectives for July are:

  • Build revised maps for near-Sol space on two scales, one for just the “Human Protectorate” region, another for a substantial portion of the Orion Arm that places the 8-12 other civilizations that humans will interact with most frequently, and release those to Ko-fi
  • Produce a one- or two-page document that describes typical starship designs and mission profiles, and release that to Ko-fi
  • Re-work the spreadsheets I have modeling the exploration and colonization of near-Sol space, now based on FTL assumptions
  • Revise existing “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” documents to reflect the reappearance of FTL in the setting, and release the new versions to Ko-fi
  • Resume producing new documents in the “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” series (most likely starting with the Alpha Centauri writeup) and release that for patrons to Ko-fi

Upcoming Conventions

I had originally intended to hit some of the conventions closest to me this year, but the windows for getting on con programming and making other arrangements passed while I was still employed by the federal government, and I missed a lot of those opportunities. So in 2025 I think I’m going to hit the same conventions I attended last year: Travellercon in October, and Philcon in November. I’ll revisit my plans for conventions in the Baltimore-Washington area next year.

The objectives for July are:

  • Register for convention programming for both Travellercon 2025 and Philcon 2025
  • Begin preparing a world-building seminar, tentatively titled “World-Building for Science Fiction: Getting the Astronomy Right,” for one or both conventions
  • Begin preparing 2-3 tabletop game sessions to run at both conventions

Re-publishing Earlier Fiction

I made very little (although not zero) progress on this item in June, and it’s probably going to stay close to the bottom of the priority list. The objective for July will be to continue researching my options for re-publishing, and starting to develop a workflow for it.

Notes on the Structure of Interstellar Civilizations

Notes on the Structure of Interstellar Civilizations

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I’ve just published a PDF document to my Kofi page, free for current subscribers:

Notes on the Structure of Interstellar Civilizations

This is a collection of assumptions, a bit of mathematical modeling, and lots of commentary on the prevalence of interstellar cultures in the Human Destiny setting. Even if you’re not interested in that setting per se, it may be of some interest as an example of deliberate world-building on a very grand scale.

There’s going to be a follow-on project, involving making some maps of the Human Protectorate’s primary volume, and of the immediate galactic neighborhood around Sol in the Human Destiny universe. Not sure if I’ll turn to that immediately, but it’s in the critical path for my project to re-think that setting, so probably sooner rather than later.

Status Report (17 May 2025)

Status Report (17 May 2025)

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This is the first update to my writing blog in over two months, and I’ve got a lot to discuss.

Where I’ve Been

My absence over the past few months can be tied back to the results of last year’s elections here in the United States. I have plenty more to say about that, you may be sure, but not in this space – this blog is solely for my creative work and isn’t intended as a current-events commentary. Still, the immediate impact of those elections on my personal and professional life was profound. I was, after all, employed by the US federal government at the time.

Suffice it to day that late in January, my wife and I looked at our finances, and realized that it would in fact be feasible for me to retire now, rather than three or four years from now as was my original plan. Watching what was already happening elsewhere in the federal government, what was already happening in my own piece of it, we decided that was the best move to make. I put in for retirement, and as of today (17 May 2025) that’s in effect.

However, that meant I had less than four months to finish one last really big project for my office. This at a time when almost daily, major changes were being imposed on my workplace that made actually doing that work more and more difficult.

I managed to get it done – that final project was completed two days before my retirement – but at the cost of almost all my creative production from about the end of February. After taking care of my other commitments, I just didn’t have the time or the emotional resources to focus on creative work at the end of each day.

So that’s why I haven’t updated this blog, or my Kofi page, or most of my other online presence, since early March.

Fortunately, that dry spell is over. I’m now retired, and I have no plan to look for a new full-time job anytime soon. Which means I now have the time – and, once I’ve adjusted to the new state of affairs, the energy – to get busy with my own projects once again.

In short: I’m back.

Creative Projects

So, in which creative projects do I intend to start investing some of my newly available time?

Architect of Worlds

At the moment I’m mostly in maintenance mode for Architect of Worlds. I’ve started collecting some notes for an eventual second edition of the book, but it may be a few years before I feel prepared to seriously start work on that. In the meantime, Ken Burnside and I keep collecting errata and releasing new minor updates to the book.

Ken and I also need to have a discussion about possible automation for the design sequences in the book. In particular, whether we want to work with someone to produce software that can be sold, or whether we want to take a different approach. That discussion is months overdue, and there are people who have done great work producing candidate software that have been in limbo because I just haven’t had the time to give the matter my full attention. Time to get that figured out.

Meanwhile, I think I have enough material to start producing at least one or two blog posts a month on new research or extra “rules” for Architect of Worlds. Special cases, new design sequences for additional detail, worked examples, all of those are possible.

The “Human Destiny” Universe

The Human Destiny setting is my primary space-opera universe under development.

Before my hiatus, I was working on using Architect of Worlds to produce short write-ups for specific star systems in the Human Destiny universe, and publishing those via my Kofi page. I’d like to get started with that once more, and hopefully get up to producing at least one new writeup per month. All this material will eventually go into an “atlas of human space” that might be published as a complete book.

I also want to get back to serious design work on the Human Destiny tabletop RPG, using some game system that has a third-party-creator-friendly licensing scheme. Most likely candidates are Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying engine, and the Modiphius 2d20 engine.

Finally, I have three or four new pieces of fiction in this setting at various stages of development. Plus a couple of previously published works that I’m considering taking down, re-working, and republishing on a more creator-friendly platform. (Self-publishing on Amazon certainly makes money for Amazon, but the available evidence suggests it doesn’t do much for most authors.) Those stories are likely to appear as I find my hindbrain has finished processing them.

Writing Fan-Fiction

The one creative outlet I did manage to pursue over the past few months has been writing some fan-fiction, specifically Star Trek: Lower Decks fan-fiction. That’s been so much fun (not to mention useful therapy for stressful times) that I’m likely to continue with it. The stories I’ve written thus far are all available on Archive of Our Own: Lower Decks Continues.

The portion of my subconscious mind that I call “my muse” also handed me another insanely ambitious fan-fiction idea recently: write a sequel to the classic Arthur C. Clarke novel The City and the Stars. As often happens, I keep telling my muse to drop the idea, and she keeps ignoring me and handing me concept after concept in support of it. I suspect I’m going to have to write the thing just to get her to shut up about it.

Other Projects

There’s also my Fourth Millennium historical-fantasy setting, which got a fair amount of my attention last year and will probably rise back to the top of the queue at some point.

One project that’s long overdue: over the past couple of years, I’ve purchased several tabletop games that I’ve just never had time to bring to the table. Now that most of my days are going to have plenty of free hours, that’s going on the agenda. Some of those titles are nicely evocative and thematic, and they may well suggest some ideas for stories. I won’t know until I’ve tried them out . . .

Finally, I’m still working on a second undergraduate degree, and eventually a master’s degree, from the Open University. That’s going to continue, and in fact over the next 2-3 weeks it will take up a significant chunk of time – final assignments and exams are coming up. By next fall I’ll likely be enrolled in a couple of new courses. Still, with my day job no longer a factor, I expect I’ll be able to be a better student and still get a lot more creative work done.

Current Status

So there it is – I’m on the cusp of a major realignment in my time and creative work. I plan to spend what’s left of May just adjusting to my new status, working on my university courses, and starting to build some new habits. You may see some new work from me before the first of June, but I’m not prepared to make any promises.

About the beginning of June, though, you can expect to see the monthly planning message resume, and I’ll hopefully be producing new items on a regular basis for the first time since early this year.

My thanks for everyone’s patience. Looking forward to the new adventure . . .

Planning (sort of) for March 2025

Planning (sort of) for March 2025

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Very short planning message this month, because I’m honestly finding it difficult to plan creative work more than a few days in advance right now. For anyone who’s getting impatient, my apologies and things are likely to improve dramatically after 16 May.

My current primary objectives, assuming I find the time and serenity for them, are to (1) knock out one or two more star-system writeups for the Human Destiny setting, and (2) maybe pull together some more notes for the Human Destiny RPG sourcebook. On that second item, I’ve got a fairly complete set of character-design rules in the back of my head, and I think they hold together pretty well, it’s just a matter of getting them down on paper.

Meanwhile, my “writing fan-fiction for therapy” pseudo-project isn’t going too badly. About 21,500 words of new prose in the past two weeks, which isn’t bad at all for something I’m just doing in odd moments. I’d almost forgotten how smoothly the prose can flow when you’re playing in someone else’s sandbox. I’ve decided against posting any of that work to my Ko-fi, since fan-fiction really shouldn’t be allowed that close to even small amounts of actual money, but if anyone’s interested here are a couple links:

Some more things developing on the back burner, but better to discuss those when they’ve taken shape a bit more fully. Also, when I’m out from under my current employment and can start enjoying retired life. Two months and seven days . . .

Status Report (26 February 2025)

Status Report (26 February 2025)

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Some of you may be aware that I’m employed by the US federal government. As you can imagine, it’s been chaos in the office for weeks now. Rather exciting, going into the office every day, not knowing if this is the day you’ll be ordered to do something blatantly illegal . . . or just arbitrarily fired. Fortunately, I’m on the glide path to retiring from federal service as of mid-May, but that’s also taking up a lot of my attention and emotional investment right now.

As a result – part scheduling adjustments, part just not having the emotional budget to keep up – my creative plans for February are kind of out the window at this point.

One new item is that my muse, fickle creature that she is, has got me writing fan-fiction again for the first time in many years. Earlier this month I managed to knock out a 9,000-word novelette for Star Trek: Lower Decks. What can I say, now that the show is over, I wanted more . . . and maybe a little hopium is what I personally need right now.

So I’m probably not going to hit my planned marks by the end of February. However, I’m hoping to have at least one Human Destiny star system writeup finished shortly. That first bit of fan-fiction will be going up on my Ko-fi as well, as a freebie for all visitors – that’s going to be the usual pattern if and when I write more. With any luck, I’ll be able to keep ahead of other tasks and get those projects knocked out by the first few days in March. Then we’ll see what seems appropriate for next month.

The good news, creatively speaking, is that in no more than two-and-a-half months, I’m going to be a retiree. More time to write, at least!

Planning for February 2025

Planning for February 2025

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Well. January of 2025 was certainly not a dull month. Not going to discuss my opinions about what’s been going on here. I certainly have opinions, as my family can attest from dinner-table conversation, but that’s not generally what I use this blog for.

What I can say is that I’m about to undertake a pretty big life event, after which (roughly mid-May of this year) I may suddenly have a lot more time and attention to give to my creative work. So even this dark cloud might have a silver lining to offer.

For now, though, I’m going to be pushing forward with the usual projects.

In January I got caught up with my university courses, so I’m coming into February in good shape there. I got two star-system writeups drafted for the Atlas of the Human Protectorate last month, and I plan to continue working on those. I also intend to spend some time in February starting to assemble the next draft of the Human Destiny RPG sourcebook. I’ll probably start with the revised character design rules.

Here’s the list for February:

  • Produce the writeups for two star systems for the Atlas of the Human Protectorate, post as a freebie for high tiers on Ko-fi
  • Start work on revisions to the Human Destiny setting bible and core RPG rules, specifically to write the new character design rules
  • Start (or resume) work on at least one new Human Destiny story
  • Continue to collect and rewrite existing material for posting to Ko-fi

The first two items are this month’s hard-and-fast objectives. The main wild card this month is that my employer has abruptly cut off all possibility of telework, which means I don’t have as much flexibility in my schedule now and I’m having to spend more time in the office. I’m not expecting that to make all that big a change, though – I got used to teleworking after the pandemic, and I was probably more productive that way, but I’m not having too much trouble adjusting to the new (old) way of doing things.