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Status Report (20 June 2024)

Status Report (20 June 2024)

I spent the first half of June mostly working on tasks for my day job, and collecting notes for the Fourth Millennium universe. A lot of those notes are going into a specially designed Notion database. If I can figure out how to share that out in read-only form, as a flat document or as an online wiki, I’ll make it available for patrons and readers as a free release before the end of this month.

Meanwhile, earlier this week I had an inspiration for a story set in the Fourth Millennium timeline. Specifically, a story about the death of Alexander the Great and its immediate consequences, but with a number of alternate-historical details to lead the event in a different direction than happened in the Original History. I took a couple of days to work through the details in my head, and then I started writing. So far I’ve been knocking out at least a thousand words per day on that story. Best guess is that it will end up novelette length before it’s finished, and it’s likely to serve as a charged release for my patrons by the end of the month.

Progress! It’s nice to get back to work on a project that’s been lying fallow for a long time – my creative process seems to need that kind of refreshment every now and then.

Planning for April 2023

Planning for April 2023

March was a surprisingly productive month. I blew right past my milestone for the layout and book design of Architect of Worlds. I believe I can predict now, with high confidence, that the bulk of the layout will be finished sometime in June. At that point I’ll still need to make one more editorial pass, create and arrange a bunch of filler art, probably clean up the cover and a few other illustrations, and create the credits page and the table of contents. I can’t imagine any of that will take more than a couple of months to finish. Very tentatively, let’s look to see Architect of Worlds released in its first edition late this summer.

I also managed to get a chapter or so written in Twice-Crowned. That looks like a good trend to maintain in the coming month. On the side, I’ve been tinkering with the alternate history for the Danassos setting. I had become dissatisfied with a few elements of the history about the time of the Twice-Crowned novel, so I’ve been going back in what little free time I have and working out some changes. That’s set me back from working with Notion so much – that will probably resume once I’m happy with the new structure.

Once again, this month’s planning message is going to look a lot like last month’s.

  • Top Priority:
    • Architect of Worlds: Continue work to design and lay out the finished book. Tentatively plan to finish through page 115 (out of approximately 180).
  • Second Priority:
    • Danassos: Continue work on the new draft of Twice-Crowned.
    • Danassos: Rebuild the alternate-historical timeline.
    • Human Destiny: Continue compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate.
    • Human Destiny: Produce a map of late 23rd-century Mars for the Atlas.

I expect at least one free update for my patrons – the next partial interim draft of the Architect book design. I suspect there’s a good chance that I’ll also be able to issue a charged release in April: the next partial draft of Twice-Crowned, hopefully well past the mid-point of the planned story.

Planning for March 2023

Planning for March 2023

I didn’t get as much done in February as I had originally hoped, although those milestones were probably more than a little optimistic. I wrote a little bit of Twice-Crowned, and made it almost to page 40 in the layout and book design for Architect of Worlds.

The only really new element in February: I’m starting to use the documentation tool Notion to gather and collate notes for the Danassos setting. That’s really promising as a method for archiving world-building notes for a given setting – much better than my usual procedure involving a bunch of disorganized Word documents. For now, I’m using it to support work on Twice-Crowned and to prepare for work on the Fourth Millennium RPG book later this year. I also anticipate it may be a very useful tool for the Human Destiny setting – I can see using it to cleanly document Architect of Worlds designs for various star systems, for example.

So in any case, this month’s planning message is going to look a lot like last month’s, aside from some minor tweaks.

  • Top Priority:
    • Architect of Worlds: Continue work to design and lay out the finished book. Tentatively plan to finish through page 70 (out of approximately 180).
  • Second Priority:
    • Danassos: Continue work on the new draft of Twice-Crowned.
    • Danassos: Gather notes in Notion for an eventual Fourth Millennium book.
    • Human Destiny: Continue compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate.
    • Human Destiny: Produce a map of late 23rd-century Mars for the Atlas.

As usual, while I focus primarily on Architect, I don’t expect a charged release for my patrons this month unless I get really ambitious with the novel or some other piece of fiction. There will probably be at least one free update – the next partial interim draft of the Architect book design.