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Status Report (26 February 2022)

February 26, 2022 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

The best-laid plans of mice and men, and all that.

My plan for February was to get a major update of the world-design sequence for Architect of Worlds out the door, and then pivot to finishing the Human Destiny novelette “Remnants” before the end of the month. Okay, one out of two isn’t bad.

It turns out that writing a murder mystery is hard. I’ve rewritten “Remnants” three times in the past couple of weeks, and I keep finding plot holes that mean the story still won’t work. I don’t think there’s any way the story will be finished to my satisfaction before the end of February. I’m honestly not sure how long it will take me to get it straightened out, even if I stay focused on it to the exclusion of other projects.

It appears to be time to throw in the towel and move to something else, while the back of my brain works on “Remnants” on its own schedule. That means there will be no charged release for February for my patrons. I’m going to concentrate on getting started on a new project for next month, and in the meantime pushing a book review out with what’s left of this month. I’ll post a planning message early in March as usual.

Two Planetary Systems

February 18, 2022 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Time for a quick taste of how the new Architect of Worlds version is turning out.

Long-time followers of this project will remember the two running examples in the draft: planetary systems named Arcadia and Beta Nine that are intended to demonstrate how the system works in practice. I’m in the process of re-working all of the examples, which should be the last step before I share the current draft with my patrons and my readers here.

Here are a couple of tables to suggest some of the results of the revised system.

Arcadia Planetary System
Orbital Radius	Planet Type	Planet Mass	Density	Radius	Surface Gravity
0.254 AU	Terrestrial Planet	0.26	0.75	4470 km	0.53 g
0.380 AU	Terrestrial Planet	1.75	1.09	7460 km	1.28 g
0.580 AU	Terrestrial Planet	1.34	1.10	6800 km	1.17 g
1.00 AU	Terrestrial Planet	0.22	0.74	4250 km	0.49 g
2.12 AU	Planetoid Belt	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
4.08 AU	Large Gas Giant	460	0.20	84100 km	2.64 g
8.12 AU	Medium Gas Giant	180	0.075	85300 km	1.00 g
12.0 AU	Small Gas Giant	52.0	0.14	45800 km	1.00 g
17.6 AU	Failed Core	2.80	1.13	8620 km	1.53 g

Not too many surprises here – this resembles the previous version’s Arcadia system fairly strongly. For some context, the primary star here is a singleton K2V, with about four-fifths the mass and one-third the luminosity of Sol. The third planet (at 0.58 AU) is the Earthlike candidate that I intend to use as an example for the last portion of the design sequence.

Beta Nine Planetary System
Orbital Radius	Planet Type	Planet Mass	Density	Radius	Surface Gravity
0.027 AU	Terrestrial Planet	1.22	1.09	6610 km	1.13 g
0.038 AU	Terrestrial Planet	0.94	1.01	6220 km	0.99 g
0.062 AU	Planetoid Belt	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
0.135 AU	Small Gas Giant	12.0	0.29	22000 km	1.00 g
0.390 AU	Failed Core	2.80	1.16	8540 km	1.56 g

The Beta Nine primary is an M4V red dwarf, with about 0.18 solar masses and less than 1% of Sol’s luminosity. It also has a brown-dwarf companion that cuts off planetary formation too far away from the primary. This planetary system is actually quite a bit different from the previous draft’s Beta Nine. The new model I’m using provides enough planetesimal mass for at least a small gas giant world, and it also allows for the possibility that some of that planetesimal mass “migrates” into the inner system to help form rocky worlds. So we end up with more planets this time, and the terrestrial worlds are considerably bigger.

One inspiration here is the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system. My old model didn’t have much trouble generating a planetary system like that for a small red dwarf, but it needed a pretty massive protoplanetary disk to do it. Under the new model, a red dwarf star doesn’t need an improbably big disk mass to have a chance at Earth-sized worlds. Given how many red dwarfs we’ve found with planets of significant size, I suspect the new model fits the facts better.

I’m hoping to have the new draft out as a free update for my patrons, and as an update to the version posted on this site, within a few days.

Status Report (30 January 2022)

January 30, 2022 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Well, the honey and the biscuits are not quite coming out even.

I’m making decent progress on “Remnants,” a new Human Destiny novelette. However, that’s going more slowly than I had expected; I’m discovering that writing a murder mystery is a bit more challenging than my usual genre. I’ve also settled on an indie novel to review before the end of the month, and I’m plowing through that text at a rapid pace. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have enough free hours left before the end of the month to get both tasks finished.

Doing at least one book review a month has to take precedence, so as a result, there will be no charged release for my patrons for January 2022. I’ll most likely be able to finish “Remnants” in the first week or so of February, and that will probably be the next charged release. I haven’t settled on the next major project to get attention, but I suspect I may be looking hard at a major round of revisions to the Architect of Worlds design sequence, based on the new research I mentioned in this post from last week.

More news early in February.

2021 in Review

January 1, 2022 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

In some ways, 2021 was a pretty good year at the Palace. The blog has been growing steadily every year since I resumed it in 2018, and 2021 was no exception. We got several thousand distinct views, which isn’t bad for a non-themed, meandering blog by a part-time creative. On the Patreon side of things, I’ve reached almost two dozen active patrons. I’m not sure yet, but I think income from my original work is approaching the level that I make on the long tail from my tabletop industry period years back. Not a bad milestone, even if it’s still orders of magnitude short of “quit the day job” money.

This was the first full year after I started cross-posting to social media. It was also the first full year since I started posting one or two reviews per month of self-published or indie fiction. Those no doubt helped.

As usual, the main factors holding me back are the part-time nature of my work, and the fact that I likely have too many distinct projects under way. Those items make it hard for me to hit major milestones. For example, it’s been over a year since my debut novel, The Curse of Steel, was released – yet the sequel, The Sunlit Lands, is still not nearly complete in first draft. I started a space-opera novel, Second Dawn, for Kindle Vella but that project has been stalled too. My main non-fiction project, Architect of Worlds, made significant progress but still isn’t close to being finished.

My creative style seems to work for me – I don’t get completely blocked very often, and I usually make progress on something every month. I worry that it demands patience from my readers, though.

Anyway. I usually take this opportunity to look back on the top-ten new posts from the previous year. This year looks kind of different on that score. My book reviews are clearly driving some traffic, and when I can connect my work to the popular RPG Traveller, that seems to bring a lot of clicks. Something to keep in mind.

Overall, I think my goals for the coming year are going to involve two meta-objectives: to make progress on all of my outstanding projects, and at the same time to finish one of the book-length items. The best candidates for the latter are Architect of Worlds and The Sunlit Lands. Still, we’ll have to see how things go.

Planning for December 2021

December 8, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 1 comment

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.

Status Report (28 November 2021)

November 28, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Well, we’re coming down to the end of the month of November, and I’m sorry to report that the honey and the biscuits are not coming out even. (Except at our Thanksgiving table, where we had a very fine feast.)

At the moment, new material adds up to about 9,000 words, most of it in the new Human Destiny story I’m working on. That’s looking as if it will come to novelette length before I’m finished with it. I also have one new chapter of The Sunlit Lands complete in first draft, and part of the next chapter. Nothing new on any other projects, alas.

In fact, that’s better than I managed in September or October, which tells me that I may have gotten the creative engine unstuck finally. It’s still not enough to reach my self-imposed threshold for a new release for my patrons. Therefore there will be no charged release for my patrons in November.

If I can keep up the current pace, however, a full release for my patrons seems very likely in December. More on that once I’ve got the decks cleared a bit and can plan for the coming month.

Status Report (20 November 2021)

November 21, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

The day job has been taking up a lot of my time and energy over the past few weeks – there’s a great stack of work I need to get knocked out at the office before it turns into a ghost town over the holidays. Still, this weekend and the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday are promising plenty of time to get creative work done.

At the moment, I’m working to get a new Human Destiny short story put together. As with “Guanahani,” this story is set on the day when the Khedai Hegemony launches its overt invasion of Earth. In this case, the story is set on Mars, where a small outpost has been struggling to survive in isolation, ever since everything went to pot back on the home world. When the aliens arrive, they give the Martian colonists a fateful choice to make . . .

I’ve also been working on new chapters of The Sunlit Lands. That’s moving too slowly for my taste, but I may have two or three new chapters finished by the end of November.

At the moment, my plan for my patrons is to release those new chapters of The Sunlit Lands and the new short story as a charged release by the end of November. That’s conditional on the new material adding up to at least 12,000-15,000 words. I may also finish polishing up a minor version update of the Human Destiny sourcebook – that will be a free patron reward if I can get to a good milestone with it.

I’ve also been reviewing yet another creative project, something I worked on several years ago and then dropped. Another fantasy novel, in this case, but more strictly historical fantasy. It’s an alternate-timeline setting, in which Classical Greece ends up developing along very different lines than in our history. I find I actually have quite a lot of notes, and a very healthy opening already written for a novel. More about that if I decide to bring it up off the back burner.

I also owe the world at least one book review before the end of the month. A few good candidates in my TBR stack, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

Planning for November 2021

November 1, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

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

October 2, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

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.

Sharrukin's Palace

Building fantastic worlds of the mind

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