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Planning for September 2026

Planning for September 2026

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Hmm. Looks like I did it again – by the time I reminded myself about posting a planning message for August, it was already almost the end of the month. Retirement does not seem to have improved my tendency toward procrastination.

A lot has, in fact, been going on! So here’s a summary of events over the summer, and plans for the coming month.

University Studies

Summer vacation is about over, and I’m going to be starting to do some pre-review of the coming year’s course materials. In the 2026-2027 year, I’ll be taking two courses.

One is a straightforward astrophysics course, Astrophysics of stars and exoplanets, which looks as if it’s going to be digging a lot further into the quantitative aspects of modern astronomy. I’m looking forward to learning some new bits and pieces that might make their way into the putative second edition of Architect of Worlds.

The other is an experimental-physics course, Remote experiments in physics and space. You’d think it would be tough to do a lab course when you’re remote-learning across the Atlantic, but the university seems to have figured that out. I’ll be working with other students to plan and carry out some physics experiments and astronomical observations using remote access to the university’s instruments.

The courses formally open in about a week, although actual instruction doesn’t start until October. I plan to spend some time in September reading ahead and generally getting ready. At the end of this year I should be 75% finished with my BSc degree, still on track to start my post-graduate work by about 2029.

No formal objectives here for September. Those will start in October once my courses are actually under way.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

Since my last planning message, I’ve finished two stories, “The Country of Silence” and “Clear as Mudd.” The next story, “Sixpence in Her Shoe,” is under way and I plan to get that finished in September.

At this point, my return to fan-fiction writing has been going on for about a year and a half, involving 15 stories and over a third of a million words. Still not the biggest chunk of my fan-fiction corpus – my Mass Effect stories (written between 2014-2016) come to around a million words – but it’s been more robust than I expected when I started. Probably going to keep going for at least another few months before the planned series is complete.

A side project: the site where I started posting fan-fiction back in the day has become a sad example of the “dead internet” theory. It’s very poorly maintained, a lot of its functions no longer work well or at all, and it’s apparently awash in scam bots. So I’m in the process of moving all of my work off that site for good. Fortunately, I kept all my earlier work in my own files. Hence I can pull those stories up, possibly give them another coat of polish, and repost them to Archive Of Our Own (AO3) without much trouble. So as time permits, I’m doing that, including a few stories that I wrote and never did post to the old site. I’m also going to be updating my CV page on this site to make sure it points to the new master copies of everything. Once all that’s done, I’ll be deleting all my stories from the old site and deactivating my account there. Unfortunate, but probably necessary.

The objectives for September are:

  • Finish and post “Sixpence in Her Shoe”
  • Finish copying all my old stories over to AO3
  • Update the CV page on this site to reflect the current status of my fan-fiction
  • Deactivate my original fan-fiction site account

Architect of Worlds & Composer of Cultures

August and September were mostly devoted to an overhaul of the draft Cultural Evolution game for Composer of Cultures. The result was enough different from the incomplete version 0.5 draft that I’m labeling it version 0.6.

The game mechanics themselves are complete, and in fact Ken Burnside has done some red-pencil on them. Currently I’m in the process of writing all the supplementary material for the new draft (basically, all the material that would let the user interpret the results of the “game” and build an historical timeline for their fictional alien culture). No firm timeline as to when that will be finished, although I’m hoping to be able to release a complete draft to playtesters sometime this fall.

The objectives for September are:

  • Finish version 0.6 of the Cultural Evolution Game for Composer of Cultures
  • Contribute to the initial design for other portions of Composer of Cultures
  • Continue to collect other research for a potential second edition of Architect of Worlds, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

Personal Universes

I’ve been creatively blocked with my “Human Destiny” space-opera universe for quite a while. To review the bidding: in its original concept, this is a universe in which benevolent aliens arrive (about 18 years from today) and conquer Earth in order to save us from our own folly, after which humans slowly become citizens of the galaxy.

Much of my trouble with that concept has been two-fold. First, it really was hard to write stories about human characters with agency when the Overwhelmingly Benevolent Aliens were in charge of literally everything. Second, I was just having trouble believing in the premise. Okay, it’s not like there’s any shortage of human folly around, but the back story is otherwise already falling apart. As an example, one of the stories I’ve actually written for this setting had a character loosely modeled on Elon Musk as the protagonist, set on Mars in the early 2040s. These days I have zero appetite for taking any inspiration from Elon Musk, nor do I believe we’re going to be putting any humans on Mars that soon.

So the solution I’ve meandered toward is to rethink the setting, so as to preserve a lot more human agency and simultaneously divorce it from those last vestiges of America-centrism. One aspect of this is to assume humans will explore and colonize the rest of the Solar System over the next century or so, although it will be a slow process and it will be driven primarily by powers like China, India, and the European Union rather than (e.g.) Russia or the United States.

To this end, I’ve been tinkering with a tabletop game, Stellar Horizons by Andrew Rader (who is a well-known space scientist). Probably the best “explore the Solar System” game I’ve come across for messing with plausible future histories. It’s been working pretty well! There’s a sequel too, which covers the exploration of the interstellar neighborhood over the next few centuries. I’m hoping the end result will be a medium-to-long-term timeline that will get my Muse moving more effectively.

The objective for September is to finish working with Stellar Horizons and build a first revised timeline for the “Human Destiny” universe.

Planning for May 2026

Planning for May 2026

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April was a productive month. I didn’t get everything I planned done, but I made decent incremental progress on just about every front, and hit a couple of major milestones. About all I can ask for.

Here’s the plan for May.

University Studies

Just about finished with studying and assignments for both my courses for the 2025-2026 year. Late May and early June are going to be final-exam season.

Meanwhile, I’ve registered for two more courses for the coming year. One’s an astrophysics course, the other is an experimental-physics course in which I’ll be working with other students and getting time on some remote scientific instruments. In particular, I’ll be getting some time on the Open University’s telescopes in the Canary Islands and doing some actual astronomical observation, which will be cool.

The objectives for May are:

  • For my astronomy course: Finish reading Topic 7 and prepare for the final exam on 29 May.
  • For my mathematics course: Finish the tutor-marked and computer-marked assignments due on 5 May and 12 May, then prepare for the final exam on 9 June.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I was able to finish “What’s Past is Prologue” in April, which rounded out the “sixth season” of Star Trek: Lower Decks in my personal continuity. Once that was finished, I spent a few days planning and mapping out the “seventh season,” which I’ll be writing as time permits over the next year or so. I’ve started writing the first story in that sequence, with the working title of “Home Front.”

The objective for May is to complete and post “Home Front.”

Architect of Worlds & Composer of Cultures

One big milestone for April was the new version of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller,” which has been released by Ad Astra Games and is apparently already selling reasonably well.

I’m still working on version 0.5 of the Cultural Evolution Game for Composer of Cultures, making good progress on both rules mechanics and supporting material. Rather than release yet another partial draft, I’m working toward having a first complete draft for my half of the book, and there’s a decent chance I’ll be able to get that done in May. I know, I keep saying that, but I do keep getting closer every month . . .

The objectives for May are:

  • Finish version 0.5 of the Cultural Evolution Game for Composer of Cultures
  • Contribute to the initial design for other portions of Composer of Cultures
  • 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

I’m currently focusing on my “Great Lands” Iron Age fantasy setting, and I’ve posted a few draft maps here and to World Anvil. I’ve also applied the draft “Cultural Evolution Game” from Composer of Cultures to help me work out an historical back story for the setting. Next step is going to be to build a revised “historical atlas” for the setting, and make that available both on my Kofi page and on World Anvil. This is fairly low on the priority list, but I do hope to make some decent progress on it in May.

A "family tree" of famous cyberneticists in the "Star Trek" fictional universe.
A Mentorship Chain

A Mentorship Chain

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There’s a bit of worldbuilding that often comes up when you’re working in a rich setting. Sometimes you’ll want to trace master-student or mentor-protégé chains, so you can see schools of thought and who’s likely to have had the most influence on whose philosophy.

If I wanted to work in the Star Wars universe, for example, I might want to trace links between Jedi masters and their padawans. In fact, there’s a very famous chain in the canon universe, stretching five “generations” (Yoda -> Dooku -> Qui-Gon Jinn -> Obi-Wan Kenobi -> Anakin Skywalker -> Ahsoka). If I was writing wuxia fiction, I might want to trace lines of succession for the leadership of various martial-arts schools. And so on.

Today, since I’m planning the next “season” for my Star Trek: Lower Decks fan-fiction writing, I had occasion to do some research and map out just such a mentorship chain. In this case, for “important cyberneticists.” The result is the attached “family tree,” which combines both alpha canon and some plot-relevant decisions of my own. Took about 90 minutes of work to produce, including sketching out the chart in Affinity Photo.

I won’t explain every item on this tree – Star Trek fans may recognize some or all of the names, and possibly there will be some raised eyebrows at some of the links I’ve established for my own continuity. Still, this can serve as a small example of the worldbuilding technique.

Planning for April 2026

Planning for April 2026

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Huh. My apologies to my readers – it looks as if I completely failed to post a planning message for the month of March. I certainly made out a planning board, and I know I intended to make a post about it, but “I’ll do it tomorrow” must have gotten a little too entrenched. So let’s pick back up with the month of April.

In general, retired life is agreeing with me, I’m keeping up with my university coursework, and I’m getting at least a little creative work done most days. It’s just a matter of pushing long-term projects forward until I have something worth sharing . . .

Here’s the (not so tentative – I’ve got some definite commitments I need to meet) plan for April.

University Studies

Still very much on track, and as far as I can tell I haven’t scored lower than about a 94/100 on any assignment or exam so far this year. Coming down to the final stretch for both courses, with exams coming up in May.

The objectives for April are:

  • For my astronomy course: Read Topic 6, turn in the sixth graded assignment, and then read Topic 7.
  • For my mathematics course: Read Units 11, 12, and 13. Get started on the computer-marked and tutor marked assignments due in mid-May.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

“What’s Past is Prologue” reached Chapter 20 just before the end of March, and I’m definitely getting into the end-game of the plot. Probably aiming for 24-25 chapters in all. Very good chance I’ll be able to finish that novel in April, depending on how my time works out. It’s getting very good engagement, including from new readers, to the point it should soon pop into the top-five list of all the stories I’ve ever written on Archive of Our Own.

The objective for April is to complete “What’s Past is Prologue.”

Architect of Worlds & Composer of Cultures

Ken Burnside would really like to have a revised version of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller” ready to sell, and I suspect I can have a draft ready for him before the Mayday celebrations kick off, so that’s a major project right now. I’m not seeing any reason why that revised and expanded document, based on the final release version of Architect, can’t be available on the Ad Astra Games catalog within a few weeks. This is my top priority right now.

Still working on version 0.5 of the Cultural Evolution Game for Composer of Cultures. I had originally intended to do just a little polishing of existing mechanics, but the more I worked, the more I saw ways to improve the whole structure. The simulation model is complete at this point, but I’m working on the section the reader can use to translate the game results into a more-or-less detailed history of their sophont species’ cultural development. Hoping to have that done sometime in early-to-mid April.

The formal errata list for Architect of Worlds is finished and has been posted here.

The objectives for April are:

  • Draft a new edition of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller“ and release to Ad Astra for publication
  • Finish version 0.5 of the Cultural Evolution Game for Composer of Cultures
  • Contribute to the initial design for other portions of Composer of Cultures
  • 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

The “Human Destiny” and “Tree of Worlds” universes are getting occasional attention, as time permits, although progress on both is very slow. Maybe more over the summer, when I don’t have university courses to take up time and energy?

I’ve also gone back to look at my “Great Lands” Iron Age fantasy setting, with the intention of reworking some of the worldbuilding and re-releasing the fiction (“Krava’s Legend”) that I’ve written in that universe. Incremental progress there too. There’s a good chance I’ll eventually be able to point to a World Anvil page for this setting . . .

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 January 2026

Planning for January 2026

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December was a very quiet month. Most days I simply made incremental progress on game design, writing, and my university work, without hitting any big milestones. Truth be told, I was kind of taking it easy. So there’s not much specific to report about the month – I kept up with my obligations and a lot of second-tier projects just marked time.

So, without further ado, here’s the tentative plan for January 2026.

University Studies

At the moment I’m only a few days ahead on both of my courses, so I hope to do a little catching up. If I hit the following marks, I should be about two weeks ahead at the end of the month.

Objectives for January include:

  • For my astronomy course: Finish the third graded assignment, complete the first half of the course exam, and read Topic 4.
  • For my mathematics course: Finish the second graded assignment and read Units 7 and 8.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I was able to finish “The Spooky Season” in December, and start on what looks like a short-novel-length piece: “What’s Past is Prologue.” This is going to be a big work, rounding out the “season” of Star Trek: Lower Decks stories I’ve been writing since early last year. A lot of established Star Trek characters are going to appear, there’s going to be lots of intrigue, mystery, and starship battles, and Beckett Mariner is going to have her first no-kidding command with extremely high stakes.

The objective for January is to complete “What’s Past is Prologue” at least through Chapter 10.

Architect of Worlds & Conductor of Cultures

I was able to complete version 0.3 of the Cultural Evolution Game, and playtesters have had a crack at it. The assessment is that the mechanics work, but I’ve heard a couple of insights that are leading me to rethink the design almost from scratch. So version 0.4 is in the pipeline, and if my Muse’s rumblings are any indication, it’s going to look quite different.

The following list includes two top-priority items, the rest being “as time permits” (which may mean no progress).

The objectives for January are:

  • Complete a major rewrite (version 0.4) 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“
  • 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

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 long distance from being able to share any of this, although I may try to produce a short character-design document in January.

I’m also playing with revising a very old setting – I originally came up with this one for my personal RPG campaign over thirty years ago – for which I may write up a top-level overview. More about that once I’ve fleshed it out a bit.

If either of those (short) documents gets finished this month, I’ll post them to my Kofi, free for subscribers.

2025 in Review

2025 in Review

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This year was . . . an experience. Almost nothing went as I was expecting a year ago.

Personal Life

I began the year still employed by the United States federal government as a researcher in cybersecurity, an instructional designer, and an instructor. I knew the incoming administration was likely to disrupt my professional life, but I was in a wait-and-see mode.

Then the new administration came in and immediately demonstrated that it planned to be far worse than in the President’s first term. Federal departments, including mine, were being handed over to right-wing influencers who had absolutely no competence in the fields they were being asked to lead. Federal policy was immediately being oriented toward far-right-wing ideology, without regard to any facts on the ground. Critical elements of our national security were being tossed on the trash-heap. Personally, I was already being directed to do things that I considered ill-advised at best, abominably stupid at worst. I fully expected to be fired at some point for non-compliance with idiotic or outright illegal orders.

As it happened, I reached a critical age milestone about a week after Inauguration Day. My wife and I reviewed our finances, and concluded that although it wasn’t ideal for me to retire at that point, it was quite a bit more feasible than I had realized. So I started the paperwork to retire from federal service, and that evolution was completed in mid-May. I’ve been retired on my own pension, my wife’s Social Security, and 40+ years of savings ever since.

(The three months between “deciding to retire” and “walking out the door” were among the most productive in my federal career, ironically. I wrote two full-length graduate-level courses in cyber leadership in that time – not from scratch, as I had helped build earlier versions of the same curriculum in 2023-2024, but there was a lot of new material. God alone knows whether either of those courses will ever actually be delivered to students. I’m honestly not sure whether the department I worked in even exists today as more than a skeleton crew.)

Retirement has been fairly pleasant, actually. I’m eating more healthfully, I’m getting more exercise, and while my stress level is not zero it’s certainly much lower than it was before. I’m having no trouble at all filling my days, including spending a lot more time with my wife and my adult children. So that’s all to the good.

University Studies

I’m currently in my third year of working toward a second bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences (Astronomy) and a master’s degree in Space Science and Technology, all from the Open University in the UK. That program is likely to take until the spring of 2031 to complete, unless I pick up the pace at some point. So far I’ve passed all my courses with distinction, so I’m on track for my original plan. Don’t know if I’ll ever do anything with this education professionally – I’ll be pushing 66 by the time I complete my graduate work – but if I’m still capable, I might find myself an undergraduate teaching position somewhere. At the very least, it will be nice to actually have the formal training to back up all the astronomy I’ve picked up and used over the years.

To be honest, I’ve been glad I retired this spring, because my coursework in 2025 has been a bit more challenging. Had I stayed employed, something would have had to go on the back burner, and that might have been the bulk of my creative work.

Speaking of . . .

Creative Work

At the beginning of 2025, my tentative plan for creative projects involved re-releasing some of the original fiction I wrote in previous years, writing some new original fiction, and working hard on RPG material for the Human Destiny and Fourth Millennium settings.

Basically none of that happened.

In part that was due to a new book-length project: Composer of Cultures, which is likely to become the third book in the Ad Astra Games “insanely detailed worldbuilding series.” Architect of Worlds took me the better part of eight years to write, and we’re trying to produce the new book in less than a year, so it’s soaking up a lot of my development and writing time. Fortunately this time it’s a team of three writing the book: Ken Burnside, a paleontologist named Jess Miller-Camp, and me.

It’s been interesting work so far. I’m in the process of designing a “Cultural Evolution Game” which will likely be the last 40% or so of the book (Dr. Miller-Camp is writing a “Biological Evolution Game” which will come first). We’re hoping to have the book ready for the summer convention season, but we’ll see how things go.

Meanwhile, I may not have been writing much original fiction in 2025, but I did write just under 200,000 words of new fan-fiction.

Okay, when I wrapped up my first fan-fiction phase in 2017 or so, I swore I would focus on original work from that point on. My Muse isn’t always that easy to keep disciplined, though. Over the past few years I fell in love with the new Star Trek series Lower Decks, and when that had its finale in early 2025 I found myself wanting more. So I started writing not just fan-fiction, but Star Trek fan-fiction.

(Talk about getting back to one’s literary roots! I was reading – and writing, although none of that work ever saw the light of day – Star Trek fan-fiction back in the 1970s, and that era has had a significant impact on my literary life ever since.)

So far I’ve written ten complete stories, most of them novelette or novella length, and I’m currently at work on the eleventh. It’s been fun, I’m not nearly out of ideas yet, and I’ve acquired a fairly consistent audience. So this is probably going to be part of my creative output for a while.

Looking Forward

It’s difficult to make plans for the coming year, because let’s face it – my country and much of the rest of the world are currently in the hands of malicious incompetents, and I don’t think we’ve even begun to see how much destruction they can inflict on us. Just surviving with our integrity and sanity intact is likely to be a victory.

Still. Day by day I’ll have my household to keep together, my university coursework to stay ahead of, and many more creative projects on the stove than I’ll have time to bring to fruition. Most likely creative goals for 2026 will involve completing Composer of Cultures, and writing more Star Trek fiction. Pushing my own original creative projects forward will be on the agenda too. I’m improvising from one day to the next, but I haven’t fallen off the piano bench yet . . .

So for all of you who keep track of my work, many thanks and here’s hoping you’ll find some value in my output in the coming year.

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.

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.

Planning for June 2025

Planning for June 2025

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Well, here we go, my first creative-planning message in close to six months. Now that I’m retired and have a lot more open time, I intend to get back into a regular schedule of creative work, organized as before around a loose plan that’s updated each month.

I’m going to experiment a little with the format, though, starting with this month. Instead of publishing a bullet-point list, I’m going to have a few one- or two-paragraph sections, each of which describes the current state of a project set and sets out tentative goals for the coming month.

So, without further ado . . .

University Studies

This month I’m wrapping up my university studies for the 2024-2025 academic year – this is my effort to acquire a second degree in Natural Sciences (Astronomy) and maybe acquire a graduate degree in the discipline in the coming years. The first week in June is probably going to be spent mostly on studying for my final exams, which are scheduled for 5 June and 9 June.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

The one creative outlet I managed to maintain, during that last stressful five months of my federal career, was a new burst of fan-fiction writing. That’s been in the form of a series of Star Trek: Lower Decks stories, forming a personal continuity that picks up where the television series left off. So far I’ve written five complete stories and am busy with the sixth.

If you’re interested in reading any of those:

The objective for June is to finish “Panem et Circenses,” and maybe get started on the next story.

Architect of Worlds

Now that I have some time free, there are a few things I’ve been wanting to do with Architect of Worlds that may be rising to the top of the priority list. Most of this is just product maintenance.

The objectives for June are:

  • Talk to Ken Burnside about how to approach the question of automating Architect – do we want to license one pro developer to be able to sell a piece of software, do we just want to be able to offer a seal of approval for amateur developers, or do we want to try something else?
  • Reconstruct a formal errata list, so readers can see what’s been fixed in each minor-version release so far
  • Start collecting new 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

This is my primary space-opera setting, which has seen a few published stories already and is intended eventually to support more fiction as well as a tabletop RPG.

Lately I’ve been continuing to re-think the setting’s core premises, possibly because I’ve been on a Star Trek kick of late and I’m looking for ways to make the stories and the eventual RPG more Trek-like. For a while I was thinking in terms of a slower-than-light-only universe, but in many ways that’s a poor fit for pseudo-Trek, and it makes it much harder for any one character to have lots of interstellar adventures in their lifespan. I think I see a way to keep the over-arching premises of the setting while re-introducing FTL starships, but that will require some re-thinking of the structure of interstellar civilizations.

The objectives for June are:

  • Re-work the document I have that describes the shape and structure of interstellar society in the setting
  • (Tentative) Re-work the spreadsheets I have modeling the exploration and colonization of near-Sol space, now based on FTL assumptions
  • Finish writing another document in the “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” series (most likely the Alpha Centauri writeup) and release that for patrons on my Ko-fi site

Re-publishing Earlier Fiction

This is probably the last item in the priority list, but I eventually want to evaluate my previously published fiction (3-4 ebooks, mostly published on Amazon Kindle Direct) and prepare to re-issue all of it. That’s going to involve removing these ebooks from Amazon, possibly giving them each an editing pass and rebuilding them, and then re-publishing them on a few less-billionaire-owned outlets. (I’m making almost no money from Amazon anyway, so I don’t anticipate losing much by moving my work elsewhere, and who knows? Sales may actually improve.)

The objective for June is probably going to be limited to researching my options for re-publishing, and starting to develop a workflow for it. I may get a first ebook re-issued this month, but that seems unlikely.