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Planning for May

Planning for May

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

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

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

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

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

  • Architect of Worlds
    • Continued work on the current round of improvements to the existing design sequence.
    • Possibly an additional step or two at the end of the existing design sequence, to add some new parameters related to a world’s habitability and resource value for human (or other) settlement.
    • New sections for the book, on the subjects of designing maps of interstellar space and using real-world astronomical data.
  • Krava’s Legend
    • At least another 10,000 words on the first draft of The Sunlit Lands.
    • Write the first item to go into my “reader magnet,” a collection of short pieces telling some of the back story for the lead characters of Krava’s Legend. The idea is to release that widely and for free, and use it to attract readers to the novel series.
    • Do more investigation toward improvements to my release-and-marketing workflow: find affordable sources for professionally done book cover art, read about techniques for book marketing on a budget that won’t take away too much time from writing, and so on.
  • Scorpius Reach Sector and Game of Empire
    • Develop more of the sector map and setting bible.
    • Develop a set of characters and a rough story outline for serialized fiction, possibly to be released on the new Kindle Vella platform.
    • Begin assembling a third-edition draft of the Game of Empire rules.
  • Human Destiny Sourcebook
    • Write a few thousand more words to fill out new sections of the partial rough draft.

Free updates for my patrons will probably include a minor-version release of the Architect of Worlds design sequence, and possibly a piece of Krava’s Legend short fiction. This month’s charged release, if there is one, will probably be a combination of additional chapters of The Sunlit Lands and some of the new material for Architect of Worlds.

I’ll also need to complete one or two book reviews this month. Fortunately I’ve found a few self-published novels by way of this blog’s contact form, which may lead to reviews.

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

Planning for April

Planning for April

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New month, new set of objectives to be attacked over the next thirty days. April is particularly notable because by the end of this month, I expect to be fully immunized against COVID-19 and therefore back in my day-job office several days a week. This month, therefore, is the last time that I’ll have quite the same level of flexibility for my creative work, at least until I retire in another decade or so. I’d like to make the most of it.

Here’s the plan, more or less in order of priority. As always, the plan at the end of the month may not look much like the plan right now.

  • Architect of Worlds
    • Continued work on the current round of improvements to the existing design sequence.
    • Possibly an additional step or two at the end of the existing design sequence, to add some new parameters related to a world’s habitability and resource value for human (or other) settlement.
    • New sections for the book, on the subjects of designing maps of interstellar space and using real-world astronomical data.
  • Krava’s Legend
    • At least another 15,000 words on the first draft of The Sunlit Lands.
    • Some work to refine and improve my workflow for producing and promoting self-published novels. If I can develop a reasonable workflow, I might apply it first by re-designing The Curse of Steel and “re-launching” that book.
  • Human Destiny Sourcebook
    • Write a few thousand more words to fill out new sections of the partial rough draft.
  • Scorpius Reach Sector and Game of Empire
    • Develop more of the sector map and setting bible.
    • Begin assembling a third-edition draft of the Game of Empire rules.

Free updates for my patrons will probably include a minor-version release of the Architect of Worlds design sequence, and possibly a new minor-version release of the Human Destiny draft sourcebook.

This month’s charged release, if there is one, will probably be a combination of the first 10-12 chapters of The Sunlit Lands and some of the new material for Architect of Worlds.

I’ll also need to complete one or two book reviews this month.

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

Status Report (13 March 2021)

Status Report (13 March 2021)

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A quick note today, to lay out my plan for the rest of this month. I seem to have pulled out of the creative slump I’ve been wrestling with for most of the last six weeks, so I want to strike while the iron is hot.

I’m currently working on a new minor update of the Architect of Worlds design sequence, which should start to reflect some of the feedback I’ve gotten from my patrons since the January release, and otherwise make some incremental improvements. I’m working on including a change log in this version, so people who are working with the most current draft know where the most recent tweaks are. The plan is to have this new version ready by Thursday at the latest, at which point I’ll send that to my patrons as a free update.

I’m also focusing on getting some more of the rough draft of The Sunlit Lands written, and if I can get to at least 15-18 kilowords of coherent material, that will be this month’s charged release for my patrons.

I’m also working through my backlog of book review requests, so I hope to have one or two more reviews out before the end of this month.

Those are my “must accomplish” items for March. Stay tuned.

The Next Novel

The Next Novel

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I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and planning for the next novel I want to write and publish.

That may not be The Sunlit Lands. Work on that one is proceeding, albeit slowly, so it’s possible that will be the next book-length project I finish. It’s not the only possibility, though.

More likely is an extension of my short story, “A Fire in Winter,” published here a few months ago.

Portrait of Prince Hall in Masonic regalia, artist unknown.

I’ve conceived the notion of a novel-length collection of connected stories, laying out the history of an alternate-historical American Revolution, with the African-American Freemason figure Prince Hall as the protagonist. The collection would hint at an alternative United States that might be a little better-founded from the beginning.

“A Fire in Winter” would be the first story in the collection. I’ve already blocked out the plot and action of the second story – the working title is “Anabasis,” and it involves Mr. Hall accompanying an expedition into the New York and Pennsylvania back-country, led by a brilliant but troubled American general named Benedict Arnold. I’m thinking there might be six or seven stories in the collection by the time I’m finished.

An alternate-historical American Revolution: the situation in the Northern colonies as of early 1777.

While I mull over this idea, I’ve been working through the tabletop game 1776, generating an alternate history of the Revolutionary War to serve as a scaffold for the stories. The exercise has been unusually fruitful, giving me plenty of ideas as to where Mr. Hall might be at any given time, who he might meet, what conflict or danger he might have to survive. Before long I may have the whole collection of stories planned out.

The third possibility is an extensive re-work of The Master’s Oath, which I’ve mentioned earlier. This seems the least likely, even though I do have a complete draft of that novel. It would require a considerable rewrite to be publishable.

Whichever project comes to fruition most quickly, I’ve also been thinking about improving my plan for releasing and promoting the book.

Sales of The Curse of Steel have been disappointing, to be honest. After an initial surge of sales upon release, it’s fallen to zero since the beginning of the calendar year. So far, advertising on Amazon and Facebook has been ineffective and a net loss.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I made a number of unforced errors with that novel – not in its writing, but in the plan for its release and promotion. Things like doing my own cover art, not spreading the word before release or allowing for pre-orders, not arranging for editorial reviews in advance, not arranging for a paperback edition, relying exclusively on Kindle Unlimited for sales, and so on.

For the next book, I’m probably going to bite the bullet and set myself a budget for preparation and promotion.

The Curse of Steel cost me roughly $800 to release, most of which went to a hired editor who ended up recommending no changes to my draft. The biggest chunk of funding after that was for graphic assets for the book cover. All of this suggests that I might set aside a few hundred dollars for the next book, but spend it more wisely. Maybe hire an editor (or a sensitivity reader), certainly get a professional book cover done, budget more generously for pre-release promotion and post-release advertising, and so on. Hopefully getting better results.

Meanwhile, I’ve recently linked up with a couple of communities of self-publishing authors, and I’ve been lurking and listening to their talk. Some of their advice and common practices don’t fit my profile, but some of them do, and I’ve made note of a lot of resources that might be useful.

All of this means that my next book release, whenever that comes along, is going to be more carefully planned and supported.

One or two stand-alone books might help me figure out a better workflow and see more sales. Then, if and when I do finish The Sunlit Lands, I can always go back and re-release The Curse of Steel, applying some of what I’ve learned.

This is a marathon, not a sprint.

Status Report (25 February 2021)

Status Report (25 February 2021)

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The last few weeks have been a bit of a ride, so I have a few updates for everyone.

First, for some time now I’ve been dealing with some minor medical issues, and that seems to have come to a head in the month of February. Nothing life-threatening, by any means, but it was kind of hard on my productivity. Chronic headaches, lethargy, inability to focus or keep on task well into each day. I was having a hard time keeping up with work for my day job, much less my creative projects.

It turns out that my treatment regimen for type-2 diabetes has been throwing me for a loop.

Ironically, my lifestyle has been a lot healthier ever since the COVID-19 pandemic crashed down on us. I’m getting more exercise, my diet is much better, I’ve lost a significant amount of weight, and so on. However, until recently I hadn’t adjusted my medication routine to fit, and it’s looking as if my blood sugar was becoming chronically low in the mornings. Again, not low enough to be a serious threat, but more than low enough to account for the difficulties I was having.

The good news is that this is all correctable. Now that I understand the problem, I’m adjusting my treatment regimen, within parameters approved by my physician, and I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to recover my mornings.

The bad news is that working on this has taken up most of the month of February, with the result that I haven’t hit several of my goals, and probably won’t before the end of the month.

As a result, there will be no charged release or bonus release for my patrons this month. I also don’t think there will be any updates to Architect of Worlds or the Human Destiny draft sourcebook until sometime in March.

That having been said, here’s a summary of the creative projects I have under way at the moment, roughly in order of priority:

  • Book reviews, still at the rate of one or two a month.
  • An update for Architect of Worlds, revising some of the existing material and possibly adding a new section (on the subject of “using real-world astronomical data”).
  • Further progress on The Sunlit Lands, the second book in the Krava’s Legend series.
  • An update for the Human Destiny draft sourcebook, with some new material.
  • Development for a new book-length project, building “A Fire in Winter” out into a novel-length collection of short stories. More about that in an upcoming post.
  • Re-evaluation of The Master’s Oath, with an eye toward giving it an extensive rewrite and preparing it for eventual publication.

I’m also starting to think about how to improve my strategy for publishing and promoting my work. Sales of The Curse of Steel have been kind of disappointing – after an initial surge when the book was published, they’ve faded down to essentially zero since the new year. I’ve tried a few things to promote the book, with very ambiguous results. In the meantime, I’ve gotten hooked into one or two communities of self-published authors, and have been learning a lot about ways to improve presentation and promotion.

Within the next few months, I’m likely to have another book to publish, even if that isn’t The Sunlit Lands. I’m going to take that opportunity to prepare and apply a more aggressive publication strategy. If that works, I may go back and re-launch The Curse of Steel, using some of what I’ve learned. This is a long-term investment, but with luck, it will pay off.

Rehabilitating “The Master’s Oath”

Rehabilitating “The Master’s Oath”

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Thinking about the “new project” I mentioned in my last post, I’ve gone back to re-read the final complete draft of The Master’s Oath.

I usually describe The Master’s Oath as my “first complete, mature, original novel.”

I specify it that way because it wasn’t the first novel I ever wrote; that was a rather juvenile swords-and-sorcery piece that I produced when I was about twelve, and no, that one isn’t remotely salvageable. I also distinguish it from the next five novels I wrote, all of which were fan-fiction and therefore not fully original work. The Master’s Oath was entirely mine, written as an adult with all of my skills fully developed, and it was the first such novel I ever managed to finish.

It’s a novel about a White American man (or at least he thinks he’s American, at the start of the story). He’s a U.S. Army veteran who is recovering from serious wounds, suffered in action in the field. Since leaving the military, he has been living comfortably at home, but his existence has gone hollow: no life-partner, few social contacts, no occupation other than watching his investments tick over, no purpose.

One day, he discovers that he is not American in origin. In fact, he isn’t from our world at all. He comes from an alternate-history Earth, one in which things went differently starting in the twelfth century, and where Hermetic magic rather than technology is the foundation of civilization. He accepts an invitation to travel to this other world, where he is welcomed and elevated to the aristocracy. Naturally, this doesn’t work out well for him, but that’s where the story comes from.

The Master’s Oath is a fairly political novel, probably the most overtly political novel I’ve ever written. It’s about democracy as opposed to aristocracy, justice as opposed to elitism, knowledge that everyone can use as opposed to esoteric occult insight. It’s about a man coming to terms with his own inherited privilege and deciding to do something positive with it.

It is also – and this is where I realized how problematic the current draft of the story is – about race in America.

The alternate-historical kingdom where my protagonist ends up is geographically placed in the southeastern part of North America, and it’s temporally placed in the mid-19th century. It’s culturally French rather than English, but that doesn’t evade the central issue. It has all the same original sins as the real-world United States: imperialism, genocide, chattel slavery, and white supremacism.

As a White American author, I have to be really careful how I approach a story like this one. There’s the technical problem of writing with tropes that will alienate a big chunk of the potential audience if badly handled. There’s also the moral problem that arises from the possibility that I’m exploiting the historical experience of others for my own benefit.

So The Master’s Oath has been sitting in my limbo pile for years, and I’ve often said that it will never be published, that it isn’t actually publishable.

And yet, and yet . . . I poured a lot of myself into that story, a lot of the things I believe and that are important to me, more than most of my other fiction. It’s decently well written, with (in my humble opinion) an interesting protagonist, a neat action-adventure plot, and a ton of world-building detail. Going back and reading it now, I see some things I would rewrite if I wanted to take the time. Would that be enough to mitigate the technical and moral issues with the current draft?

It would be nice to have another full-length novel in my catalog, and this one would take much less work to release than writing a new one from scratch.

It’s a conundrum. I need to wrestle with it some more, and maybe seek out some fresh perspectives.

Notes for a New Project

Notes for a New Project

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Soon after I stopped spending most of my creative effort on work for the tabletop game industry, I started work on what would eventually become my first mature, original, and complete novel. Its title was The Master’s Oath, and it will never be published.

When I finished working for Steve Jackson Games, I still had a lot of that company’s influences in the back of my mind. In particular, a book Ken Hite had written for GURPS in 2001 (GURPS Cabal) made quite an impression on me. It was that book that made me aware of the Western esoteric traditions for the first time: kabbalah, Hermeticism, Johannes Trithemius, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, the Tarot, the Golden Dawn, that whole utterly snarled yet gorgeous ball of yarn. I studied esoterica for years afterward, building quite the library of relevant works, all of which are still in my possession.

Mind you, I’m not by any means a believer or a practitioner. The Western occult tradition was a false trail in our intellectual history, not something that has any pragmatic reality. I still find it useful as a source of creative inspiration. To this day, the attentive reader might notice little scraps of it in my fiction – alchemical or Tarot imagery, that kind of thing.

The Master’s Oath was one product of that period of my life. It was an alternate-history novel, a portal fantasy too, with Golden Dawn-style magic built into the plot. I worked on it from about 2008 through 2012, and that was a fierce and terrible struggle. I learned a lot about planning and writing long-form fiction, about world-building in the service of literary work, about a lot of things not to do. I don’t regret that time spent.

On the other hand, as I mentioned, The Master’s Oath is utterly unpublishable, a fact I only realized after I had congratulated myself on finally finishing my first mature original novel. I’m still proud of the research, the world-building, the quality of the prose in it. Unfortunately, it’s also a deeply problematic piece of work . . . not outright racist, as such, but thoroughly insensitive, with tropes built in that an American White male author really needs to be very careful about. Much more careful than I knew how to be at the time. Probably more careful than I have the skill for even today. So I’ve chalked The Master’s Oath up as part of the “million crappy words” that every novelist probably has to write before he can start making real progress.

Still. Nothing a writer ever learns is likely to go to waste forever. I still have all that esoterica lurking in the back of my head, along with everything I’ve learned as a Freemason, and whole reams of early-modern history.

Finally, I think I may have discovered a way to put all of it to use.

Imagine a world that diverges slightly from our own about the time of Elizabeth I, and becomes significantly different sometime in the early eighteenth century. A world where people like John Dee, Michael Maier, Robert Fludd, and Elias Ashmole were really on to something. A world where the Rosicrucian movement wasn’t just a weird historical joke.

A world in which different ideas and different historical currents might give rise to a different kind of modernity. A different kind of United States, in fact. Maybe even a better one.

As always, when I’m tinkering with alternate-historical ideas, my first impulse is to bring a few games to the tabletop out of my extensive library of historical simulations. For example:

Imperial Struggle is one of the most recent purchases in my library, a grand-strategic simulation of the conflict between Britain and France in the long eighteenth century. Its mechanics are deceptively simple, but the resulting gameplay is deep, rich, and nicely balanced – a great tool for developing alternate histories.

Here’s another one, ironically the very first historical simulation game I ever owned:

1776 is a much older game – my copy has been on my shelves for well over forty years now – but it’s a decent simulation of the American theater of a war that was fought across half the world, and ended with the formation of the United States. It’s nicely customizable too, easy to build alternate-historical scenarios for.

I can think of two or three other games I might be able to bring down and use, too. I have more than enough material to start building a timeline and a “bible” for stories set in this putative alternate reality.

As for the stories themselves? Well, “A Fire in Winter” fits nicely into the emerging structure. In fact, thinking about what else I could write to follow that story is probably what got my hindbrain working on this notion. I’m sure that as I start writing down and organizing all of this, more stories will suggest themselves.

None of which means I’m going to be setting aside other projects, to be sure. I still need to keep making progress with Architect of Worlds, the Human Destiny setting, and The Sunlit Lands. Still, I’ve been in a bit of a rut for the last few weeks, and my creative brain seems to work better when I can shift to a new project once in a while. This may be a promising candidate.

Status Report (28 January 2021)

Status Report (28 January 2021)

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The past two weeks have been just about a wash for my creative work. A task at my day job pushed aside just about everything else for about a week and a half. Then, just as that was winding up, I took a nasty fall outside my house and got rather banged up. Nothing was broken and I didn’t need a trip to the hospital, thank goodness, but I collected a fair number of gouges, scrapes, and bruises. I’ve been in a fair amount of discomfort for several days. Kind of hard to focus on creative work, especially since my dominant hand is one of the parts that are stiff and sore. At this point, I’m not likely to hit some of the creative milestones I had in mind for this month.

Not all the news is bad, to be sure. I’d like to praise a couple of my readers, Brett Evill and K. Nakamura, for their work “playtesting” and providing feedback on the current Architect of Worlds draft. The two of them have been going through the current sequence with a fine-toothed comb, and they’ve already found a number of things that could stand to be fixed or improved. I plan to get back to that project in February and will probably be releasing a new minor version to my patrons fairly soon.

Another piece of the Architect of Worlds project will involve writing some material on how to use real-world astronomical data with the design sequence. If you want to build a realistic “solar neighborhood” for your SF setting, incorporating what we know about the stars and exoplanets around us, how do you go about that? I’ll probably at least start working on that next month too.

Meanwhile, since I had more than enough hours on the books at my day job, I’m taking the rest of January off to heal up from my accident and get some writing done. I’m focusing on producing a new partial draft of the Human Destiny sourcebook for Cortex Prime. Right now that’s at about the 16-kiloword mark, and I’m hoping to get a few thousand more words down before the end of the month.

The partial draft of the Human Destiny sourcebook will be this month’s charged release for my patrons. Once that’s out, they’ll get free updates as I continue to work on the project, until the rough draft is completed.

I don’t have any new original fiction to release this month, although I’m considering dressing up a bit of work from my fan-fiction period to show off. I’m also reading a very good candidate for my next book review.

Finally, I’m continuing to make slow progress on The Sunlit Lands, which will be the first sequel to The Curse of Steel. No clue yet when that novel will be finished, but at the moment I’m hoping to release it late in 2021.

The name of the game is persistence and resilience . . .

Status Report (14 January 2021)

Status Report (14 January 2021)

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Man, this month is just flying past. There’s a lot going on, and I’ve just about committed myself to a plan for this month’s Patreon release, so it’s time for a general update.

Architect of Worlds: I’ve been stress-testing the current draft of the complete design sequence (version 0.3, which was released to my patrons on 5 January). I’ve found a few minor bugs and tweaks, and possibly some ideas for further development, but nothing that requires major surgery at this point. Along the way, I’ve started developing a new map and gazetteer of the solar neighborhood for the Human Destiny universe. That’s probably going to take quite a while to complete.

Human Destiny: Back in December I completed a partial rough draft of the proposed Cortex Prime sourcebook, as a submission for the Cortex Creator’s workshop. I’ve gotten some useful feedback from that, and I’ve started to write some more new material for this project.

Short Fiction: I don’t think I’m going to release any free new short fiction in January. This is because I appear to be on the verge of actually selling two pieces of short fiction! I need to concentrate on writing material that will actually earn me some income. More about that if and when the deal is completed.

Krava’s Legend: I didn’t get much work done to promote The Curse of Steel in November or December, nor did I get much written on The Sunlit Lands. I’m trying to carve out some time to keep pushing forward with those tasks.

Book Reviews: Since this blog has been listed on a couple of sites for independent book reviewers, I’ve been getting lots of requests for reviews. More than I’ll be able to cover, although that’s not a bad problem to have. At the moment it looks like I’ll be covered for January and February – look for two or three new reviews here over the next few weeks.

Okay, now for patron’s business.

I’m going to institute a new procedure for certain big projects, the kind that are likely to be in development for several months with incremental drafts. It’s in my interest to let my patrons see early drafts, because I might get useful feedback. On the other hand, I’m not comfortable charging my patrons every month for access to the latest versions.

So in such a case, I’ll be charging my patrons in the first month that I release a draft, but subsequent incremental updates will be free to patrons until the draft is more or less complete and ready for publication. (Also, of course, patrons at the appropriate level of support will get a free copy of the finished product, if and when that’s ready.)

The first project to fall under this heading is the current version of the complete design sequence for Architect of Worlds. I released version 0.2 of that in December as a charged release. I updated the document to version 0.3 in early January and will continue to release the occasional incremental update to my patrons as needed. Those incremental updates will be free of charge.

The second project that will come under this heading is the rough draft of the Cortex Prime sourcebook (and setting bible) for the Human Destiny universe. I’ll be releasing a partial draft (version 0.2) to my patrons late in January, which will be this month’s charged release. Subsequent incremental updates to that document will be free of charge.

Haven’t decided what I’ll be releasing in February, but honestly, there’s a lot going on that’s not entirely under my control at the moment. I’m playing things by ear for now. More news as I figure things out.

Short Story Now Available: “A Prince of Tanȗr”

Short Story Now Available: “A Prince of Tanȗr”

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I’ve posted a new short story, “A Prince of Tanȗr,” to the Free Articles and Fiction section of this blog.

“A Prince of Tanȗr” is the first story I’ve written in the setting described in my article, “Building a Better Barsoom.” It may be my first attempt at writing a bit of planetary romance, but it probably won’t be the last.

“A Prince of Tanȗr” will also be released to my patrons, free of charge.