2021: Year of the Cat

Funny year, both creatively and just, whatever. I started off by moving from Cleveland to Northwest Arkansas, where I worked my old job from home for a while and then, predictably enough, got laid off. I didn't get a lot of writing done after that, because job-hunting is at least as time-consuming and more emotionally draining than having a job. 

I had a fairly productive trip to Devil's Den early in the year, though. That place always revives me.  

I wrote a bunch of material for a couple of serials and then decided, as much fun as it was, I needed to get back to The Nameless Way. I wouldn't say I've abandoned the serials, but they're on hold. Gotta get that book done.

While we're talking about the book, I also found a way to do a map I like. It's already changed a bit from the picture up there, but that's pretty close to what I'm going to publish. In other map-related news, I finally got around to putting my venerable World of Greyhawk maps in poster frames so maybe they'll be a little bit better protected.

I finished Hogz-- errr, TerrorHog, as well. I'm not going back to Peryton Publishing in any other capacity, but that's another project like the serials that I drifted into because I thought it would be quick and easy. You'd think I'd have learned by now that it's never quick and easy. Anyway, I'm proud of the result, and now it's done so I can move on and get back to serious writing.  

So where am I with this book I keep saying I'm focusing on? Bgrargh. I mean, I guess I shouldn't put it that way, because I'm enjoying working on the center brain-stage again. I just now started doing that, though, and a few leftover TerrorHog tasks are still nipping at my ankles now and then. We'll see. Seems like this is taking a lot longer than it should. 

I'm kinda burned out on gaming. Like, even as a player. Partly it's the teleconferencing stuff, but this just happens occasionally. You could probably scroll back on my blog and find several other times I said the same thing. I'm sure I'll be a fanatic again after a little break. I mean, just look at that Greyhawk map. How could you not get ideas? Also, I'll probably run TerrorHog at least once. 

Here's a picture of my friend, Charlie, who died of COVID early in the year. I don't really have anything else to say about that. And then there's some cat pictures. The cats aren't dead or anything. I just like sharing their pictures.

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Whiplash

Yeah, never mind that other stuff. They're both great projects, but I never should have let myself get sidetracked. I'm working now on the thing I need to be working on. After that I can come back to the serials. 

 

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Seriously Serialized

Back when Amazon announced Vella, it occurred to me that something like this might be a better way to publish my Blackridge stories. I had originally planned on a series of short novels or novellas. After I started that, I became aware of Radish and decided I could do the Komar book that way.

So... yeah. Now I'm writing two serials. It's been killing my progress on The Nameless Way, which is really frustrating. I kind of dove into this without really thinking about what I was doing. I'm not even sure anybody is reading the darn things. 

I think I'm starting to get a handle on it, though. Earlier this month, I finally settled on a job. Well, a gig anyway. I've been doing one of those phone app food delivery things and I actually really like it. The fact that I'm not job-hunting anymore and that the work I'm doing has a flexible schedule is helping me get serious about writing.

So anyway, let's talk a little bit about the two serial projects. Eventually I guess they should have their own pages here, but I don't much feel like setting that up now. I've talked a lot less about the Komar one, so I'll start with that.

Forgotten Cities of the Komaran Sea -- https://radishfiction.com/stories/14126

Waking up in a confused post-dream state, a traveler remembers a dizzying panoply of experiences, but only in jumbled, fading fragments. He finds his way through a misty otherworld to an abandoned underground temple, where he meets a group of ruthless treasure-hunters and learns that he is in a desert in a completely unfamiliar land. Seeing little other chance to survive, he joins the strangers and helps them search for the relics of the lost civilization. This one is actually a sequel to Losing Lanterns, but it stands alone so I've been afraid to mention the connection for fear of scaring people off. That link is just a summary. You need the Radish app to read stories there. The first three episodes and the app itself are free.

Ghosts of Blackridge -- https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/product/B092RX1GVT

An inhuman spirit preys on students in a fictional late-80s college town in the Arkansas River Valley. No one knows where it came from or who to trust. Or maybe some of them do. There's another newcomer to Blackridge, someone with plans to put the demon to use for his own schemes. I used the town where I went to college and some of the people I knew to build the template, but of course I changed a lot. I don't want to be thinking of these characters as my friends when I start tormenting and killing them, after all. As with the other one, the first three episodes are free.

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9/11 Memories

I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar; that much is true. But even then-- Wait a tick! Wrong story. That's a song, isn't it?

Dear Penthouse, I never thought something like this could happen to me, but-- Shit, no, that's... just a side gig.

I dunno. I totally forgot what I was going to share. Something was supposed to have happened today, right? Was it that thing with the computer that went crazy and turned that dude into a giant space baby?

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Wight Now

Every year, Alice Cooper looks a little more like Trampier's Wight illustration from the First Edition Monster Manual.

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The Art Police

I don't usually share stuff here if all I've got is a link, but this is worth spreading around and I don't have anything to add right now. Here's a couple of quotes, anyway:

There’s a rising wave of attacks on art and authors which often involve not just misreadings or bad faith readings, but no readings. Actually reading the work in question—beyond perhaps one out-of-context screenshot—is no requirement, apparently, for attacking the author, demanding work get pulled, and requesting public flagellation.

. . .They view art as a series of moral lessons that must be entirely unambiguous. Reading the tweets during these scandals, you see the same claims over and over again. Stories must be uplifting, characters "likable," messages clear, and all bad or messy or immoral lines/characters/events must be explicitly rebutted in the text. (At times you sense they want the author to write "this is bad!" and "this is good!" in the margins of every page.)

https://countercraft.substack.com/p/art-should-be-a-doorway-not-a-mirror

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Gamma

I love how Ewing handles the difference between what Marvel gamma rays do and what real gamma rays do in Immortal Hulk. Instead of piling on more pseudo-science that someone in the future will just end up reconning, he embraces the mysticism of a world where radiation can make you a super-hero.

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