Friday 7 March 2014

The rumours of my demise have been greatly exagerated

I swear I'm still alive. It's been 6 months since I wrote anything, but my existence was not snuffed out. I have some announcements listed below, but lets start with a question. Where the hell have I been? It's complicated but I will attempt to answer.

First off, that con plague I had turned into full-up bronchitis and persisted for over a month. It wore me down like an old set of brakes. At the same time, my day job reared its ugly head and saddled me with far more extensive duties than I was expecting. My days became longer, and I was burning out pretty badly. There were dozens of times that I tried to write, but I froze every time and just stared at the blank page on my computer.

Not writing is bad. Even worse is when I get into the habit of not writing. I procrastinate and put things off again and again. Weeks of not writing stretched into months, and next thing I knew, Christmas was fast approaching. When December rolled around, I was heavily distracted by another of my many chronic issues: physical fitness.

My day job is military. Even though I work at a desk, I am expected to maintain a certain level of physical fitness. Those who know me know that I am not the most fit/athletic of people, and this is made worse by some long-standing knee problems that required surgery two years ago. I had a fitness test to do in December, and I was officially "freaking out". I should not have been so worried, I passed the test without issue, hooray! With that out of the way, I thought I will totally write over Christmas break! Nope.

Turns out, passing that fitness test put me in the running for a software job down in the States. They let me know about it the day before I left for vacation, and I immediately lost two months to the incredibly elaborate, immensely complex, Canadian Forces Foreign Posting Screening process. I have spent the last few months doing meetings, appointments, training, and it culminated in getting a wisdom tooth ripped out on Tuesday.


Mad Science
Now you would think that being that busy would preclude me from writing at all, but for some reason, it didn't completely. As the screening process neared its end (still not quite done) I found time to sit down and type out all of my ideas for a Mad Science book that had been knocking around in my head for the better part of a 8 months.

I finished the draft last week, and Cait edited it immediately. It is now in Patrick's hands for copy-editing and proofing, and we are working on the art plan. The book did grow a little in the writing. What was originally going to be a little PDF expansion pamphlet expanded into a full-fledged supplement, complete with some rules expansions, NPCs, places, organizations, gear, creatures, and more.

The plan right now is to send out the PDF to everyone who backed us, and then make it available for Print-on-Demand at DriveThruRPG.com. Give us a bit of time to work on art and layout, and the book will be ready soon.

Other Plans
I have some other ideas on the go. Nothing solid, or confirmed yet, but once I figure out a direction, and solidify it somewhat, I will chat about it here. I will say that I hope to make another book before Gencon this year, but I am not quite sure what that book will be yet.