Okay, so there has been a lot of things I’ve been working on and I neglected my website in favor of keeping busy with research, learning new skills for my day job and to decompress after the last two years, which is why I haven’t posted much during the last 24-36 months. That said, I fixed the puzzles as it seems one of the updates broke them again.
There are also a few things I’ve been experimenting with for design work that I hope to put in a presentable form soon.
I know I’ve been lax at updating things here over the last year or two. In part this is because my primary focus has been my day job working in a library. During the pandemic my writing took a back seat for many reasons, the primary one being the amount of energy that went into serving my community as well as closures of branches that added a higher volume of work in our location. As things have been returning to a pace more in line with what we experienced before Covid-19, I’ve been able to decompress a bit and pick up my writing pace to more than a snail’s crawl of a few hundred words a week/month.
I just finished the rough draft of Chapter 3 of Codex Caelorum et Infernorum, am starting to do the writing for Chapter 4, and working on the outline of Chapter 5. At some point I will take photos of my outline process to show you how I break down my chapters as it can be a bit involved with the index cards I use to flesh out the ideas behind each outline entry.
Hey, all. I know I’ve been quiet, but that’s because of not just doing holiday activities and family things. It’s also because I’ve been nose to the grindstone to release a few items as well as getting some more projects going as the old ones go out the door. I’ll be updating my bibliography page over time and talking about the new releases as well. Also, there will be more puzzles.
I’m a diabetic and I had something crop up that essentially ate this month. At times, despite my best efforts, it has caused a few issues, like not updating this site or keeping up with some of my personal projects at the rate I (and likely you) would prefer.
The good news is I’ve been given a clean bill of health and I bounce back rather quickly. When you throw in the work I’ve been doing to prep Archetypal Roles to get the PDF version ready and have the print-on-demand version nearly in the wings, the results have been to slow down other items. Expect to see more regular postings and releases.
My latest project is available in PDF format at the moment. A physical book will be available soon. For now, my Archet
ypal Roles book is available on DriveThruRpg.com.
If you can’t wait, or you want to get a jump on character design for your stories or games, give this a look. The book breaks down the subject to help you generate the ideas to fit more than a million seeds you can grow into full-fledged characters with the depth audiences expect for the people in print, on stage, or the screen.
Sorry I didn’t post anything in nearly 60 days, but with the loss of two very close individuals in the space of 10 days, moving to a new work site, putting together more furniture, having my car breathe its last, and preparing for summer programming at the library, I haven’t felt motivated or had the time to keep posting any material.
I’m beginning the edits on the intro to archetypes book. It’s only 132 pages, so it won’t take long, but that means I might not be able to fill you in on other projects or keep up with the Learning by Design posts at the pace of 3-7 a week.
Okay, so I might not be able to provide a lot of updates on things given all the stuff I have going on in the background, but I worked on a nice-sized document and several handouts for a game design program. Some of the posts here will be all about that subject as part of what might be a future book. The blog isn’t changing focus, just adding another facet to it for things I’ve been doing quietly for the past 10 years or so.
A couple of weeks and a few thousand words have passed since my last post, but given all the work I’ve put into fixing up the house and having enough room to at least do some typing, if not mapping, has gotten me to the point where I can access enough of my supplies to really churn out some words. Some days I’ve been doing 2,000+ while also putting the house in order. I’m not finished with that project, but the space is livable now, meaning I get to spend more time writing than unpacking.
The blog has seen almost no updates in the last three weeks because I moved to a new living space. We were living in a cramped one-bedroom apartment for the last couple of years, so I was writing/drawing maps using a tiny TV tray and holding my mouse on my lap and trying to sketch out the cartography as I went along. Needless to say, that wasn’t very helpful nor was it conducive to drawing maps of any kind. Luckily, we now have double the living space, which means there’s now enough room to do everything I need without compromising on the quality of the work.
The last few weeks have been interesting as I injured myself at least a couple of times while moving and I got some pretty potent drugs to deal with the pain from what seems to have been a bruised rib. So other than unpacking and cleaning, I’ve been laid up on meds. Can’t say it wasn’t fun, but…
Anyway, back to churning out new content…