As the title of the post might imply, last week was really interesting for me—for the first half, not nearly doing as much as I probably should be doing (or would prefer to be doing), and, for the second, cramming a whole lot into the time I have.

The Failed Technomancer—Covers

The covers have finally been finished! My artist did an incredible job—take a look!

I really couldn’t be any happier with these things. I jumped in surprise and pleasure when I saw Zed’s shadow turned into a hand as it met 64Bit and Cortex—just delightful.

For eagle-eyed viewers, the price you see on the second image is for hardbacks. I’m predicting that most sales will be ebook and audiobook—both of which will initially be free, then I’ll slowly bring the price up over time—because that’s simply where the market is. I bring this up just to allay any potential fears. I am not charging anywhere near $25 for the ebook and audiobook.

Anyway, for anyone interested, computer wallpaper and phone background versions of these images should be available next week. That’s a work in progress.

As a side note, finally having the covers means I got to turn in everything needed to my editor for final formatting, so it should just be a matter of weeks before I have the EPUB and can start ordering proofs of the physical books.

The Failed Technomancer—Audio

I did not get nearly as much done, as far as novels (and The Failed Technomancer in particular) are concerned, on my end as I wanted to last week. The audio recording equipment that I ordered was supposed to come in Monday… instead it came in Wednesday night. So I spent Thursday and Friday learning how to use the equipment and doing the best I could in recording the first six or seven chapters. I hope to have the rest of the book recorded by the end of the week, but that’s definitely a very hopeful prediction.

In the meantime, here’s my audio setup:

I really like this booth! It doesn’t cut out noise as well as I had hoped, but most noises in my home it sufficiently cuts out (and I re-record anything that gets corrupted by outside noise), particularly with the door to the room closed. I get to feel like I’m in my own little world once inside, with the curtains closed and the light turned on. It’s really fun!

So what did I do with the beginning of my week?

Well, I did not begin major editing on Inner Demons, as I would have if I were being much more efficient. While I can work on two completely different projects consecutively, even projects at very different stages of completion, in my opinion I don’t do work of an acceptable quality if I overlap my big projects too much. So, instead I worked on my side hustle, which is TTRPG content.

I warn you, if you are not in the hobby already then much of what follows might just sound like gobbledygook. Feel free to skip this section if you don’t play Dungeons and Dragons or any other TTRPG.

I wrote out a big story about my love of tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs), then realized that I was being a bit self-indulgent. Suffice to say, I love the hobby, and I write some third-party content for a game called Level Up that’s up for sale on Drive Thru RPG (the link leads you directly to the product I get royalties off of, not the main page of the website). If you play and enjoy Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition but want a little more character options, I predict you would enjoy at least taking a look at Level Up, which is completely backwards-compatible (for real, not the fake way WotC is claiming with OneDnD) and which my product, Motif Classes, is intended to be used with. (Motif Classes can be used with regular Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition characters, but some fiddling may be required.)

I will note that I’m not sure how long any of this will be available for sale. WotC’s “hostile takeover” of the industry (as I’m increasingly coming to think of it) threatens the existence of many medium and small publishers, freelancers, and other third-party content creators, including their games. ENWorld, the creators and publishers of Level Up, have not yet decided how they will save the game in the face of WotC’s aggression, gaslighting, and outright lies, but many of the solutions they have proposed may require a significant facelift for their existing TTRPG content and may require existing materials to be taken down while they get revised—including my stuff. But, content bought and downloaded belongs to you and there’s nothing anyone can do about that—which, as I type this, sounds like an appeal to urgency, which is not what I’m trying to do. I’m just saying that if you like TTRPGs, if you like DnD but want more, and if you like third-party content or hacking your game, consider following the links above. Or if you want to basically play DnD but don’t want to give your money to WotC in light of recent actions, you might be even happier with Level Up as the, in my opinion, best DnD-like available right now.

(I mentioned, sometimes indirectly, a lot of loaded stuff above that I won’t even try to fully address or explain here. If you want to learn more about the OGL situation, I would recommend doing some very careful research on it and do not solely read what Wizards of the Coast has put out—the company has been lying quite brazenly about their actions.)

And, as a final, not-directly-related “what the heck, why not” in this section, I’m just going to throw this out there: EZD6 is one of the best tabletop role-playing games available right now, the current top of my list, and I love it. If I’ve somehow got people reading this who have been interested in giving TTRPGs a try but didn’t know where to start, EZD6 is fun, beginner-friendly, veteran-rewarding, and very easy to learn and play. Actually, forget about just sharing this with people who don’t know where to start—I think EZD6 is fun for anyone, people new to the hobby and people who have been playing since OG DnD.

Anyway, with the exception of System Architecture: Motif Classes (A5e), nothing I’m mentioned in this section belongs to me, and nothing at all in this section I’ve been paid or encouraged to mention. This just happens to be a topic I’m passionate about.

In Conclusion

And that wraps things up! Hopefully next week I’ll be able to come to you and share that I’ve sent my audio files to my audio mixer man. I also hope to be able to share wallpaper versions of the book cover and, if I can figure out how to get Kindle Direct Publishing to work with me, share a pre-order link! Maybe I’ll even have figured out Discord and can provide the opportunity for people to join my server there and start chatting—we’ll see. I’m usually going to prioritize some sort of writing over most of those chores that don’t directly build toward publishing.

Have a great week!