Hello, friends!

This week was pretty standard for me, and thank goodness for that. After going to Oregon, I didn’t really want anything else. I did go and visit family (this time on my side) this past weekend, which is always a pleasure, and it’s a lot of fun seeing my baby explore a “new” house and get excited whenever she makes a discovery. (One of her big discoveries this weekend was that wall-mounted doorstops can be pulled off; the other was that ping pong balls are delicious, as far as she is concerned.)

I also played the board games Oceans and Space Base with my family, and I highly recommend both of them. Oceans is (to the best of my knowledge) the most recent game in the Evolution family of board games, although it stands alone. Players take turns playing cards to create and evolve aquatic animals, with the goal being to eat as much food as possible (essentially). Gameplay is given an interesting twist when deep cards (a large second deck filled with entirely unique cards) are introduced about a third of the way through the game. In Space Base, you are given command of a… well, a flight shuttle base in space… and must carefully purchase ships to make your base the most productive out of all other players. Players take turns rolling dice to collect resources, but you gain resources on both your turn and other players’ turns, depending on the ships you’ve purchased.

Bloggyness Review: Santiago

I finished Mike Resnick’s Santiago this week, and I quite liked it. The book was sold to me as a ridiculously funny Western sci-fi… I didn’t find it that funny, but it was clearly a Western set in space. The beginning of the book is really slow, with almost every one of the first few chapters consisting of the protagonist going somewhere new, talking for a long time with a larger-than-life character, and discovering a new person to talk to (all as part of his quest to collect the bounty placed on the legendary Santiago). After a repetitive opening, Santiago collects a few extra “main” characters that provide a lot of entertaining variety in the middle of the book, then closes off with a finisher so strong I decided the whole was far greater than the sum of its parts and plan on putting the book on my shelf with the greats.

Not much in the way of language or explicit questionable content, although there are several characters early on in the book with very clear perverse interests that made me uncomfortable. So consider that a warning.

The Failed Technomancer

Once again, audiobook is selling better than ebook or physical. Work on the sequel will begin before the end of the year. No promises beyond that—writing time is tight, much tighter than when I started this blog with very, very grand visions of how things would be. But The Betrayed Technomancer will be my next book project.

Inner Demon

My friends who are reading and helping me with a copy edit are, on average, maybe two chapters into the book. Not the speediest progress, but it’s progress.

Other Projects

I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned each of these before, but I have three primary writing-related side projects that fill up my writing time when I’m too tired for novel writing, or when my writing time is too small for novel writing. (I prefer to write in thirty-minute chunks, minimum, when doing longer content.) I thought I’d either bring these to light or provide an update, whichever is needed.

Cheating Lords is a bet-making, bid-taking card game I’ve been developing, somewhat in the vein of Skull King. Unlike most games of this nature, there are five suits, and the trump suit can be changed from round to round—or within rounds. In addition, the game is shaken up by having you win gold (rather than points) and having you wager gold each round to gain more gold. It’s a high-stakes game that, at least when I play with my family, can be pretty engrossing. I don’t predict this game will be ready to formally publish any time soon, just based on how much time I have to playtest it.

Last week I reviewed In the Land of Invented Languages; I was re-reading that book in preparation to write an article on language invention. Specifically speaking as a non-linguist, I want to write an article to other SFF authors who are non-linguists to show them how they can make a solid, real-feeling language using basic linguistic principles in a structured way. I’m hoping to get the first draft of that article finished this week.

Finally, the Third Realm universe began with me hacking together a few rules for role-playing game, and I’ve been toying with it ever since, even after the Third Realm universe naturally grew into a world I wanted to write novels in. I’m going to start putting work into my latest revision on those rules again (currently titled 3rd Realm Custom RPG, or 3RCRPG—definitely a working title, not the final).

With these exception of the article, these are longer-term projects that I won’t want to prioritize over novel-writing, so I doubt I will have updates on them most weeks.

Send-Off

Are you a big board game fan? Do you play TTRPGs? Tell me about it! I’m always interested in learning more in these areas. And, of course, always let me know if you’re enjoying what you’re currently reading—and what you’re reading.