Monthly Archives: December 2018

Holiday Update

I hope all my visitors have been having a good holiday weekend. It’s been (mostly) relaxing here.

First though, here are two links you might find of interest. Andrea over at Little Red Reviewer was kind enough to interview me about my upcoming books, and you can find the link right here. And if you’re unfamiliar with her site, you ought to look around because it’s loaded with interesting, entertaining content.

Second, here’s a link to The Skull’s holiday card.

Here in our tower by The Sea of Monsters all of our minions returned in time for holidays, and they were celebrated with great abandon. First this required a great deal of cleaning, and then my enchantress concocted some delicious food.

For ourselves, our biggest present this year was the basement. As I think I mentioned, with the basement finished, I can now leave my games set up for long stretches. So while I did receive two new boardgames, with the basement what I really received was an entire cabinet full of games, for I can finally play all those that I own. I must have played seven games of Falling Sky in the last week, and I’ve finally got a handle on the rules. It’s much more fun to conquer Gaul this way than I’m sure it was in real life.

The Skull Will Return

You probably already knew that, but I’ll reiterate the fact that a new Kickstarter will launch early next year for the next two issues. Contents for issue 3 are already set and heading into layout. Man, I love working for the Skull. I’d really like to take the magazine quarterly, but I still haven’t seen much feedback on the second issue, so I’m starting to believe if people haven’t had time to read TWO sword-and-sorcery issues in a year that four might be a real glut. It’s a shame, because I know we could keep readers supplied with some great stuff. There’d be even more authors, and more continuing characters.

In other news, I’ve finally wrestled the outline of the third book of the new trilogy into decent enough shape that I’ve begun drafting. So far it’s just a few pages long, but it will grow from there. My goal was to get all of the major plot arcs figured out before my editor got back to me about book 2. Perhaps you know what it’s like to step away from a really complicated project for a long while — it can be really hard to remember what you were planning to do.

Right now all of the big points are worked out. The book’s divided roughly into three acts. Act I is the most solid, and I know how I write well enough at this point to not sweat the little stuff in Act II yet. Act I is likely to change on me as I work through it, and it would have a ripple effect if I had everything in Act II set in stone. I think I really am growing more efficient with this whole book drafting process…

Ask Me Anything

All day today I’ll be over at Reddit Fantasy, ready, willing, and able to talk about the writing craft, editing, or just about anything else writing related you want to chat about. You can find me at this link. Hope to “see” some of you there!

Brood of the Witch Queen

Are there any Sax Rohmer fans among my regular visitors?

I’m finally reading one of his novels, although it’s not a Fu Manchu title. I’m about halfway through a supernatural menace novel titled Brood of the Witch Queen. Rohmer can turn up the dial on the menace really well, and is really strong on the description — sometimes I stop and re-read paragraphs because they’re so nicely composed. The heroes are a little wooden and pulpy but the rest of the prose definitely has enough strengths that it’s worth a look, if you’re at all curious.

I’ll have to try some Fu-Manchu now, although I might first finally get around to reading Calgaich The Swordsman, the famed Gordon Shireffs historical that’s supposed to very good and quite Howardian.

Behind-the-Scenes

You wouldn’t know it by looking at the site, but life’s pretty busy here. Nearly every day I’m doing editorial work for Perilous Worlds. Several times a week I’m editing things for Tales From the Magician’s Skull. And every day I’m working on either the promotion of book 1 of the Ring-Sworn trilogy, or working on the first draft of book 3. This morning it’s that draft I’m contemplating. Wrapping all the threads up by the end of the book is proving a little challenging, and so I’m still tinkering with the outline.

I’m also managing some wargaming to relax, courtesy of the dedicated spot in our new remodeled basement. In the last couple of weeks I’ve played four scenarios of one of my favorite games, Ambush!. (While I do enjoy playing, that exclamation point is part of the game’s title.)

I hope to share details about all of the publishing stuff as everything gets closer to release…

In the meantime, here’s a snapshot at the end of a recent Ambush! scenario. And here’s a link back to my thoughts after a first few plays, as well as a description of the game for the curious.