Writer’s Desk

Here at Jones central I spent a long weekend putting my study into complete order. It had been converted into my mother’s convalescent room while she was staying with us for about five months, and between that and all the paperwork from her hospital stay AND the usual clutter, it took a couple of days for me to get it working again.

Now, though, I have everything filed, and I’ve culled my bookshelves. The desk itself is clean of all clutter that doesn’t need something done with it, pronto. Chief among that pile of “stuff to be done with” are the reviews for some excellent products I received for review at GenCon. I sent a number of nifty looking books on to John O’Neill, but beside me are four books that I’m particularly fond of and which I’ll be mentioning both here and at Black Gate in more detail in the coming weeks.

1. Dungeonslayers, a neat little fantasy role-playing system that’s extremely compact but full-featured.

2. The Demolished Ones,  an awesome sort of Victorian FATE scenario with elements like The Prisoner (but this one defies easy explanation).

3. Monster Island, a fabulous sandbox setting for RuneQuest.

4. My friend Sarah Newton’s Monsters & Magic, which is a system for re-envisioning older role-playing systems as new FATE style games.

Now I must get back to writing. I’ve got some short stories due very quickly, and some novels to finish drafting, an outline to finish, and some promo work to get done! Oh, and I need to feed the horses…