One of the things I was very much looking forward to, when planning out What to Feed Your Raiding Party, was the illustrated techniques. Drawing food is fun. I have no idea why, but it is.

So far I’ve got Chapter 1 all sketched (inks and scanning left to do) and Chapter 2 edited and the techniques drawn. Still have a dozen or so spot illustrations, and then the other 3 chapters to go. My soft-and-squishy deadline of a 1st-quarter launch is still sounding doable. Right on!

I’ve got to head out of town on Saturday, but only for the day. It’s my first meeting with the rest of the ImagiCon staff (I’m heading up Registration), so I’m looking forward to it. You know what 6 hours in a car means? Prime drawing time, ladies and gents! Providing I don’t fall asleep, lol.

But I even have a book light that I can use on the way home if it gets dark, so I’m being hopeful.

Until next time…

It was pure luck, frantic “reflexes” and really good dice rolls.

And that was 1000 XP each.

Nice, huh?

Of course, that was only after we had to smoosh a massive centipede, refight a wasp or two, 3 brutes blocking a path, go up one side and down another of a house and agree to a positively disgusting use of a a stone-to-flesh spell to make a brick wall separating 2 halves of the basement not so separated. And in the process we almost lost one party member to a severe poisoning incident.

But What Did We Eat?

Oh, man, the potluck was definitely a good idea, but maybe too good. So much food and lots of leftovers means we need to streamline things a bit to avoid such mass quantities. But we had chili, Sweedish meatballs, quesadillas, tamales, chips, hot wings, mozzarella sticks, veggies and dip, Spanish rice, refried black beans, and brownies for dessert.

Too much of a good thing is still too much, lol.

Instead I think I’m going to propose the 3 “factions” of our group each rotate between bringing nibbles, main dish, and dessert. We’ll see how that goes.

And One More Thing

While running errands this past weekend, Todd and I decided this would make the perfect gamer’s sofa.

We game around the coffee table to make use of the comfy seating but it means having to get creative with dice rolling since they have a tendency to bounce of couch cushions or roll off the maps on the coffee table. Instead we use some saved box lids (C uses a wooden cigar box)–pack rat tendencies ftw!–but this sofa had a dice-rolling tray already built in, along with a cubby in the center console (hidden by the uppermost padding) and a retractable dual drink holder.

What more could a gamer ask for, right?

Back to the Book

The reason we are here and all that.

Chapter 1 illustrations are nearly finished and Chapter 2 will get edited/evaluated shortly. I have to say, having everything printed out makes this project feel very much real and very close to complete, even if there are countless hours ahead spent formatting the whole kit and kaboodle.

Until next time!

These notes include a space for the different ingredient quantities, what illustration each will need, if there’s a specific technique involved that could use it’s own illustration, any sidebar information, all the equipment or tools needed for the recipe (this will come into play later) and what skill level and XP the recipe will carry. Then I just slip them into the page protector with the recipe and move on to the next one.

I still haven’t figured out my formula for XP per recipe, but as I get the rest of the slots filled in, chapter by chapter, a rubric should present itself. Why is XP important? Oh, just wait and see, my friends, just wait and see. *evil DM laugh*

My working plan (all things subject to change, as usual) is to work on a chapter at a time with the eval sheets, then do the techniques and spot illustrations in batches. Since many of the latter will be small, I can gang them all up in my sketchbook, scan them together and then break them apart in PhotoShop. I did something similar this week for 4 illustrations for 2 of my other blogs and got them all done in just a few hours (and that included coloring 3 of the 4, which won’t be an issue with these).

And with that, I’m off to finish evaluating chapter 1.

Tonight the tangible bits of the book went from this:

to this:

It grew! And let me tell you that those two suckers together are HEAVY. Like lift-with-your-knees heavy. Now I have all of the recipes printed out in draft copies, chapters placed with their preceding comics and little tables of content for each. Holy cats, y’all, that’s a lot of pages! (95 of comics, 90 of recipes). Granted, that doesn’t mean the book’s going to be 185 pages… Well, maybe it does. Actually, I think it’s going to go over 200 by the time I add in everything else that needs to be in there.

Wow.

Now, truth time. I could slap these pages into a design document, add a cover and a full index and send it to the printer and call it done. Only thing is, it wouldn’t be (much) different than any other book out there. It wouldn’t be what I promised What to Feed Your Raiding Party would be. And it wouldn’t be the book I’d want my name on forever and ever.

So I’ve still got some work to do, obviously, but with the drafts printed out I feel SO much better about the progress I’ve made.

Now, about this week’s game.

The first session we had massive ants blocking our path. The second session we had massive scorpions coming out of the woodwork (literally). And there are these evil-intented imps hiding in the walls and hanging from chandeliers gunning for us so much that the party is totally paranoid. This week we had more “fun” with the imps and then–THEN–walked right into a giant wasps nest in the third floor of this dilapidated mansion.

Sigh.

We made it out alive (barely, in the case of one of our members), but now we have to go back because our thief found an underground something or other that requires further investigation. And potentially backup.

But what did we eat?

It was our single guy gamer’s “turn” to provide the nibbles and, for all his worries about stacking up to Lys (whose mother was a caterer) and I, he turned it out pretty doggone good! It doesn’t hurt, apparently, that SGG has a new lady in his life and she’s very much into healthy foods. So he brought a bunch of fresh veggies with ranch as well as sesame dip, chips and salsa verde, peel and eat shrimp and little smokies in a small slow-cooker. He did good!

For dinner though, we decided to get sandwiches from the recently opened Jimmy John’s in our neighborhood. See? I’m not totally against take-out, I just don’t think it should be an every day–or every game–occurrence. Of course, there’s something to be said about the quality of the take-out and I consider Jimmy John’s to be pretty high-up on the list of safe spots for quick eats. (I love their Beach Club–it’s amazing!)

Next time we’ve decided to do a true pot luck supper, so we’ll see how that turns out.

Until next time! (I’ve got some lists to make!)

Granted, I’ve still no clue as to what the outside front cover is going to look like, but hopefully it’ll come to me before too long.

In the mean time, I’m hoping to get those straggler recipes entered, the first proof printed and get the nit-picky organizational bits done. From that “short list” I typed up 2 weeks ago, that looks like:

• print master copy of comics & recipes and decide on general flow
• rank recipes for skill and XP and all that other fun stuff
• decide what techniques need to be illustrated and where each’ll go in the flow

Other than that, I’ve been wondering more and more, now that I have gotten used to (and love!) my Kindle Touch, would anyone be interested in a pdf-style e-book of What to Feed Your Raiding Party? I could do the pdf version myself, a Kindle-formatted version might be a little trickier and require outside services (just thinking out loud, here), and would almost certainly need some manner of reformatting to work best on the smaller screens, but I’m willing to entertain the notion if folks are interested.

Until next week!

If you’d told me back when I started this project that it’d take me more than 2 years to complete I would have laughed and told you you were delusional.

But, hey, you live and learn.

This week’s progress is minor compared to that major milestone I posted about last week. In fact, it’s not even quantifiable in the old % ways. I’m retesting (ie, making and writing down everything this time) several of the missing recipes from my original list this week–got 3 done tonight, actually–but they’re not yet entered into the software yet. So there’s that.

And, then, I put on my list for Tuesday that I wanted to pencil the 5 chapter “covers” for the book, thinking that it was a bit ambitious but, still, maybe doable. Color me shocked that I actually did get them done! Sure, they’re total parodies (even more direct than the comics themselves) of movie posters/book covers so it’s not like I had to be too terribly original, but I managed to whip them out in 2.5 hours total. That’s not too shabby if you ask me!

I still have to ink them (so no sharing just yet) but there’s definitely room on this week’s schedule for that to happen. In fact, it might be the one time that inking takes longer than penciling!

But before we sign off for the year, I wanted to slip you guys a peek from Chapter 5: The Goodies

When you’ve only got 16 pages to tell a story it’s tough to find a sample page that doesn’t give too very much away! (Which is also why you won’t be getting a peek at the epilogue–with only 4 pages there’s not much to choose from.)

Still plenty of work to be done at the beginning of the new year, but this week off from work really is helping–even if I did agree to do a (small) wedding cake for this Friday, time really does feel like it’s on my side for once. (She says knocking on wood so as not to jinx anything!)

Y’all play safe on New Year’s Eve and we’ll see you back here in 2012!

Because we’ve got some big news:

***100% INKED!!!***

Yes, you read that correctly: all 90 pages of comics for What to Feed Your Raiding Party are inked, scanned and have had preliminary digital clean-up done. I pushed myself to do 4 pages each this past Saturday and Sunday so I wouldn’t have to do the final 2 pages over the holiday weekend.

Oh, but that’s not all!

92% Analyzed Recipes

Oh yes, my friends, I even squeezed in some time during the week to do some drudge-work data entry. We’re up to 69 of the minimum 75 recipes (well, okay, the minimum number of recipes for the book was 50–10 per chapter–but I tested around 90 so we’ve made the new minimum 75; I don’t think anyone’s going to complain, do you?) and I was able to track down the notes–well, titles at least–of the missing recipes from my note cards. Some will need to be re-created but that’s okay. It’s my week to cook between Christmas and New Years, so those missing links will get sorted out in due course.

So what’s left? Oh, a lot.

I think I mentioned some of it before but the short list looks something like this:

• draw the “covers” for the 5 chapters
• print master copy of comics & recipes and decide on general flow
• rank recipes for skill and XP and all that other fun stuff
• decide what techniques need to be illustrated and where each’ll go in the flow
• draw said illustrated techniques
• design templates for ingredient charts, page layouts, etc.
• identify and produce needed spot illustrations
• write/edit introductory bits and general help sections (*this has been started*)
• design the outside cover
• layout the whole kit and kaboodle
• edit Index (this part’s gonna suck, but I think my recipe software is going to help with the basics *crosses fingers*)

So, yeah, a lot but not nearly as much as before when there was all that AND all of what I’ve already done.

Setting a deadline at this point is just asking for trouble, but I’m fairly confident that it’ll be sometime in the first quarter of 2012. When I have a better handle on exactly when it’s going to be ready I’ll open up pre-orders so those of you who’ve hung with me this far can get yours at a discount (and I can start planning things like launch parties and convention appearances).

We’re getting so very close!!!

91% Inked Pages

*muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail* *muppet flail*

…Ahem.

So, like I was saying, I’ve got a total of 8 pages left to ink and then it’s on to the rest of the slightly more fiddly bits. Finally, it looks like I’m going to meet a deadline (that being to have the inking done by the end of the year). As to those fiddly bits, I’m just about to the point where I need everything I’ve got printed out so I can do some good, old-fashioned moving, sorting and arranging to get what will be the start of my master copy.

But to do that, I have to get the last few recipes entered and analyzed, so that’s the next thing on the list. And I just found out I’ll have the entire week off between Christmas and New Years so I see that definitely happening then.

This past weekend we had our second gaming session and it went much better than the first, I think. At least it feels like we did more than get our butt’s kicked by some enormous ants. We cleared the rest of one side of this mansion we were sent to check out, found some evil imps hiding in the walls, torched some creepy-evil dolls (just to be safe) and, generally, managed not to die. There were some massive scorpions (to go with the last session’s ants), but we did much better against them, thank goodness!

But what did we eat?!

I realize that a natural thing to include would be the menu for each gaming session and I totally neglected that last time so here’s the scoop.

Since our first session was the weekend after Thanksgiving it made the most sense for us to serve turkey gumbo for supper. This went over fabulously and we still had tons of leftovers (still half a gallon in the freezer, for that matter), so it worked out well on all fronts. I’d also planned ahead when prepping pre-Thanksgiving nibbles for my family and had enough crab dip, cheeses and spinach dip to serve at both gatherings.

This time, though, 2 of our other gamers took over meal duties and brought cheese & crackers, veggies and dip and a crock pot of chili over for pre-game nibbles (I think we spend as much time eating/hanging out as we do playing, which is why our 6-hour gaming sessions aren’t all that arduous) and the fixings for hot subs for the supper break. They were fabulous and really a good example of how things don’t have to be complicated to be good and filling, and much better than burgers or other take-out.

Christmas day would have been our next session but pretty much everyone opted to stay home in pjs rather than get together so we won’t be reconvening until the 2nd weekend in January and I think our single guy gamer is in charge of the food that time, so we’ll see what he comes up with and I’ll be sure to keep y’all posted.

___—___—___—___—___—___—___

Gaming lesson of the week month:

Look up! You never know when 4 albino imps are waiting in the ceiling to drop a net on you.

___—___—___—___—___—___—___

I think I felt this way about October, too. Maybe it’s just an every-other-month thing.

But! Enough grousing out of me, for I have good news, too:

84% Inked Pages

Ta-daa! We’re 14 pages away from having a major segment of the book complete. Yay me! Yay us!

Other than that, there really hasn’t been time for much else. And rather than blather on about my pet peeve of people appropriating the word “chef” for non-food-related endeavors (seated, I’m sure, in the bitterness that stems not from my culinary school education but in the massive student loan that still exists which, sometimes, seems like all I have the show for it), I think we’ll just end here.

84%… not bad! And we’ve got our 2nd D&D game this coming weekend. Whee!

But anyway!

78% Inked Pages

Yes, that’s right folks. Chapter 4 is inked, scanned and saved to the external hard drive. Woot! And here’s a page from said chapter:

Now, I’ve just had a long, hard look at my calendar for the next month (aka December, aka the end of the year, aka the craziest time of the year) and there’s not a weekend that doesn’t have some event going on at least 1 if not both weekend days. And dome Friday nights, for that matter.

That said, I’m going to be bold (read as: optimistic to the point of stupid) and state that my goal is to finish the remaining 20 pages of inking by New Years Eve. On paper (hah!) this is totally doable. And I’m definitely at the point where I am ready for this to just be done already.

But will these last 20 pages finish the book? Yeah, no.

While at Mom’s on Saturday as my siblings, Todd and Aunt Marie (Ms. Fix-it) participated in replacing a section of my mother’s walls and her front door to fix what was supposed to be just one little bit of mush drywall, I made a list of what-all else needs to be done before the book is.

It’s still a lot, but there’s no one big chunk (other than layout, which I have plans as to how to streamline that part) that’s quite as difficult as the 90 pages of comics. There’s still drawing (each chapter has it’s own “cover”, the real cover, spot illos and techniques), a little more recipe analysis (yes, I know I haven’t updated that number in a while, there’s a reason), and then all the fiddly formatting bits.

But very soon I hope to be able to print out a massive proof-copy of what I’ve got so far, just so I can put my hands on a draft of it and make notes here and there and figure out how this is all going to fit together. I know we’ve got computers for that, but there are some things that paper and pen are best for.

Until next time!