The Scoop

New Year, unclear

2012-01-02T15:28:00.000+10:30

(Cross-posted at my Eyliarenn blog)

It's 2012. Great. This time last year I set myself a goal; viz to have a playtestable version (not necessarily complete, but workable) draft of my RPG worldbook completed and ready to present to a playtest group. I also pllanned to have a good playtest group (not my own) lined up to try it out, put it through its paces, and report back to me what they liked and what they thought sucked.

Update: The worldbook is a long way from being ready to playtest, and I haven't lined up a group yet (which kind of makes sense, as I didn't want to contact any playtesters until I had a complete draft in sight of being finished - four to six weeks away probably).

A year can challenge priorities and remove opportunities (or offer new ones). I made my committment on the back of my wife's coming home from an extended stay in hospital and all the positive feelings for the future that generated. Since then I've survived two restructures at my day job, and had to commit a lot more time to that than I thought I would ever have to again, and my writing has suffered. The first things to go werre the blogs and Twitter feed, then the actual worldbook prep, then the copious notes I generate in the quiet moments between what I was just doing and what I'm doing next. With the lost time my imagination and, to a degree, my will to push on, dissipated as well.

I've also been hatching plans for creating an online imprint. This has been in the back of my miund all along: I wanted to produce my projected Eyliarenn product line (the main book and about seven or eight supplements) electronically under my own company name before even contemplating a hard-copy release. In the absence of actually working toward that goal, I've been considering what else I could do at the business end. I have nebulous plans of expending the imprint to cover fiction and poetry releases as well as game-related materials. I'm also beginning work toward producing everything we release in multiple formats (ePub, Kindle) instead of just pdf.

So I guess the year hasn't been a complete loss, but I can't helf but feel like I should have achieved some more tangible goals by now. But this is the time to look to the future, I guess, not the past. So, here are - in no particular order - the targets I'm going to set for myself going into 2012:

Keep working toward a playtestable draft of my Eyliarenn worldbook
Get my ebook venture, Aridamely Press, up and running with one or two titles published by year's end
Stop devoting so much of my non-work time to work (sometimes a necessary evil, but not something to make a habit of).
Try to maintain more of a web-presence (blogs, Google+, Twitter).

So, here's to 2012. Let's hope it lives up to its promise (and that I do the same).

How long has it been?

2011-12-03T23:51:00.000+10:30

I suck at the whole blogging enterprise. This much is obvious. I haven't posted since February. SINCE FEBRUARY! And who noticed. Not all that many. I could count them on one hand; and that would me my imaginary hand with no fingers on it (lost to an imaginay combine harvester - oh, God, what a mess; imaginary blood everywhere and bits of imaginary bone stuck in the imaginary gears of the harvester (which is, of couse, itself imaginary), causing said harvester to burst into brightly-hued imaginary flames: I was just lucky to get out of there with my sense of whimsey intact).

I can write that because absoluttely nobody visits this little corner of the web. They just breeze through in their electron-guzzling PCs and their sporty little iThings without so much as slowing down to yell obscenities at this particular rest-stop on the way to somewhere more interesting.

Should that worry me? Aren't I writing this for my self? For my own satisfaction?

Who can tell anymore. Lately I've felt untethered from a lt of important things in my life; work, writing, cooking, friends. Some of this I don't have a whole lot of control over. Other bits I do have a little influence on, but I've been too busy wrestling with the angel that I've forgotten to demand the blessing, forgotten what it was I was going to ask for.

Maybe getting back to writing is how I ask for the blessing. Maybe it's a way to let go of the angel. Maybe everything else can look after itself for a while.

Sometimes life gets in the way...

2011-02-15T13:50:00.000+10:30

I know that sounds feeble. The fact is, I haven't written a single word toward the rules-part of my world-book, and am reconsidering whether the best strategy is to link to a specific rules set in the first place (which may put me back to square one).

I haven't been completely idle, though. I've been making some notes on the world, mostly with a pretty dark thread running through. I'm toying with teh idea of doing a separate supplement that I'm calling Gothic Eyliarenn. That sounds like I'm making grand plans for a publishing empire before I've even got the first draft of the foundation book down, but hear me out.

The way I imagined this place was as a gritty-realist fantasy setting (I mean, it doesn't even have real magic or gods). One of my keystone directives was that I wanted to create something like a pseudo-magic setting, more science-based, though the science is rudimentary and dealing with processes barely controlled, let alone understood. The ideas that I have been developing of late have been more 'horrific' in nature than fits the flavour of the Eyliarenn setting, but they do work within the internal logic of the setting. I don't want to 'pollute' the basic book with varying visions of Eyliarenn, but rather set out a solid foundation that can be built on by myself and others, and that can stand multiple interpretations (I also have in mind an Epic Eyliarenn supplement - I'm not such a fan of the 'bigger than Ben Hur' style of game, but I know I'm probably in the minority among fantasy gamers on that one).

So I am working, just not so much on what I should be. More to come soon I hope.

(This post has been simultaneously published on my Eyliarenn project blog.)

Not 30,000

2011-01-05T16:13:00.000+10:30

The word count on my book now sits at a little over 27,000 words. a little more than it did just before Christmas. I had a really productive spurt for the two weeks leading up to Christmmas. I had hoped to get it up to 30,000 by New Year's Eve, but it wasn't to be - too many family commitments and a healthy dose of relationship maintnenance. No regrets.

Now I'm settling back into work routines and will be writing like some writing fiend in the evenings in no time. But tonight it's Trafalgar.

10,000

2010-12-08T16:42:00.000+10:30

Passed the ten thousand word mark last night on my super-secret, hush-hush writing project. All I'm saying is it isn't a novel (though I may have a stab at writing one at a later date - I have a plot I hallucinated a couple of years ago when I was quite ill and I'd like to take it out again sometime and see where it might go), and it won't interest most people. But who cares. Less than half a dozen people have read my honour thesis (a fact for which I cm grateful). Basically, I'm writing it for me. If I can sell it a make a few bucks, all the better.

Yes, Johnson famously said that "No man but a blockhead writes, except for money." so, well, it would be more than just a little bit cool if I could make some money from it, and with money comes validation, I guess.
Yeah, sure - I want to sell it. Happy?

At least I'm enjoying the process.

Some perspective - 15 November 2010

2010-11-15T15:25:00.002+10:30

http://thisisindexed.com/2010/11/poor-things-2/

Adventures in blogging

2010-11-14T15:42:00.000+10:30

I'm the first to admit, I'm an inconsistent blogger. I know I should be more regular in my blogging habits, and everyone who has an opinion on the subject says you need to be posting at least two or three times a day if you want peoplke to come badk regularly (and thereby make any kind of cash from your margin ads).

I was really slack for a couple of months while my wife was in hospital, and I don't apologise for that - I understand that for some people with sick loved-ones, getting all that anxiety and pain and heartache out to their online audience is cathartic and may even help them to get though the rough patch, but Jess is a pretty private person, and anything I wrote about that time would be mostly about her, so I had to respect that.

SInce than, I've still been slack. There's some upheaval at work at the moment due to an ongoing restructure and "right-sizing" (I'll save my disdain for the newspeak of the corporate world for another post) and I think that it would be inappropriate (and a red-flag for potential future employers) if I wrote about that. But to be honest, that's not what's keeping me from posting either. I'm even making headway with the RPG setting I'm writing (which, for anyone with an interest, I'm going to start blogging about here).

The fact is, I just don't think I'm that interesting. So instead of beating myself up over not constantly updating The Scoop with all the latest from my world, I'll be concentrating on the other blogs I'm trying to get up and running, and the other sideline projects that insist on my time, like work, and marriage. This doesn't mean I won't post on The Scoop ever again. It simply means that when I don get to it, or if I just don't have anything to say, I'll feel a lot less guilty about it.

So, until I've got something interesting to announce, that's me out.

Of new rules and grognards

2010-11-04T16:32:00.000+10:30

I am just at the moment familiarising myself with Triple Ace Games/Cubicle 7's All for One: Régime Diabolique RPG, with a view to running a game for my gaming group. All for One uses Exile Game Studio's Ubiquity system, which looks good on paper, but I've never played Hollow Earth Expedition (though I've heard a lot of great things about it, and I promise I'll get around to it sometime), and every plan fails on contact with the players.

In the last couple of years Savage Worlds has become a default system for the group, and a few of the guys can be a bit hidebound when it comes to trying new rules-sets (I've run RTT, RuneQuest, True 20, Summerland and Trail of Cthulhu games over the last three years with varying degrees of failure).

So I'm looking for two things; I'd like to hear anyone's thoughts on the Ubiquity system - how it plays, what tweaks or house rules they introduced, stuff like that. I'm also keen to hear any advice on offer for getting grognards to try new things (games written in the last fifteen years, for example). Post your thoughts here and maybe wwe'll get a discussion happening.

Oh Happy Day

2010-10-15T10:16:00.001+10:30

Jess returns home tomorrow. The world begins to right itself, centering once more on its axis. The lion lies to the lamb, then has roast lamb and invites all his lion friends - everybody wins. Except the lamb.

Insert NO KIDS logo here

2010-10-10T21:26:00.001+10:30

Before we got married (actually, years before marriage seriously came up), my wife and I confided in each other that neither of us wanted to have children. Eleven-and-a-half years of wedded (mostly) bliss later, and neither of us has shifted one iota in this conviction.

That's why this isn't an argument so much as an affirmation.

I'd just like to say here that Tempus makes a finer and much more patient parent than I ever would have.

Haiku Status Update - 10 October 2010

2010-10-10T21:07:00.002+10:30

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Feeling old today;

Like a typewriter ribbon.

frail and faded.

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I have a cold. Not a "Man Cold", but a genuine, knock-one-off-one's feet doozy of a chest infection. I think I'm over the worst of it, but I'm still congested as all hell and my head feels like it's been unscrewed and stuffed full of cotton wool, which itself has since become filled with mucus (thus accounting for the heaviness). Unfortunately there's more where that came from, as the two tissue boxes I've emptied in the last couple of days will attest.

I hate being sick. Partly because I hate the feeling of being sick, but more so because people assume that I'm not sick at all but just looking for some sympathy. I don't do that. I'll usually go to work unless I'm hurling or exhibiting a temperature higher than 102°F. In fact, I took two vacation days off last week to try and get over this affliction. And I'll show up at work regardless tomorrow - hope I'm not contagious, like my boss who I probably caught it from (Thanks, Susan! It's been neat!).

Speaking of health, I'm happy to report that Jess is up and around under her own steam again, and should be out of her convalescent internment in a week or so. She came home for lunch today, and when she's back for good I'll get her to write out our vaguely Japanese/Vietnamese miso noodle broth recipe which we enjoyed today, and to which I owe at least 30% of my better-feeling at this point, and post it to our nascent Pragmatic Kitchen blog (as yet, unsullied). It is a curative on the level of "Jewish Penicillin".

Built to last

2010-10-05T15:36:00.000+10:30

The concrete facades may be falling off the remaining Brezhnev-era buildings dotted around Moscow, but oneSoviet-built monument to progress is not only still intact, but may well only need its batteries recharged to be operational once more; the Lunokhod-1 rover, launched in 1970 and "lost since '74. Read about it here, courtesy of the good folks at MIT's Technology Review.

The road not taken

2010-10-05T11:02:00.000+10:30

If I had it to do over again, knowing what I know now, I think the biggest thing I would change is my career-path, which was diverted in primary school, primarily by my parents. I was a semi-talented, self-taught artist as a child (all big ideas but no technique). This was something my mother encouraged me in, as she was a painter and ceramicist herself. At least until grade seven; Near the end of the year I, along with bout half-a-dozen other of my Westminster peers, were offered the opportunity to attend a different public high school to the one I would normally attend (based on geography), in order to take part in an intensive Art course for promising talents. Ironically, the alternative school was actually closer to where I lived.

I had some reservations - I knew a few of the other kids that had been offered the course, and I knew a couple of them were way better artists than me. I wasn't sure if I would make the grade. But the ultimate decision was my parents'. Each for their own reasons, they decided that it would be a mistake for me to take up the offer; Dad because it wouldn't lead to a real job (essentially the same reason I had to drop out after year ten), and Mum, because she thought it would expose me to drugs and the wrong sort of people (those, I guess, who had no chance of getting a real job).

What shits me the most, looking back on it, is that nobody could make a compelling argument for why I should take the course (apparently an pilot program run by the school). The options for visual artists career-wise are many and varied, and were even then. At worst I might have gone into store window-dressing or become a photographer's assistant. But what I think I would have really liked to do is build a career in typography. I think it would have suited my particular suite of talent, technical proficiencies and bordering-on-asbergian passion for detailed minutiae. God knows, I wouldn't be any richer (poorer, more likely) than I am now, but I think the product of my labour might have been more worthwhile, more of a contribution to the whole.

Vale Tony Curtis - 3 June 1925 – 29 September 2010

2010-10-05T00:01:00.003+10:30

I grew up knowing Tony Curtis only as the Danny Wilde from the slick 1970s television series, The Persuaders! Years later I began to realise that he was a movie star way before his brief television foray. Every character I saw him play (up until Spartacus) exhibited something of Danny's irreverant, ironic, and flirty style that resonated with my idea of how fun it might be to be a grown-up. Back then I had no idea how close Danny's hinted philosophy was to Curtis's. There's a touching and funny rememberance of the great man by Tom Junod over at the Esquire magazine website*.

As for role models, I think I could probably have done worse.

* A big thank you to Tempus Fugit for bringing this one to my attention.

Tanka Status Update - 23 September 2010

2010-09-23T15:06:00.004+09:30

[Note: I started writing this post about two weeks into "the incident", but didn't post it - this makes up the first part of this post. Jess has got a lot better since, but all of us - her specialist, the nursing staff, her family, Jess and me - all had doubts at one time or another as to whether she'd really come out of this as she was before it began. Now I can say with some assurity that she will be back to what passes for normal in our pocket universe in a matter of weeks. She's still in hospital, but should be home again in terms of weeks rather than months.]

Haiku Status Update - 27 July 2010

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A sudden start wakes

her from her troubled sleep, her

parody of death

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After thinking about it for a few days, I'm going to pursue the subject of my wife's current convalencence. She's a very private person and for years she wouldn't talk about her condition to anyone. That's been changing in the last few years, with close friends and immediate colleagues being brought into our little circle of knowing. I wasn't going to write anything, but then I thought, what's the harm? Nobody we know will read it anyway.

Well, I'm not going to talk in specifics, but surfice it to say, she has a chronic condition that flares up every so often. In the past it's taken her a couple of weeks to get over it, with a couple of days loss of some functionality (i.e walking with a limp, unable to write by hand). This would happen every couple of years, annoy the hell out of her, and pass.

This time is different. it's hard to describe without betraying a confidence, but this incident has laid Jess low. It's robbed her of her ability to move around independently and to speak. The simple act of swallowing is denied her. She has an I/V drip and a feeding tube, and the worst part is she's still in there, a little groggy from the veritable pharmacopia she's being fed, but alert, thoughtful and - when she can make herself understood - wise-cracking, trying to cheer up those around her. Jess's prognosis is good, but it's impossible to stay 100% positive 100% of the time. Doubts creep in during the quiet times - mostly in the medical profession

This, I guess, is why they make you take vows when you get married. I wonder how many people ever really think about what they're committing to.

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Tanka Status Update - 23 September 2010

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Freedom -to one who

misplace theirs - comes to take

a narrow focus:

the ability to walk,

to pour a glass of water

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Jess is up and around again, albeit with some assistance. She started to regain her speech and facility to swallow about four weeks or so from the beginning. Now she's eating pizza and insisting I bring dessert when I visit after work (although she says the dessert jag will end when she gets out of hospital).

I'm looking forward to getting back to normal again. Jess is looking forward to getting back to work. We're both looking forward to having some time together, alone.

Haiku Status Update - 23 July 2010

2010-07-23T22:21:00.001+09:30

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Swimming in the ebb

And flow of information:

It's good to be back

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Yes, we're online once more. Actually we have been for about a week now, but I've been too distracted by the pretty lights to post about it. That and Jess hasn't been well. More on that another time perhaps.

As expected, I have got a lot of writing done during my enforced exile from the 'tubes. I'm hoping that I'll be able to keep up the momentum now all the biggest of all distractions is back in my life and in my study.

Haiku Status Update - 9 July 2010

2010-07-09T15:23:00.006+09:30

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Oh, say can you see

A light at the tunnel's end.

An on-coming train.
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Still no home Internet connection, in spite of signing up with a new ISP nearly A-WEEK-AND-A-HALF-AGO. Am told that the hardware and thecompetency to connect it (WTF?! I thought connectability technology was all plug-and-play these days) will arrive on consecutive days next week. So I have to take two of my hard-earned annual leave days to receive said hardware on Wednesday and to allow the ADSL magic in to our humble abode on Thursday.

The things we do for love.

Oh, BTW - Happy New (Financial) Year, Everyone!

By George, it's a tirade-al wave!

2010-06-29T17:08:00.000+09:30

My pal George, overwhelmed by an understandable wave of frustration, let loose with a tirade on his Twitter feed. You can read about it here, as someone from Adelaide's sole Daily, the News Ltd-owned Advertiser, must be a fan.

George, as champions of free speech and net neutrality, we salute you. Also, happy birthday for tomorrow!

Status Update - 29 June 2010

2010-06-29T16:36:00.000+09:30

Entering week four (or is it five?) of our home Internet exile. Virgin Broadband won't even sell us another modem to replace the one that died, but are more than happy to send us a new one for free if we cancel our currently suspended service (which, apparently they won't be un-suspending regardless) and take up their current offer (less data per month for more of our cash). So now we're shopping for a more reasonable service (and a higher data threshold - you get to that five-gig ceiling so quickly).

Any suggestions for a new ISP, drop me a line. If we take up your recommendation I'll immortalise the moment in a very special haiku status update.

Haiku Status Update - 16 June 2010

2010-06-16T17:32:00.009+09:30

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No Facebook chatter,

No faint roar of Google Wave;

Just my thoughts, unplugged.

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Still no home Internet connection. I've given up trying to find a new suitable wireless modem; we've suspended our service with our current provider (if we still get charged for a service we can't use because they can't supply us with a new modem - they claim they don't have any and don't know when/if they'll be getting more, even though they seem to be signing up new clients for the very same service - I will be naming names), we're considering copper-connection services again. More as it comes to hand.

Tanka Status Update - 13 June 2010

2010-06-13T15:57:00.000+09:30

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Still no connection

Missing the "status updates"

Of others, and the

Random, jokey emails

That neatly fill my inbox.

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Spent a good part of yesterday and today trying to find a modem that will work with our "state or the art" wireless broadband service. May as well added a purpetual-motion machine and a unicorn to my Must-Pick-Up-Today list. Really starting to get annoyed. Getting some writing done in the purpetual isolation of my truncated existence, though, so it's not a complete loss I guess.

Haiku Status Update - 11 June 2010

2010-06-11T10:25:00.000+09:30

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Still unconnected:

A leaf fallen from its tree.

I miss my Google.

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"Grrrr"; or, the maddeningly ephemeral nature of the modern object

2010-06-08T12:47:00.013+09:30

Our modem failed last night. I was watching the little display light up and start to look for a connection, then all was blackness. Well at least on the little screen.

The effect on our household is that not only do we no longer have wireless broadband coming in and connecting our little old PC to the wider world, but we also no longer have a "landline" connection to the greater humanity, as our telephone connection comes through the same modem. We are, until I can find a replacement, informationally and communicatively marooned from society.

For the record, I'm writing this in my lunch break on my work computer.

Food Report - Syrian Pizza

2010-06-06T22:25:00.002+09:30

Last night we made the Syrian-style pizzas I've mentioned in a previous post. They were really delicious, but not without some problems. The pizza dough is the easiest I've ever made - throw the dry ingredients in a mixer with a dough-hook (we have an 700 year old Kenwood that still runs like a steam-engine), with two teaspoons of olive oil and slowly add the water as it's mixing on the slowest setting, then let it run for ten minutes.

This is where the problem occurred. The dough was about three-and-a-half cups of flour, and 420ml of water. Now, I'm still a novice baker, but that amount of water got my spider-senses twitching. I added about 370ml in the end and that was still too much - a pizza dough should be a lot looser than your average bread dough (and should only get a single prove, to maintain that elasticity), but this was almost runny and difficult as all hell to work with, sticking to everything it came in contact with, including the oiled baking sheet and damp tea towel covering it while it proved (next time I'll use cling-wrap sprayed with oil).

I made the full amount of dough, divvied it up into four roughly equal portions and let it prove for two hours, as per the recipe. When I came back to it the dough portions had spread back into one homogeneous spread of really sticky dough, and when I tried to cut it apart with my old blunt chef's knife I keep just for working with dough, it stuck to the baking sheet, the knife my fingers and anything else it touched (again). Eventually I managed to work it on a well-floured board, and eventually my managed to stop laughing.

In spite of this, the dough made one of the best pizza bases I've ever tried. Next time we make these Ill take a photo and post it. Lamb and cinnamon are magic when combined, and the tomato topping on the base actually added to the overall taste rather than fighting with the other flavours. Definitely a recipe for the repertoire.

Random musing: the Primacy of Print

2010-06-06T00:32:00.000+09:30

Today sees the release of Shit My Dad Says, a book by Justin Halpern. Justin maintains the incredibly funny and honest @shitmydadsays Twitter feed, which is, as the name would suggest, comprised solely of quipps and quotes from his father. It's one of my favourite Twitter feeds. I can't wait to read the book and I wish Justin the best of luck with it (not that he needs any), but it did get me thinking.

All the pundits talk about the end of the book as a dead-tree artifact; Jock Given reviewed two books on the subject just recently (the irony of publishing hardcopy books about the "death" of hardcopy books seems to be lost in the hyperbole). But the fact remains, ever since Julie Powell hit paydirt with an offer from a serious publisher to convert her Julie/Julia Project into a book (and, since then, a movie deal), the dead-tree artifact has become the holy grail for bloggers. Many people now start blogging with the expressed intention of nailing a book deal (presumably without all that pesky "actually writing a book" and "shlepping it from agent to agent, publisher to publisher in the hopes of getting a nibble").

I'm not climbing to the summit of the moral ground hear; I'd do any number of unsavoury things to get a book deal. It's just that, well, aren't books the thing we're supposed to be getting away from by embracing electronic media and providing free entertainment for the future millions of ereader and iPad users?

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On a related note, I'd just like to give a shout-out to one of my favourite "useful" bloggers, Jen Mayer of 24 Boxes fame. Jen has a recipe book out, which you can order here. I have to confess that I haven't read the book, but if it's as good as the recipes she's posted over the last couple of years I've been following her, than it'll be work the exorbident freight costs from the US.