I’m pleased to say that I managed to get a lot of work done on the Armor book this week. Far more entries have been written up in detail, and I’ve even come up with quite a few notes for material that needs to be written and added to it.

I’m not sure if I’m going to continue to work on the book this week. Odds are pretty good that I will, but I also have another two short stories that I wish to write up.

The first one is going to be called ‘100’.  A very simple and to the point title and it will be the fourth in my series of tie-in short stories for my zombie novels. This particular offering will be set in the Philippines and the protagonist will be my brother-in-law and his two boys. I’m not sure how long the story will be, probably around 10,000 words or so.

Chris Van Deelen is the author of the Skirmisher Publishing LLC sourcebook Creatures of the Tropical Wastes sourcebook, co-author of its Wisdom from the Wastelands game supplement and contributor to the 'Sword of Kos: Hekaton' Anthology.

I’m pleased to say that I managed to get a lot of work done on the Armor book this week. Far more entries have been written up in detail, and I’ve even come up with quite a few notes for material that needs to be written and added to it.

I’m not sure if I’m going to continue to work on the book this week. Odds are pretty good that I will, but I also have another two short stories that I wish to write up.

The first one is going to be called ‘100’.  A very simple and to the point title and it will be the fourth in my series of tie-in short stories for my zombie novels. This particular offering will be set in the Philippines and the protagonist will be my brother-in-law and his two boys. I’m not sure how long the story will be, probably around 10,000 words or so.

Will it be a gift to him and the boys? I don’t know. Simply put, trying to get any of my family to read what I write is like trying to pull teeth from a chicken. It’s simply downright impossible. When I am finished writing it I will send them copies and see how far that goes.

The other short story is going to be number nine to tie into ‘Sword of Kos: Dark Inheritance’. This short will be a direct lead-in to my sequel, which I have stated numerous times I will end up writing later on this year, probably around August or so.

Speaking of short stories, earlier today I posted the third of my zombie short stories. This one is called ‘Payback’.

The main protagonist is a police officer, who I met several years ago. He wrote a book called 'Wolf and the Sheepdog', which were a collection of short stories about various encounters he had during his years on the force.

My son Gary has ambitions to become a police officer himself in a few years’ time and I've always had the upmost respect for the men and women who patrol the streets and keep the rest of us law-abiding citizens safe. I know a lot of people hate cops, but I'm certainly not one of them.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

I posted one of my earliest short stories based in the Alien’s universe a few weeks back, called ‘She Who Gives Life’, I have been toying with posting several of my other earlier works, including a piece I wrote for ‘Roughnecks: The Starship Trooper Chronicles’ that I wrote as an entry in a short story contest, and a series of interlocking stories that are also set in the Aliens universe.

If I do this, I will be editing the living crap out of all these works, as they are well over a decade old and will need to be treated to some tender loving rewrites. But at this time it’s only a thought, because I have so much on my plate as it stands, and by re-writing and editing these older works, that simple task will take away from working on my other short stories and various projects that I have on the go.

The largest obstacle when it comes to either of these offerings is locating the files! I hope that I have them backed up somewhere…

My long awaited Radiation based issues of ‘Wisdom from the Wastelands’ are the next two that will be released. They will be issues 38 and 39 respectively.

My editor has two more issues in his hands to work on – another new race issue and one on artifact quality. I realize that ‘Wisdom from the Wasteland issue 4: New Races’ was not well received by the community when it first came out, but I personally have always liked having a wide variety of races to choose from. So I figure issue 41 or so will be the next one covering that particular theme.

And I really need to write up some new issues. I have lots of ideas but all my other projects have kept me away from this task. I’m good for the next two months, but what about after that? I guess I could send Greg the second optional combat rules, but I will have to go and trim out the material that I didn’t get around to writing up.

I still recall back in the day playing ‘Legion of Gold’ for the first time and how much I loved it. This was the first Gamma World module that I ever played and I have to say that even to this day it still holds up. Then again that can be said about a lot of the old modules that were published many years ago in the early years of role playing games.

One of my favorite parts of the module dealt with the ‘Buggem’s’. That part of the module had a lot of different mutant bugs to harass and horrify the players. It got me to thinking that I personally would love to take all the old mutant bugs from the original Gamma World game and re-write them (as I typically do, add more of a background story to them) and maybe publish a book dedicated to mutant insects.

Again it is just a thought, since I already have so damn much on my plate to contend with!  I wonder how the post-apocalyptic OSR gaming community would react to such an offering?

Last started reading ‘Destroyermen 3: Maelstrom’ by Taylor Anderson. This is an excellent series that is set in World War 2 about a pair of old Destroyers that are whisked from our world into a parallel universe where humanity never evolved. Instead the world is over-run by dinosaurs and two races, the Grik and the Lemurians. The crews of these two destroyers find themselves caught in the middle of a genocidal War between these two races.

There is a hell of a lot more to it than that, but these novels are highly entertaining and very well written and if you’re looking for something new to delve into, this would be a good choice.

On another personal note, I was absolutely ecstatic to learn earlier this week that The Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo is having another first, another very exciting offering to all the fans and supporters.

We have pretty much the entire cast of the venerable and still excellent movie ‘Aliens’ coming to the expo this year! Including Sigorney Weaver!

Before this announcement I was almost tempted to sell my VIP pass, as they had announced some changes that were taking place that essentially made my pass all but worthless to me. After discovering this announcement I am damn glad that I didn’t.

Aliens is my favorite movie of all time and this is something that I have been wishing to attend for nearly thirty years. They have a separate event called ‘Aliens EXPOsed’ And I purchased a ticket to this event yesterday morning.

April is going to be one hell of a good month!  Now only if the guy from Spatcave will get my armor and pulse rifle completed and shipped to me on time. I REALLY want it now, especially for this event!

Lastly once again I would like to invite my readers to like my new author page on Facebook. Just click on my name Chris Van Deelen to be directed to the page. Takes but a second to do so and like it. You’ll make me happy.

And that’s it for this week, as always enjoy life everyone and peace!