Bonus content compilation, more sources for Mutant Future, Lost Stars and Harry Dresden!

Halloween is just under two weeks away, which means ‘gasp’ that Christmas is not far behind. Oh wait, I forgot the other holiday that my American friends celebrate – Black Friday. Wait, is that a holiday?

At any rate it’s that time of week once again for me to put my views and other sundry thoughts to virtual paper and post said virtual paper in the ether that is the net.

This week saw me with very little time to do any writing at all. I was busy with everything that life could throw at me after work, which meant that I could not do a damn thing. And since I forgot to bring my laptop to work one day this week, which meant that I could not do any writing that day.

And then Friday I decided to be a good dad and invited my son to join me for lunch, so that killed any possible writing for Friday.

I really hope to finish the story next week and then get the final in the series of shorts finished by the end of the month. I am going to aim to try and write 2000 words a day starting tomorrow, in preparation for the national novel writing month.

Yes I am still waffling about if I am going to join that or not, and at this time I’m leaning heavily to the ‘I will join’ side. But as my many readers know my mind can be quite fickle and I can change it several times.

Last week I talked a great deal about my Wisdom from the Wastelands supplement. As it turns out after I posted last week’s blog I ended up posting bonus material for three of my issues. I posted material for issue 35: Terror Weapons, Issue 41: Alternate Forms of Radiation, and Issue 43: Optional Combat Rules 2. I still have to come up with bonus content for two other issues and I eventually will.

Now here is the good news. After talking to my editor Michael Varhola, he has agreed and we are going to end up publishing all the bonus content in a single volume. I got in contact with my fellow scribe Derek Holland and he has also agreed to this project. So last week I sent all my bonus material to my other editor Greg and Derek is going to do the same. Greg is going to do his usual incredible job of editing the material. The target date for this book of bonus material is going to be around the same time that issue 50 is released.

I will keep you updated with the progress of this book. I know that many of you will ask ‘will there be a charge for it?’ Yes, but before you get angry this will be offset by giving coupon codes to those who have purchased the various products.

And just to let you know, after compiling all the bonus material, it comes to nearly six full issues of material! All my issues (well with the exception of two) have bonus content and it adds up really fast!  Remember that is only MY bonus content. That does not account for Derek’s bonus content, which should effectively double the size of this book.

Something for you to look forward to!

Another thing is that many people do not really care for PDF’s and they like to have the material they purchase in their hands, instead of on a computer or tablet screen. My solution to this is that I do print my books out and then I take them to a company like ‘Staples’ here in Calgary and have them bound. I use the ‘wireless’ binding, which is essentially a black back and side with a clear plastic cover. This generally costs about $5 to do and it keeps all your PDF books in one nice and convenient place.

For books like my Wisdom from the Wastelands series I wait until I have 20 issues printed out and then I get it bound. This works great for all the other books that you might have purchased and have taken the time to print.

Before I came across this method I used to print the books out and then slide the pages into plastic sleeves and place them in a three ring binder.

Honestly that option became too costly, as I was constantly buying plastic sleeves as I printed the books out. Getting the wireless binding is a lot cheaper, believe me!

Usually I don’t post about other companies works, but for this blog I am going to make an exception. The Knotty Works has produced ten issues of a series of supplements called ‘Going Postal’ and three issues of another mini supplement called ‘Table Scraps’. These works are all perfectly compatible with Mutant Future and are well worth your money. I was impressed (and truth be told, a little jealous) with the latest issue of Table Scraps, where the author introduces quite a few rules covering the use of black powder weapons in a Mutant Future game. I wish I would have thought of it first! Heh, all the material is really worth your time to pick up and read.

For the hell of it I decided that I would give SyFy’s latest series a shot. Last weekend I watched the first episode of Z-Nation. So far it’s a standard Zombie Apocalypse show, with the usual bit of trying to find a cure or a vaccine. I won’t give away any of the major plot but I will say that there was one particular scene that really did make me shake my head. It involved a baby.

That’s all I will say about it and if you want my honest opinion of that scene, it was just dumb. Other than that however I did not mid the show and I will continue to watch it.

Since I have been at my new job for four full weeks now, it has really cut into my reading time. Well into my audiobook time. So I have only managed to finish one book, the latest in John Campbell’s Lost Stars series: The Lost Stars: book 3; Imperfect Sword.

What I really enjoy about his books is the fact that it is all about the struggle to throw off an old and corrupt way of running a government and embracing a new version that is actually ‘for the people’. And of course how the old government is determined to hold onto power and the schemes and machinations that they use to try and keep the control.

Very political but there is also more than enough action to keep even the most rabid combat fan happy.

I know that quite a few of my readers are fans of the Harry Dresden series. I want to ask you this… how many of you know about the comics that are being published? If you don’t know about them, there have been a number of original stories written and published, of which you can now buy all the issues of a particular storyline as graphic novels. The first is ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, the second is called ‘Ghoul, Goblin’, and the latest is called ‘War Cry’. If you did not know about these before, you do now! They should all be available at your local comic shop. And the first two novels have also been turned into comics, just to let you know.

And that is it for this week.

Peace!

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.