Yesterday was the 15^th, which means that I am now into the second half of the month. And it means that Christmas is all that much closer as well.

Last week I mentioned that I was going to break the 40,000 word mark on the sequel to ‘Dark Inheritance’.

I have done as I set out to do. As of today ‘Familiar Bonds’ is now at 43,040 words in length. Also last week I mentioned that I figured this book would be around 120,000 words, which means that I just broke the 1/3^rd mark.

The rate at which I am writing I will easily finish 60, maybe 70,000 words by the end of November. No matter what, I accepted the 50,000 word challenge and kicked its ass!

Also, since this marks my first year anniversary of writing a monthly blog, I am going to make a couple of changes to it. I’m going to add a few things. First and foremost I am going to be mentioning any new releases that Skirmisher publishes, not just my Wisdom from the Wastelands.

I am also going to bring up other gaming material that I might purchase. Sometimes I find some real gems that really deserve to be mentioned.

I may even talk about my fellow author’s contributions to the website, although maybe not as much. There are two reasons for that. First – most of my readers will see the material on the homepage when they come to visit the site. The other reasons, well they will remain my own for the time being.

Once ‘Dark Inheritance’ is published, my readers will find that it’s cut into 12 chapters and an epilog. I have followed in the footsteps of two of my favorite authors when it comes to how I do chapters in ‘Familiar Bonds’.

I’m cutting it up into ‘parts’. Furthermore, each ‘part’ is cut up into single scene chapters. Part one is complete and has been cut up into 25 chapters. Part two has barely begun and it is already six chapters long.

Thank both Jonathan Maberry and F. Paul Wilson for that. And no, I will not be commissioning artwork for each chapter, unlike what I did with my first book!  I can’t afford to purchase 100 plus images!

Also something that I mentioned last year about this time was that I had planned on doing up gaming statistics for the characters. That is still very much in the planning stage. All the major characters and many of the supporting characters will be ‘statted’ up. I also intend on creating several pieces of magical gear to go along with it.

Who knows, I am still considering doing a map of the Monastery and maybe add some other goodies as well. But that is all secondary at the moment. Once I finally get a date on when this will be released, then I will more than likely drop everything and get to work on that project.

And as I have stated before, once it is released then I will be releasing one short story tie-in every two weeks. That’ll take twenty six weeks for me to post all the stories.

Speaking of which, these stories will end up changing from what my friends have read, as I will be going and giving them a proper edit and changing things around so that they fit even more concisely with the two novels.

At the beginning of December I will be returning to my old project of doing mutant and weapon conversions to post on the site. I plan on continuing to convert many of the heroes and villains from both ‘Spider-Man’ and ‘Doctor Who’. I also will see about doing some other conversions as well, including a couple from ‘The Real Ghostbusters’.

And I will get back to ‘statting’ up weapons from the ‘Crysis’ series of games as well.

Last week Skirmisher published a beautiful Aegean Regional Map for the Sword of Kos campaign setting. This map is a huge 10 meg file which means that it can be taken to any local ‘Staples’ store and printed out poster sized! While you're at it, pick up the Mediterranean Campaign map as well!

Both sell for $5.99 and if you’re a fan of the campaign setting, it is worth every penny.

Yes I have every intention of printing it out poster sized and getting it hung on my wall. I may have to take a photo of it and post it once that is done.

I haven’t mentioned this many times over the past several months but back around May I finally managed to get back into tabletop roleplaying in a friends Pathfinder game. After not having been able to play since around November 2009, it was quite the treat to get back into playing.

During that time I found a couple of very cool PDF’s to download called ‘Feats Reforged' from TPK. There are three volumes. Volume 1 covers the feats from the Pathfinder Core book, Volume 2 covers feats from the Advanced Players guide and the most recently release, Volume 3 covers Ultimate Combat.

Essentially these books take the feats and increase the bonuses they provide when the character hits 7^th and then 14^th. Sometimes the feats have different bonuses at different levels, but it takes feats that became pretty much useless after you hit a certain level and made them worthwhile once again.

Finally, for those of you who enjoy using Critical hits and misses in your game, I would also strongly recommend that you take a look at their book 'Laying Waste' This is a nasty book filled with all manner of mayhem to be used with or against your group (GM's, be fair and let the players use it!). Instead of simply rolling to see if you achieved a critical hit and do extra damage, this book allows for a much wider variety of possible effects.

And it includes feats, archetypes and even optional combat rules.

I wish I would have thought of something like this! These books are incredible additions to any gamer’s library and you can’t go wrong. 

Oh, I watched ‘Interstellar’ with my best friend last week. It was a LONG movie but I found it managed to hold my attention and I did not get bored. It got a little weird at the end, and I’m not really sure about some of the science, but then again what the hell would I know about science?

Would I recommend seeing it? Of course! Watch it and enjoy it, the movie was really entertaining. There were what I considered to be some serious plot-holes but that is to be expected from pretty much all movies nowadays.

Oh yeah – before I forget, it was pretty cool to find out that my very first release through Skirmisher was mentioned in an audio podcast earlier this week. Around 5:30 they talk about my ‘Creatures from the Tropical Wastelands’ in softcover format.

Of course I thought that it was pretty cool to be mentioned like that.

A couple of my friends are using Hero Labs to create and maintain their characters. I decided to purchase a license for the Pathfinder game and I will be using it from here on in. So far it has been very useful and I believe that it has been money well spent! In fact I believe that I will use this program to generate the stats for all the characters in my novel, as I mentioned above, although I might also purchase the 3.5 OGL license as well.

And I guess that’s pretty much that for this week. Since I haven't done so in a few weeks I would like to invite any of my readers who happen to be on Facebook to like my personal author page, and maybe follow me on twitter as well!

As always, stay warm and enjoy life!

Peace!