It’s really starting to look and feel like Christmas here in Calgary. The past few days it’s been damned cold out (-45 with the wind and that’s in Celsius!) and there is a lot of snow on the ground, and more car accidents than you could ever wish to see.

In other words, a typical day in Calgary after a major snowfall.

But at least I’ve got a working car and the roads were not too terrible between home and work, so I made numerous trips safe and sound.

Times like these I envy my American friends who live in the Deep South, where they rarely ever get snow and serious cold.

Today also marks the last day for the NaNoWriMo Challenge. Last week I touched upon it, and as my readers already know, I completed the initial challenge back on the 19^th.

I’m really REALLY proud to say that I wrote 81,004 words in 30 days. For those in the know, your average novel is 80,000 words. So I wrote a full length book in a month.

Now comes the really fun part. I will be doing some serious editing and making a lot of changes and taking notes. I will also be adding some new material as I go, but I won’t be pushing out the word count as I had through the month of November.

With this task now complete, I will be getting back into writing up monster and weapon conversions to post on the D-Infinity site.

And I also plan on writing up that long delayed bonus material for Wisdom from the Wastelands issue 46: High Tech Weapons 4.

Speaking of my series, Wisdom from the Wastelands issue 47: Underwater Rules was released earlier this week!  Much to my pleasure, this issue made it as high as #8 in the top 100 small press best seller, and as of tonight, as I am writing this blog, it is still sitting at #27.

That is one of the highest ranking issues I’ve had in about a year!

Yes, I am pleased.

Now that December is almost upon us, I will be getting down and working on some new material. I mentioned a lot of the ideas I had in my last blog and I really need to begin, but I have no idea which I am going to start!

I’m waffling between working on an equipment issue, nanotechnology based tattoos, and more environment issues, since my underwater issue sold so well.

No matter what though, I will start work this week on something.

Going back to my novel, after talking briefly to my editor Michael Varhola I am going to make some fairly significant changes to my book. So here's what's going to happen with 'Familiar Bonds'.

Drow from D&D have always been into worshiping spiders. Well, specifically Lolth.

I talked briefly with Mike yesterday about this. After our discussion, the Drow in Kos are not going to be worshipping a spider goddess. No, in fact the Drow are going to be into something far, far worse. I’m pretty sure that it’s been done before, but then again what I have written has probably been done a million times already.

Also in a few scenes I referred to the head of the households as Matron Mother. That too is going to change. I already have a number of different possibilities in my mind that tie in with the way I'm going to write them up for Kos.

In my first novel I had the main characters get drunk and ended up getting Tattoos (which seems to be a common enough occurrence in real life!).  I am trying to come up with a way to handle the tattoos that I had the three main characters get when they were in the city.

I came up with one idea that seemed to work just fine, but I was having issues trying to come up with how to handle the others. One on Jaeger's arm, and the one on Viya's face.

After I write what I am thinking of, I'll see how it plays out. If I like it, I will keep it. If not, I’ll just erase it and come up with something else.

By the way, I will also be writing up (as I mentioned last week) material for Labyrinth Lord. I still intend on writing up an article about tattoo magic, to tie in with my novels, but now I am going to write up some unique magical items for use by monks.

I know that monks are not that popular a class to play in the various games, but considering my own background with Shaolin Kung Fu, I like them and it seems appropriate that I write up something.

So I will do just that.

A couple of things to talk about media wise. Last week I watched a DVD that had been sitting on my ‘to watch’ pile for a long time. I finally got around to it and found that I really enjoyed it. The movie was called ‘Odd Thomas’ and is based on a series of novels written by Dean Koontz.

Anyone familiar with his style of writing will recognize it instantly as they watch the movie. It was funny, somewhat scary and turned out to be a pretty good mystery. And the ending broke my heart.

I really recommend this movie!

And today my wife and I had the pleasure of seeing ‘The Penguins of Madagascar’ movie. I have loved those cute and cuddly guys ever since they had a small part in the original ‘Madagascar’ movie. So much so I have faithfully purchased and watched every DVD that came out with their TV series.

It was fun! Typical chaos and laughs to be sure, and if you’re a fan of the TV series, this is a must see.

I have not purchased any new gaming material this week, so nothing to report on that front.

Oh and the image that I have used for this week’s blog is from my favorite artist Alfonso Maesa. It is for the story ‘Legend’ and depicts a much younger Viya in a rare moment of peace. I thought that Alfonso did a wonderful job of capturing the way she would look when she was content and at peace.

And with that, I’m done for the week.

So until next time, keep warm, drive safe and enjoy life! Try not to lose your temper with the folks around you, as remember – we just over three weeks until Christmas!

Peace!