Hiatus
As some of you may have discovered, I have taken a hiatus from working on pretty much anything. There haven’t been any new creatures posted for New Mutant Monday, nor have I written up any new magic items for Wednesday’s Wondrous Works.
I’m currently working on another short story, but I can’t say when it will be done. The story is going to be longer than I originally had planned.
Does this mean I’m quitting all the projects and work I’ve done over the past 6 years? I’d say probably not.
I do need a rest. I seriously need a rest. I’ve been creating for over two years, writing up an average of two or more creatures a week, plus a ton of other material and I’m really tired.
The past few weeks where I haven’t written any game material has been restful for me. I feel a serious weight has been lifted from my shoulders.
Some of you might wonder how long it takes to write up your average creature. For me, looking at the image while I type, it typically takes about a half hour or longer. If it is a very complex creature, well you’re looking at an hour or more.
Now combine that with having to stat up the creatures for Pathfinder – you’re looking at a minimum of an hour’s worth of work.
I am kind of thinking to take every creature I have written and create a new series of word files. One covering each type of creature in 3.5 and Pathfinder. Aberrations, Monstrous humanoids, animals, plants, vermin, undead, constructs and so forth. Instead of trying to publish each series as I had originally hoped, maybe I could convert them to Pathfinder and then make the necessary changes for Starfinder when it is released.
That in on itself, creating the files and then cutting and pasting into the new files will be very time consuming.
We shall see. There is the fact it’s still going to take a lot of work to convert these creatures as well, but if it’s done in manageable segments, a couple of dozen per publication, it can still work. If I do this, don’t expect anything new while I’m putting in the effort!
500 plus creatures do the math and you can probably see why I am tired. And between November of 2014 and January 2016, I wrote an additional 400K worth of words for the epic ‘Buck Who?’
At the very least I will be taking a hiatus from creature creation. I might (read will) get back to writing up new magic items, as they are far less labor intensive for me to work on. Maybe this week, maybe in a few, we shall see.
I might even write up another 100 oddities, since the 100 Oddities found in a Car, published by Skirmisher nearly two weeks back has managed to reach as high as 16 on the top 100 best sellers and is already a copper best seller for me.
Michael Varhola has my Monk magic item book, which hopefully Mike will be able to get to in short order. I will end up converting the material in the book to Pathfinder. You can expect a nice, well… very sexy image of a certain Tiefling which is one of the three main characters in my novel Dark Inheritance to grace the cover.
I can send Mike my Plant Mutation book, but truth be told, I would much rather wait and see Dark Inheritance published before I even consider working on anything else.
After the novel has been published, THEN I will think about the mutation book.
Speaking of Michael, Skirmisher released a new 5th edition module this week… Into the Mines of Moria! As always, do yourself a favor and pick it up!
Oh yeah, as always I need to thank Alfonso Maesa for the full color version of Ronnath Al’thia, my Ranger and the central character for the series of nine (soon to be ten) short stories I have written and posted on the site.
I’m going to do away with the typical reviews for this shortened blog. I have finished several novels, but only one movie, which is the only thing I WILL discuss.
Back in the late 80’s or early 90’s there was a gem of a movie called Moontrap, starring Walter Koenig and Bruce Campbell. This was a great movie about ancient astronauts, a moonbase, and nasty aliens.
I found a sequel to this movie called Moontrap: Target Earth and grabbed it instantly. What a mistake.
It was made on a shoe-string budget, had terrible acting, even worse effects and the plot? What fucking plot?
I was shocked to see it was written by the same guys who did the original. It was terrible! Avoid this movie unless you can see it for free. It was a major waste of my money and time and I was so damned disappointed.
Yes I used my 3D printer last week, but haven’t printed anything new this week. I did glue together my Poe Dameron blaster, and printed out all the parts for the Motion Tracker. Now I need to find the screws for it!
I could glue it together without the screws, but I want it to be sturdy!
You can see the images in the banner above this blog.
I still have quite a few items I would like to create, and the biggest and most time consuming will be the Rebel flight helmet, which I will have to reduce in size by 10% to get all the parts to fit on my printer bed!
So many possibilities… I do love using my new toy!
And that’s it. I’ll see if I’m up to another blog next week or not. Maybe I’ll continue with a weekly blog, maybe I’ll slow down and the blog will be less frequent than it has been in the past.
Stay warm, stay happy!
