The second week of January is now complete, and it’s been a bit of an interesting ride. Terrorist attacks in France, oil continuing to drop in price, and cold weather.

For me, life has changed very little. I like that. I do prefer to have little serious change, as over the past five years I’ve had to deal with quite a bit of it.

Some of it has been good, some has been bad. I can say though with all certainty that life has not been dull.

I’ve been in contact with my editor Greg. He currently has two issues for Wisdom from the Wastelands. The Harvesting issue for that I have mentioned in previous blogs, and one on Animal and Plant genotypes.

The second one has been done for several years. The original idea behind it was to publish it in a massive advanced book for Mutant Future.

The downside is that the book would never have come to fruition. The main reason is that so much of the book has already been published as various issues of my Wisdom from the Wastelands.

With the changes that I mentioned in my previous blog, the increase in size is going to be a serious blessing. And I won’t lie; it will be a bit of a headache for me, since I have to produce so much extra material for each issue now.

Still it’s a challenge that I accepted and I will enjoy working on in future months. The good news of course is that I don’t have to worry about writing an issue in the next week or so, I have essentially four months to get a couple more written.

Why so long? Well, Wisdom from the Wastelands will be going monthly, instead of by-weekly and as sporadic as it has been. Some people might not like that since it means only twelve issues a year, but the way I see it, the reader will be getting the equivalent of 3-5 issues with each, due to the size increase.

The monk magical item issue for Dungeonmasters and Dragonslayers (a Labyrinth Lord compatible publication) has been coming along slowly. Not because of lack of ideas, but mainly due to lack of time last week.

That and some of the items I have been writing require some research. Still, I like how the issue is shaping up and it won’t be much longer (time providing) before it’s finished.

I’ve tried to incorporate a lot of material. If you want it in 3.5 and Pathfinder terms, there are a few wondrous items, a whole simple system for creating magical weapons (yes based off the systems I mentioned). Lots of magical armor and so forth.

I just hope that the readers will enjoy it. Wait a second - didn’t I say that in my previous blog?

Also as I mentioned in my previous blogs, I have undertaken the task of writing a couple of short stories for a friends Twins. The first story for the girl was completed last week. That included two edits and some minor re-writes.

I’ve started working on the story for the boy, this one set at the end of Mass Effect. I will finish writing it this week and hopefully finish the edits as well, so that next weekend I can give them the stories.

Now if only Alfonso Maesa would finish the artwork for both!

I don’t know how many of my readers know this, but after burying my father-in-law in August, I was forced to change jobs. Previous blogs mentioned that fact, and how bitter I was about it. That is neither here or now, and the reason I am bringing this up is because I have lost the ability to read as much as I used to.

Well, technically it isn’t reading, it’s listening to my books on audio. Still, I have dropped to half of what I used to read as a result of the change. So that is why I haven’t mentioned books as much as I used to in my blogs.

Recently I was able to listen to the 10^th book in the Starforce series by B.V. Larson. I was disappointed to learn that he had brought the series to a close at book 9. Then out of the blue he announced that the series would continue with the help of another author.

It picks up about twenty years later, and deals with the main protagonists son. I won’t go into details but with one exception, I enjoyed the novel. The way it began was too damn similar to the way the overall series began.

I can’t go into detail without spoilers, so I won’t say anything else. Still, I did enjoy it despite that one issue I had with it. Nice to see the series is continuing, and the next novel, book 11, will be out by the end of the month.

Speaking of books, John Ringo’s latest, and if what I read is true – last book in his Black Tide Rising series was released last week. Once I’m finished my current novel, I will jump right into that one. I finished the third book when I was in the Philippines last year, and was quite eager to continue with the series.

No new games or gaming material this week, so nothing to discuss on that subject.

Typically this is the part of my blog where I would make a personal observation. Some weeks I have several topics to discuss, other weeks there is nothing on my mind.

This week is the latter. Nothing really worth talking about or at least nothing that really stuck out in my mind.

If there is any chance that my readers might be waiting for me to write a review about ‘Alien: Isolation’, you’re out of luck this week. I might finish it by next weekend, but I really doubt that. It will more likely be the end of the month. I just don’t have the time to play the way I would like.

Still, all I can say for sure is that it’s LONG and if you’re susceptible to anxiety or are easily scared, don’t play this game. I don’t scare easily and it’s made me jump or yell ‘holy shit!’ more than a couple of times.

In other words, I love it!

And that’s it for this week. I haven’t asked this in a few weeks, so I figured that, what the hell. If you would be so inclined, please give my personal author page a like on Facebook, and if you happen to use Twitter, follow me on that as well.

This week's blog image is from Ninja Gaiden 3. No I haven't played the game, just thought it was a cool image to use for the blog since I was talking about monk (aka martial arts) items.

Until next week, stay warm and happy!

Peace.