I’ve been a little more creative this week on a – wait for it – brand new project.  As those of you who follow my weekly blog know I have been posting a serialized novel called ‘Buck Who’.

Yes I started out calling it a story but at nearly 40,000 words, it’s no longer a story. It can be considered a long novella or a short novel. The way I write however? It is a novel.

Chapter 5 was posted on Friday, as per usual, and Chapter 6 is almost finished. I may finish it tonight and get to the edit right after, although more than likely I will do that tomorrow.

Right – I got off track, the new project. I’ve started writing my next issue of Wisdom from the Wastelands. This one is all about nanotech undead. With the new size of the E-zine I can really shine! It will have about 16-20 new types of undead, a handful inspired by Everquest 2, while the rest spawned from my twisted imagination. Right now I have the basic rules written up and have completed about 8 of the monsters. I kind of hope to have it finished by the end of the month.

I’ve discovered when I give myself a deadline now, I tend to meet it more often than not. In fact I tend to hit my self-imposed deadline about 80% of the time now.

Once this issue has been finished and sent off to my editor, I’m going to switch gears and finish off the basic skill system I began writing about four years ago. It’s all but finished, I just have to polish it up and write up a few new entries. Once that’s done, then I’ll get it off to Greg as well.

A lot of material is still being produced, even if we haven’t seen a new issue of Wisdom from the Wastelands in a while.

And who knows, as long as I have enough issues in the pipe to cover the next several months, then I will finally go back and continue work on the Powered Armor and Robotics books. They’re both way too big to put out as Wisdom from the Wastelands issues (the PA book alone is 70 pages!).

And I am looking forward to the release of the new Dungeoneers and Dragonslayers E-zine. I have no idea who’s is going to be the first issue, but I won’t lie – I hope I get that honor.

One last tidbit to note when it comes to ‘Buck Who?’ I’ve already begun writing up gaming material to eventually release, either as a PDF or free companion. It will cover several new mutants, the characters, even the weapons.

Don’t expect it next week though, probably won’t release it until it is the size of one of my new issues of WftW.

Last week I posted another top five list. This time I covered my top five urban fantasy novels. I have not read all that many urban fantasy series, as I am not a fan of the genre, but still, if you are looking for a possible new series to check out, I would suggest reading this one over.

The nice thing is I have already compiled a large top five list. I have enough ideas to cover the next eleven weeks. As I think of more I will be sure to add them to the list.

Also last week we saw the release of another 100 oddities. This one covers 100 oddities for a Wizards Library. The best news is this product has sat in the top 10 small press releases for the entire week!

I really have to write my own. In fact I did start one, but with all the projects I have on the go, it fell to the wayside. Time to read over the issues I do own and see how they’re set up and get back to work.

This week I purchased a new PDF called ‘Androids, Aliens and Aberrations’ after seeing it was Mutant Future compatible. It is a series of new races and other material, so I wanted to check it out. The PDF contains Evolved Humans (Ancients, in my WftW#4), Enders (T-800’s from Terminator and Terminator 2), E9000 (The T1000 from T2), Evolved Humans (Mind Masters from WftW#4), Goliaths (really got me thinking of ‘The Hulk’) Greys (yes, the little aliens) Loonars (unique! Yay!), Psion (sort of a cross between my Mind Masters and regular Humans), Reptoid (think Annunaki), Rotter (Fallout’s Ghouls), Serpent Noble (even before I finished reading the entry, I was thinking Annunaki Hybrid).

Overall it is pretty light on both crunch and fluff, but then again that is the normal state when it comes to a lot of the material published for Mutant Future.

The nice thing is the author did name the sources for the various new races, and quite honestly it is worth picking up for your campaign. Of course I will be totally biased and say that you should use my races from both issue 4 and issue 40, but as the author of both you would expect me to say that.

And since it’s that time of the blog, I did finish another novel last week. Destroyermen 8: Storm Surge. I’m nearly caught up to the series, with only 9 currently available, until the tenth book comes out later this year.

Character deaths abound, stakes grow ever higher in the war with the Grik, and even more surprises and new allies and enemies to contend with.

If you haven’t had a chance to read Taylor Anderson’s series, I cannot recommend it any more strongly than I have. Hell, this series even made it onto one of my top five lists over the past month!

I’ve also started reading a couple of new series. I’m trying to get into the Spider-Verse comics and recently picked up the first four issues of ‘Spider-Woman’ and the first issue of ‘Silk’. I might end up waiting to pick up the graphic novel compilations of the Spider-Verse comics, as I really don’t want to fork out the cash for the individual comics. Especially since it probably has enough issues out now to justify the publication of a release of the graphic novel.

After reading the first issue for both, I have to say I’m curious. Why was Cindy Moon looked up in a bunker for a decade? Why are all these characters able to jump from universe to universe? Why the hell are there a couple of seemingly indestructible hunters after the various characters?

I could always go and read up on the characters on the Marvel site or maybe a Wikipedia, but I think I’ll hold off until I can get my hands on the graphic novels and read up on it through that method.

Do I like them? Yeah, so far, although the artist doing Silk is almost to anime-ish for my personal taste.

That covers it for this week.

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Until next 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.