Radiation, Chariot Races, Dragons, and More

Here we go again for another week. I’m still quite amazed that I have been able to keep up with this weekly blog for as long as I have!

So as is usually the case I’ll start it off by talking about ‘Dark Inheritance’. I did break 112,000 words last with the edits and re-writes. A lot of the material I added was from the notes that I have been compiling since I began the first draft of edits.

Although I do find it quite ironic how I began to write a small scene where Jaeger is about to purchase some magical throwing knives to give to Viya as a gift and it somehow morphed into a noblewoman approaching Viya to talk about her mother.

My writing does tend to have a mind of its own and I fully intend on writing that very minor scene! I just need to find a good place to fit it in.

It’s coming along quite nicely, and I’m still sitting about 75% of the way through with the first round of edits. Once Michael Varhola gets his hands on it, I fully expect there to be more changes. I won’t lie, I hope he doesn’t ask for any, as I typically don’t like to cut or make any drastic changes to something I’ve already worked on. Still as was the case with ‘The Rite’, part of the Sword of Kos: Hekaton anthology, he did not really ask me to do any re-writes, but a lot of the wording he changed. Everyone has different views and differing ways of phrasing. I know that after reading some of his work that I would have done the same thing. Don’t get me wrong – this isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a way of how we differ in our styles!

Speaking of ‘Dark Inheritance’, I have really tried to go out of my way to make it fit seamlessly into the Kos campaign setting. Earlier this week Skirmisher Publishing released the Kos City book that details many locations found in the iconic setting.

In my novel I have visited several locations detailed in the book, and although it was too late to get it included, I have contributed one additional location, called the Silver Dragon’s Thorn – a Tattoo shop.

Also I have written a fairly extensive and (in my opinion) exciting scene that details the chariot races that are held in the Hippodrome and some of the rules surrounding the races. I don’t know about other readers, but from the various chariot race scenes that have been depicted in movies over the decades, they always struck me as a medieval version of Death Race, and thus the inspiration for the whole scene.

Later this week I hope to finish off even more edits, but I discovered that while going through the book that the last 25% really did need some serious polishing.

And of course I have at least one major Epilog scene to write.

Onto other topics. I have continued to post new and repost old material that I wrote up as bonus content for my issues of Wisdom from the Wasteland.  It was kind of funny how much new material I had to create! New Diseases for issue 8, a few weapon modifications for issue 9, and a couple of high-tech tools for issue 17. Now all the issues past issue 21 need brand new material! I certainly won’t be posting as frequently as I had with my previous reposts, as I need to come up with some ideas for each issue and write them up.

As for the Monsters from Entertainment and Media I am continuing to repost older work from the old Skirmisher site. So far I have not missed a single day when it comes to getting the material edited and reposted. I did end up missing one day however when it comes to writing up the statistics for Metro 2033 critters. I am a busy man after all and those days will happen whether I like them or not!

And speaking of monsters from mother Russia, I realized that I can also write up the mutant creatures that appeared in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as well, and as such I have already bookmarked the wiki page and once I’m finished with my current batch, I will begin work on those.

Last week I finally got around to listening to ‘A Game of Thrones’. See, when it comes to many popular books or TV shows, I tend to avoid the band wagon. I just don’t like to jump on it and join the rest of the people. That’s why it took me so damn long to get around to reading the Harry Potter novels. Hell, even longer for me to get to the Dresden Files, and many of my friends were pushing me HARD to read those.

I have to admit that despite the fact the novel was easily 36 hours long (audio), I did enjoy it and was not once bored by it. So I am going to continue with the series but slowly, maybe once a month or so.

I am now almost finished listening to Jonathan Maberry’s novel Flesh and Bone. It is the third in his Benny Imura series a zombie series written for teens. It was rather nice to see one of my literary heroes Joe Ledger makes an appearance in this book.

This novel has given me the inspiration to write up a whole swath of differing zombies that can be used in OSR and possibly in SF settings. Of course this is many months down the road, but still there are so many different types of undead, so why the hell not?

It has taken most of the past two weeks but I finally managed to come up with the way to handle radiation and work the radiation sickness rules into cohesive and playable rules. So later today I will finally put to pen the ideas and hopefully finish off the two issues and send them off to Greg for final edits.

Be nice to see these two issues finally get published, considering that I came up with the idea exactly one year ago today!  I started writing up the ideas while sitting in the Calgary international Airport waiting for my flight to the Philippines.

And I know at least one person has been waiting for a couple of years now for me to come up with vehicle rules for Mutant Future so I will endeavor to try and come up with something workable. I do have some notes written down here and there, I just need to think long and hard on how I want to write this up. They need to be fairly simple and yet playable.

My wife and I caught ‘Desolation of Smaug’ yesterday and it was everything that I had hoped for. Absolutely loved it! The dragon effects were quite amazing and nearly gave my little lady a heart-attack. I love it when she gets so worked up watching a movie like she did. Of course she was quite angry when it ended where it did, and now we have to wait a full year to see the final installment of this epic fantasy series.

On a totally different subject, I was wondering if there would be a call for ‘Mechs’ in Mutant Future. There are plenty of sourcebooks and material available through the various RPG companies out there.

Maybe it’s something I will consider for future work, but at the moment I still have several huge books that need to be worked on before I even consider a new project. It is vital that I finish projects already started!

Lastly as per usual here is the rough draft image for chapter 2 of my novel. I certainly do love Giorgio Alfonso Maesa’s work!

Oh and one last thing... Kayne West, go F$#% yourself... being proud that you are a non reader? Yup, continue to dazzle us with your intellectual superiority.

Until next time, Peace!