Welcome to the first day of November, folks. Welcome to the first day of NaNoWriMo as well. Will I be participating in it this year?

In a word, no.

Unlike last year where I had a lot of projects on the go, this year I want to actually finish most of these off. If I took the time to write 80,000 words in one month like I did last year, I would never get any work done.

And besides – Fallout 4 comes out in 9 days. I will be losing a lot of writing time because of that game.

Hey – the upside is you know I’ll post conversions on the main page!

I have been extremely busy with real life this week, which prevented me from posting conversions, so sorry about that.

If it was not for adding a mess of mutations, I would have finished the Harvesting book. I’m going to try and finish it tonight, after I’m finished posting this blog.

Then I have to work on the ideas I have for two issues of D-Infinity, and continue to add material to the expanding re-release of the WftW weapon issues.

It’s never ending!

Say it with me… Friday saw the posting of Chapter 41 of Buck Who? I’m going to be starting Chapter 45 tomorrow and I’m still about 2-3 chapters away from being done. The action is really heating up however and closure is so close I can taste it!

After that, my time during my breaks at work will be used to re-write and edit my two zombie novels.

That and work on about 5 short stories I want to write.

When do I not have something I want to write?

Monday saw two more creatures posted for New Mutant Monday. The Terror Rags (one of my favorite creations of the past few months) and the Haizi Shi Renzu. Yes as I typically state, there will be two more posted tomorrow morning.

The funny thing is, a lot of the time I have no idea what I’m going to write up! I really don’t! I typically have to scramble for ideas on Friday and Saturday for the newest critter to terrorize and harass your players.

It’s going to be the same thing next week, of course.

Here is the link to this week’s Terrorscream Spectre-Tacular D-Infinity episode, so watch and laugh at William for his opening antics!

Nothing new when it comes to releases this week either, but hopefully that will change soon. We need some new material.

I’m going to talk about a few things that I saw this week.

Many of you don't know, but I have a Twitter account. I've nearly 700 followers now, and that means my work is seen by more people.

That's the only reason I use it.

Weekly I get new followers and lose a few, but I always gain more.

I found it amusing that a particular actor Jackie Earle Haley followed me about 6 months ago and promptly unfollowed me.  He has 29,000 followers and is following 800.

So it will be the same thing this time. I won't follow him.

Too many people randomly follow you to get you to follow back and then delete you.

I always return the favor.

The election has been over now for two weeks and people are still upset about the Liberals winning. As such I've seen quite a few meme's about Trudeau turning our country into a Full Burka wearing Muslim nation.

Enough with the god-damned fear mongering already! His party won, and who knows what will happen now. Maybe things will get better maybe they'll stay the same.

In 10 years he'll get booted just like Harper did, for doing something incredibly stupid.

It's the nature of the political beast.

But seriously - fuck off with the fear mongering and all the bullshit. Your party lost, grow up and deal with it like adults.

And of course because I do so much tabletop RPG designing… When it comes to ideas for table-top RPG's don't just come up with a base-line idea and publish it.

Take the time to write up the rules to make the idea playable. Don't expect others to do that.

For me, you just come across as a lazy designer.

Sure it might work for OSR systems, but even the material I create for those games are workable in the end with the person running the game forced to do very little.

Yes ideas are wonderful, but so are the mechanics to use the ideas!

Seems I've been doing this a lot lately... time for another rant. Warning, this is something I feel pretty strongly about, and there will be some naughty language.

I totally agree with one aspect of Ayn Rands point of view. You should be compensated for your work.

That is all I agree with. Her views otherwise are pretty... well radical for my liking.

Now when it comes to writers, bloggers, artists and our ilk, no we do NOT WANT our only compensation to be exposure. We do not want to know that our work will be reached by tens of thousands.

Well, let me backtrack - we want that, but more importantly we want MONEY for what we do!

I will make an admission. I used to fall under that trap saying to those I wanted work from 'think of the exposure!' That doesn't cut it, period.

Yes some of the artists I like charge more than I can afford. Well too damn bad for me, not for them. They get what they believe they are worth, not what I think they are worth. Would I dare ask them for a discount, or say that it'll be great exposure? Not a fucking chance.

So would I say that sort of shit to artists today? Nope. If I can't afford their rates, my loss. There are always (I hope!) others who can afford what they charge and will be more than willing to do so.

I think about the stories I've read (maybe true, maybe urban legends) about big corporations like McDonalds trying to hire bands and not bother paying them, using the same old bullshit line about getting incredible exposure.

Screw those assholes!

They should be paying PREMIUM rates to these bands instead of trying to weasel out of proper compensation.

So bottom line is this... If I choose to do something for free, I do so knowing it. I have my own agenda for doing so, and no it's nothing sinister. A lot of time I write for pure practice, just like I train Kung Fu. The more I work at it, the better I become.

The people I do work with are very fair and are willing to turn the material I write into publishable material, including the stuff I post for free.

Well, most of it at least.

One of my friends, Isaiah, I just want to see him get what your work is worth... actually let me rephrase that, I want to see him make more! Thus one of the reasons I have backed his kickstarters.

Another friend, the guy who did the work for my book, Alfonso, same with him. He’s always been more than fair to me when it comes to commission and has produced some incredible work. Honest to god I hope that once the books I have written that he illustrated are published it will lead to more opportunities for him. BUT he is being compensated for his effort and I hope fairly by myself.

And to all other artists, writers, bloggers etc. on my friend list. Never take a job for free unless you want to. Don't buy the bullshit excuses most people (myself included in the past) try to state about great exposure.

You put the time and effort into your work, you deserve the momentary compensation.

Nothing else will suffice.

I certainly get good compensation!

And because of my rants, this blog is finished for this week! I’ve said enough and my views will probably piss more than a few people off.

Heheh…

And that’s it! Have a great week folks, stay warm and happy and remember, just 9 more days until Fallout 4 hits the shelves!