Slowed Down Just a Tad

You know, it’s only two weeks until the end of the month, and that means a lot of my readers will have their kids going back to school.

Are you looking forward to this? Are you going to miss your kids? Feel a sense of relief?

It’s been four years since my son graduated high school and I look back to the summers. For the most part, he typically enjoyed the summers with his friends, or would stay home and play video games and the like.

Until he hit grade 9, at which point I helped him get some jobs where I used to work, and he worked one summer with his uncle. Since he’s graduated, the kid’s been working non-stop, or taking various classes.

I find when this time of year rolls around, I get that feeling of ‘I’m going to miss my son, but it’s nice not having him hanging around all the time’ to ‘great, now I have to fight with him to get his homework done’.

Mixed feelings to be sure.

Anyhow, time for the usual updates.

This week I did very little when it came to writing. I tried to work on a Star Wars fan fiction, which I haven’t even come up with a proper title for, but I only managed to write about 3000 words.

I’ll give it a shot this week, get it written and figure out an actual title for the story. In a nutshell, it’s all about an Imperial TIE Interceptor pilot and a massive battle between Rebel and Imperial forces.

Pretty simple and straight forward, and although I would love to put some serious effort into the story, there is no money to be made! So odds are it will be just the one story.

One thing I do need to work on however is adding more to my Nanotech Undead issue of Wisdom from the Wastelands. I have mentioned it a few times over the past couple of weeks, and as it turns out the issue is too damn short!

I need to add about another 6 pages worth of material, so that translates roughly into about another six creatures.

That is not what I call a problem. It means Michael Varhola will have to edit the new additions, but it won’t take all that long for him to do so.

After that, my next project to get ready for him will probably be the Monk Magic items I mentioned before. If he’s cool with it, I hope we can release both a Labyrinth Lord version and a Pathfinder version.

If we release only the Pathfinder version, hell I’m cool with that. It will sell a hell of a lot more copies than the LL version at any rate.

And I STILL have to get around to learning how to use Campaign Cartographer 3 plus! Just that I have been so damn busy with so many things… and not just my writing.

I’ve taken up an old hobby. I used to take drift-wood I found in Kananaskis country and turn them into hiking staves, but I have long since gotten out of the habit. I needed a change of pace so I dug out a pile of them I had stored away in the shed and have been working steadily on them this week.

It takes about half an hour to sand them down, and unless I decide to personalize them, all I have to do is dust them off, stain and then put a coat of clear lacquer on them.

If I personalize them staff, that will add at least another hour or more to the job, as I have to sketch the design on them, and then use a dremel to carve it out, then paint it. 

Still I finished one for my wife, and we used it over the weekend when we went on a 10 kilometer hike. I made another for a friend and I currently have several which are ready for staining.

I do believe I’ll try to sell them on Kijiji for about $50 a pop.

So that has eaten a lot of my spare time.

I did have the time to finish off Season 5 of the Walking Dead. I am really looking forward to season 6, but I won’t be finishing it, as my wife HATES cliff hangers, and we all know that season 6 ended with a major cliff hanger.

I forgot how much I love that show! And it’s pretty amazing my wife and I have managed to finish off three full seasons in less than a month.

We’re going to watch at least one other season of something before we get around to season six. I want to kind of drag it out until we’re getting closer to the season 7 premier.

I also finished the first novel in a series called The Exile Empire by Joshua Done. The novel in a nutshell is about the Earth having been destroyed by an alien race, forcing the last remnants of the human race into exile, fleeing for their lives in a very Battlestar Galactica exodus.

They do eventually come across another human-like species which is under attack by yet another hostile alien force, one which is technologically inferior to the humans, but have the numbers.

I found the novel to be kind of tedious. I’ll more than likely read the second one in the series, but nothing about the book really stuck out for me.

Oh yeah… almost forgot. I did post the usual two New Mutant Monday entries, the Reptiloci and the Marsh Terror – another one of the creatures Clint Staples wrote up for his Runequest Thursday series!

As of tomorrow, I will be posting three entries a week for the next 14 weeks. The reason is I want to start series three at the beginning of January, 2017.

So that means more mutant monstrosities for you to enjoy.

Before I forget, please check out Fox and Ox creations latest kickstarter - Bureaunauts! They’re more than halfway there and I REALLY want to see this kickstarter succeed!

Please click on the link above and become one of the backers.

And on that note, I’m done for another week.

Have a great one folks, and try to stay happy and sane despite the political bullshit taking place in the US.