Stranger Things and More, Plus Updates

First before I get into my usual mess, I wanted to give all my readers a quick heads-up. My wife and I will be driving to Seattle next weekend (as long as she is feeling okay), for a five day weekend.

As such I will not be posting a blog that week, although I should still be posting my three entries for New Mutant Monday, but it probably won’t be until later Tuesday evening.

We’ve never been to Seattle, although my son went earlier this year, so I’m looking forward to going there!

And after nearly six bloody months, I FINALLY landed a job. I start tomorrow driving for a new company. Pay isn’t quite what I want, but at least I’m working, and I’ll just keep bugging my former employer until something opens up there.

So this week saw no work on anything. I was hitting the ground pretty hard, looking for work, and as such I did not bother doing any writing.

With one exception. I had to write up seven more creatures for my latest issue of Wisdom from the Wastelands issue 52: Nanotech Undead, which was released this week. Three bucks folks, it’s a good deal, and you get 25 new terror creatures to use against your players in OSR games.

So next I’ll be trying to get Mike to publish the 100 oddities found in a car, and we’ve been discussing the possibility of publishing the Monk Magic items for OSR, although I really do need to convert them to Pathfinder.

Hey it would sell far better as Pathfinder, but at the same time I would get at least a few sales through the OSR venue.

We also discussed at length about the creature books. It looks like we might go the route of cutting the New Mutant Monday books into two parts, to try and keep them at less than a hundred pages. We also talked about the mutation books, which it makes more sense to get them published before we work on the creature books.

Why?

The reason is quite simple. I get those three mutation books out, and I will be able to cut pages of material which would otherwise half to be published in the creature books!

So after I work on the Monk items for Pathfinder, that is my plan – they’ve been edited once, and tons of new material has been added. They are going to be edited a second time before I send them Mike’s way.

Speaking of books – I talked to my artist friend Alfonso Maesa about possibly doing the covers for the mutation books, and the creature books which will be published. He seemed interested and willing, so here’s hoping… and over the next month I’ll be pushing him to work on a commission I paid for months back.

And of course one of the three images I used for this blog is his rendition of The Joker. You can find it plus many other pieces of art he has produced by clicking on his name above.

Now onto other topics. Before I forget, as of writing this post, Fox and Ox Creations Bureaunauts is only $500 from achieving their goal! I am very pleased about this! Here is hoping over the next week they’ll be able to unlock some of the goals they have added.

If you haven’t already backed this, please do!

And I was very pleased to finally break the 200 mark for page likes on my Personal Author page. I went through the list of friends I asked to like the page, and a LOT have invites they never responded to.

As such I’ll be lighting a fire under their asses… after all, a lot of them asked me to like pages so I am the kind of person who expects the favor in return.

I posted three entries for the New Mutant Monday series two this week, which means there are only 13 weeks to go before I’m back to two a week. This week I added the Lansqui, Driguar, and the Blackbird Howler. Three more will be up tomorrow. Since I’m starting my new job I don’t know if they’ll be up in the morning, or after work.

Oh and as has been the case for the past several months, the Driguar is a conversion of one of Clint Staples Runequest Thrusday creatures, the Dragonfang.

Since I mentioned social media already, I have had quite the surge this week as well on Twitter. I currently have 1136 followers. I have noticed a trend though, one which is really pissing me off. First are those who follow me and are following no one. The second are the sheer number of click-bait accounts I am seeing, followed by the porn accounts, and finally the assholes trying to sell followers.

To each and every one of you… fuck the hell off!

I’m not following any of those people back any more. Screw that shit.

No new games to talk about, although I am looking forward to Nuka World on Tuesday!

I finished season one of Stranger Things. At first I was not all that into the show, as having grown up in the 80’s, and being 15 when the series was set, I have very strong memories of the music and everything they were trying to push as nostalgia. Once I finished the third episode though, it really began to grow on me. By the end of the first season I was quite ready and eager to see season two.

I just wish producers would give a little more effort into portraying D&D…

And yes the characters grew on me as well, and it was nice to see a couple of fucktard bullies get what was coming to them.

The Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo is less than a month away and two of the young actresses – Natalia Dyer aka Nancy and Shannon Purser aka Barb are going to be in attendance. Am I going to meet either? Probably not.

And I finished a couple of books, as well as nearly a third, but that will have to wait for this week. I finished a novel called One Year After by William R. Forstchen which takes place a year after the end of One Second After, the story revolving around a small town and the trials and tribulations they had to endure after EMP attacks utterly destroy the States and throw them back to the dark-ages. It was not quite as good or heart wrenching as the first novel, but I certainly enjoyed it enough and I like Mr. Forstchen’s style of writing.

John Matherson has become the town administrator of Black Mountain and is trying to do his best to work with the fledgling government trying to restore order. When a draft notice demanding over 100 of the town’s strongest and best arrives, he knows exactly the impact it will have on the community and decides to see what he can do about it.

From there, it just goes from bad to worse, and the Reavers he had to deal with 18 months previous seem to be just a prelude to what is to come.

The second novel I read is called The Opal: Matt Turner volume 2 by Michael Siemsen. It’s about a man who is able to read the history of any object he touches, as long as there was a strong emotional bond. He is kidnapped by a man who had made his life a living hell in the first novel and is forced to read an Opal he found, one which could lead to another massive fortune in wealth.

The kidnappers cohorts have their own agenda, and by the time the novel has come to a close Matt’s life has been turned upside down once again for the worse. I can’t go further without spoiling it, but the novel is worth your time to read!

Oh and this week’s D-Infinity live was really great! A fine art challenge and there are already quite a few entries on the front page!

And that’s it for this week. Next week school will be back for most students (although I know quite a few have already gone back, at least here in Calgary), so you know what that means… we’ll be seeing Halloween stuff in the stores shortly!

Try to stay happy and safe!