A week ago I launched the kickstarter for Zeitgeist 1980, an interactive fiction game inspired by 80s movies and television.
Category: Blather
Plans for the New Year 2021
The best laid plans for 2021 in a world where each year will be worse than the last.
Rebelling in NaNoWriMo – Two Projects, Zero Novels
In the parlance of National Novel Writing Month, a “rebel” is someone’s whose project isn’t quite a traditional novel. Maybe you’re writing a script, or nonfiction, or a collection of unrelated short fiction. As long as it adds up to 50,000 words, you’re still participating – under your own terms. In my case this year…
Survival Mode: A narrative solo RPG actual play
That’s a mouthful. Let’s break it down. Narrative: It’s formatted like a story – specifically, like serial fiction. Solo RPG: It’s a role-playing game I’m playing my myself Actual Play: I’ll be reporting on what’s going on. So juggling those definitions around, basically I’m going to be playing a solo game and then formatting what…
Retrogaming 1982
1982 is the last year before the crash that brings the console market to its knees, the last year the Atari VCS isn’t called the Atari 2600, and the year the Apple II finally gets a strong contender in the home computer market. 1982 Arcade Games We definitely see some strong entries in arcades as…
Chicago Steampunk Expo decompression
This weekend was my first convention table-vending experience at the Chicago Steampunk Exposition. As a special guest presenter I was given a prime spot right near the entrance to the vendor exhibition area, brought five copies of each of my steampunk, cyberpunk, and roleplaying game books to sell, along with hundreds of business cards, bookmarks,…
Galvanic Century as Steampunk
There are a few characteristics that set my mystery series Galvanic Century apart from what might otherwise be considered “generic” steampunk. Edwardian vs Victorian The series, thus far, runs from 1912 to 1914, right up into the Great War, making it an Edwardian rather than Victorian series. The fact that Queen Victoria is as yet…
Game Development at Taoscordian Dot Com
I launched Taoscordian.com back in 2016 when I started publishing tabletop RPG materials. Thinking that running an extra site was too much overhead for too little benefit, I consolidated all the RPG stuff back over here last year, and turned the domain into a redirect. (If it’s still redirecting for you, clear your cache.) Now…
Come see me at the Chicago Steampunk Expo
Come see me the last weekend of September at the Chicago Steampunk Expo.
Every Book a Lesson Learned
I started writing novel-length fiction in 2013, and have published ten such books in the past six years. Each time the process has been different, each time I’ve basically had to re-teach myself the process of what it is to write a novel based on my fuzzy recollections of the last time. Writing Lighter Than…