Upcoming Releases

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Last year was a quiet one for me, at least in terms of releases. This year is shaping up somewhat differently. The past couple of years left me sitting on a pile of manuscripts that needed licking into shape. These included 4 Kormak novels and one longer epic fantasy about wizards and dragons set in Kormak’s world. Over the past few months, as things have settled down in the wake of writing Illidan, I’ve slowly gotten to grips with them. The Kormak books form a long arc taking our monster-hunting hero from the court of the King-Emperor of Siderea to Read more…

5th Edition D&D Goes Open License

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Wizards of the Coast made a big announcement this week. The fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons has gone Open License in much the same way as the 3rd edition was. In some ways they’ve gone even further with 3e by making some of their intellectual property open(ish) license as well. It seems that through their Dungeon Master’s Guild program people will be able to set adventures and supplements in the Forgotten Realms, release them and get paid for them. I think this was a good and necessary move. I really like the 5th edition of D&D. In many ways Read more…

The Dark Side of Accountability

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As of today I have managed to post more times in the past two weeks then I did in the whole of last year. Yay! I am quite proud of keeping up my workday blogging schedule. One of the reasons I have done so, possibly the only reason, is because I said I would, here on this blog, in my very first post of the year. Because my resolution is a matter of public record, and it’s easy to see whether I have kept it, I feel some pressure to get the posts done. I will be embarrassed by my Read more…

The Steampunk Excerpt

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Yesterday, I said I would post the first scene from my Russian steampunk novel complete with my editorial notes. Alas the fickle finger of fate has intervened. Scrivener has crashed seven times on me since yesterday, which is more than it has crashed during the whole period since I started using it back in 2007. Since the only file that crashes is the one for this particular story, I am tempted to conclude that this might have something to do with Scapple importing. That might be jumping to conclusions prematurely though. Something else may have corrupted the file. The net Read more…

Day One, Scene One, Chapter One

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So I started work on the first scene of the first chapter of my Russian steampunk novel. I got eight hundred words or so done. It was initially a disappointing read. It lacked the the richness, power and drama I thought it would contain when I conceived the scene. This is normal. For me, it’s how the transition from imagination to prose often works. In my mind, I had a picture of a landscape somewhere between Dore’s illustrations of 19th century London slums and Miyazaki’s villages from Laputa the Flying Island. Dark satanic factories belched forth smoke and flame. Things Read more…