STALKER7

Cry, cry, the world is gone.

Bone and ash and splintered rune.

Who will weep for all that’s lost

beneath the broken moon?

***

Finished the latest draft of ‘Shattered Worlds’ yesterday. A hair over 99,000 words – and that’s the first half of the story.

It’s been a long time coming, this one. In fact, I took the first rude scribblings to the Viable Paradise Writer’s Workshop in 2015. *sheesh* nine years ago. That was the year of the Sad Puppies blowout/Hugo Controversy, and that week on Martha’s Vineyard was one of the most disappointing writing experiences I’ve ever had. (I also have a small scar on my right hand to remember it by, too.)

I dropped the project for several years after that. Stepped back from the whole idea of traditional publishing, even fiction writing. I was pretty frustrated and disheartened. Plus, I had plenty of glass work. On top of that, all of a sudden, my tabletop war game projects get attention, gain traction, and the dream of being a published SFF author goes on the back burner.

Then Covid hits and two years of masked-up, social, political, and economic weirdness blur by like a bad LSD trip. End of 2022, I come out of lockdown to find the entire landscape subtly but profoundly altered; the combination of age, long-term disability, and post-covid economy kindly but firmly informed me my custom glass days are over.

Thirty-five years getting cut by glass, I realize I’m fine with that. But I need to seriously rethink my writing, not just miniature wargame-related but fiction as well. So here I am, again, chipping away at my post apocalyptic fantasy saga.

I don’t know if Broken Moon/Scorned Lands has ‘market appeal’; the story and setting are like “D&D meets Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. On edibles.” Not really the kind of stuff literary agents salivate over. Plus, they measure their response time in months. “If you never hear back from us, it means we’re not interested.”

Nonetheless, I’m going to hire a copy editor and kick it out the door, then start sorting my notes for the second half of the saga as I move onto the next, short-term project. Speaking of which…

GT&ES will be expanded into another six-mission Case File for my latest wargame rule book, When Nightmares Come. If modern-era monster hunts and occult investigations are your thing, you can pick up a copy at the Osprey site, Amazon, Wargame Vault, and many fine, hobby retailers.

That’s it for now. Thanks for your time.

Game hard and good hunting.