STALKER7

Holiday season, end of the year, it’s generally time to reflect and assess. In this case, to tally the words read, the words written, and establish some reference points to better close out the year and chart a course for 2025.

Words Read

I’m only going to hit 20 books read this year. Shame. That’s short of my usual. Of those, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and Cloud Cuckoo Land from Anthony Doerr stand out on my fiction list.

For non-fiction, I’d say John Meacham’s Lincoln bio, And then There was Light and David Brooks’ How to See a Person top of the list. Although, Murakami’s Novelist as Vocation and Francis Collins’ The Road to Wisdom were important.

Words Wrote

And kicked out the door to find work, that is.

For Tabletop Games, I managed two campaign supplements for the recent Osprey Wargames rule set, When Nightmares Come. These are Smuggler’s Neck, and The Oldest and Strongest Kind. Time to break out your eldritch gribblies.

For the fantasy monster-hunt game, Nightwatch Blood and Bone, the sword, sun, and sandal campaign Grave of the Sun is available. That is, if you want to shake the scorpion out of your boot, sharpen your scimitar, and set off under the burning sand to stop a legendary necromancer.

Alternately, if you need shades to dim the glare in a shiny dystopian future, there’s the Exploit Zero pocket game, Mission Critical. [2x 2 game area, 3 minis per side, focused objectives, six turn limit, it really is a mini, miniatures game]

And finally for Zona Alfa and Kontraband, there was a new expedition to the Exclusion Zone, Location 39.

For Fiction, I released the first half of a post-apocalyptic fantasy saga titled Broken Moon, Scorned Lands.

My editor suggested I shop it around to literary agents for a traditional commercial release, but after four months and dozens of polite Thanks but No Thanks, (and dozens more We’re Simply Too Busy to Respond to You) it seemed past time to send it. Just shy of 100, 000 words, the story of half-orc survivor Addas Dashag has been a long time coming and I figured he needed to be out there, making his way across the ruined world, trad-pubbed or not.

I’ll save forthcoming projects for another post, but I’m currently hammering some dungeon crawl fiction into shape with Shiver and Funk, Five Torches, the heartwarming tale of a crew of misfit delvers and the dirty dangerous jobs they do for their wealthy clients. Should have a new chapter up in time for Christmas, in fact.

That’s it for now. Thanks for stopping by. Click on the links above for more info on those books and more. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Have an excellent day.