CotHR Is Out

That's the rumor, anyway. I found this out last week, but I've been lax in my blogging duties lately. I'm very excited about this book; it's been a long time coming, and I wonder when I'll be able to page through it myself and see how it looks, smells, etc.

It's the finished product that always chokes me up, you know. The work, well, it's work, and it's not like it always comes easily. Children was one of those books that was fun to write, so I'm sure I'll get shivers up my spine the moment I crack the cover and get my first whiff of fresh ink.

Anyway...I'll post more later. Maybe.

It's Too Quiet

You can reckon that when it's quiet, I'm either busy or I'm being lazy. In this case, it's a combination of the two. Am I busy? Certainly. I've also been ignoring a few things that I probably shouldn't be ignoring (which includes about 95% of the non-spam email I get).

The day job is draining me dry lately. The company I work for is relocating this coming weekend, and it seems like the past 45 days have been filled with the constant uphill struggle of preparing for the move. It'll be nice to be snug in our new facility. The old one leaves something to be desired.

On the writing front, it's that top secret project. I'm also going to be helping out with another CCG, which is light work that pays real well. Knock on wood.

Over at Against the Shadow, there's been a post by one of the members where he gives Legends of Shadow a pretty critical/negative review. I'm never one to debate reviews with fans (or non-fans, as the case may be) because, frankly, I'm too close to the project to be completely objective. I don't think that it would be professional for me to offer a rebuttal, even if I wanted to.

I did respond to his post, though, mostly to let him know that I was the one who wrote such-and-such chapter, and not one of the other authors. The way I see it, I don't mind if folks know who to blame for this chapter or that. More power to them, I suppose.

Back to the subject of reviews, yeah. I won't say I've had tons of my work reviewed critically in the past, but I decided a long time back to expect slings and arrows from opinionated people. Anyone who hangs their chin out in any creative field, be they artists or writers or whatever, should expect to get slapped in the face once in a while.

As tempting as it may be to use this forum to express my opinions on Legends in comparison with those that have been posted at ATS over the past few days, I will refrain and refer to the above statement: I'm too close to the project to be objective, even if I wanted to be.

Back to real life, for the moment. Tonight: writing. Tomorrow: writing. The day after that: writing. You get the idea.

Star Wars OT

Well, as this news item on CNN goes to show, I ain't never. Such good news has rarely been heard by my ears. I've thus far refused to buy the Special Edition of the trilogy, and with the impending release of the original theatrical release of the movies, I'll finally be able to show my little boy the movies as I saw them when I was just a sprout.

So...in a word: awesome.

More CotHR Previews

Black Industries has posted two more previews of Children of the Horned Rat for download. You can find them on their previews page at this link. I'm pretty excited about this book, and can't wait to finally see it in print!

One-Hundred Days

That's how long we have left before Gen Con indy. I made my flight reservations yesterday. The way I saw it, the seats aren't going to get any cheaper; plus, I'm about a month late buying my airfare compared to last year. The only difference is that this year, I'm paying for them with money I earned writing, as opposed to adding another debit on to my credit card statement.

I checked Gen Con's event listings and found my games. I reckon that since they're listed there, they must be more or less bulletproof. For anyone who plans to be in Indy and who wants to sign up for one of my three Thieves' World sessions, the event numbers are as follows:

RPG01315, 8/10, 4pm - 8pm, "One Night In Sanctuary"
RPG01316, 8/11, 2pm - 6pm, "One Night In Sanctuary"
RPG01317, 8/12, 2pm - 6pm, "One Night In Sanctuary"

One night in Sanctuary makes a hard man humble, and so on and so forth.

The last game of my Midnight campaign went off relatively well on Saturday night. For more details, feel free to check the Shadows of the Past web log.

A co-worker asked me if I find writing to be less fun now that I'm doing it for money. This was due to a discussion we were having about people who say you should try to get a job that you love, and you'll never work a day in your life, and whether or not that's strictly true.

Reflecting on it, writing/game design is work. It always has been. This doesn't mean I don't enjoy it, though I'll admit to enjoying certain aspects of what I do more than others. So long as the enjoyment I feel outweighs the discomfort, I'll continue to do what I do. As time has passed, I've learned tricks that speed up the work, or that make the less-than-fun tasks more tolerable (if not enjoyable).

Gardening, after all, is work; not that I'm a gardener, but I've pulled my share of weeds and mowed my share of lawns. I figure that an avid gardener might enjoy the end result of his toil: the blooms, the vegetables and fruits, and the fresh air and sunshine. In exchange, there's a certain amount of toil that goes into gardening: the weeds I mentioned, the mowing, the pruning, the digging, the manure, the pests.

To me, writing is like gardening. I pull my metaphorical weeds, true, but I also get to smell the flowers. As it stands, the scent of the literary roses, the sight of them in the figurative sunshine, and the allegorical flavor of the fruit, is well worth the labor involved in pulling a few weeds.

Enough for now. Back to work soon. My thirty minute lunch break is nearing its end.