Looks like I haven't posted anything here since 2011. I've been posting things on the blog that Emily and I maintain together. This post will be short, but I'm curious as to whether there's anybody who follows this blog on RSS or elsewhere.
I'm hoping to begin posting things to this site again. I've written a lot of fiction in the past few years, so I'd like to post some thoughts on what I've written. I've also begun designing board games. Here's a list of some of what I've been up to since the last time I posted.
Singularity:
Previously, this site was home to a serialization of my first attempt at writing a novel. The book is called Singularity. Mostly, it was a way that I could keep myself accountable to keep writing it. A lot of that book was written real-time while I was posting here. You can see the first 10 chapters here, but they are probably quite different from the book as it stands today. I stopped posting here because nobody was reading it. I think the problem was that the posts weren't frequent enough, so people had a hard time following along with the story. I also was posting content that was a bit longer than a person typically wants to read in one sitting. So readership fell. I've left those chapters on the site if you want to go back and read them. Or just ask me and I can send you the full book.
As I alluded to above, I finished the first draft of Singularity in 2010 sometime. A lot of the ideas I came up with for the blog posts made it into the final book. I read, edited, and rewrote the book in 2011, changing some details and the general direction of the story for the sake of the next bullet point below. I'd consider Singularity to be 85% finished at this point. It could benefit from another round of editing and probably some tweaks to the story. But at this point in time, I'm not actively working on it.
After my first round of edits, I had some good friends read the first edit version of Singularity. We had a great discussion, and they gave me some fantastic feedback. The story is so much better because of the feedback they gave me. I feel bad for those guys. They read my second drafts, which are just ok. Then I make them a lot better after their feedback. So they never get to read the final drafts of my stories without knowing all the surprises already. Maybe someday I'll send them something that doesn't need a lot of work.
Singularity's Legacy:
One piece of feedback they gave me on Singularity was that there were a lot of questions left unanswered. I don't think I was writing Singularity with the intention of writing a sequel, but there were a lot of things that weren't answered after the first book. So I wrote a second book, called Singularity's Legacy.
In my opinion, Singularity's Legacy is a lot better than Singularity. But it relies on Singularity too much to stand on its own. So it stands as a good sequel, which adds a lot to the Singularity Universe and advances the story far beyond what the original book did. I am quite proud of Singularity's Legacy.
Singularity's Genesis:
It was around the time that I finished Legacy that I learned about the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest. It's a short story contest. It's free to enter and they give out great awards every quarter. I wanted to enter a story. I was still pretty stuck on the Singularity idea, so I decided to write a short story in the Singularity Universe. I decided on a story that explained the basis of the predominant technology used in the full length novels. The idea was that the story would stand on its own, but would be an extra treat for anyone who had red the first novel. It fills in a large gap of time that is completely missing in the novel. It ended up pretty long for a short story, but still fit within the restrictions of the contest.
I submitted it and did not win. But in the process, I had answered a lot of questions about Singualrity. So I went back and incorporated the short story into the first novel, and did a full rewrite of the first novel to fit the event of Genesis and Legacy to allow the two novels to flow together.
The City Beneath:
I learned about something caled NaNoWriMo, a terrible acronym. It stands for National Novel Writing Month. Each year in November, a bunch of people crowd around the internet to write novels. The challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I decided to do it in 2012. My inspiration for the novel was the 1950 film noir classic: The Asphalt Jungle. The title for the city beneath is a play on the subtitle for the movie "The city under the city." I wanted to capture the dark mood of film noir and the conflicted feeling you get when you find yourself rooting for someone to commit a crime.
I decided to set the story in a post-apocalyptic steampunk Earth. There had been a terrible, destructive war, and humanity over-reacted by destroying all post-victorian technologies. The story had 6 thieves with different skills and personalities teaming up to rob an un-robbable train. It was a lot of fun to write the story, and hopefully a lot of fun to read for the few who have read it so far. Since writing this story, I haven't yet gone back to edit significantly. I hope to give it a thorough editing and fleshing-out in the near future.
The Voluntary Savant:
This was my second entry into the Writers of the Future contest. I've had this idea in the back of my head for a while. It was only a title, nothing more. But I really wanted to write a story called the Voluntary Savant, so I did. On a trip to Vietnam in late 2012, I was inspired by the setting, and decided I wanted to write a story using the Mekong Delta as a setting. This ended up combining with the title in my head to make the story as it stands today. More than any other short stories I've written, I like this one the best. It's just a really awesome story. Let me know if you want to read it, I'm happy to share.
I submitted this in the March 2013 contest, and I haven't heard anything back yet. I'm hopeful that it will at least earn me an honorable mention. Either way, I really enjoyed writing the story.
And the Games:
I've been playing a lot of board games of late, and as a creative person, I'm naturally drawn to the idea of board game design. I have some good friends who also are interested in board game design, so we feed off each other. I've started the design for a few games in the past few months.
One of them is called Bananas Unlimited. My goal was to make it into a simple 1-commodity pick-up and deliver game. I got an idea using a deck-building mechanic with farms, boats, carts and markets. I put together a rough prototype and gave it a play. It was ok. But it was a little tedious and felt like it took too long to get going. This one is currently residing in the "Back of the head" region.
The game I'm actively working on right now is called The City Beneath. You guessed it, it's based on the book I wrote in November. Originally, I had been working with a couple of friends to design the game at the same time I was writing the book. We came up with some great ideas out of this, but in the end, I think it proved somewhat difficult to put together the type of game we were developing. We all liked the system we had been working on for the game, but hit a bit of a roadblock and weren't making much progress. We put that design on the shelf, but we may resurrect that design at a later date with a different theme.
This spring, I decided to resurrect the game based on my book with a mostly different game mechanic. Where the previous game was heavily focused on pulling off a heist, this game is more focused on the inherent mistrust between thieves. I hope to write the game up a little more fully soon. In a few words, it's an area influence, hidden information, bluffing, and deduction game. You are trying to determine which locations in the city are the least or most valuable and develop your influence there. At the same time, you have a number of hidden agendas to accomplish and need to develop your skills to get yourself further in the game.
So there you have it. I just summed up my entire creative life in the past few years. Drop me a comment, let me know what you think. I'm hoping to begin posting here more often to share my thoughts on the stories I'm writing or the games I'm designing.
I'm hoping to begin posting things to this site again. I've written a lot of fiction in the past few years, so I'd like to post some thoughts on what I've written. I've also begun designing board games. Here's a list of some of what I've been up to since the last time I posted.
Singularity:
Previously, this site was home to a serialization of my first attempt at writing a novel. The book is called Singularity. Mostly, it was a way that I could keep myself accountable to keep writing it. A lot of that book was written real-time while I was posting here. You can see the first 10 chapters here, but they are probably quite different from the book as it stands today. I stopped posting here because nobody was reading it. I think the problem was that the posts weren't frequent enough, so people had a hard time following along with the story. I also was posting content that was a bit longer than a person typically wants to read in one sitting. So readership fell. I've left those chapters on the site if you want to go back and read them. Or just ask me and I can send you the full book.
As I alluded to above, I finished the first draft of Singularity in 2010 sometime. A lot of the ideas I came up with for the blog posts made it into the final book. I read, edited, and rewrote the book in 2011, changing some details and the general direction of the story for the sake of the next bullet point below. I'd consider Singularity to be 85% finished at this point. It could benefit from another round of editing and probably some tweaks to the story. But at this point in time, I'm not actively working on it.
After my first round of edits, I had some good friends read the first edit version of Singularity. We had a great discussion, and they gave me some fantastic feedback. The story is so much better because of the feedback they gave me. I feel bad for those guys. They read my second drafts, which are just ok. Then I make them a lot better after their feedback. So they never get to read the final drafts of my stories without knowing all the surprises already. Maybe someday I'll send them something that doesn't need a lot of work.
Singularity's Legacy:
One piece of feedback they gave me on Singularity was that there were a lot of questions left unanswered. I don't think I was writing Singularity with the intention of writing a sequel, but there were a lot of things that weren't answered after the first book. So I wrote a second book, called Singularity's Legacy.
In my opinion, Singularity's Legacy is a lot better than Singularity. But it relies on Singularity too much to stand on its own. So it stands as a good sequel, which adds a lot to the Singularity Universe and advances the story far beyond what the original book did. I am quite proud of Singularity's Legacy.
Singularity's Genesis:
It was around the time that I finished Legacy that I learned about the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest. It's a short story contest. It's free to enter and they give out great awards every quarter. I wanted to enter a story. I was still pretty stuck on the Singularity idea, so I decided to write a short story in the Singularity Universe. I decided on a story that explained the basis of the predominant technology used in the full length novels. The idea was that the story would stand on its own, but would be an extra treat for anyone who had red the first novel. It fills in a large gap of time that is completely missing in the novel. It ended up pretty long for a short story, but still fit within the restrictions of the contest.
I submitted it and did not win. But in the process, I had answered a lot of questions about Singualrity. So I went back and incorporated the short story into the first novel, and did a full rewrite of the first novel to fit the event of Genesis and Legacy to allow the two novels to flow together.
The City Beneath:
I learned about something caled NaNoWriMo, a terrible acronym. It stands for National Novel Writing Month. Each year in November, a bunch of people crowd around the internet to write novels. The challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I decided to do it in 2012. My inspiration for the novel was the 1950 film noir classic: The Asphalt Jungle. The title for the city beneath is a play on the subtitle for the movie "The city under the city." I wanted to capture the dark mood of film noir and the conflicted feeling you get when you find yourself rooting for someone to commit a crime.
I decided to set the story in a post-apocalyptic steampunk Earth. There had been a terrible, destructive war, and humanity over-reacted by destroying all post-victorian technologies. The story had 6 thieves with different skills and personalities teaming up to rob an un-robbable train. It was a lot of fun to write the story, and hopefully a lot of fun to read for the few who have read it so far. Since writing this story, I haven't yet gone back to edit significantly. I hope to give it a thorough editing and fleshing-out in the near future.
The Voluntary Savant:
This was my second entry into the Writers of the Future contest. I've had this idea in the back of my head for a while. It was only a title, nothing more. But I really wanted to write a story called the Voluntary Savant, so I did. On a trip to Vietnam in late 2012, I was inspired by the setting, and decided I wanted to write a story using the Mekong Delta as a setting. This ended up combining with the title in my head to make the story as it stands today. More than any other short stories I've written, I like this one the best. It's just a really awesome story. Let me know if you want to read it, I'm happy to share.
I submitted this in the March 2013 contest, and I haven't heard anything back yet. I'm hopeful that it will at least earn me an honorable mention. Either way, I really enjoyed writing the story.
And the Games:
I've been playing a lot of board games of late, and as a creative person, I'm naturally drawn to the idea of board game design. I have some good friends who also are interested in board game design, so we feed off each other. I've started the design for a few games in the past few months.
One of them is called Bananas Unlimited. My goal was to make it into a simple 1-commodity pick-up and deliver game. I got an idea using a deck-building mechanic with farms, boats, carts and markets. I put together a rough prototype and gave it a play. It was ok. But it was a little tedious and felt like it took too long to get going. This one is currently residing in the "Back of the head" region.
The game I'm actively working on right now is called The City Beneath. You guessed it, it's based on the book I wrote in November. Originally, I had been working with a couple of friends to design the game at the same time I was writing the book. We came up with some great ideas out of this, but in the end, I think it proved somewhat difficult to put together the type of game we were developing. We all liked the system we had been working on for the game, but hit a bit of a roadblock and weren't making much progress. We put that design on the shelf, but we may resurrect that design at a later date with a different theme.
This spring, I decided to resurrect the game based on my book with a mostly different game mechanic. Where the previous game was heavily focused on pulling off a heist, this game is more focused on the inherent mistrust between thieves. I hope to write the game up a little more fully soon. In a few words, it's an area influence, hidden information, bluffing, and deduction game. You are trying to determine which locations in the city are the least or most valuable and develop your influence there. At the same time, you have a number of hidden agendas to accomplish and need to develop your skills to get yourself further in the game.
So there you have it. I just summed up my entire creative life in the past few years. Drop me a comment, let me know what you think. I'm hoping to begin posting here more often to share my thoughts on the stories I'm writing or the games I'm designing.
