It's Books All The Way Down (Patreon)

Where have you been? Work, it turns out, is fractal unless one is disciplined and focused. Jobs spiral off into unlimited detail and are happy to consume you. Did you read that thing by the biologist, the one who said you could spend your whole life studying the life in one garden and not even get close to reaching the bottom of it? Just like that. A lot of time has been spent learning how to maintain a business that appeared out of nowhere, on things I never thought I'd be doing. Have you seen our adverts? Yea, that's not especially fun. However now things have levelled out and it's time to get back to the whole reason I'm here in the first place.

The three images in this post are from three books that are coming out soon: Slate & Chalcedony, The Big Squirm, and Get It At Sutler's.

Slate & Chalcedony is a long overdue adventure I have had on the back burner for years now but thanks to the very persistent people I work with have been successfully pushed into finishing recently. Writing and art is done, editing and layout is next. Yes, this is one of the threatened chapbooks from the Troika kickstarter (remember that?) and will be going out to pretty much everyone as part of that obligation and of course on here. But why did it take so long? I've been asking that question for a while and the staff at Melsonia have been shouting it pretty loudly on top of that. Three books have sat at 90% for years now, this being one of them, and the only thing I can think of is the sudden loss of my main collaborator at the time. It's not something I've thought about but if we're pointing fingers it might as well be that. These books are lipstick on glass.

In brighter news there is a new book by friend of Melsonia Luke Gearing: The Big Squirm. A hardboiled detective adventure on the case of the Scarf-Worm bubble and crash. It's a big book, a big adventure, and even takes part in the city of Troika, which is neat. It's the kind of adventure that intimidates me as a GM, with many moving parts and NPCs and STAKES and whatnot which is why I am particularly enthusiastic about it. There's nothing cooler than something you can't do. I've got high hopes for its popularity for all of the above reasons. 

Get It At Sutler's is probably the second chapbook that'll escape my clutches. This one is fresh and unburdened by psychic baggage and so should be less tortuous. In it I want to explore the form of the dungeon in reverse, which is to say the players stay still and the dungeon comes at them. It's also a mini game of sorts that the GM can throw out there as a possible activity. Imagine you're running a game in Troika and you tell the players "hey you know you could get a job at the department store down the road? That would pay for your hotel room and give you a little spending money on top." If your players are as cool as I think they are they will have their aprons on in a hot second and be behind their stall before you can say "retail is hell". 

There are other books coming as well. We've had 6 months now of non-stop work getting things back on track after a period of badness, we'll call it The Crying Time. We must all work to leave The Crying Time behind and do good things. 

I'll continue to not talk about this Patreon in public, at least until the pudding comes out, however know that this display of support has been encouraging during a very sticky time and I appreciate it.