Oy vey. It has been over two months since my last entry. There are two reasons for this.

(1) After NaNoWriMo wrapped up, I was a bit burnt out, and not having anything concrete to update people on every day, my writing progress on the blog stopped altogether.

(2) On January 1st, I finally broke down and bought a copy of the incredibly fun (and incredibly addictive) World of Warcraft. It has resulted in many long nights, and a lot of time taken away from other projects I really should be working on.

Anyhow… other than the huge loss of time that WoW has been, life continues much the same. Mary’s pregnancy is going well (I need to haul out the scanner and get some of the latest ultrasound pictures up for your viewing pleasure), work is consistent and solid, and the financial situation — while not completely out of the woods yet — is stabilizing.

A couple of recent news items that I would like to share. This past Monday, we learned that our good friends Pat and Leanne are expecting a baby of their own in August! This is cool, because then we’ll be able to share the joys and travails of raising a child — and our kids will have a playmate their own age.

(Now all we need is our friends Kevin and Beka to get on the horse and add to the gang.)

The other news item is RedBrick related… I’ll let the press release speak for itself:

FADING SUNS REBORN

(Auckland, New Zealand) February 8, 2007—RedBrick Limited announced today that they have successfully concluded negotiations with Holistic Design Inc. for a license to publish English- and German-language roleplaying products for the Fading Suns universe.

Fading Suns is a science-fiction roleplaying game set in the sixth millennium, when the stars are beginning to fade. A new Dark Age has descended on humanity, for the greatest of civilizations has fallen and even the stars are dying. Now, feudal lords rule the Known Worlds, vying for power with fanatic priests and scheming guilds. Nobles, priests, aliens, knights, starships, psychics, lost worlds, and ancient
artifacts—welcome to the universe of Fading Suns!

James Flowers, RedBrick Company Director, said “Everyone at RedBrick look forward to taking up the reins of the Fading Suns roleplaying game line, continuing the excellent tradition established by Holistic Design. As huge fans of the game, we want the best for it. We recognize this will be a challenging universe to explore, and thank Bill Bridges, Andrew Greenberg, Chris Wiese, and the rest of the Holistic Design team, for giving us the opportunity.”

Chris Wiese, Holistic Design Inc. President, said “We at Holistic Design are very pleased to have the the RedBrick team develop and grow the Fading Suns Roleplaying Game line. Their top notch crew has the energy and vision to take the Fading Suns universe to the next level. From what Redbrick has in the works, the fans can expect great adventures in the far flung realms of the Fading Suns.”

RedBrick’s Fading Suns products will use the Victory Point System mechanics on which the game line was founded. James Flowers explained, “While the demand for d20 products has been strong, we feel our resources are best spent focusing on the primary system. To that end, we will be actively working on the long-touted Third Edition of the Fading Suns game, smoothing out some of the mechanics and bringing previously published and new products into the line. However, we have a lot to do
and our immediate focus is to get a couple of Second Edition products that are near completion published first.”

Carsten Damm, RedBrick’s Fading Suns Product Director, said “We’re looking forward to engaging and working with Fading Suns fans, many of whom have voiced excellent ideas about where the game could go. Our aim is to tap into this pool of ideas and skills and make the best of it, keeping as true as possible to Bill Bridge’s original vision.”

RedBrick has assembled a team to work on developing the Fading Suns property led by Alex Wichert, a published German novelist who has been immersed in the Fading Suns universe since 1995 and is an active voice on the Fading Suns forums. As Line Developer for Fading Suns, Alex is responsible for ensuring continuity between the English- and German-language editions.

More information and forums can be found at RedBrick’s Fading Suns web site at http://www.fading-suns.com.

Fading Suns is a Trademark and Copyright of Holistic Design Inc. All Rights Reserved. RedBrick Limited are headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand, and also publish the popular Earthdawn® fantasy roleplaying under license from FASA Corporation. RedBrick’s company web site is http://www.redbrick.co.nz. Holistic Design Inc. are headquartered in Stone Mountain, Georgia, USA., and publish an extensive line of computer games and the miniatures boardgame Noble Armada, also set in the Fading
Suns universe. Holistic Design Inc.’s company web site is http://www.holistic-design.com.

That’s all for now. I’ll have another update soon… I swear!

I spent the last couple hours of National Novel Writing Month doing my best to (legitimately) boost my word count. Here’s where I ended up:

Not really near the objective… but more than one-fourth of the way there. I also learned a few things about myself and my writing over the course of the month.

First, my inner editor is very loud. One of the things you’re supposed to do during NaNo is ignore the inner editor, and just get words on the page. November is for writing, December is for editing.

I’m just not there. I spend a lot of time composing things in my head, choosing the right words, going back and tweaking as I move forward. Part of that is just my style, but another part of it is the fact that I spent a good year or so editing the Earthdawn Player’s Compendium — while I’m not a bad writer, I’m (presently at least) a much better editor.

The other thing I learned is that if I push myself I can produce — what I need to do is sit my butt in the chair and actually do it. Some days will be more productive than others, but it production is the point.

So… November is over… where do I go from here?

Well, the novel is going to be pushed off to a back burner for now. I’ve been kind of neglecting RedBrick, and I have some things I want to write for them. If I keep developing the mindset I’ve been working on for the past month, I’ll actually get something done, and probably feel better about myself in regard to the whole Earthdawn thing.

Don’t worry, the story isn’t going away. I will keep plugging at it, posting sections as I finish them.

I also plan on posting here more often… this month has seen a lot of production from me blog-wise, and I like to think that’s a good thing. It keeps my friends and family in the loop.

Anyhow… that’s all for now. My bed calls, and I have a long weekend ahead of me. See you on the flip side!

So I haven’t written anything yet today… and there are two more hours in the day.

Here goes nothing…

So… NaNoWriMo is nearly over. Here’s my current status:

Not too shabby, all things considered. I wrote up a bit of ‘filler’ the past couple of days, which is what has boosted me over the 12k mark. I’m working tonight, but I have tomorrow (Day 30) off… my last chance to push that word count as high as it will go.

I had been hoping to break 15k by month’s end (my revised target once I realized that 50k wasn’t going to happen). I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that or not… I have less than 2,500 words to hit target… a productive three or four hours could do it.

We’ll see. Wish me luck!

(By the way, if you want to read what I have posted thus far, visit The Stars of Lochost.)

I’m going to be a lot more open and honest about things than I have been recently… it hurts my pride, but I need to get it out.

I’ve just finished looking at our financial situation, and it isn’t good. Things have been tight for the past few months, with Mary in school and so forth. We’ve been barely keeping our head above water.

But there’s a surge coming (to continue the nautical metaphor)… and I don’t know how we’re going to get through it.

As of right now, we are a month and a half behind on our mortgage, two months behind on our car payments (with December’s payment for each pending), and the credit card bills have started to slip. We also have heating bills and overdue taxes on the house to consider… not to mention the cats are overdue for a checkup… and the car needs its 40,000 mile service (in order to keep our extended warranty valid).

Mary has had a little bit of money coming in from work study, and we’ve had roommates who contribute as well… but that’s likely to change in the next month or so.

You see, Mary is going to take a semester off, and the financial aid money we had been using to help make ends meet during the semester won’t be coming this spring. One of our roommates is likely to be moving out in December or January (he finished his thesis and plans on moving away from Bangor), and the other one has been making noises about leaving as well (he’s been trying to keep it quiet… but did a poor job of it).

Come January, it looks like all we’ll have is my paycheck. Nowhere near enough to meet our financial obligations — especially with a baby on the way. Unless we get some kind of major cash infusion… we’re going to go under.

We’ve already gotten some help from family, and I’m looking at liquidating anything that can bring in some money (good bye magic cards, so long large RPG collection)… but that’s not likely to bring in anywhere near enough, and not soon enough.

Quite frankly, I don’t know what to do. It’s everything I can do at times to keep from just breaking down… a couple of years ago everything was going well from a financial standpoint, but now it’s twisted the other way around.

I try not to burden Mary with it… she’s got enough going on right now with school and the pregnancy and her back problems. She can tell something is wrong, though, and doesn’t know how to help me. Hell… I don’t know how to help me.

If anybody has any ideas (or a spare nine or ten thousand in cash lying around), let me know. I’m exploring some options, but anything you can suggest will be considered. (Speaking of which, we applied for heating assitance this winter and were denied. I make significantly more than the income cap for a couple — the baby doesn’t count yet. I imagine that other social programs will result in the same result.)

All right… I’m done for now. Sorry to dump this on y’all.

Bleah. After burning the midnight oil to break the 10,000 word mark, I have done pretty much nothing as far as the NaNo story goes. In fact, I’ve only opened the file once (thinking that I might get a few hundred words down last night), and just didn’t feel it.

I’ve got… seven-and-a-bit days left to boost my word count as far as I can… but I’m just feeling burnt. Not burnt out of the story (it’s still there, niggling my brain), I just don’t have any energy.

We’ll see if I can get anything down tonight. I got out of work not too long ago, and I have to open tomorrow (that means I need to get up about 5:30am)… I may call tonight a wash, head to bed early, and get back in the groove tomorrow afternoon.

As mentioned in an earlier post, we had an appointment with the OB today, and had another ultrasound done. Everything is going well — all the measurements and such are right where they should be, and there is no sign of any developmental problems.

Here are a couple of pictures from this ultrasound session. We didn’t get many pics this time around, because the tech was looking at parts, getting measurements, and the like. We didn’t get a shot of the face, because baby was face down and not cooperating very well. The thumbnails link to the full-size images.

The peanut did cooperate enough for us to learn the gender. I will not post that pic here for general viewing, because I know that there are some people (like my parents) who want the gender to be a surprise. If you want to know the impending Harrison’s gender (and chosen name), then click this link. If you don’t want to know, I will keep the updates on the main page gender neutral so as not to ruin the surprise.

Missed the earlier ultrasound pictures? Use these links to the relevant posts:

August 25, 2006
September 15, 2006
October 12, 2006

That’s all for now! No progress on the story the last couple of days (bleah). There is a new section ready to be posted, but that will probably wait until tomorrow night. Ciao!

I finally hit the 10,000 word mark! I had hit a minor snarl in the most recent section I’ve been working on, but I figured out how to unsnarl it while at work… so I came home and after catching up on my mail and such, I plugged away at hitting the most recent goal I set for myself.

About ten minutes ago, I ran a word count and saw that I had beaten my self-imposed objective! Relief doesn’t begin to describe the feeling at the moment.

That’s all for now. I’m tired (as it is nearly 5am). More later.

As you can see, I have added very little to my word count since my last entry — 331 words, actually written early Thursday morning, but not officially uploaded until now. My schedule the last couple of days has been too busy to get any writing done… it’s a Camarilla weekend, which means that Friday and Saturday night were both full with LARPing. Add in work on those two days… and there’s very little time to get any writing done.

However, I am working Sunday night 4-12, so perhaps I can get a couple of hours writing in tomorrow before I do dishes and go grocery shopping and such. Then I’m off Monday and Tuesday… we have an appointment with the OB on Tuesday at 11 for another ultrasound, but otherwise my next two or three days are (mostly) free. I hope to get something resembling back on track, and break that 10,000 word mark (my current goal).

That’s all for now. More to come later…

So here we are at Day 15… halfway through the month. Here’s my recent progress:

Day 13:

No recorded progress on Day 13. My work for the day was mostly late at night and it got counted as the next…

Day 14:

Made some progress — about 600 words (which includes the count from Day 13). I’m maintaining a reasonably steady pace, but nothing miraculous. I got hung up on a minor plot snarl, and got a touch slowed down. I thought about it while at work, but didn’t actually add anything to my count from the previous night.

Day 15:

I’ve broken 9,000 words. Still not quite where I want to be, but I’m making forward progress. I’m off to work in about 15 minutes here (and don’t get out until midnight), so this is my final official tally for the halfway point.

I am off tomorrow, and I’ve managed to undo the plot snarl… maybe I can get a bit more focused work done and break the 10,000 word mark.

That’s all for now… more updates later!