Sorry, It Has Been a While...

I know, I know. I should update the blog more frequently than once every couple of years, but school has been keeping me busy. But I think a quick update on where things are at would be in order.

I am still alive, and I do want to make some content updates-- at some point. I have been saying that for years though with not much to show for it, but there it is. Maybe I will just curate memes or something. Low-effort stuff haha.

The short story I mentioned in my last few posts a couple of years ago did get published in the Vintage Worlds 2 anthology (i.e., that Kickstarter was successful). If you missed the Kickstarter but still want to buy the book, it is still available at Founder's House.

Regarding use of the blog itself, the Numenera 2 Character Creator still sees a decent amount of traffic, though because it has been a few years since I updated it, it is slightly out-of-date, lacking data from the Torment: Tides of Numenera Explorer's Guide and possibly other sources. Regardless, it has over 22 thousand all-time views currently. For reference, it passed 10k all-time views in May of 2020, and 17k in January 2021, so 2020 was the big year for it, but it's still getting quite a bit of use. Actually, I am slightly surprised it still works-- I half expected the changes Blogger has made to the site would break it, but apparently not. Looking at the graph, use of the generator seems to have peaked in March/April of 2020 and dropped off since then, but still mostly remains at a higher level than when I was actually updating this site.

And speaking of the website, the site overall is at about 58 thousand all-time views. Two years ago (January 2020), it had just passed 17k total views. Biggest month ever for the blog was April of 2020, with 2,731 views that month. Guess the lockdowns and so on that were going on at the time encouraged people to play around with rolling up Numenera characters.

Anyway, that's all for now. Happy New Years, everyone.

57 Hours Left for Vintage Worlds Kickstarter

The Kickstarter for Vintage Worlds 2 & 3 has a little over two days left. It is coming down to the wire as to whether it will fund or not. Cross your fingers, tentacles, pseudopods, or other equivalent appendages!

Vintage Worlds is a series of anthologies of retro-style sci-fi short stories. By retro sci-fi, I mean rockets and ray-guns, sword-fights by the light of the twin moons on the canal-banks of Mars, dangerous forays into the humid jungles of Venus teaming with ultra-tropical alien life, unscrupulous smugglers and pirates haunting the Asteroid Belt, and so on. That is to say, the Solar System as it should have been, as opposed to the one we actually got. It is a really interesting sub-genre of science fiction if you ask me -- and who wouldn't want to ask me?

Volume One of Vintage Worlds turned out really well, I thought. Help us bring Volumes Two and Three to life!

"The Sarcastic Snake-Men of Neptune" To Be Published in Vintage Worlds 2

Very exciting news! The long-awaited Kickstarter for Vintage Worlds volumes 2 and 3 has begun at last. My short story-- actually closer to novella length-- titled "The Sarcastic Snake-Men of Neptune" will appear in volume two. If you have read the first installment of VW, you may remember my story, "The Headless Skeletons of Mercury". Two characters from "Headless" appear in "Sarcastic," but it is not necessary to know the story of "Headless" in order to understand and enjoy "Sarcastic." I mention it only because if you liked plucky heroine D.J.'s Mercury shenanigans, you'll probably enjoy a much longer story seeing her get into trouble on a trip to Neptune.

And perhaps I am a vain person, but the awesome cover art of volume two could very well have been inspired by "The Sarcastic Snake-Men of Neptune" (which does contain a scene on a moon of Jupiter), although in my mind, D.J. doesn't look at all like that haha.

Tears of the Gods Chapter 9 Updated

Not that I expect many people care, but I made a large-ish addition to Part 9 of the Tears of the Gods. That is the first time I have gone back and made a major revision of a previously written chapter. This was needed to more properly introduce a character that plays an important part in chapters 10-12 at least, and possibly beyond, when and if further chapters ever get written.

Does that mean that Tears of the Gods is back on and will be someday finished? Maybe. I don't want to make any promises in that regard though because I have done that several times already just to let them slip, but I do really, really want to finish Tears. It is the only novel-length thing I have ever written, and while it has essentially zero chance of real publication, it is a story in my brain that wants to escape onto the page even so. Plus I think it would be cool to call myself a novelist as well as a short-story writer and poet.

Stay tuned!

Updates and Milestones: May 9, 2020

Just a few quick updates.

This past month, April, was another record month for Troy Stories, with 2,493 views. Wow! That's the first time we have had a 2k+ month in terms of page views. Needless to say, it was a huge improvement over the previous record of 1908.

Also, last week sometime, the Numenera 2 Character Generator itself passed a big milestone: 10,000 page views since publication, right now sitting at 10,192. For perspective, it was about this time last year that the generator passed the 2,000 cumulative page-view mark, and it was around this time in 2017 that the generator first saw the light of day. Pretty neat, eh?

Additionally, as mentioned yesterday, Love in the Ruins is now available for purchase.

And lastly, a PSA: the mask goes over your nose and mouth. Both nose and mouth. Yes, nose included! I know, I know... it's hot and uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as being intubated by a ventilator, if I had to guess. Also, if you pull the mask down to talk to someone, you are defeating the purpose of having the mask at all -- may as well just lick that person's eyeball while you're at it. A mask is not a magical talisman. It will not block your sputum getting on other people or their cooties getting on you if it isn't between you and them, capisce?

That's all for now. Don't let the 'rona getcha.

Love in the Ruins has been published

I'm officially a published poet now. Love in the Ruins came out a couple weeks ago, and a poem of mine is included in the anthology. Link is here:

Love in the Ruins at Founders' House Publishing

Blurb from the publisher:

"Many stories have been written already about the approaching end of industrial civilization:  about the great tragedies and the small triumphs, about struggles spread out across landscapes and struggles just as bitter within individual hearts, about the people who survive and the ones who don’t. One theme that's been unfairly neglected in deindustrial fiction is love. ... This anthology includes ten stories and three poems about love in the deindustrial future, by turns ethereal and earthy, traumatic and tender—but all of them ending with a promise of happily ever after."

Deindustrial, in case you are wondering, basically means after industrial civilization has been brought low, usually due to running out of oil. One may consider deindustrial fiction to be a sub-sub-genre of post-apocalyptic fiction (itself a sub-genre of science fiction), but deindustrial generally posits a slow decline instead of the fast collapse more typically envisioned in post-apocalypse stories. (And if you are wondering what a civilization's slow decline looks like, have a look out your window.)

Updates and Milestones: April 1, 2020

Hello, I'm still alive. The 'rona ain't got me yet, and I ain't even April Foolin'.

It is heartening to see that the blog gets a lot of use still. I know I say that every time I post, but what can I say? It feels good to be of service, in whatever capacity I can be. And March, interestingly enough, set another record for the blog with 1,908 views, a substantial increase over the previous record, which was 1,716 views, set in December. (Since I didn't do a February or March update, I guess I should mention that January had 1,487 views, and February saw quite a big drop-off, with 1,178 views, which was the lowest since June of 2019.)

I guess folks are stuck at home spending their time rolling up Numenera characters. No judgment -- I do the same sometimes (which is, in fact, why I went to the trouble to set up that character generator). And as usual, a bit less than half of this last month's traffic went to... drumroll... the Numenera character maker. The old Cypher System character maker and the Revised edition Cypher System character maker nearly tied for second place last month though, which is a slight change from how things normally are. Those three pages together account for about three quarters of the site's traffic. In a very distant fourth place is the printer-friendly Numenera character sheets index, with a whopping 36 views in March. No other page or post cracked 20 views for the month.

Other news: if you recall my poem "Come Home Ere Falls the Night" and the Love in the Ruins anthology project it is a part of, that seems to be moving forward at last. The publisher has sent out contracts to the various authors, so hopefully that book will see print at some point. (No doubt the 'rona will delay the timetable on that, as it has everything else.) Not sure what the status is of Vintage Worlds II, but hopefully that will get off the ground this year too.

That's all for now. Don't let the 'rona getcha -- as the Good Book says, "wash your hands, you sinners".