Easter Sunday Thoughts - Goals, Publishing and my Now
Well, here I am on Easter Sunday, past the first quarter of the year. From my writing/publishing perspective, I’ve made my major goal, which was to finish editing and entering beta feedback/rewrites on The Demon’s Peace and submitting it to the editor for more editing! It’s in decent shape, and I’m on track for release this year.
For Q2 2026 my goals are:
More Cambions
Get more work done on the manuscript for Cambion Chronicles #3, which is back to Vex again as the protagonist (she was the heroine of Cambion Chronicles #1) but older and wiser. (Ultimately, I'm seeing if I could get two manuscripts done this year, as well as my ongoing newsletter serial story!)
Short Stories
There are three of them in the hopper.
The Devourers, a short piece that was supposed to go out with Reflections, but ended up stalling.
New Reader Magnet for my newsletter - I’ve a current story with Lukie in it, aimed at enticing people to read The Revenant Records, but I was going to refresh this with a Thaena story to get them to read the about the cambion sisters.
Submission to magazines. One story is back after a round of magazine rejections. (Two currently in the void of being 'on submission'.) I got one piece of feedback which was nice, that said the voice was off. Except what does it mean when they say that? Everyone tells you that 'voice' is important for a writer, but it's a bit fuzzy on what that exactly is. It's the vibe, the way you tell the story, the consistency of the tone. And I read this story again and agreed there was a bit of a tonal inconsistency. Was the story horror? Absurdity? Humour? I was shooting for a blend of all three, but think I can refocus to come down more on the horror side. Time for another rewrite, then resubmit.
Roleplaying Game Design
I have this serial problem of not being able to finish a build of my Vestiges of Magic roleplaying game. I get close, then don’t want to use that system and tear it down and rebuild in a new system. This has been going on for five years! And I haven’t released anything substantial despite having a PDF graveyard of half-finished systems.
To conquer this I’m going to try doing a few short indie RPGs set in other universes/worlds and releasing them, and this won’t have anything to do with the Vestige universe, just yet. The current thing I’m noodling on is Questworlds, which looks to be finally in a playable state (I have tried to run this before several times and it hasn’t worked with different groups. Is it me? Is it the children who are wrong?) I still like QuestWorlds at a conceptual level, so I'm doing an OSR/D&D mash-up. The last time I ran it at a convention, people complained about not having set skills or attributes, despite them having cool stuff on their character sheet like 'Summon wolves' and 'Greatest hunter in the region' so I'll try to see how it will work with a mix of freeform attributes and a set attribute list.
Holidays
I had plans to go overseas later this year, except there’s a war on! Petrol prices are rocketing. Will the war end? Should I stay or should I go now? Arrgh.
Media
I seem to run away from anything that’s too popular. I didn’t watch Buffy in the 1990s, or Babylon 5, and missed out on the Youtube/internet Creepypasta phenomenon.
Fixing this now; up to season 5 of Buffy. (Is Glory/Ben trans? Kind of interesting. Will this end well?)
For the Creepypasta stuff, I'm watching some Youtube short horror films recommended by Goblin Archives, the Liminal Horror developer.
Reading
I churn through quite a few novels, which I'm trying to keep up with on Goodreads. Got a few more reviews coming. Currently burning through a lot of Japanese detective/mystery books, my favourite mystery genre. I'm quite enjoying Uteksu's Strange* books - Strange Pictures, Strange Houses and currently Strange Buildings.