New Book

I want to write a new book.

Despite the lack of time I have, despite the lack of actual gaming available, despite the sheer inertia of slack that living in this damn country seems to instill in me (well, to be fair, I'm kind of busy being a father to my children), I feel the need to complete something.

More than that, I have a completely unreasonable challenge of wanting to get something done here, in Paraguay. I don't know how much it would cost to do a print-run down here or what the quality of the product might look like, but I feel almost obligated to try...just to have the experience. I have visions of making the trip up to the U.S. with one suitcase full of Paraguayan printed books. How wild would that be?

I've been thinking about this a lot, even as I dither around with projects. I find myself frustrated when I look at the works on my hard drive that are 50% or 70% or 95% completed (CDF was completely finished, save for the art, and I scrapped and started a complete rewrite due to my dissatisfaction with the final product). I get an idea in my head and I go gang-busters on it for a few days or weeks or months, and then...ugh. It's not that I run out of gas, so much as I run out of inspiration. Or fire. Or something. I want to give something to the community that...well, that's worthwhile. And while such a thing is certainly in the eye of the beholder (like the chicken-shit reviewer that gave one of my books "1 star" without a single comment...fuck you, dude), it has to seem worthwhile to Yours Truly. It's all well and good to say, hey, let's make a cool "space RPG," but if Classic Traveller is good enough for such a concept, why do I need to write a new book?

[not that retools of past concepts are never worthwhile, just by the way. Batman '66 is, quite frankly, awesome sauce]

A friend down here recently gifted me with a very nice, hard cover journal of the blank page variety. It would make a cool sketchbook, save that the paper is a little thin for drawing. I've yet to write word one in it; I just keep turning it over in my hands and wondering what I can and will do with it...if anything. And I just keep thinking, "I need to write another book." Something concrete, something finished, something that can be handled and held and used...by both myself and others.

The hard copies of Five Ancient Kingdoms is dwindling (just checked with my mailer via email the other day)...probably about a dozen-twenty copies remaining...but it hasn't really sold well enough (in my mind) to warrant another print run. And yet I was just informed via email of a long-time gamer about to start a 5AK campaign with her gaming group. That's very cool. I want to do that again...I want to create something useful and fun and entertaining. I'm not a novelist. I don't write screenplays.  My "rockstar days" are long behind me. This is what I do...the "game thing." Blogging just ain't enough.

OOOOOkay...glad I could get all that off my chest. It's been stewing a lot lately (along with everything else...football playoffs and holiday travel and whatnot) and I really needed to put it in writing, spew it out into the universe so it stares back at me. Instead of just having it bouncing around my brain in an endless loop.

Give me the weekend to figure out the specifics of the project. Thanks.