Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Unexpected Windfall

Readers who have followed my blog for more than a couple years will have noted drop-off in production from the early days when I averaged something like two or three posts per day. It’s not that I’ve lost (much) steam as far as wanting to blog…it’s just that I have new time constraints with the birth of my 1st child (now 18 months old). Add the responsibilities of being a parent to my regular work, writing projects, and normal household duties and you can see how one’s time just has a way of, well, dwindling.

I nearly considered ending the blog (mainly out of frustration), but a couple things kept me from doing so: A) I still have things to say, and B) this is my main/only way of promoting my books (I have even less time/money to go to conventions and stuff).

Oh, yeah...also C) ego.

Anyway, even though it makes me feel guilty (I haven’t been able to promote my new book as much as I’d like or cruise the forums or other blogs or offer exciting and startling insights into recent developments in RPG gaming)…even though I DO feel guilty, I wouldn’t change my circumstances for anything as my boy is the greatest joy of my life and he definitely takes precedence over any other selfish wants I have. Sorry that’s caused a drop-off in my production but…well, there it is.

SO…it turns out I will be having a rather unprecedented windfall of TIME in the very near future: my wife is going to be travelling for business in August (as she has been doing) and this time she’s taking the baby with her! They will be travelling to South America for 10 days or so, and I will be left here with two beagles and an extreme amount of spare time on my hands.

Not to mention a crushing melancholy while I miss my family.

Now they were gone for close to a week last month, but I spent the time fasting and…along with the melancholy…my energy level was pretty low. This time, I’m going to turn off the television, catch up on my sleep and exercise, and intending to spend my every free moment WRITING.

The question is: writing what? And a million dollar question it is.

Here’s the deal: you folks who reading this are my main target audience. It looks like I’m going to have the opportunity to knock out one or two projects that have been on-and-off the burner over the last several months…and I want to know which ones are of greatest interest to y'all. What would YOU folks like to see me finish up?

For the next three weeks I’m going to be running a poll, asking blog readers to tell me what they'd like to see as the focus of my writing. I’m not going to guarantee that I’ll actually work on the project that gets the most requests, but I DO guarantee I will consider mightily those projects that generate the most reader enthusiasm.

[by the way, if you select the “Other” category, you WILL need to specify exactly which project I’ve left out of the mix (add it via a comment on this post)]

Thanks for your time. I’ll do my best not to get his done.

: )

+++EDIT: Hmmm...blogger had an error trying to upload my poll from the computer by my office. I'll post it later from home; sorry about that!+++

4 comments:

  1. Your D&D Mine project (which has inspired me to do the same, though my own version of D&D is on the backburner). And maybe, if it was successful, the results of that questionnaire effort from months back! I am curious about what came of that. As for your production, anyone who has been really following you will know your reasons, of course, and screw anybody who doesn't know! ;-) looking forward to more good stuff.

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  2. The last bit of Land of Ice would be my choice. I know it is just treasure left, but some of those items sound pretty nifty!

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  3. D&D Yours - I want to see what you come up with especially with your adventure phases integrated.

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  4. Bah! Ignore those D&D Mine people, JB. Plenty of that stuff out there already. You need to wrap up CDF (What the heck does that stand for anyway?) and get it out there for us Cyberpunk/Shadowrun lovers. Now THAT needs more love out here in the OSR Blogosphere.

    Pretty please?

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