Son of Flame, Son of Hak


Part one of Son of Flame, Son of Hak has been published for Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign setting. You can find it in the downloads section:

http://www.dablackmoor.com/MMRPG

As always, feel free to get in on the forums and let them know how much you hated/loved it. DABlackmoor.com uses different forums from zeitgeistgames.com, so you will have to re-register to use the DA Blackmoor forums.

I'd love to hear what you folks think about this one. In my opinion, it's weaker than "A Night in Maus," but you never can trust the author.


The Road Home


Now, I know you all know that "Realms of the Dragons II" is out, but I'm only going to get a chance to do this once in my life:

I can walk into nearly any bookstore, thumb through the stacks, and find one of my stories in there.

I'd be lying if I said my story was brilliant and that reading it is best thing you could do with your time today. But I'd also be lying if I said that I haven't been dreaming of this moment from the time I cracked open my first Dragonlance book.

Will this story feed the orphans and promote world peace? Probably not. But every time a childhood dream comes true, that motivates the rest of us to pursue our own childhood dreams.

Maybe that's reason enough.

Coming in May ...


Ed Gentry, the Don King of Shared World fiction, succeeded in selling a Realms of the Dragons II article to Dragon Magazine. Five or six of us contributed to the piece, which will be appearing in the May issue, #332. (The image I used is actually the cover of issue #331.)

If you’ve been a gaming geek since you were 8 years old, you understand how cool this is. Even though the article is short, even though I contributed only 250 words or so, even though most of those words were "wacky," "sidekick," and "titillation," getting a byline in Dragon Magazine is just plain exciting.

Selling articles to Dragon is something real writers do.

Somehow they haven’t spotted the pretender in their midst. I’m just going stay low, avoid turbo lasers, and see how long I can hold out.

Show us some love ...
H and I were back East for 2 weeks, with her family. Now I'm headed back up to Wyoming for more construction work. That leaves a load of unanswered emails. If you're one of those folks, please be patient just a bit longer.

"You can't, you won't, and you don't stop."
It's somewhere between 1 and 2 a.m., and sleep just made its dodge check. I can't complain because Ashlock is awake and New York is 2 hours ahead of Colorado.

Up at 2 in the morning, listening to the trucks pass on the highway. We have a finite number of days on this earth, and each time you let go of one, *poof* that's it. Of course, it's a mental trick --- all the disciplined writers I know get their work done between 6 a.m. and noon. It's just us hacks that sit awake, clinging to the night.

"Legacy of the Savage Kings" goes to the printers tomorrow. The proof editor passed along her compliments and a request for a sequel, which is always nice to hear. If you've read any of my work you know that it comes with more than its share of errors. Like Ed said: "If Harley sends you a story he claims he wrote, and there aren't any errors ... he's lying."

Finite lives. And people choose to spend them reading stories that you and I write. That’s enormous. As authors we incur a responsibility for those finite hours, to share and to teach, or at the very least, to entertain.

But enough of me wasting your finite life. Go out and write something wonderful, that only you could imagine. I can’t wait to read it.

Into the Wilds
My current assignment is a 30,000 word module. That's 6k above the usual count, and trust me, I need every word I can get. I'm only 1/3rd of the way done so far, but I'll post more about the project as it begins to firm up.

Fogey Quiz: Saurus and Ashlock, name the module with the worg-riding goblin leaping out of the cover...

100 Word Flash Fiction
I did my part and contributed to an 11 author story that will be submitted to Wizards for web-publication. It's damn tricky to get much done in 100 words, but I gave it my best shot --- and set Ed Gentry up for a heck of a recovery. Ask him about it. ;)

Anyhow, we'll let you know if WoTC bites.

Gone but ...
It will be 3 to 6 months before John Handy has a proper grave marker, so H and I built a cross for his grave. It is a very simple affair, painted white with routered edges. The extended family met to place it before his grave this afternoon.

Tomorrow night we catch a red eye home to Colorado. It will be good to be home for a number of reasons, not least of which is the measly $100 in my bank account and the alleged royalty checks waiting in my mailbox.

Thanks again for all the support, guys and gals. H and I appreciate it.

John Handy died on the morning of March 5th.
He will be missed.

A Big, Deathy Welcome to Walt!
...who is also something of an artist. Mike, you should check out Walt's page and see if his work is suitable for the FFP style.

Return of the Clockwork Inquisitor

In a surprising turn, Zeitgeist Games has plans to include "A Night in Maus" in the upcoming Wizards’ Cabal sourcebook. Even cooler, the editors suggested that the story will be illustrated, which is always a lot of fun. Royalties are great and all, but illustrations are where it’s at.

The editors also promised that the next story, “Son of Flame, Son of Hak,” will be posted soon. I’ll let you know as soon as I see something real.

Zeitgeist Games just hired some new hands, which should help with their workload. If you’ve submitted stories or proposals to ZG and never heard back from them, or toyed with the idea of submitting, now is the time. Hit them again and demonstrate your persistence.

A Note on Community
Elaine mentioned this in her blog, before she shut it down, but it bears repeating: writing is a lonely gig. This isn’t bad, per se, just the nature of the calling. You write alone, submit alone, and when you get the rejection, it is addressed to you and no one else.

But that doesn’t mean no one is on your side. Stop, take a minute and look around. This haphazard collection of artists, writers and designers, we all know what you’re going through. We’re in it together, we’re all chasing that same impossible dream.

That’s a pretty incredible thing. I remember getting into written fisticuffs with a certain Loghan Shadowhand, back in the day (and getting my vocabulary handed to me on a bloody shingle). I remember the day when Mother and Ashlock figured out they both listened to Rush. And the day Jeff thought I critiqued his discussion thread as “predictable.”

I can’t stress how valuable this group is. Out of a random 100 souls, probably three or four have aspirations to be writers. Out of a 100 would-be writers, maybe only one makes a go for it. That places you, and the fellows around you, in a very elite group.

It doesn’t make us better than anyone else. In fact, it probably only predisposes us for failure, melancholy and disappointment. But it also brands you in a certain way, makes you see the world in a different light, leaves you hungering for different dreams. For better or worse, you’re tainted.

Most of us have never met. Maybe we never will. But as Elaine Cunningham pointed out, it is rare – and valuable – to find other folks that can actually identify with this life. When you receive the inevitable rejections, you have an understanding audience. When one of us makes it, it spurs the rest of us to press that much harder.

It ain’t much, but it’s home.

Drywaller by Day, Author by Night,
Or, Why the Heck is Harley in Wyoming?!
So, Ms. H’s father remains very ill. She has been spending time back East with her family, and with her father, making the most of the time they have left. I miss my wife, but I wouldn’t deny her this for anything.

With H (the attractive one) gone, this leave the other H (me) to pay the bills for rent and what not, in one of the most expensive counties in the U.S.

Have I mentioned I’m a freelance writer? Well, right now, and for as long as it takes, I’m also a freelance drywaller. This means living out of my truck with a duffel bag full of clothes, a sleeping bag and pad, a laptop for writing (thanks to BWS!), and a fistful of software (thanks to MNTS/BWS!).

And you know, it’s not all that bad. I’d love to be with my wife, I’d love for her father to be healthy, but these aren’t things I can change. What I do have is a rare and marvelous opportunity to chase my dreams. In a lot of countries I’d be worried about where my next meal was coming from. Instead, I spend my evenings daydreaming about worlds that never were.

And that’s a pretty damn good life.

H vs. Tank, regarding Shared World Fiction
Tankgrrl: "You’re a literary whore!"
H: "Doesn’t mean I’m not good in the sack."

(Strained Metaphor Translation Service: Where you sell your writing has no relation to how good or bad your writing might be.)

Coming in May: Legacy of the Savage Kings

"Remember the good old days, when adventures were underground, NPCs were there to be killed, and the finale of every dungeon was the dragon on the 20th level? Those days are back. Dungeon Crawl Classics don't waste your time with long-winded speeches, weird campaign settings, or NPCs who aren't meant to be killed. Each adventure is 100% good, solid dungeon crawl, with the monsters you know, the traps you fear, and the secret doors you know are there somewhere.

For centuries, the Great Swamp has hidden hints of an ancient culture of barbarian kings. While passing through this miserable bog, the PCs encounter Stygoth the Damned, a half-dead black dragon driven mad by a mysterious disease. Delving further, the heroes discover that the disease is tied to the very swamp itself. A great corruption once infested this place, destroying the savage barbarian kings and leaving only mighty statues as their legacy. Now this corruption has returned, and a terrible Witch Queen is mining the corrupted swamp-earth to produce evil, blighted artifacts. In order to stop the spread of these evil weapons, the heroes must enter the ancient caves of the savage kings, put to rest the corrupt legacy of their downfall, end the disease that scars the land, and then face off against the Witch Queen herself."

Come get your Conan on. :)

You Are Not Your Writing
A quick thought before I hit the road to wild, wonderful Wyoming.

"You are not your writing." I think we've all been told this at one time or another, usually by a loving friend when after we've received the umpteenth rejection letter.

I've always had a hard time believing it. I am my writing, I've told myself, or at least my writing is the blood-ink smear of my soul's best effort. That's close enough, right?

I thought so once, but now I'm not so sure. Let's examine the argument from the other side ...

Last week I was working on a gaming project and caught myself getting lazy. And why not? I had sold 6+ similar works, and publishers were asking for more.

But whoops. I was not my writing, or more accurately, My Writing Was Not Me. Who cared if it had the words "Harley Stroh" on the cover. If it was crap, it was still crap.

Fortunately, my edits hadn't been turned in yet, so I had the chance to re-invest myself and get the job done right.

But the lesson had been driven home. Whoever H. Stroh is, whatever he's done in the past, none of that applies to the work he is creating now. And conversely, the work I've done in the past doesn't apply to who I am now.

You are not your writing.
Your writing is not you.

So when you get those rejections, glean what you can, and move on, because you've grown tremendously since you sent in that last submission.

And when you get those acceptance letters, glean what you can, and don't get cocky, because you still need to hustle your little behind and make certain the NEXT story/module/supplement rocks. Quality isn't a given.

Today I'm published, but that's a far cry from being a professional.

I'm Not Unemployed, I'm Freelancing
Today Goodman Games sent the map "galleys" of the d20 module, Legacy of the Savage Kings. It is really, really, geek-boy neat to see my blue-lined graph paper drawings converted into professional maps. The preview of the module should be up on the preview page some time this weekend. I'm excited to see what the cover looks like.

What a dork.

Along the same lines, it looks like Iron Crypt of the Heretics will be GGames' Gencon special. If, like me, you've been dreaming about going to Gencon since you were 12, having a module slated specifically for the event is pretty cool. If I can quit freelancing and get a job before August, I might be able to make the con, which means I'll slip you a $20 bill to go up to the Goodman Game's booth and demand a copy of the module. :)

On a serious note, I've also had the privilege of helping out with the module being written for GGames' Gencon tournament. Essentially I get to sit back, look over what has been written, and suggest ideas for development. It's a lot like like being paid to daydream. If any of you are gamers and plan to be at the con, I heartily encourage you to sign up for the tournament. It is going to be a blast, I promise you. Even if tournaments aren't your thing, it will be a chance to game with some great GMs.

A Big, Deathy Welcome to Tim!
...soon-to-be author of the best selling Falcon Cross.

And a Big, Deathy Wave!
I'm headed off to a month long Freelance Writers' Motivational Workshop (read: going to Wyoming to work construction and help out on the farm). I'm taking the laptop and hoping to finish a handfull of new d20 projects, but internet access isn't likely, considering the family farm doesn't have a phone.

Still, I'll be down on the weekends. I'll get your email, just expect some lagtime.

Until then, keep safe, keep writing, and don't forget that the best books have yet to be written.

//H

Harley’s Fifth Grade Posse
Yesterday I subbed in one of the local private schools. Thankfully I was only an assistant, which amounted to sitting at the front of the class and reading aloud while the real substitute teacher helped the students with their handwork projects. (The Thief Lord is a great book, by the way. I’ll try to run down the author.)

By the time we hit fifth grade, the students had figured out someone new was in the school. I sat down and cracked open the book, but before I could start to read, a hand went up.

“Are you the guy who writes Magic books?”

“No,” I answered. “I’ve only written a short story for the Forgotten Realms, and the book isn’t even out yet.”

“Can I have a copy?”

“Um, sure.”

More hands go up. Pretty soon I’m taking orders from half the class.

I didn’t think about it until later on, when I told H about the day.

Her first question: was my story appropriate for fifth-graders?

Heh. Good question. Thankfully, they’ll technically be headed into sixth grade before the antho gets out, but ...

Now, for the record, I was playing D&D as early as third grade (which means my brother must have been in first grade!). And with our trusty Monster Manual in hand, we spent entire winters battling Asmodeus and hordes of devils in the Ninth Pit of Hell. You and I know that it was good clean fun, but I shudder to think what Mom and Dad might have thought if they had overheard more of our games. (I still remember asking Mom how to spell “assassin.”)

Again, good clean fun. We read constantly, and after the Monster Manual, our most oft-used resource was the dictionary.

But most of the parents in the school probably didn’t have that experience. When they hear "D&D" they probably recall kids playing with swords in storm drains, microwaving cats, and all the rest of the mindless mid-80s D&D talkshow scare.

Now I’m NOT proposing we censor ANY book, no matter the content, and you and I both know that Dungeons and Dragons has about the same corruptive powers as Charlie Brown. But how do we convince parents of that? Perhaps, with the new young reader imprint, the question is moot.

But can I give copies of WoTC books to my fifth grade posse, hoping to inspire a generation of writers?

I’m hesitant to proclaim any conclusions, so I’ll leave this one open ended. I’m still working it out in my own head.

=====
But I Digress...
*laugh* This reminds me of the time a friend bounced a check at the local gaming store.

Imagine his mother's chagrin when she got the bill from “Marshak’s House of Fantasy.”

... it might as well have been “Marshak’s Velvet Pleasure Dungeon” for all she knew. :):):)

A Big, Deathy Welcome To ...
Zombie Flyboy --- Purveyor of all things Zombified!
Plus, he's the president of the Ash fan club, which is always worth points in my book. That and he likes to play with photoshop.

Eberroops
So I realized that my mail forwarding expired a little while ago, so if I was sent the rejection, I'd never know it. I may have to give the old roommates a call and see if something came from Hasbro.

That is, unless they share an address database with the FR folks across the hall. I don't know that an open call would justify the data entry, and harassing editors for rejections isn't the sort of thing you want become known for. ("Hey, Peter? It's that guy, again, on line one. He's whining about having never received some rejection letter.")

Nope. Time spent begging for a sheet of paper could be time spent writing. This is definitely one to let slide. :)

Bless WoTC Accounting
There is something very reassuring about receiving royalty statements ("$0.00") even though the anthology won't be out for another couple months.

Arbitrary Eberron Arbitration
or "My name is #25."
So we should be getting our rejection letters soon. The longer it takes, the better, since the "near miss/write a story for our anthology" letters will be personalized and take longer to produce. I think credit goes to Kam for ferreting out this information, but I could be wrong.

Anyhow, net-rumor says that 24 lucky folks get the callback letters. 276+ of their best friends get the photocopied "thanks, but no thanks." Having lived through the Maiden of Pain open call, I look forward to seeing the talent stirred up by this competition. In all likelihood these will be some of the people writing the 2nd and 3rd generation Eb novels.

But what about #25? Was she/he demonstrably less of a writer than lucky #24? I find that hard to believe. And yet it isn't hard to imagine #24 going on to fortune and fame, and #25 deciding to give up the ghost.

Now, I know that won't happen to any of you. I know that you'll all stick this one out and slam the next open call. But if you do happen to get a "Dear author" photocopy slip, you have to promise that you'll disregard it. Take a week to mope, catch up on the Simpsons, then come back meaner and leaner than ever. Get hungry. If it means you'll write better, get angry. Submit to the White Wolf call, start querying random shared-world lines, finish that original novel you've been working on. Start a new one.

Because it isn't a rejection of you. It isn't a signifier of future performance.

It is just an arbitrary line drawn in the sand.

Cthulhu Lives! ... In Hollywood!
These folks have done some amazing work. It feels like it is half again too long, but that is only because the first half rocks so much. Can't wait to see the entire film.

She Logged In to Kick Ass and Chew Bubble Gum
...and she's all out of bubble gum.

Elaine Cunningham's blog is back up and running.

We're looking for a few good GMs...

A Big, Deathy Shout-Out...
...to ol' Ed Gentry.

Ed and I (along with some other folks), will be duking it out gladiator style in a few months, competing for a preciously small publishing window. That didn't preclude him from going over my proposal and improving it 100%.

Thanks, Ed.

Choose Destruction
An amusing, well-written page that might get you daydreaming ... which is always good.

How to destroy the Earth

Courtesy of the Saurus.

Zombie Films and Hypothermia
An artist friend of mine is working on a low (read “no”) budget horror film. Last weekend I had the privilege of standing in as one of the kills. This consisted largely of me stumbling about in the middle of the street with a pressure sprayer duct taped to my back. On cue I would wave my hands in the air and Rob would fire the sprayer, creating what we hoped looked like a spray of blood gouting from my neck.

We were using black and white 16 mm (?) film, so the color of our faux blood wasn’t a concern, but viscosity was. After several tries, we settled on a chocolate syrup/grape juice mix.

Complications arose around take 5 or 6. We were filming in Colorado, so it was a little chilly, especially if you were drenched in chocolaty goodness and grape mashings. By take 9, I couldn’t feel my hands, but this might have improved my acting. Certainly it couldn’t have made it worse.

After 1.5 hours of wetting Grims and the streets of Fort Collins, we called it good. We did one last shot of my twitching corpse, mugged for the camera to use up the last of the reel, and ran home to the showers.

For the record, hot water showers are the foundation of modern civilization.

A final note for aspiring horror film directors:

There are a lot of fake decapitated heads on the market, some more expensive than others. You might ask yourself, “Self, what separates a $20 head from a $75 head? Shouldn’t I just save some cash and go with the cheap one?”

Sure, but like most things, you get what you paid for. We were using a cheaper, styrofoam head, and after the first couple shots, the girl was showing signs of wear. Her face mashed in a little, one ear threatened to fall off, and the paint had begun to flake.

So if you are going to use a decapitated head, and if you plan on throwing it around in the street, I recommend going with something a little more durable. The extra $50 you spend will be money you save when you use the head in later films.

Writing for Money and Happiness

Tonight I’m up drawing maps for a Goodman Games dungeon crawl, sorting ideas for the World of Darkness open call, drinking coffee and listening to “I Need a Lover That Won’t Drive Me Crazy” on repeat, which --- in all likelyhood --- immediately disqualifies me from the novel contest.

I had planned on getting to bed early, but before I knew it was one in the morning, and itunes is still showing no signs of wear. This is when I’m happiest with my writing, when the projects are still embryos and still have the potential for greatness. They’ll be flawed eventually, but right now they are perfect in their ambiguity.

Enough of the update. Back to wealth and happiness.

We all know that we’ll never get rich by writing, or at least there is a very, very slim chance that at some point we might be able to pay a couple rent checks with royalties. For a moment let’s imagine that we’ve all accepted this and move on to happiness. We talk about economics all the time; let’s spend a little time with the emotional half.

Just as writing won’t make you rich, so too publishing can’t make you happy. Sure, you would be happy as a mouse on the moon if you sold a Realms novel tomorrow, but then what? You go out, raise a few too many toasts, and when you wake up in the morning, you are the same writer that you were before you sold your novel.

Hmm. This hair may be too fine to cut in a blog at 1:32 in the morning, but let me try again.

When we’re unhappy we take a look around and assess the things we haven’t got. Me, I haven’t sold a book. So if I’m unhappy, it must be because I haven’t sold a book. This look/assess/move instinct is what kept us alive when we were living in caves (“I’m cold. No fire. Go get fire.”) but it can be misleading in our modern lives. Most of us have everything we need --- food, shelter, warmth --- but we still carry a persistent sense of unease. I’m no anthropologist, but I’d argue that this ennui is hardwired into our human code. Once upon a time it kept us alive, now it is what makes us tune into the shopping channel, get divorces, buy new cars, and --- for some of us --- write books. It's not a bad thing in an of itself, just as long as we can recognize it for what it is.

I’m not being terribly clear here. Let me try one last time, then I promise I’ll go to bed.

You’re an author. So when you get pinged by your own personal ennui , you write. But we all write, and we all know that the annoying Jiminy Cricket on our shoulder doesn’t go away. So we set our sights on selling stories. Surely then we will feel a sense of accomplishment and validation.

But it won’t, because Jiminy still wants more. Another story, a book maybe, certainly a trilogy. And yet, every time you come home at the end of the day, you still come home to you: perfectly imperfect, plagued by doubts and insecurities, envious, proud, and all of those other qualities and failures that make me love you so much.

What I’m trying to say is this: there are many reasons for publishing. But money isn’t one of them and neither is happiness. All the novels in the world won’t be able to solve the internal mess. You have to deal with that yourself.

Those of you that haven’t clicked on to the next link already might be scrolling back to the top of this post, where I mentioned that I’m happy tonight, writing. It’s true. The potential for these works has made me happy for the moment, but when I wake up tomorrow I’ll have to go at it all again, and when you’re as bad a writer as I am, you have more off days than on days.

If there were a summation to this post, it would be this: writing is a magical act, but please, please, please don’t assign it more power than it deserves. Would-be writers quit every day because it hasn’t made them rich/beautiful/happy, and I want to be reading your works when we’re both 90.

NIM III
The third and final installment of "A Night in Maus" is up over at the Zeitgeist downloads.

Thank you, to everyone who hung around for all three parts. I sincerely hope you enjoy it.

A Big, Deathy Welcome to Laurie!
Thanks for stopping by. It's rare to see a new face these days.

And a wave to ec. I always feel a bit chastised when she drops in - like a pretender that has grown a little big for his britches. Suffice it to say that we should all drop by her blog at

http://elvenbard.blogspot.com/

and maybe learn a bit. ;)

====
A note on hyperlinks ... or the lack thereof. Blogger isn't too happy with my mac these days, and no matter which browser I use, I'm always missing "buttons." Which is to say: sorry for the overly simple posts.