Welcome Back!

A month and some change later, and I’m back.

Am I ready to be back? That’s a different question. I have pondered the idea of extending my hiatus, but that way lies inertia, and I have enough issues with that these days, thank-you-very-much.

So every concern must be dismissed. My buffer is still unsatisfactory…but what would be enough? Noriama still little better than a second draft? Let it be seen anyway, warts and all. Celestial not even half finished? Slow down your posting schedule. Nothing I write is good enough? It never will be, no matter how long you delay. Your ashcan RPG currently stalled out because you need playtesters, and scheduling is a problem? Post it anyway, perfection be damned!

In my work on RPGs, I spend a whole post extolling the virtues of Goblins. Goblincore is an aesthetic that, on some level, finds beauty in ugliness; the unfinished, the unpolished, the unexpected, and the unfamiliar. I’ll proudly wear that label, and embrace the human messiness that comes from being sincere to myself and my effort.

So what does that mean for the coming year? Well, as I said in my Hiatus Post:

• When I worked in the Chicago Loop, I wrote during the commute. A lot of this was extremely short stories and of middling quality, but there isn’t an artist alive who doesn’t cringe a little at their early work. Nevertheless, it is work I have written, and it deserves a place on this website.
• I have multiple stories of varying levels of completion: Noriama, The Stormcallers, Celesti, Winterborne, and The Everlord Series are all half-formed partially-complete efforts. Some may never be finished, but I will nevertheless put them here for your perusal.
• I have more to say about RPGs! The RPG Medium will get an Errata, with some additional thoughts and games that have popped up since its completion. It won’t be a large one, but it will lead into:
• My RPG! I’m making one, slowly, and I’ll be posting the design process I went through. More for archival purposes than anything else, really.

But as I let slip in an earlier paragraph, I won’t be publishing as often as I was before. Four times a week is possible when you have a large buffer of polished work, less so when you’re not writing that fast. How often will I post? We’ll feel it out as we go. To start with, I’m going to try posting Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays for a bit, possibly scaling back as I get through some of the buffer. We’ll see how it goes together, I suppose!

To start with, I’ll begin posting the RPG Errata. I’m still finding little bits and pieces that blossom into posts, so it might become an ongoing irregular series, but until then I’ll be posting those during the week. As for Saturday, I’ve got a lot of short stories, so we’ll start posting those then.

As for the rest of it, I don’t want to craft too much of a plan. After all, as Robert Burns once said: the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft to sh*t.

Or something like that.