I’m finally getting around to wrapping up my 2014 writing progress blog posts (yes, I heard that snicker over there in the corner . . . I know that we’re already into February :-) ), and in the interest of thematic matching, I figured that the fourth quarter progress post should mimic the amount of writing progress that I made in the fourth quarter. In other words, it shall be short and sweet ;-) So without further ado:
Fourth quarter, 2014: 1,216 words
I did actually spend some time doing some interesting non-writing things in the fourth quarter. I gave Shattered a visual facelift for one thing. But there’s also another interesting project that I spent some time on. First, a quick step back. For someone like me, for whom writing has always been a fun hobby, the advent of self-publishing was a dream come true because it provided a viable, plausible, and direct avenue to get my stories out into the world for others to read and enjoy. Reading and writing have always been things that I have enjoyed, and so has gaming. I’ve actually never delved too deeply into console gaming, but I love playing computer games, board games, and card games. I have a board game collection that spans several shelves in our playroom closet. I play collectible card games like Magic the Gathering as well as other card-based games like Dominion and Race for the Galaxy. So you can believe how excited I was to discover that, just like with writing, there is now a self-publishing avenue for producing your very own card games and board games. One of the biggest sites seems to be The Game Crafter, which lets you self-publish full board games. There are also many other sites that will allow you to self-publish card games. So in the beautiful afterglow of this exciting discovery, I spent some of my Q4 free time designing my very first game: a galaxy-building card game of intergalactic trade called Starliners. It’s still a work in progress, but I’ll get it finished and released into the world sometime in 2015. And speaking of releases, I promise that you’ll finally get to read The Emerald Veil sometime in 2015, too. It’s on its way. I promise :-)