A Word on "Woke" and anti-"Woke" sentiment.

A minor news trickle today tells us that John Cleese has cancelled a planned talk at Cambridge University because he disagrees with the University's "woke rules" that led to them blacklisting another speaker who had previously performed an impersonation of Hitler. He's not wrong that people should not be unfairly blacklisted because they criticised something as close to objectively evil as it is possible to be through the medium of parody/satire.

However, in damning such actions as being "woke" Cleese has fallen into a pernicious trap that many people seem to be struggling with at the present time. What he objects to is the performative and arbitrary actions of people with a poor understanding of what is required to respect others. Essentially, performative virtue signaling.

The concept of being "woke" is completely different. It is, and should always remain, a term that means being conscious of systemic bias and abuse towards minorities embedded in culture. To be woke if you are part of those minorities is to be "on guard" against the inevitable inequities and injustices that will infect your life. If you are part of the privileged majority to be "woke" is to be aware of the systemic inequalities and to make reasonable efforts on a personal level not to be part of the problem.

It is an understandable confusion to conflate being woke with acting out performative virtue signaling. There is a conversation about how to assess another's actions in light of the blurry line between one and the other. But going round banging on about how woke is a terrible thing that is a blight on our society is exactly the kind of behaviour that contributes to the climate where woke is even a necessary concept.

Also, it allows people who are engaged in performative virtue signaling off the hook somewhat. 

Performative virtue signaling is carried out in bad faith, where as trying to be woke should always be good faith. As a sentient species we are, and I believe always have been, very bad at recognising bad-faith actors when their impact on our lives is at a certain level of abstraction.

If I have a pie and someone steals that pie I have no problem with that, I call them a thief and react to that kind of bad-faith action in the way I have systemically deemed appropriate. However, if I have a concept, an important concept, that if I accept its existence and relevance and attempt to act in the service of, and someone else undermines it by, essentially, being the living embodiment of reductio ad absurdam in regards to that concept I am at risk of losing sight of what that concept is all about in the first place.

I have to say that I don't believe that Mr. Cleese ever knew what woke was supposed to mean in the first place, and I don't think he's alone in that. I also think that the previous incarnation of woke, political correctness, suffered from many of the same problems, but also the fact that the concept inherently allowed latitude to bad-faith actors to allow them to muddy the concept. Political correctness even sounds like a bit of a weasel-concept.

This is why woke is, essentially, a much better concept. It says know your boundaries, mind your business, don't presume to know what someone else is going through and don't be naïve about the consensus reality of the world you live in. It parcels that all up in a neat concept, single word. It's a concept of deep and valuable nuance.

For which reason right-wing concept-jacking of the term to rob it of power is exactly the kind of thing that should be deplored and called out. It's a gift to such people that the range of effects of performative virtue-signaling is so broad from "silly and pointless" to "unfair and hurtful" to "actually quite damaging". It also helps a lot that no one's come up with a nuanced word that means "performative virtue-signaling".

It would have been cognitively uglier and harder for Mr Cleese to say: "I believe these rules are an act of performative virtue-signaling and I will not be associated with an organisation that seems to have such lax consideration for those they damage with such arbitrary rules and the real struggles of people whose lives are impacted by real systemic inequalities." It's not snappy, or glib, or quotable. However, it would have been kinder, more accurate and, well, more woke.

New Bridgetown - A Small Amendment

Nothing too major, but the first new Bridgetown episode will actually be released to my Patreon page for subscribers only on the 21st. Then the episode will be released to the blog for everyone else a week later on the 28th.

There are loads of other perks to all the subscription levels and the coveted "First Subscriber" treat is still up for grabs (obviously not very coveted then). All the treats in the world cannot hope to compete, however, with the warm and fuzzy glow that you will receive from knowing that you are doing your little bit to help someone achieve their dreams.

See you in Bridgetown!

Today's The Day...

I'm wondering if I mentioned that I was enrolling the Chicago Shadows trilogy in KDP Select.

I probably didn't.

At some point in the past I railed against Amazon attempting to monopolise self-publishing with its Select programme. I still think it's a bit iffy, but not as iffy as I first thought.

1) In 90 days the trilogy will be de-enrolled from KDP select and released to other channels. For this flexibility Amazon get my exclusivity until spring.

2) All the numbers say that the greatest number of sales come through Amazon so as a starving artist I really have no choice.

Now to go and make a "Books" page.

Morning Off

Well, day off but this afternoon I must do chores. As you can see from the left bar the first volume of Chicago Shadows is in beta. Three of my seven lovely beta readers have received their copies. I am expecting to get the other four out by tea time tomorrow. Right now, however, I'm going to play computer games and possibly eat some toast. (Not necessarily in that order, now, where's the Marmite?)

Getting Things Done

The last couple of days have been particularly productive. CS1: The Silent Majority has come out of editing and is awaiting my typographical and artistic skills to put together a beta package for my ever-so-kind beta readers.

I was expecting to take a break from editing to iron out a few bugs and add a couple of features in Manuscript. In the end this work took me a total of about an hour and ten minutes, so CS2: Pleasant Rest has been loaded up and is now under the microscope. This also means that Manuscript is ready for alpha testing with my faithful alpha tester AKA my mum.

I wrote the first draft of CS1 in 2010 during the annual nano bunfight. The first draft of CS2 came this year. I've completed a lot of writing in the meanwhile. Some of it is invisible in a fiction sense because it was RP manuals but all of it counts. I'm exactly as bad with my over use of the qualifier "just" when in full flow but otherwise the shape of the language in CS2 is way ahead of CS1.

That's not at all to say that I'm ploughing through at high speed, there are still many gotchas to be identified and corrected. However, I am not finding the same repetitive rhythm that I was shocked to discover in CS1. It could also be the difference between punting out something for Nano and being allowed to get through at my own rate. Even so, I've managed circa 130,000 words of fiction this year so far. Not a bad amount with a day job vying for my attention.

I'm off to indulge my new C&C Alliances habit, cook a spaghetti bolognese, eat it with the Mrs and hopefully unwind. Hopefully I'll be able to link through to my latest BTS article soon, watch this space.

Free For All Invitations - The Stealthy Straw Man

Oh isn't it wonderful! Harper Voyager are accepting full manuscript unagented submissions for the first two weeks in October. They made the announcement in a press release on the 12th September. How amazing! That'll show the traditional publishing industry is ready to take risks and run the gauntlet! Yes, it will!

No.

It won't.

Let me tell you what would be a risk. Innovation. I've seen this particular dog and pony show at least twice before and it's just a bunch of disingenuous rubbish or blatant incompetence on the part of the organising publishing house. Why? Simple. If you announce this with two weeks to spare before the actual event then you will not be receiving new material you will be receiving material people are already sitting on. Either material that is currently in need of a good polish (and four weeks to polish with the aid of my manuscript tool would be pushing it, without polishing properly it is a nearly impossible task) or material which the author considers to be 'good to go' already.

The massive problem with the latter category is that this material isn't already with an agent for one of three reasons, 1. has already been rejected by dozens of agents, 2. was just about to go to an agent but author saw press release and decided to skip the middle man 3. just isn't. Only manuscripts in category 2 or 3 stand a chance of actually being decent and then only the same chance as that submitted to an agent i.e. apparently not much.

So Harper Voyager are proposing to allow the filth gates to groan open for two weeks and then to send some lowly peons to scrub through the fetid literary detritus and report back if they find the Hope Diamond in amongst the slurry. The peons, of course, probably won't. Then Harper Voyager can say: "See, agents are the only way". Or, if the Hope Diamond appears they can say: "Great, a sucker to bilk on a publishing deal because they're not represented by an agent".

I have also seen a scheme run by another publishing house in which they turned the preparation of 30k of opening into a six month event and delivered a full, tight requirements list for the type of material they would consider. Now, that's a plan.

This, this is just a meaningless and mean-spirited publicity stunt engineered by people who are either cynical or ignorant and are probably both. To attempt to save everybody a little bit of time and trouble: if you have just finished and you have an agent in mind, submit to the agent, if you have been rejected a number of times already there is probably a reason why. This is just a cruel chimera and you should direct your energies elsewhere.

Beware The Monkey

For even more Monkey I've started writing for pop culture site Beware The Spaceman. It's not a paid gig but the site has a much bigger reach than my little corner of the internets so I'm happy to get some face time up there. They're really enthusiastic and supportive so that's pretty cool.

My first piece for them is called "Real or Recall" and, in honour of the recent remake of Total Recall takes a retrospective of the relationship between Philip K Dick and the world of cinema. All the favourites are referenced: Blade Runner, Minority Report and The Adjustment Bureau but I also detour into the lesser known adaptations like Screamers.

When I started looking at the article I didn't actually realise the number of SF cinema tropes that could be connected back to PKD. I mention a few of the films that show the clear influences but there are loads that I Just couldn't fit in but almost every SF film since Blade Runner shows at least some preoccupation with the themes that Dick liked to explore.

One of the big things that I made passing reference to was how similar the themes of Cronenberg's movies were, I'm not sure if that was conscious on Cronenberg's part or not. eXistenZ is the one that shows the clearest connections but the adaptation of Naked Lunch, Videodrome and even The Fly all share the same themes.

Interesting stuff, I think you'll agree.

The Age Of The Self Publisher

Honestly, it is. My news feeds tell me so. Here's a round up.

We start with the underwhelming news that Rich Burlew author of hilarious RPG based cartoon Order Of The Stick managed to raise a meelion dollarss via Kickstarter to re-publish some graphic novels. Not that this isn't good news and not that OOTS isn't great fun but if he was surprised by the support he got I think he's one of a very small number.

So, what about people who are not internet celebrities (or celebrities of any sort)? Well Kerry Wilkinson used to to count as an almost complete non-entity in most people's lives but he is scaling the dizzy heights with a series of crime novels. He was a journalist so one could argue that he had contacts, I suppose. He's just gone over to the dark side like so many self-published successes and signed a massive six book deal with sith lord Darth Liverous Macmillan Books.

Apparently having a square-jawed name helps if you're selling pulp fiction as John Locke has sold over a million self-published books and is very happy with life as a self-publisher. This is what we like to see. Also self-publisher Rachel Abbott has said a book deal with a major publishing house didn't "feel right".

To develop the theme of the last link (tldr: self-publishing is a phenomenon all of a sudden but our eyes bleed for a decent editor) some people are dismayed by the amount of textual slurry now available to peruse. While it's true that about 9% more self-published material is crap than Sturgeon's Law would dictate this is pretty much true of the internet. It's also true that one man's meat is another man's poison. I have, in the past, been known to fete the work of unedited pulp hacks milling out books via Lulu and prefer something with plenty of heart, originality, spark and gusto to most of the bland rubbish available in high street bookshops.

So, you'd think I was a happy bunny right now.

Mostly.

The one fly in the ointment is that we're swelling the coffers of notorious market place bullies Amazon in our rush to get an eye on the rough stuff. This triumphalist blog post from the Guardian simultaneously rallies the troops and sends them on a foolhardy charge Kindlewards in a manner that most deserves the inaugural "Patrick Stewart Facepalm Award" for well-meaning encouragement towards complete and utter disaster.

Customers may well love Amazon, I do, and as long as they're encouraging greedy multi-national distributors to cut their margins as thin as possible that's great. But when they start practicing Long-Tail-Fu on the little guy that's the time to say: "Hey, Amazon, I ain't gonna be your bitch" (with many thanks to Bill Bailey).

That's all for now. Thanks for reading.

Where's The Monkey Gone?

Sad to note that last year I clocked up a grand total of three, count 'em, posts on the main journal. If I'd have made a commitment to one post every month and stuck to it I've have put in more.

I can only apologise.

The old arguments about all the time spent blogging are times not spent writing more worthy stuff still apply but so much has happened and none of it has been recorded. Well, some of it has, as the monkey has been shrinking in public.

PULP RP came out in October (I think it was October). The usual folks played a few games. It was a good thing. I began recording Starfall as an audiobook, I am just over halfway in sittings. There will be editing to follow.

I changed my day job.

I competed in Nano and won my 6th victory (4th consecutive).

The world turned.

I always intended to come back to my journal and pay it a bit more attention, I guess now it is as good a time to start as any.

One of the things that's kept me away is that I am pretty confident that no one actually reads this thing so I am really only writing it for my own sake anyway. Once, back in the mists of the before, I think I had some traffic because I used to review POD books. A practice I fully intend to resume. Being out of commission for a period of time, however, is tantamount to dying, having an empire grow up around your meagre grave, which is then paved over to build a shopping mall and then being utterly forgotten in the mists of time.

So I know that when I come back here to start in earnest I am starting again.

What makes me wonder whether this is the time is the discovery of high configurability in Google News/Reader which has in turn lead me to this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/30/self-e-publishing-bubble-ewan-morrison

From my Self-Publishing news feed. If there's about to be a bubble I guess I should try and get some shekels out of it... I actually doubt that the world of novelising is suitable for a bubble. It is a long held presumption that writing a crappy novel is just as hard as writing a good one and that people generally only wrote if they had some sort of aptitude for it or they wouldn't keep going.

I bet most literary agents can have a good chuckle at these assumptions.

What's staggering though is the fact that even the 999 cruddy novels that an agent turns down every year in favour of the one they actually choose to represent (which may not sell even then) is just the tip of a crudberg that would dwarf the contents of every library on earth.

People are writing utter tripe, we don't need monkeys at the typewriters, we have actual people who will issue forth tens of thousands of words of complete and utter drivel for no real reason whatsoever.

I mean, people can't honestly believe they stand a chance of making it big any more, can they? I mean, really? Twenty minutes acquainting oneself with the facts should be quite enough to show that believing you can write a best seller is a costly and foolish waste of time. Save your tears and buy a lottery ticket. Nobody's getting rich writing, those people who are rich and happen to be writers are rich for reasons beyond their competency as authors, trust me.

Not to say that professional writers aren't talented people who can turn a phrase and produce some solid work on occasion; of course they can. What I'm saying is that there are thousands of people who cannot make a living at writing turning out equally good (sometimes better) material that goes ignored. Some of it is actually published, some of it is self-published, some of it never sees the light of day. All of it is in the minority compared to the oceans of black and white effluvium produced by the sadly deluded and the lexically incompetent. The signal to noise ratio in the world of fiction is just ridiculous, and people don't really care that they're ...

Actually in a straw poll of one the guy who is sitting next to me says that he does care about trying not to read rubbish and he scours the internet to find reviews of titles he is thinking of putting on his reading list before committing to trying to acquire them.

And where does this search start? Amazon.

So if you aren't in a "readers who liked this also liked..." on Amazon, and you've only been reviewed by two people you probably aren't going to enjoy that broad based success necessary to generate  a living income out of just publishing novels.

So, why am I bothering?

I'm not, really. I write because I like to write and if people like to read what I write, well, tough because I find publishing to be a hassle and once the story is done I can't usually be bothered to go any further.

So I hope you enjoy reading about my writing even if you are highly unlikely to ever actually experience any of the stories that I write. I'll get back to reviewing when I can. But it rather depends on finding something to read and then reading it, which requires spare time, and I don't have any.

That's the other barrier.

Oh well, there are always jobs that don't involve writing...

Back In The Saddle

So yes.

Been a while. A good while. Those of you who have been following the continuing saga of No Dice will know that I've been putting all my effort into what I shall now dub "No Dice Phase I". No Dice Phase I consists of: The Core Book, Random Encounters, Levercastle, Shadow Cities and PULP RP and represents a full cycle of work.

If No Dice has any BIG IDEAS trust me most of them are in this Phase I. Sure there are plenty more ideas in Dreamtime Stories and Marauders and so on. But these are all derived from the BIG IDEAS in Phase I.

No ideas are bigger in this phase than the ideas behind PULP RP, the last publication in the series which is what I am getting down to now.

So that's what I've been up to. The other main piece of news is that I have acquired an eBook, which has swiftly become a great boon. I have been able to catch up on my reading as I prefer PDFs to regular published books. It's been great. I shall soon be returning to my duties as a POD book reviewer as I've chewed through so many books in the last fortnight that I shall no longer feel horrendously guilty for not reviewing things people send me in a reasonable amount of time.

Currently submissions are closed. But when they are open, be assured, you will know.

I think that's all for now. I'd better go and see if Sue's Sim 3 is now working as it was having memory issues.

Crawling Toward The Finish Line

Back from Belper and keen to relay gory details but for now suffice to say that my favourite session of the weekend for general hilarity and mirth filled darkness has to have been OTE. Least favourite for running smoothly but certainly no slouch in the "fresh ideas" camp was Dreamtime which was intellectually stimulating whilst being a bit slow to play. Work is ongoing.

Other than that I am pounding the keys frantically on the home stretch with Levercastle which nearly has a magic system and does, in fact, have an Alchemy system which all the failed alchemists in my campaign may be pleased, or nervous, to hear.

For now though, arrivederci.

Lulu First Run Toll

It's inevitable, I have discovered. Just like going away entails leaving some small but irritatingly necessary item behind at home so printing with Lulu entails finding one glaring but ultimately trivial thing wrong with the first batch of published product.

With Random Encounters the problems are superficial but relevant to me (it probably won't make a lick of difference to anyone else):

1) Slight overcropping on the front cover, even though I was careful to keep within the software cover designer.
2) When I first published the book to review the PDF I made sure that the spine was consistent with the Core Book having title and authors at the top and a product number at the bottom. Apparently, somewhere in the multitude of republished editions that have followed the cover designer seems to have reset to the default. Title at the top of the spine account holder's name at the bottom. So the spines of the first eight copies of RE read "Random Encounters-Leo Stableford". That's rather embarrassing, there were four distinct authors of the volume and an illustrator (who was one of the four authors!) just having my name on the spine is wrong and makes me feel a bit awkward.

Obviously, I shall have to make sure both of these issues are remedied before any more are printed.

2010: The Year We Got Busy

I wish that the amusing implication of the post title was anywhere near accurate. No, a more literate version of the semantics is to be inferred.

The plans are afoot for a calendar littered knee deep with exciting and rewarding events. The problem is that none of them are planned. Unplanned events are the absolute worst kind. You know they are going to resolve into the flesh but until you have a time, or a place, or both they torture you with vagueness.

Among the highlights of a full summer programme are: New No Dice events at Nottingham's new game and comic shop where Justin and I are also almost certain to organise a bit of Heroscape. Especially seeing as WotC seem to have released the Scape freeze to produce a D&D themed Underdark expansion set, which looks pretty yummy.

We'll also be wanting to get out and about in the summer time as outdoor No Diceing last summer was a brilliant success. In addition we want to hit three conventions, our friends at Beer and Pretzels, IndieCon (our non-attendance at which was an epic fail for us last year) and GenCon (if there is one). It doesn't stop there: we want to organise our own massive shindig to tie in with the release of Levercastle.

Finally, myself and the Mrs want to slope off for a couple of holidays in amongst all that. And there's the ever present joy of the Belper games weekends!

2010 will be eventful for sure. But will I survive it?

P.S. Check out our new slimline podcast available from the link top right.

Tweeting The Second Time Around

I have to ask myself the question: Am I just not getting it or is Twitter, in fact, rubbish?

The first time round I didn't give the world of Tweeting a chance; so I'm back on with a Twitter feed that is on the public timeline and trying to get my head round all this "Trending Topics" nonsense. I even looked on here for a widget to put in the sidebar which would allow people to see my Tweets but there doesn't appear to be an "official" one so that quest came to a hasty end, in the first instance.

Still, I am determined not to be one of these people who showers scorn on something just because he doesn't really get it. I want to get it before I shower scorn on it because for the life of me I don't know why all these celebrities and whatnot think it's so amazing. I had a quick look at Charlie Brooker's feed and the massively tiled background photo, preponderance of profanity and surreal disconnection of an unnetworked feed sent me away underwhelemed.

Perhaps I will warm to it...

I think I'm "searchable" so why not look for me. After all that's the idea of this stuff, surely.

In other news: they're making a film adaptation of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies cue mind-boggling at the intertextuality.

An underwhelming set of duets is planned for the X Factor Final. In the office the prevailing attitude is that nobody should win because they're all rubbish. As long as Robojoe fails to win I really don't mind. I think it may well be Olly, if it's not Robojoe. If it is Robojoe I predict a christmas number one and then almost certain obscurity as people fail to care. An unfortunate wastage of the X Factor prize fund. Who knows if he wins I may try to push "Killing In The Name Of" to number one for Christmas as the Facebook group wishes.

The only thing that's news-y about the revelation that most people won't pay extra for TV in HD is that the BBC thinks this is news. I remember watching  the clarity and beauty of the clear digital image slack jawed when DVD was released. But HD only improves on DVD a tiny little bit, and is monstrously more pricey. Whoever thought people would pay premium for that is stupid and greedy. Like I said, big news, not.

It appears that now people can see how whichever government is in power at the time is apparently squandering taxpayer money at Where Does My Money Go dot org. 53bn on General Public Services, eh? That'll buy a lot of second homes and duck houses... Pardon my cynicism. How long before someone registers wheredoesmymoneyreallygo.org? I can picture a wonderful parody with coloured circles representing "Down the back of the sofa", "Government 'Sharp Exit In Case Of Coup' Fund" and so on and so forth. It's all very well being able to see how the government our wasting the sweat of our collective brows but if we don't like the size or number of coloured circles in a particular category what, exactly, are we supposed to do? Ask for a refund?

Meanwhile, the taxman is complaining that his old computers are stopping him pwning us for all the money we might possibly owe. So let's get this straight, shall we? The government wants to plunge us back into misery and gloom in 2010 by charging us more tax for everything and the taxman is moaning because he can't screw us for an even greater amount... It seems as if we never needed a website to answer the question about where our money went. The answer is quite obvious.

Well, as always it's up to the personal world to rescue me from such gloomy thoughts. There's bacon, sausage, Dreamtime Stories and a generally sociable weekend in my immediate future. It seems all my money goes on buying cuts of dead pig... yum.

2009: The Year Of Impotent Rage

Not my impotent rage, if anything I have been less rage-filled in 2009 than any year since approximately 2002. So that's good. But just as "9" is just and upside down "6" so 2009 reverses the fortune of the 60s in a very weak attempt to make something out of the fact that two numbers look like each other upside down.

For "we" are no longer sticking it to "the man" and "the man" has responded by shafting us like good 'uns. From throwing a hissy fit about not scamming a bunch of undeserved dosh off the working stiff to proving that administrative incompetence was ongoing in sensitive situations to the trivial but still ridiculous nickel and diming to death in online games. Right across the spectrum of government and commerce wherever there could be said to be "the man" (not to be confused with Nicolas Cage who was the man for very different reasons on Tuesday) he was sticking it to "us" unashamedly and without consequence.

However the BBC might want to put a positive spin on it the infosphere continues to belt us in the face with a tirade of liberties taken by those in power and it turns out our response is "meh".

Of course Harold MacMillan could continue to tell us that "we've never had it so good" to this day. We might all be poor but in the last recession we the general kind of poverty didn't come with games consoles, the internet and TV on demand. We might have been robbed blind, offended by government incompetence and forced to pay for virtual grenades but there are still plenty more ways to remain distracted and anaesthetised.

Hmmm, starting to sound a bit ranty? Yes, probably.

I'm not ranting, because ranting implies angry and I'm just as apathetic as the rest of you. I know the government are corrupt incompetents and businessmen are greedy sociopaths and that there aint no such thing as a free MMO but I don't care to do anything about it.

Media provides us with any number of enterprising journos from the Mark Thomas school of publicised activism who will stage revealing prank after revealing prank but the media will also tell us, nothing gets done as a result. If people with the public ear, viewing figures in the millions and, in some cases, their own fan clubs can do nothing then why should we?

Exactly.

I could point out what I think Electronic Arts should have done to milk money out of punters in a clever and non-irritating way. I could make any number of suggestions about what needs to change in banking. I could harp on and on about how I would restructure the House of Commons. In the end so could you, everyone reading this has access to browsers, Google and Blogger.

But what we've learned is that a simple plea for Friends, Romans and Countrymen to lend their ears is drowned out in a sea of attention grabbers. Gil Scott-Heron was right, the revolution will not be televised but only because we'll be too busy playing Wii Sports to fit one in.

I was going to pontificate about whether to theme the blog for a bit nominating a "Star" of the week or some such inconsequential nonsense but I've already dripped on for long enough.

Don't be thoroughly depressed, it's nearly the weekend... I shall be relentlessly upbeat tomorrow, I promise.

Okay so...

It's definitely been a while but I think given that I had a wedding to help organise I can be forgiven. Also I fell victim to the usual August malaise that seems to affect everyone. Having said that we punted out a couple of podcasts and got some RP done even despite this.

It's only the poor old blog that seems to be suffering. I have to say that it hasn't really been a time for profound thought, or indeed even interesting thought. Mostly I've just been getting through stuff and ploughing ahead.

Mrs, myself, the doodler and another friend have all booked and paid for our places at the upcoming games weekend organised by a friend in the wilds of Derbyshire. The experience is unfailingly a complete escape from reality for a few days. I myself have never experienced the specially extended version of the weekend that goes from Wednesday night all the way through to Monday morning but I imagine the sense of reality dislocation is going to be the most intense it's ever been.

The good thing about that is that you come back to real life suffused with the feeling that you have actually experienced a Narnia-esque amount of time in a parallel dimension. The bad thing is that the reality shock sucks really really bad.

Still, the highs of such an experience are way in excess of the lows, so bring it on!

The cat has been to the vets for a little family unplanning and is staggering around the house with stiches in her side and one of those funny collars on. It has to stay there for ten days. It's quite upsetting because we're used to her leaping about the place full of beans and looking, well, like a cat. Now she's trying to be energetic, but also trying to ditch the collar and the stitches appear to have had more of an impact than she'd like to admit.

I'm looking forward to ten days time when she might start, once more, to look more like our cat.

We're having a board game session tonight followed by the Season 2 finale to our Over the Edge campaign on Saturday. So for the next five weeks life looks set to be fairly normal.

I guess I can cope with that.

Welcome To The Silly Season

I've started to notice a significant drop off in vocal activity. It's about that time from late June until early September when people drop off the radar for weeks on end, it gets a shade too hot to be hitting the keyboard, people are motivated towards eating, drinking and otherwise gadding about doing frivolous things.

And what of we, the Hosts? The artists? The creatives? I know that Mrs Monkey is busy working on her female oriented RP epic. I'm knee deep in writing for RE Vol 1 and Justin's sketching away for the same volume.

So what is there to report?

Not much.

Welcome to the silly season.

I could tell you that I had had some vague thoughts about helping out the aspiring RP hacker, or that I'd suddenly found that names are really important in Over The Edge, or that I was slightly concerned about the amount of goodies we're thinking of introducing into RE Vol 1...

But none of it makes a full post.

Besides, in the case of item 2 I'd really rather you had to ponder that one yourself. Names? Over The Edge? Hmmmm.

Late to the TPK Party

TPK in this instance standing for "Total Publisher Kill". The internet has been alive with commentary on the whole WotC removing PDFs of their product from sale debacle.

I just thought that I would add my tuppence in here. If I knew that I had sold 10 copies of No Dice and 100 more people were bothered enough to copy the PDFs then I would be extremely pleased. RPGs, like good stories, need to be spread wide to root down.

I think the bigger people are the more they forget about roots, on many levels. Of course we're those tree-hugging hippie types who want to give away our core book PDF but hey...