The plan was to do a bit more blog stuff this year, keep things ticking over, stay up to date with gaming and writing projects as the weeks and months went on. So, that’s going well…
Gaming
Anyway, the gaming group have just finished a short, scrappy, some might say cursed, sequence of Cyberpunk games. Like the 2020 game itself it was all Very 80s. Rogue cops, a dodgy Doc, a media-babe with a bunny-girl makeover.
There were drugs, high technology corporate sleaze, old (dead) friends, sentient computers and surprisingly little gunplay.
Due to a restricted time frame it ended like a one-season television show cut off in its prime. Our heroes, mid-heist, discover they’re hacking the wrong computer and then:
Black screen. No music. Credits.
Also on the gaming front: Achtung Cthulhu (running in alternate weeks with the Cyberpunk 2020), the promise of something OSR next week, and also some not-enough-players evenings of noodling about and creating a simple-to-play (let’s describe it as ‘urban fantasy’) game that may be entitled “Mortal”. More on that later, maybe.
Writing
I’ve written a lot of short comic strip scripts in the last month and it’s been a fun medium to work in. An interesting change of pace. No wasted words and very narrow confines for the 2000AD “Future Shock” style of four-pages-with-a-twist. Granted one of my efforts ran to six pages but that was for a slightly different brief. Some of these scripts may see the light of day at some point (I even sent one along to the 2000AD open submissions thing). I’ll keep you posted.
Also in writing, I’ve completed a few short stories but more importantly (and after another rejection) I’ve decided to do a major rewrite of my YA science/fantasy adventure novel. So that’s now the ‘work in progress’.
I have some notes from a few very helpful beta readers, and also a general feeling that I wrote the book around six years ago and I’d do things differently if I was starting now. I’ve begun by changing the main character’s name.
My current wild idea is to re-structure it with two overlapping first-person POV characters. That feeling may pass lol.