HSU IT Department

I haven't written to my personal journal since October 12th, and that's because of the crowdfunding.

When last I wrote, I'd done five interviews in a week, and I was ex-haust-ed.

Yep, more exhausted now. (Or at least I was a week ago when the crowdfunding closed).

But the crowdfunding for Designers & Dragons: Origins went very well. We closed out at just under a quarter of a million dollars, which was as high as I could possibly imagine it going. And we had just more than 1500 backers, and that one was pretty much at my expectation, because modern-day RPG crowdfunding (the only category I look at closely) seems to convert 50% of its early signups to backers and we had 3,000 early signups.

Evil Hat is talking about increasing its print run from 3,000 per book to 4,000 per book, something that would be entirely covered by the crowdfunding. It means I won't see $$$ any time soon, as our agreement is profit-sharing, but that's totally good by me. It was a good tech-writing year and I'd prefer to see the long tail of another 4,000 total books, especially since that'll keep my work in print longer.

Over the course of the crowdfunding, I did 11 interviews, published three articles at my blog and tried to make meaningful posts to Bluesky on a daily basis.

(That would be the exhausted part.)

Hopefully all of that contributed to the project's success.

And now, we wait. The books are out to proofreading right now, which means that I get 5 or 6 weeks without having to worry about Designers & Dragons: Origins, as the due date on the proofreading is the end of the year. (Sorry to proofreaders who have work due at the end of the holiday season!)

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Speaking of tech writing: that's been busier than usual too. I don't have many clients at this point, which isn't great, but my biggest client keeps me as busy as I want to be, and that discourages me from seeking new blood. (Which is all OK as long as, and only as long as, my biggest client is still needing work.)

But three weeks or so ago one of my other clients came back with some rush work for November (and some less rush work for December). So for the last two weeks of the crowdfunding, I was also putting in four full-time days of tech writing.

(That was the rest of the exhausting).

That all made it pretty tough doing creative work for the month, but I did manage to do the minimum revisions/expansions of Designers & Dragons: The '10s that were on my schedule. Mind you, I worked one Saturday to manage that and have been doing other creative work on evenings (a magazine article and some large-scale work on my eternal Michael Moorcock book).

Just like the 'ole days before I shifted to freelance work so that I could work on roleplaying history half time without it being in the evenings.

I should have put my Patreon on hold for November, while I did the Kickstarter. Ah well. I *am* putting it on hold for December to try to catch up on other work and to not worry about writing while I'm in California for the holidays.

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There's been some fiction writing too: Kimberly and I have been attending a writing group at the local library since summer sometime. It's just a couple of people and it's not organized to offer comments on anything by the flashest of fiction. But, it's been encouraging me to play with fiction again. I wrote an actual flash fiction a couple of months ago, for the first meeting I went to, and I was pretty happy with it.

But for this month's meeting (tonight!), I tried something else. I dug out a Microscope campaign that a few of us had run with the intent of using it as the foundation for fiction if we wanted and after poking around a while found something to write about. My intent is to write a longer short story (e.g., not just flash fiction), but to write it in flash-fiction sized segments. So last night I put together 800 or so words for the first section, and I'll take it in tonight, and we'll see how the group reacts to science fiction.

Hopefully by next time (January, since we'll be out-of-town for the December meeting), I'll have all or most of the story, but I can still bring the second segment.

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I guess the other inevitable thing to comment on here is cats, because then I can put cat pictures on the Facebook copy of this.

Elmer is entirely settled in Boston. His new dad stopped giving us updates after things had settled a couple of weeks in, which is totally fine (and probably healthy), but one of his workmates (the old gaming friend who introduced us) occasionally sends us pictures of Elmer looking very happy (with his new dad's OK). So we are happier than happier that worked out.

In the last few weeks, both Mango and Megara seem to have gotten much more comfortable downstairs. Mango has started hanging out in the cat tree and the comfy chairs that were definitely Elmer's territory before. Megara still often sits hesitantly at the bottom of the stairs, but she makes many more forays beyond that in the downstairs than she did even just a week ago, and we've occasionally found her sitting in the comfy chair in Kimberly's office (which definitely was another thing that used to belong to Elmer).

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More busyness coming up. I've got Monday scheduled to figure out my health insurance, since my monthly rate is jumping to almost $1000. (Thanks GOP! Thanks Trump!) I've got some taxes that I need to deal with. And our Christmas trip is just more than three weeks away.

But for at least tomorrow, and maybe more, I can rest.

(Well, not totally, I have that article to finalize, which is for Wyrd Science, and I promised it for Friday, but maybe I'll relax other than that for the next four days.)