A Winnar is Me!

Windhammer Merit Award for the win! This is my third one in a row (I'll try not to think too hard about what that might say about me being consistently second-best...) but this one especially is a HUGE achievement, given the quality and quantity of the entrants this year.

I think what I'm happiest about, at this point, is simply that I'll get to showcase the fantastic art done by Anthony Contoleon of the wasteland, the Zendari, and all the Mecha in a forum as public as a complition published by Tin Man Games. Seriously, the art he did is amazing; it deserves to be seen by the world.

This was a great few days for me in other respects, as well. I managed to get Vigilante published and ready for the world in time for the Con. The version I presented there I'm calling Alpha for now, and deciding not to attempt to publish to the public yet. Actually, I've come up with a plan by which I can develop, playtest, and build up some publicity and anticipation while further improving on the game in a process that should take about a year, culminating in a Kickstarter. Over this time, I'll keep working with the artist to get more and better art, and start recruiting writers to write content for it. The vision is to present the final, complete, published version ready for marketing and sale to the public at Convolution next year.

In other news, my short story, "To Give a Hand," which some of you may have read an early version of already, was VERY well received at the Writer's Workshop. One of the authors set it's publishable right now, he just wasn't sure about the ending. The other said it definitely will be publishable once I've re-worked the ending. He said, "It's three quarters of a great story!" Yay! I think I already have some ideas about how to re-work it, too...

Last but not least, I also made contacts at Convolution with students from Reed College--the playtesters for Vigilante--who liked it enough that they want to hire me to come up to Portland at some point to run a LARP for their gaming club. Win!!!! Time to dust off the Arcadian LARP and make the revisions I've been meaning to do since I first ran it... god, has it already been two years since then? Once we've run that one, this will be a great opportunity to finish up the Isles of Mist LARP I've had stewing in the back of my mind for even longer and actually break it out with a live crowd. It's going to be hot. I love this LARP.

However, all of this is going to have to wait at least a little bit, because now that I'm no longer facing immediate deadlines, I have some serious gamebooking to do, on very exciting projects for people who are expecting results from me.

Do you ever feel a little schizophrenic?

...

Nah. I love living like this. I touched base with a dear friend at a Halloween party last week, and realized how happy I am to be writing this much, working this hard, and making it all come to life.

Of course, back to it as soon as I recover from this head cold I caught at the con. Even I need to rest once in a while.