Carpe Blogiem: 2019 – A Year In Review

Here are how things went for me in 2019:

The Good (What I did well or that went well)

  • GURPS Realm Management (aka “SNO-51”) was written, revised, and is currently in playtest. The playtest is likely to be extended and as of this writing there have been over 1,000 emails traded back and forth between myself and the 20 odd playtesters. I’m happy with the amount of comments and the content itself. Some things needed to be changed and there were things I didn’t think of or notice when I wrote the first draft. Thank Glob for good playtesters.
  • Douglas Cole contracted me for five adventures for The Fantasy Trip. I decided to bring in my oft-times co-author J. Edward Tremlett. J. is a damn fine writer and we joined forces to finish the five adventures. The kickstarter earned $40,108 of a $16,000 goal. We did damn good. We had the first two turned in by March 31st 2019 and the last three by October 2nd. Those last three will be in a separate kickstarter that will appear at some point in 2020 (I think). That’s two kickstarters I’ve been involved with that have been successful.
  • I outlined, contracted, and wrote another GURPS book. Currently, this is codenamed “Marl Ankh-3” – I’ll be turning this in at the end of January 2020. It was fun to write and will be a book for one of the current setting lines.
  • My Patreon continues to provide more than half of my income. I hover at around 70 patrons at any one time and I hope to grow this membership this year. I need to put out more content and I intend to dig more into my Vault for what once was Pyramid content and convert it over to my style for Patreon. Patreon Specials were delivered on time each month and I’ve started solicited opinions for what should be in a special for the next month via poll.
  • I have two other GURPS supplements that I’ve outlined and queried on and given tacit permission to write (as soon as I’m contracted for one of them at least).
  • I have done outlining work on a fiction series set in my Chronicles of Ceteri universe. My other half continues to help me get it ready to write. I keep having to put off fiction-work for “another year” and it annoys me. I need to make this happen this year.
  • My mother remained in decent health, but she went back up to my sister’s house in northern VA to get some medical procedures done since my sister and her spouse are better able to take care of her up there. I miss my mother very much, but I call her daily and that will just have to do for now.
  • Grammar studies were put on the backburner a lot of months, but I continue to memorize the rules of the English language – slow going, but still going it is.
  • Government Assistance: finally got on Medicaid (thank you VA expansion!) and am seeing a doctor for my routine care for my ailments.
  • I participated in NaNoWriMo 2019 and wrote three separate short stories featuring the same character. They weren’t bad. I put them in the Vault for now. Maybe publish them at some point.

 

The Bad (What I could have done better or had no control over)

  • The first book of a fiction series I wanted to write turned into a something else and I set it aside.
  • I still didn’t publish anything in the fiction market in 2019. I missed my 2019 goal and went about another year without publishing anything. Sigh.
  • I kept off the Steve Jackson Games forums most of the year – too much stuff to do and not enough free time.
  • I ended my Dungeon Fantasy campaign (Aersalus), went back to my superhero campaign (AEON) and ended that, went back to my urban fantasy campaign (The Chronicles of Ceteri) and ended that, wrote up a wuxia campaign (The Middle Kingdom) ended that, and wound back up in Ceteri. I intend to run my Ceteriverse campaign as long as possible. It’s my most “built up” campaign and I find it a comfort to run in.
  • I lost two long time players and two new players, but gained two new players. Sigh. Real Life™ keeps pulling my players away from me and it’s starting to piss me off.
  • Posting remained at 1-2 entries per week with some weeks seeing 3-6. I’d like to get to posting daily if possible, but that’s not a small amount of work.
  • Mental Health: Lots of stress this year has resulted in going on another medication to combat the anxiety, night terrors, and insomnia that comes with it. I put this in the bad column, but I’m working through it and things are getting better – better than last year at the same time anyways.
  • Physical Health: My weight continues to flux very badly (swings of up to 10% in either direction). My A1C remains was up higher than I would have liked, but hopefully seeing this new endocrinologist will help me get meds to lower it. This too is here because it’s still not as good as I’d like.

 

The Ugly (I don’t know how to categorize this or too early to tell)

  • I added “Fiction” to my Patreon account and write monthly bits of fiction (up to a 1,00o  words or so). I added a new tier to my Patreon as well just for folks interested in my fiction only. Now to get my work OUT there and try to pump up the patron count more.
  • Didn’t get into any other gaming systems other than GURPS or the Fantasy Trip. I’d like at least working knowledge of Dnd 5e and maybe one of the flavors of OSR. I need to branch out more in the roleplaying community and I’ve yet to do it.
  • The Fantasy Trip’s OGL-like rules didn’t come out this year so I couldn’t publish anything with them. J. Edward Tremlett and I wait for them to drop so we can get into it.

 

Like my previous years, there was more good than bad and it was overall a good year. Like 2018, 2019 was not the year of “Some Day” as I had hoped. It left me frustrated and wondering how I can make it the year of Some Day in 2020. Sigh.

So for 2020 I’ve set the following goals for myself:

  • Publish a novel either via self-publishing or through a company.
  • Propose and (hopefully) write more GURPS supplements. I can work on two projects at once and I fully intend to try and do 3-4 projects this coming year if possible.
  • Read up more on The Fantasy Trip to better familiarize myself with the rules.
  • Maintain my obligations for freelancing.
  • Continue to deliver Patreon content to all patrons.
  • Build up my Patreon more and be more communicative with my patrons.
  • Continue to blog at least twice per week. I’d like to get to 3-4 times a week (excluding session recap posts if possible).
  • Work on my layout skills perhaps via Office Publisher or InDesign or maybe by purchasing the new kid on the block – Affinity
  • Finish writing the setting bible for The Chronicles of Ceteri. I’ve been wanting to get this done for years. It’s likely to eat up a lot of time, but when finished should help me deal with new players to the setting easier than the multitudinous separate files that the bible currently takes up.
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