Monthly Archives: May 2017

Upcoming Deadlines

I’m reorganizing myself a little and trying to focus on a couple of deadlines that are looming large on the horizon. I’m still working on game development stuff in Unity and struggling to make headway on my next novel, but the below are additional projects with real world deadlines that will impact me negatively if I miss them.

 

Blackened Hearts (10 June 2017)
I’ve organised an initial play test of Blackened Hearts, the pirate LARP I’ve been writing, to occur on 10 June. I don’t want to be writing the damn thing right up until the day of the event, so my deadline to entirely finish the play test documents is a week prior. Currently:

  • 10 out of the 15 character roles have been written up and had an initial editing pass, so they’re pretty much play test ready, and the other 5 are still in varying stages of completion;
  • the rules document that is to accompany them is about 66-ish% done — I did the initial write-up ages ago and have edited it since then, but there is now some extra stuff I need to add to it and I want to include a section on pirate gambling games that people can play during the LARP;
  • the item cards are 90% done and ready to print, there’s just a few last-minute additions I need to make to finalise the document;
  • the power cards are woefully underdone… I’ve got basic one-line descriptions written for about 75% of what I intend to include, with no actual cards finished yet.

Immediate goals: Today I intend to finalise the item cards and finish up at least one character role. Then, I’ll be angling to finalise another two character roles by the end of Friday and make a start on the power cards, with a view to completely finishing the LARP by the end of next week.

 

The Big Issue Fiction Edition (5 June 2017)
The Big Issue is accepting public submissions of short stories of up to 3,000 words for their next Fiction Edition — this is a paid gig if you’re accepted, so I’d really like to make it in. Submitted stories need to be previously unpublished, which means I can’t just use one of the ones I’ve already written and posted here. I need to work out what I want to write about and write the full thing. They only accept submissions by post, not email, so I don’t want to be writing right up to the deadline. Even if I don’t get accepted, it’ll at least give me another story I can post up here.

Immediate goals: Today I am going to read last year’s Fiction Edition, so I can see what sort of things they tend to accept. I’ll try to have a full concept and outline hammered out by the end of next week. Then I’ll try to finish it the week following.

 

Not Actual Deadlines

On top of those, there’s a couple of other things I’d really like to do in the upcoming weeks:

  • An as-yet-unnamed script for a short horror film I’ve bee working on (about a third of the way done) that I’d really like to finish off before my birthday (18 June); and
  • I want to commission some cover art for the short stories I’ve published on here so that I can package them as freebies on Amazon’s Kindle store as well. As they’re just going to be free, I’m not looking to spend a lot of cash on the art — I’m thinking minimalist, simple covers (Google minimalist book covers if you want to see the sort of thing I mean). I’ve got professional artist friends, but I don’t think what I’m looking for is worth their time or rates so I might just grab an artist off Fiverr. Again, I’d really like to do this before my birthday.

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Filed under Future Projects, Roleplaying, Writing Progress