Category Archives: Published Books

Blackened Hearts released!

The pirate live-action roleplaying scenario I’ve been working is finally complete and published. I’m actually quite surprised at how long it took me to get it all put together, worked, reworked, playtested, torn down, written back up, polished, and finished — part of that was simply me being unmotivated and easily distracted, but a lot of man-hours still went into the production.

The final product is 62 pages long (A4 format) and weighs in at almost 30,000 words, which is basically half a novel. I’d say it took me just as long from start to finish as it does for me to write and publish an actual book.

The whole thing was basically a new experience for me. I don’t normally write roleplaying material for public release, though I’ve been running various different games for sixteen years and have written a lot of stuff for personal use in that time. On top of that I’ve only really played in a handful of LARPs.  I’m more of a tabletop roleplayer, though I really enjoyed all of the LARP scenarios I’ve played in.

The first LARP I ever played in was the playtest of an excellent Warhammer Fantasy scenario called Sunset Claws (available here), written by my friend the inestimable Steve D. Steve is a great local game designer and player that was really welcoming to me when I first started making forays outside of my own little roleplaying group and into the wider Australian RPG community.

I knew literally no-one else at the playtest and have always suffered from a great amount of social anxiety, so the whole experience was a bit nerve-wracking… At one point I had gotten so far from achieving my character’s goals and was so lost at what to do next in this sea of people I didn’t know, that when the next person pulled me into a private conversation I just laid all of my cards on the table and begged them for help, actually on the verge of tears. This other player wrapped me into their plans and we ended up together on basically what was a “winning” side of the evening, having accomplished all our goals and gotten away with it.

Despite my near-breakdown and social anxiety, I ended up having an enormous amount of fun. Once Sunset Claws was released properly I ran it again myself, as a birthday event, and when Steve D wrote a sequel of sorts I participated in the playtest of that as well.

Afterwards, I tinkered with the basic format of Sunset Claws to create a similar “Very Special LARP Episode” for my own gaming group, a live-action session of the tabletop game I was running at the time. It was loads of fun. One of my players wrote another LARP, a steampunk one, again based on the same basic framework.

I’ve played in and ran a couple of other scenarios over the years as well, but I kept coming back to the simple rules I’d first encountered in Sunset Claws as pretty much my ideal.

Sunset Claws is where I started when I began writing Blackened Hearts, and I feel like I did a good job of replacing and updating the mechanics, customising them for the type of game I wanted to write, and just generally making the rules better than they were when I found them. I’m especially happy with the Crease/Tear mechanic I devised for pacing use of characters’ abilities throughout the scenario.

When I was writing, I gave a lot of thought to how complex it should be, plot-wise. You want enough complexity that everyone has plenty to do, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming and players don’t have time to do what they need to do.

The basis of the scenario is two major plots, each of which everyone can get involved with as they affect everyone on the crew: one is a bit of political intrigue around the captaincy and the other is the potential existence of a supernatural threat. If the cast is just the “core” eight characters, there is also a single side plot that characters get involved in. With that few players, the intrigue and action focuses very heavily on the two major plots.

If the full fifteen characters are used, however, I felt that there simply wasn’t enough material to keep everyone busy. To address this, each character beyond the core eight either adds a significant additional complication to an existing plot, or introduces an entirely new small side plot. This makes things increasing more chaotic as more people are added and I’d say that if you want the scenario to really shine you should definitely pull together a full cast of fifteen than going with just the core.

I think I ended up striking a good balance and the feedback from the live playtest seems to bear that out. I received a lot of great feedback from the playtest and made significant changes not only to the characters but the underlying mechanics of the game based on it. You can’t see exactly how well a game will work while you’re writing it — you need to chuck it at actual people, see how it survives contact with real players, before you can get a proper understanding of how well it’s put together.

A note on gender: “Are you a girl or a boy?” “I’m a pirate!” “Well yes, but what’s in your pants?” “Spanish doubloons!” All characters have been written as gender-neutral, so players are free to pick whichever gender they feel most comfortable roleplaying as when choosing a character (or to leave it ambiguous).

This is something that a few people have responded positively to, so I feel it’s worthwhile taking a second to talk about it.

In previous parlour-style LARPs I’ve played in, pretty much every character was written to be a specific gender. Normally, a small handful of characters would note that they could be easily genderflipped and would provide an alternate name to be used in that case. I’m not sure if this is consistent acrossmost LARP scenarios, it was just something common to every one that I’ve personally played in.

I had noticed, from past experience, that doing it that way could result in some minor issues and confusion when it came to picking roles and remembering who is playing who. For example, some people just aren’t comfortable playing a character of the opposite gender in a LARP so it throws up a barrier to picking certain characters for them. For genderflipped characters, it can be tricky (especially if playing with strangers) for everyone to remember that a particular character, who is referred to as male with a male name in your role descriptions, is being played as a female character with a different name.

When I first started coming up with the character list, I decided to try and head off these problems by writing a handful of characters as gender neutral. I starting trying to work out what the split would be — what would be more convenient for most groups? 5 male, 5 female, 5 neutral? I wasn’t too sure. I was fiddling around when I realised that I couldn’t think of a decent reason why I couldn’t write all of the characters as gender neutral and just let each person sort it out for themselves.

Overall, I think it works well. If and when I write another LARP scenario, I’ll probably handle characters the same way.

I’ve actually already got a few short notes on things I think probably could be done better, but seemed like they would create a lot more work for fairly small payoffs. If and when I get more play data and feedback, I’ll definitely consider taking the time to revise the scenario and release an updated version. Until then, I’ll leave it as-is and other people can have a bit of fun with it and let me know what they think.

Blackened Hearts is available as a Pay-What-You-Want download from DriveThruRPG — please head over and grab a copy!


 

Blackened Hearts

The story so far…

It is a fine day for larceny upon the high seas indeed! The Devil hisself must have blest the crew of the Black Kraken with his own luck—how else could it be that you would happen upon the fat Spanish treasure galleon the Urca de Lima, separated from her escort and crippled by one of the worst storms that ever scoured the ocean? Then again, even in these most favourable circumstances, the Spaniards fought long and hard before you finally took her. The Urca de Lima now trails behind you, a small prize crew doing what they can to keep her limping along just long enough to get to the port of Tortuga.

It’s been clear sailing all week all the way back to Tortuga—almost suspiciously easy-going and peaceful, in fact—and without much to do the crew’s been going stir-crazy thinking about how they’ll spend their ill-gotten rewards. In fact, the Captain’s arranged for an early share of the loot to be divided amongst the crew. Those who aren’t needed to sail the ship are able to enjoy the rest of the evening with a little bit of early gambling and drinking, so everyone is in high spirits. All that’s left now is to enjoy the rest of the evening as you coast into port, and maybe swindle some of your fellows out of their share.

Wait, what’s all this about a curse?

Blackened Hearts is a live action roleplaying (LARP) scenario for 8 to 15 players plus a Game Master (GM) that runs for approximately two and a half hours, not including set up and tidying afterward.

In a LARP, you take on the role of a character and physically act out that character’s actions, pursuing their goals and interacting with other players while remaining ‘in character’. More specifically, this scenario is a parlour-style LARP, meaning that the area of play is confined to a relatively small area and the focus is on roleplay and intrigue rather than combat.

Blackened Hearts uses a very simple set of mechanics to govern what a character is able to do in the context of the scenario. It is designed to be played with the assistance of a GM who will facilitate the game.

The download package includes a main document that outlines everything you need to know to play and printable PDF versions of all material that need to be printed prior to the LARP.

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Post-Apocalyptic Gothic Roadmap

So, I’m currently writing the second book in the Post-Apocalyptic Gothic series, so I thought it was a good time to talk about the future of the series and where I see myself going with it.

vintage-berlin-germany-old

The first book in Post-Apocalyptic Gothic was Prometheus’ Daughter (2014), the second one will be The Man From Porton Down (tentative title, predicted release in 2017).

The stories in this series, at least at first, are only going to be very tangentially related. The Man From Porton Down is not a sequel to Prometheus’ Daughter, it simply takes place in the same setting. I already have a very basic plot outline for the third book, which is unnamed at the moment, and it as well only enjoys tenuous links to the stories that come before it. All three are all also inspired by existing period gothic horror novels — Prometheus’ Daughter is known to be a re-imagining of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but I won’t spoil what the others will be.

Once I’ve published these three books, I want to put out an omnibus edition that compiles all three in a single volume, with author’s notes about each story and two new short stories in the setting.

There is a rich enough body of work when it comes to gothic horror that I could do quite a few more books in the same style, but I don’t know whether I’ll continue past there. If I do feel like I want to go back to it, I have two things I want to do:

1) Do a capstone story that ties together all three of the previous works. This is likely to be a bit longer than any of the preceding novellas, maybe twice as long.

2) Do another trio of novellas, continuing to re-imagine gothic horror stories in the setting.

If I’m still super keen on the setting and want to keep writing it in — this is far, far in the future at this stage — then I have toyed with the idea of doing a sub-series called Shakespeare at the End of the World. I’m sure you can guess what that would entail.

Of course, I’ve got a lot of other projects I want to work on as well… who knows when I’ll get time?

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Sundered Roleplaying

I’ve been very vaguely thinking about producing a roleplaying game/setting based on my Tales of the Sundered Land series. (There’s only one book out at the moment, but it will be a series of at least four more books. Promise.)

I’m thinking a Fate Core game under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence, in a similar sort of style to Evil Hat’s Fate Worlds and Adventures series of releases. A bit denser on setting details than their releases, of course.

Fate™ is a trademark of Evil Hat Productions, LLC. The Powered by Fate logo is © Evil Hat Productions, LLC and is used with permission.

I feel like working on a project like this will benefit the series as a whole — sort of like a ‘setting bible’ that I can then use as a guide to help maintain consistency throughout the books. I’ll probably wait until after I finish up the book I’m currently writing, as I don’t want to overload myself, but if I get a spare minute here and there I might do a little work on it. In an ideal world, I might try to set up a proper Kickstarter once I’ve got a proper draft completed.

I’ve actually got a couple of other roleplaying projects on the backburner as well (one inspired by the Dungeon Keeper series and one inspired by games like Dark Souls and Darkest Dungeon). One day I’d like to sit down properly and do some real work on them all, but time is always at a premium at the moment with my full-time work and my current projects. Too many things I want to do, sigh.

Also, I’ve hit my writing goal today, and a little bit more besides.

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Costs of Publishing a Book

So, one of my friends linked me to a blog post about how expensive it was to self-publish a book, and I was really surprised at the figures being tossed around. I thought I might talk about how much it cost me, in total, to put out my first book. I’ll tackle the issues roughly in the same order as that blog post.

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Editing
This cost me nothing. I have years of experience doing professional editing work for the Government myself, so when I have a few passes through a manuscript it’s in pretty good shape. On top of that, I have my good friend Nathan, who is a fellow writer and has also done editing work for the Government for many years. Nathan, I think, is living a little vicariously through me when it comes to actually finishing and publishing stuff, so he charged me nothing.

Design
This includes internal layouting and the cover. I did all the layout work and such myself, so that cost me nothing at all. As for the cover… again, I’ve been blessed with great creative friends who want to help me succeed and are willing to donate their time. Yolanda, my artist, is my ex-partner and a very good friend. She charged me nothing to design the cover, and I got something I was very happy with.

eBook Design
I did this all myself, it cost nothing.

Printing
I wasn’t super confident about moving a lot of print copies myself, so I did a very small initial print run, sold out very quickly, then did a second small print run, almost sold out, then did a third small print run. I could have saved a decent chunk of money by ordering a larger print run right up (that’s what I did with my second book). I ended up paying roughly $5.50 per book (which is way too much!), with a total print run so far of 200 and sold most of them at $10 each. I’ve got a small amount left (maybe 20?). Online sales have been better than my print sales. My initial print run was only 70 books, so my initial up-front cost was around $385.

Bookstore Distribution
The blog post recommends not bothering with this, as online sales are king. I agree, and while I did contact a number of bookstores, get it on some actual shelves, and it didn’t cost me anything extra… I regret wasting the time and effort. For the effort to profit ratio, this is an extremely poor way to spend limited resources for a self-published author.

Extras
I do my distribution through Amazon, and to sign up with CreateSpace you need an American EIN, which cost me $10 in phone calls to get. Bowker, the ISBN/Barcode people, charged me a $55 first-time publisher fee, $84 for ten ISBNs (I used three, one for print, one for ebook, one for pdf, so plenty left over for two more books), $45 for a barcode for the print version. I pay $12 annually for this webspace. That’s about all my extras.

The blog post also mentions coaching costs, photography costs (I got a headshot done by an amateur photographer friend for free), and marketing as well. I didn’t pay anything for any of these.

money-card-business-credit-card-50987-large

After all that, the sum the blog quotes comes to $3,000 at the low end to about $11,450 at the high end, not counting bookstore distribution.

My own total cost was about $600, including my initial print run. Now, if I’d had to pay for editing and cover art, I could maybe see my costs rising match the very low end of the figures it talks about.

I guess I just want to show that it’s not as expensive to self-publish as some people might lead you to believe.

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Excerpts are up

I’ve managed to finally upload some excerpts from my two published novellas. These and excerpts from all future published works will be available via the ‘Freebies’ page on this site.

Links here in this post as well, for ease of use!

Given that The Flame’s Burden has only just been released, I’d encourage everyone to take a peek at the excerpt to get an idea of whether you’ll like it or not.

Prometheus' Daughter covert art Prometheus' Daughter covert art

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The Flame’s Burden

The Flame’s Burden was released this month! Just narrowly squeezed in at the end of the year, so I can officially say that my release schedule is one book a year at the moment. It also means that publishing my first book wasn’t a fluke, I guess!

I had placed a lot of unnecessary importance on the idea that I had to finish this one and get it published by the end of the year or I was a horrible incompetent failure of a writer. On an intellectual level, I realise how dumb that is — so what if I didn’t put it out this year? I’ve never really thought I’ll get anywhere pursuing writing seriously, so my release schedule just doesn’t really matter and I should just do things at my leisure. I don’t know, I guess part of me is still hoping that maybe one day I will be able to support myself from writing fiction and if I wasn’t able to maintain a book a year (and they’re small books, not huge doorstoppers!) then I would never get enough of a catalogue under my belt to make a serious go of it.

Next year I’m very seriously considering taking some extended leave without pay from my day job to pretend I’m a full-time author and just write as much as possible. Not 100% sure if I’ll go through with it, as I’ll need to support myself on my savings while doing it and it’ll be a big financial hit, but it’ll accelerate my release schedule by an order of magnitude and makes the slim possibility of me ever getting anywhere with my stories just that little bit bigger. Sigh, big adult decisions suck.

 


 

The Flame's Burden covert art

The Flame’s Burden

Ask is a young man, recently initiated into the priesthood that watches over his people, and touched by one of the patrons of fire. When contact is lost with a neighbouring village, Ask’s mentor Igul goes to investigate. Still new to his responsibilities and position, Ask chooses to remain behind to ward their home against the monsters that lurk in the shadows of the frigid taiga.

As time passes and no word comes, Ask is faced with a difficult decision—should he stay to protect the people left in his charge, or follow after Igul and pray that his mentor and their neighbours aren’t already dead? Can he save his people from the growing darkness? Or will his decisions lead only to their destruction?

 

Buy from Amazon.com!

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Prometheus’ Daughter

Prometheus’ Daughter has been out for over a year and a half, and I’m only just now starting to sort out my website properly… >_>  I had planned on doing this much earlier, but best laid plans, etc, etc.

My goal is to put up excerpts from each of my novels as they’re released, some short stories, and some other assorted things. For now, though, here’s a link to Prometheus’ Daughter on Amazon.

 


 

Prometheus' Daughter covert art

Prometheus’ Daughter

In the ruins of Geneva, decaying buildings stand silent witness to the twilight of humanity. Adele, a doctor like her mother before her, uncovers a long abandoned medical laboratory during a scavenging expedition. Believing that her discovery may be the key to mankind’s survival, she eagerly delves into the lab’s secrets.

 Her dream of saving humanity quickly turns into an obsession, driving away the people she loves most. When her experiments bear fruit in the form of a genetically engineered clone, Adele finds that her daughter is not at all as she had expected her to be. Will her creation bring hope and life back to the sun-scorched world? Or will her hubris condemn her and everyone around her?

 

Buy from Amazon.com!

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