Out of the Station, on down the Tracks

Things are moving forward, albeit slowly. I'm now sitting on a "B" in the class in which I had a solid "C" before...however, I wasn't very clear on the last assignment we had to do, so I may be looking at 2 or 3 out of 5 on that one. We shall see. Every day I think more and more that teaching isn't the job for me--there's too much elitism and over-the-line political correctness involved. I was taken to task last night for referring to Library and Information Science as an industry, instead of a "profession." Industries, I'm told, are things like steel workers and car manufacturers. Librarians and schools would be insulted to be referred to that way. The implication, whether they intended it or not, was that factory workers don't have real professions and are thus somehow lesser. It's actually kind of funny given that I was accused of using unintentionally biased language by referring to "Resources for the blind" and observing that a school district's on-paper demographics held up to observation, with the majority of students being African-American. Those things, apparently, are bigotry, while referring to factory workers as somehow less important than education-centric information professionals is not.

I can't play that game for the rest of my life. SO...on to public library services it is.

In other news, I heard from Steve at Troll Lord Games yesterday; they're ready to move on Pulp SIEGE which is exciting news. My first core game in full retail distribution. We're working on dividing it up into 4 volumes at the moment; as it stands, Volume One will have everything needed to run two-fisted, hard-boiled style adventures with human adversaries and little to no supernatural element. Volume Two will include all the rules for Arcane characters, sorcerers, mentalists, gadgeteers. Volume Three will be the bestiary, for those who want monsters other than gun-toting thugs. Volume Four will include advanced character customization options and GM tips. That's all just preliminaries at the moment; things could still stand to change. I really need to come up with a slew of new monsters to pad the monster book--creepy, unnatural and undead things. Lovecraftian horrors. And I need to come up with some more advice for game masters to pad Volume Four. Volumes 3 and 4 right now are each roughly the size of an adventure module.

But that's just idle thoughts (though if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them). I'm excited to have this hitting the market within the next 6-8 months.

As I understand it, the adventure module I wrote for Star SIEGE, "Another Fine Mess," should be hitting the stands soon as well.

The project I was working on for Cubicle 7 may blow up into something much larger. If it does, I'm stepping back. Just don't have the time to go bigger right now (I'm barely getting work done on the small version as-is). I told them they could have what I've already written in exchange for a byline (so I can say, "I was there.") The big reason I took this job on was that I wanted to be associated with it, so that'll serve its purpose. I'm actually hoping they do decide to blow it up, not just because it's a reasonable out for me, but because the topic really deserves a more detailed treatment than I can give it with the space I have, and by someone more expert than me.

Work is, you know...work. Things have been relatively quiet of late. No major blowups, nobody pissed off. That's good. Even keel is a happy thing at the day job. Makes the, "I don't want to go to work today," feelings more mild and easily shrugged off. God willing, it'll stay this way for awhile. It's nice being able to breathe.

So school is evening out, work is in a quiet rhythm, freelancing is progressing...I may even have some time to work on Charlie Morning and Mr. Night, here, soon. I have a couple friends who have apparently dropped off the face of the Earth, about whom I'm a bit worried. It's unlike them to not answer e-mails, and I haven't heard from them in several weeks. I'm hoping they're okay. That's the only real concern in my life at the moment.

Guess that's all. Take care, and I'll talk at you again soon.