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More like a flaycation, am I right? *

Taking a day or two off writing the Work in Progress, so that I can…

…work on the copy edits of The Warlord’s Legacy.

My definition of "time off" differs from that of you Earth people.

*(I am not.)

There’s enough pollen coating the cement in the walkway and balcony outside the apartment for me to go out and roll it up topmake "pollen men." With a corncob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal, even.

Anyone up for a snowball fight with a side of extra allergens? Just give me a minute to stick a pair of bendy-straws up my nose so I can breathe, and I’ll be right out…

There’s enough pollen coating the cement in the walkway and balcony outside the apartment for me to go out and roll it up to make a "pollen man." With a corncob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal, even.

Anyone up for a snowball fight with a side of extra allergens? Just give me a minute to stick a pair of bendy-straws up my nose so I can breathe, and I’ll be right out…

Been told by one of my beta-readers that I’m going just a little too far on the MC’s/narrator’s dialect in the work-in-progress. And while my other beta doesn’t have the same complaint, I’m inclined to listen. Written dialect is one of those things where a little goes a very long way, and even the slightest bit too much can render the text silly and/or unreadable to some of the audience. So yeah; now I just need to decide if I want to make the changes from this point on, or keep writing as I have been and then change the manuscript all at once.

(It’s not a difficult change to make–mostly, I think, just a few find-and-replaces–so I’m honestly not sure if it’s worth the mental shift to make the change for the remainder of the book or not.)

And yep, I said "MC/narrator." I haven’t written in first-person in years, except for a couple of short stories, but this book concept absolutely demanded it.

Just discovered what could be a rather unfortunate hiccup in the outline for the work in progress. I’m not sure the material that’s currently divided up into the next two chapters is really more than a single chapter’s worth. 😕

Blah…

Been reading through The Plane Above–the parts I didn’t write, mostly ;-)–and I’ve decided on a campaign I have to run at some point in the future.

Back during the Dawn War, the gods made a pact with… Something. Something from beyond the cosmos, perhaps an abnormally sane/communicative creature of the Far Realm, perhaps something else entirely. They did when the war against the Primordials looked bleak indeed, and they were desperate. The deal was for assistance against the Primordials, which they received–but the price was that they would eventually have to sacrifice several million souls (cue Dr. Evil pinky here) to this creature. The gods made this deal through Tharizdun, the only one of their number mad enough to commune with this creature.

The gods reneged. One of their reasons for imprisoning Tharizdun was to avoid payment on this horrible debt, since the deal was technically with Tharizdun alone.

But now, ages later, the maruts have somehow unearthed word of this debt. And being the enforcers of binding law that they are, they have set about to collect. They have no access to the souls that have passed beyond the Raven Queen’s gates. They cannot enter the divine dominions. They cannot just start killing mortals in the real world, because that sends most of them to one of the above fates.

But they can cull their sacrifices from the border islands surround divine dominions, and the survivors of the various shattered/abandoned dominions. It’s from the cultures of these many "islands," the only independent cultures of humanoid souls in the Astral Sea, that the PCs come.

They are part of a ragtag fleet (here we go ;-)) of spelljammers, planar drommonds, and the like, fleeing the burning wastes that were once the border islands. The gods cannot and will not interfere for directly; the fact that the maruts are actually acting in accordance with the gods’ oaths prevents them from doing so. A few do appear to the fleet now and again, but all they can offer is guidance, as these several thousand lost souls sail the unexplored far reaches of the Astral Sea, beyond the domain of gods or the telling of myths, seeking sanctuary from the constant ravages of the marut armies, as well as the many other raiders and hazards the Astral Sea has to offer.

Yes, I spend way too much time thinking about this stuff.