Hello everyone!

It's been one of those weeks, I'm afraid.

It terms of writing this week it just seems to have been one thing after another getting in the way and I'm found it really disappointing, if I'm honest. It mainly seems to have been little things, which makes it feel all the more disappointing and I don't fully want to go into it here. Partly it's because it just seems to have been little things that shouldn't be of note.

I'm generally annoyed by it all, saying that it's a period when I really wanted to have knuckled down and rattled through writing a fantasy novella.

This is still on the cards. I'm really hoping that things calm down and I can get back into a routine and catch up.

Onto other things. More positive things that will hopefully stop me dwelling on that.

I did manage to get a copy of Tales From The Magician's Skull 8. I have Tales From The Magician's Skull 9 on order too. I live in England and they seem to be available in a sporadic fashion since they managed to fulfill a successful Kickstarter. Its just been slightly irritating trying to get my hands on issues.

In Tales From The Magician's Skull 8, I've only finished a couple of the stories, but I'm impressed so far, the first was a debut story by a new author, and the second was by one of my favourites, James Enge, with a Ambrosius Morlock story, which was satisfying.

Once I've finished it, I intend to write a review of it.

Tales from the magician's Skull 8
by Goodman Games

Saying that though, I realise that I haven't done a review of Tales From The Magician's Skull 7 yet, and I need to. I've now rather a large stack of books and magazines I need to properly finish and review now.

Onto a bit of wargaming, I managed to get another delivery from the marvelous Oakbound Studio! I got some reinforcements for my Pixie Badger-Rider warband for The Woods with a bag of badgers that they sell. I also managed to get one of their 6 Soul Sluagh models too, which is a sort of possessed treeman. I also got a werewolf Wulver model too!

And as it is still Faebruary, they offered a free elf too! Which is nice. If you'd like to take a look, follow this link to the website and try and take advantage of Faebruary.

Badgers for The Woods
from Oakbound Studio

Wulver for The Woods,
from Oakbound Studio

Woad Elf for The Woods,
from Oakbound Studio.
Fits in with Oldhammer Wood Elves?

6 Soul Sluagh treeman for The Woods
Oakbound Studio
suitable for Oldhammer Wood Elves

Badger badger badger badger,
all the badgers!
For The Woods by Oakbound Studio

Giant 6 Soul Sluagh treeman
for The Woods by Oakbound Studio

And lastly, to end how I usually do, I've been tucking into a tasty mug of tea and I've also been listening to Ask A Mortician on youtube. What have you been listening too while you read this?

I'd just like to finish with wishing you all well. Hopefully next week will be more productive.

 Hello everyone!

Yikes! It's been nearly a fortnight since I last did a post, and there was me thinking I had enough going on to do a handful of extra blog posts once in a while.

As you may have seen, I have retweeted a bit about the Kickstarter created by Gilead which is still going. And which you can still get involved with here.

Ned the Barbarian, Gilead

The Kickstarter of Gilead will also set him up to start producing his fantastic fantasy art in other formats and in different ways, so please take a look.

But with my last post, I think I'd waxed lyrically about a new magazine which had had its test issue out, called New Edge Sword and Sorcery, which seems to have been quite popular. Its available at cost and if things continue to go well, they'll do actual issues and the first two will be put up on Kickstarter. I'll let you know more about that as I learn more. Hopefully one day, I may have a story or two in there of my own.

New Edge Sword and Sorcery, with
Bass in Ye Olde Dolphin, Derby

New Edge Sword and Sorcery, with 
Bass, Ye Olde Dolphin, Derby

And those photo's were taken while I enjoyed my copy with a pint of tasty Bass in Derby's oldest pub, The Dolphin, which dates back to the 16th century.

In other news, I received my copy of Tales From The Magician's Skull number 7. I think in the last post, I'd recently ordered it, but it was coming all the way from America on its own little adventure. So, to my surprise, it plopped through my letterbox after a week.

Tales From the Magician's Skull, issue 7

Though I'm late in enjoying this issue - the Kickstarter backers received their issue in February and are now receiving issue 8 - but there are some really nice stories in it. I'm not disappointed. James Enge and John C Hocking are reliably excellent and very entertaining. I won't share a photo of me reading it while, shall we say, enthroned.

I have also managed to get a couple of Kickstarter rewards through that are good. Both are supplements to the Old School Essentials ttrpg game. One is Axian Library which adds a lot of extra bits and bobs, goodies and buyables, encounters and dangers to one's game of deadly peril.

Another is Toxic Woods by Lazy Lich, which provides a fantasy campaign setting suitable for, again, old School Essentials ttrpg. I could only find a link to Lazy Lich's twitter for updates on this. So I provide a link to Lazy Lich so you can follow them for yourself.

Axian Library,
for Old School Essentials TTRPG

Toxic Wood,
for Old School Essentials TTRPG

Anyway, onto writing and what I've done since the last post. I've completed a fair amount. I'm still working on a fantasy novella that includes pirates, Fomori, an elf barbarian, a wizard and mutant cultists, oh and an insane goddess protecting a holy space. But it's not been coming along as quickly as I'd sort of hoped. I think, originally, I'd hoped to have it finished around about now. But I'm now, as of writing this post, about half way through, which is a shame. But 17,000 words in that time isn't too shabby.

I'd felt a bit overwhelmed by it a couple of times over this last fortnight and needed to take a couple of days off from it to try and recuperate from it. Oddly, the sixth chapter was the shortest in terms of word count, but also it took the longest to actually write. It wound me up a little, but I think I've got passed that now.

While I was taking a couple of days off from my novella, I didn't spend it wasting time. I did managed to start and complete a fantasy short story that I'm quite pleased about. Its 5,200 words long and sees my elf barbarian character take down a long dead liche upon its return to un-life after many centuries. I'm quite pleased with how it panned out, but I think it will be cut down to be much shorter. I was trying to get into a very Sword and Sorcery style with it. In fact, when I come to running through all my fantasy stories again for edits and another draft, I think they'll become significantly shorter.

Anyway, I've returned to the fantasy novella and I've passed the troublesome chapter six, so things should start picking up again and I might have it completed by halfway through November, hopefully sooner. I may take some time off from it again to take a rest from it. But that is mainly so I can do another fantasy short story that involves a barroom brawl between wizards. Cue things getting way too out of hand and, despite the cleverness of wizards, a lot of stupid collateral damage is expected as they stupidly decide to bring spells to a fist fight.

And that's it for today. Hopefully I'll be able to get another writing blog post or two in during the week as I've a couple of other ttrpg things I'd like to show off - including some Gaia Complex and some WFRP 4th edition. If I don't, I'll just have to show them off next week.

Farewell everybody!

 Hello everyone!

I realise that its been a while since I last did a blog post.

Unfortunately, life somewhat got in the way a bit. There have been illnesses and deaths and to be honest, things got on top of be a bit back there. But I'm back now, hopefully with a regular blog post again.

My made plan is still going ahead, I want to write a small selection of fantasy novellas and also, some short stories to send off to anthologies. I'm sort of planning on doing this in batches. Write a bunch of first drafts, then rewrite them, then edit and have beta read and all that jazz. Then will come self-publishing the novellas and then sending out the short stories.

There are a few regular  anthologies and magazines that I'd like to send them to. These are mainly Tales from the Magician's Skull, Whetstone and Swords and Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy. This will all hopefully get the ball rolling.

Tales from the Magician's Skull: issue 3

Whetstone Magazine: issue 3

Sword and Sorceries:
Tales of Heroic Fantasy
Volume 1

Currently, and I regret that things haven't moved on quicker, I am still on the first draft stage. I've two short stories and a novella involving Gwaeloch Irisgarth, a barbarian. he is the last elf in a medieval world mainly populated by humans and monsters. But other fantastical races do exist.

My current work in progress is a novella where Gwaeloch Irisgarth teams up with a wizard to explore strange energy fluctuations in the magick field. On the way, there are pirates, insane knights, a demonologist and a fomor township. I'm not too far into this story yet, but I'll be happy finishing the first draft in three weeks. But there'll be updates about that as time goes by.

After this, I want to get into another novella about ghoul dwarves and also write about four short stories, one involving a barroom brawl between wizards. Another will be a shorter piece about defeating an ancient liche. And in another, I'd like to do something like a dungeon delve, riffing on the concept of the DnD party, but where everyone back stabs each other and where many members die to the party's own incompetence and selfishness.

One thing I've always had in the back of my mind, something I was going to pursue before starting this novella, was to write a swords and sorcery novel. I just wanted to get the first draft done. I think it would help with some development with the character and the series, but that was something I wanted to do later on. I currently don't know what I would do with the novel, whether I'd self-publish it or get look into getting it traditionally published. I'm not sure yet. Ideally, I'd turn that into a trilogy, as you do with fantasy novels.

Anyway, I just thought I'd give a bit of an update on stuff, remind you good folks that I'm still here. There are other relevant things I'd like to tell you about, but I think that can wait until another blog post. Rest assured, it is still fantasy and sword and sorcery related. Some of it is even DnD related.

With that, i'll just wish you all a good farewell for now.