With The Book of Dungeons series awaiting Travis Baldree’s read, I turn to The Book of Dungeons board game, whose state of polish convinces me it is ready for art.

I tested it at the Cleveland ProtoSpiel with illuminating results. People loved the game, and everything worked together, but it was too complicated. Some features overlapped others. The teaching took way too long.

I removed systems that added flavor but weren’t crucial to its success. I cut everything extraneous, boiling the game down to its bare essentials. The following playtest also had players with new eyes. However, the next group of players had no problems, and teaching it only 15 minutes—not too shabby for a dungeon crawl. They made a couple of suggestions for clarifying icons and names. Simplification had been the key.

With editing books in my rearview mirror, I’m focused on artwork, preparing for my game’s debut at the Origins Convention in Columbus in June. Learning both ZBrush and Blender is no small task, and I’m numb from tutorial videos.

I’ve iterated on this layout in playtest for years and felt good about locking it down with artwork. It took almost three weeks to create this dungeon tile, but I was developing a pipeline, correcting mistakes, and learning new software. I expect the following tile to take a third of the time and for subsequent dungeons to take only a few days.

Overall, I’m delighted with the result. I’m going to iterate on the corner and the icons, but it looks the way it’s supposed to play. I want players to immediately understand my game’s goal and gameplay after seeing it for only a couple of seconds. Why can’t more games be like this?

Ozzy’s Health Scare

My poor kitty Ozzy developed a mass on his lip. He is less than 2 years old, but cancer isn’t something you ignore.

Initially, I thought it to be his tongue sticking out of his mouth in a dopey, Ozzy sort of way. I took a closer look after it grew. Biopsies require anesthetic, so the vet reasoned I should just have the tumor removed and scheduled me to see a surgeon.

But the surgeon explained he couldn’t operate around the mouth as it was far too fragile and prone to infection. After frightening me with the word “inoperable,” he explained that the growth probably wasn’t cancer but something called a Roden Ulcer. He gave Ozzy a steroid shot, and it cleared up the swelling in two days!

Both Ozzy and Cheddar have health insurance now, which even I can’t afford right now, so they’ll be safe if anything else happens.

Big news! The Book of Dungeons series is slated to be recorded by Travis Baldree, the preeminent voice talent of top-tier lit RPG and progression fantasy series. If you’re not familiar with his voice-acting talents, Travis is especially gifted at accents. He will narrate and record all my books late in 2025, so the audiobooks won’t be available until 2026, but we’re preparing everything for rapid release.

How did this happen? When Mark Kern, former World of Warcraft project leader, heard about my publishing ambitions, he introduced me to an acquaintance, Jason Anspach. Jason publishes military science fiction and fantasy series under his company, WarGate. Reading one of his books convinced me that WarGate was right for my series, and we signed my series to an audiobook deal. Only WarGate’s connections landed me such a big-name voice acting like Travis.

To make sure I’m putting my best foot forward, I’m combing through the series again, making it the 14th time I’ve edited book 1. But I’m pleased to have found very few errors and typos. I’m polishing things like fleshing out setting descriptions and smoothing over paragraph transitions. WarGate will assign its editing staff to give my prose a proper going-over so Travis has something professional to narrate.

With family members sick from COVID, I worked through the holidays. In addition to editing, I’m working on my dungeon crawl deck builder. The game’s design feels solid, and I’m making strides in simplifying gameplay. It takes me three hours to playtest a full game by myself, and I’ve logged about 40 playtests, so we’re talking hundreds of hours of prototyping.

I feel like I’m onto something very good. I enjoy the idea of dungeon crawls, but none of the games are very good. Most dungeon crawlers are dreary, over-designed, over-produced, and laden with rules. Designers make monsters too difficult, and encounters take forever to resolve. Epic shouldn’t mean bogged down with rules.

As I’m playtesting my game, I’m finding out that my deck builder lets players make clever decisions, and the monsters feel unique and alive without shackling people to memorizing pages of rules.

As you can see, I’m easing my way into production. I’ve laid out card templates using art elements that will become part of the final game. I’ve designed 6/8 dungeons, but simplifying monster rules forces me to retest everything.

I’ll dive into Zbrush in 2025 to model the maps, characters, and cards in 3D, which I’ll render and paint over in Photoshop. With over 100 cards, this is a daunting task, but I’ve never let heavy workloads bother me. With a lot of luck, The Book of Dungeons game’s Kickstarter campaign may be ready at the time my audiobooks become available. Synergy for the win!

If you’re interested in trying out The Book of Dungeons, I’m showing an early prototype at the Cleveland Protspiel on Saturday, February 1st, at Recess Games 26636 Brookpark Rd Ext., North Olmsted, OH 44070 (440) 779-7008.

I just finished the soft launch of my series, and am pleased to read overall positive reviews. I was very worried because the ending has so many twists, I wondered if I pushed things too far. But the 3,500 or so readers are digging it, so it’s a happy closure for me.

Having uploaded the last chapter of my web novel, I’m looking forward to an uncertain future. I’m supposed to be hooking up with a small press publisher to produce audiobooks, but without any contracts signed, it’s impossible to know if they really want to move forward with my work. They expressed interest in having me ghostwrite novels, but so far, we haven’t agreed on anything concrete.

I’ll follow up with the publisher next week because I need an income. Focusing on my series for four years has depleted my savings, so I find myself facing a point where I won’t be able to develop books/board games full-time. It’s a shame because my board game is absolutely banging right now, and I’m close to a point where creating final art makes a lot of sense.

The Book of Dungeons deck-builder achieves a lot of what I set out to do years ago. It has a very light rulebook for an RPG and has a quick set-up time. The teach takes 20 minutes, and it takes a little over 2 hours to play. For an RPG with so much design space, this is remarkable, and I’m proud of its current state. There were many times I felt like abandoning the game would simplify my life, but cutting down the design to its essentials kept the project on course.

Writing the rulebook helped me hone the game’s focus, and it’s weighing in at 8 pages which I’ll expand to 12 once I add artwork.

The game innovates a number of things that plague deck-builders. The starter deck doesn’t feel weak, and deck destruction is integral to the gameplay. All the monsters feel different and the PvP aspect isn’t mean-spirited.

The wound system especially adds depth. Wounds are actually fun to manage so healing becomes important. In other RPGs, taking hits isn’t particularly fun, and it usually means players can’t perform their character to the best of their ability. In my game, making a character get by with wounds feels like cheating the system—a positive activity!

When something shakes loose in the future, I’ll update my blog.

Launching my seven-book series as a web novel on Royal Road dispelled ideas about earning a living as a writer. I made it to their Rising Stars algorithm but realized that gaming the algorithm is how to find success in the web novel space. Other authors explained that it’s not about writing good characters or stories. Gaming the system involves copycatting the latest trend, launching into action in paragraph one, and embracing novelty no matter how nonsensical.

I’ve got great feedback from readers, but The Book of Dungeons isn’t for most RR readers. It’s like offering a meal in a candy store. Web novel readers want a quick fix, and other Royal Road authors say I’ll do much better on Amazon where sugar rushes don’t perform as well.

Despite losing the overall popularity contest, my feedback has been critically helpful in identifying typos, plot holes, and character inconsistencies. These improvements have made my soft launch a rousing success. I’m releasing chapters as fast as possible to polish my series ready for Amazon and audiobooks. This means editing 6-8,000 words a day while also incorporating feedback into released chapters. It’s an exhausting pace, leaving me no time to socialize whatsoever.

Playing Second Fiddle to a Feline

A documentary crew interviewed me about computer games. They showed up in my living room and we spoke for a couple of hours over an iPad using Zoom. Cheddar ruined many of our shots, rubbing against cameras, playing with cords, and jumping on my lap throughout the process. He wanted attention. As always, he got his way, and became a part of the process. They captured shots of him to explain the frequent meows, scratching, and surprise appearances. I had to repeat takes so often that answering questions felt unnatural. I’ll be amazed if they got a minute’s worth of footage.

The documentary also interviewed Mike Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Shane Dabiri, so I felt honored to be included. I went to Houston last year do to film another interview, but haven’t heard anything about the series since, so it’s anyone’s guess to its airdate. I’m told it’ll be on The History Channel around December of 2024, but those are guesses.

The Book of Dungeons is live on Royal Road! Anyone wishing to see what I’ve been working on for four years can read it for free, although my anxiety levels are making me sick.

Royal Road is, unfortunately, an all-or-nothing platform. Authors either a land enough readers to earn a living or they’re buried by thousands of other titles releasing chapters the same day. I hope it’s a meritocracy and not a one governed by chance. If I strike out, it relegates me to polishing my ebooks by myself. While I’m not above this, I’ve been doing so for four years and really wanted a more collaborative effort.

I’m release three chapters a day of books 1 and 2 to boost my followers. I’m only a few chapters into book 3 of my final edit, giving me 36 days of material. I’ll know by then whether to give it up and get a job.

Final Edits: Taking out the Verbiage

I planned to launch in early January, but I didn’t like some of my sentences and resolved to elevate my work to a higher standard.

By removing 99 percent of my use of passive voice, I removed a writing pitfall plaguing many authors. Over the years, I’ve developed an eye and an ear for it, and avoid it subconsciously. But still I had weak sentences from overusing the lazy verbs was and were and replacing it with something more active and visual. What does this mean? Check it out.

We were in the living room.
We stood in the living room.

The second sentence paints a more visual picture. It’s more active and visceral. Like passive voice, unless someone points it out, new writers don’t know it’s a problem.

After launching strategic airstrikes against was and were, I identified and improved my weakest sentences. I achieved this goal in a two-wave attack. First, I examined every paragraph in reverse, order to avoid losing myself in the story. This focused me on the language and gave me a very important perspective on my prose. This pass removed about half of my weak action words. I cleaned up the rest by searching the document for instances of was, replacing it with a stronger verb if possible, then repeating the process with were, eliminating 95 percent of the offending verbs.

At 3:34 PM on November 29th, 2023, I finished my RPG fiction series, The Book of Dungeons. Four years ago, almost to the day, I started my seven book journey, hoping to tell some good stories and improve upon the pulpy tendencies of the additive new genre called litRPG. I first envisioned the series after grinding through 120 Audible hours in one month (November 2019), listening to only litRPG titles. I drew a map, listed some characters, and outlined stories. After writing 770,000 words (the length of the King James Bible), I typed “The End.”

What a long, strange journey it’s been, but I feel like I landed the sucker better than Sully on the Hudson. Maybe all authors love with their work as much, but this feels like something special. As I reached the last page, my excitement prevented me from concentrating. After an incoherent first draft, I rewrote it the next day to clear up the ending. Regardless of the editing ahead, I’ve been floating on air. Not even shipping World of Warcraft affected me like this.

My covers received a little more love this week. The D on the left was too smooth and phony. After brightening the D, I applied a paper texture to it and gold frame, making it better close up. The change holds the elements together and relates better to The Book of Kells art style.

What’s Next?

After I dive into the first novel’s fourteenth edit, it’ll be ready for public beta reading. I’ll release chapters in January 2024 on Patreon and Royal Road, hoping to support myself financially, process reader feedback, and flush out errors and inconsistencies. I’m supporting the series with essays about my writing process, where the stories come from, and what I’ve learned in these past four years. There are writing myths I’d like to dispel, but until I prove my literary chops, my opinion counts for diddly squat. With hundreds and hopefully thousands of eyes on my novels, my readers and I will squash any bugs we find.

Look for it soon at bookofdungeons.com

Better Late than Never

Providence and crummy international shipping have drastically delayed The WoW Diary Reprint. The books are at the port (probably Long Beach marina), but there’s no way they’re making it into my backers’ hands by the holidays. When all the components arrive in Michigan, I’ll drive up there and sign them while they’re being manufactured and packaged for fulfillment.

The WoW Diary Reprint Delays

The backers supporting The WoW Diary reprint still don’t have their rewards, and I recently learned my distribution partner, Nolan Nasser, left the company to pursue other interests. It explains why he’s been spotting on communicating the production status, but at least he’s on good terms with his old crew. Delays in printing, shipping, and a disconnect from working outside his office left many customers rightly frustrated. He hasn’t been drawing a salary to fulfill my orders, and this makes me feel guilty about hassling him, but I respect that he’s honoring his commitment.

Halfway through the Series Finale

More than any of my books, I worried about my series finale. In a Machiavellian way, my worst book could be my last, since all my readers would be hooked and more likely to forgive a wobbly ending. This scenario is the case with many fantasy authors. Many series peter out or don’t end, and the first books are usually the best. Maybe writers lose motivation or run out of ideas. Others tie loose ends with a resolution that comes out of nowhere.

I don’t respect writers who milk their audience, and set up ways to avoid this.

I started The Book of Dungeons with a plan on how to end it. But the ideas for my last book felt fuzzy, so I planned to combine books 6 and 7 in case I didn’t have enough quality content to justify another book. That’s one reason I didn’t waste time between books 6 and 7 because I wanted the tone and voice to hold together.

It seems like it won’t be necessary—book 7 is clicking together very well.

When book 6 ended on a satisfying note, I felt pressure to avoid following it with a 40,000-word novella. Book 7 needed to be solid, so I’m overjoyed to that book 7 is shaping up to be my strongest story. Much of this enthusiasm stems from the thrill of discovery writing. There’s nothing like writing your way out of a tight spot. Another part of it is being in love with your current project. I experienced this phenomenon when building dungeons in WoW. Building something is always more satisfying than seeing it built.

Authoring Advice

I discovered 20Books, a yearly summit for independent writers. It gave me a peek at some of the more popular litRPG authors and other successful stars the business. I don’t agree with all their artistic choices, but they’ve cracked the code on advertising and making money in self-publishing. YouTube has over a hundred talks about Amazon, Facebook, and other platforms. I’m not overly impressed by how much money they’re making, because some of them are gaming the system. But what I am learning will help me deliver The Book of Dungeons to my readers.

Many of these talks leave me excited for the near future. I’m preparing to build a community of my own in 2024 and taking pages of notes from others’ mistakes and successes. I’m also getting ideas for satisfying my future Patreon supporters. If nothing else, it encourages me to push forward.

Book 6’s first draft is 75% done!

As I write this, I’m on chapter 34 with 2-3 weeks left of writing left. At this pace, I’ll finish the series by the end of 2023. Gen Con cost me more time than I expected in terms of preparation, but the nine pages of notes I took in the writing seminars more than made up for it.

I had misgivings about attending another writer’s symposium. Books by authors from previous years left me unimpressed, making me wonder if there was anything left to learn.

After four days of panels, a discussion of character arcs crystalized the importance of emotional changes. I knew about character arcs, but I didn’t fully appreciate their importance for every book—even in a series.

I cannot overstate how articulate these panelists were. The far left author, Erin M. Evans, gave good and bad examples that left me particularly impressed. It’s not enough to have a great story, you absolutely need to “land the ending” as Karen Menzel says. Karen roots for authors while she’s enjoying a book, sometimes praying that it has a satisfying finale. They gave great examples of great character arcs, including My Pretty Pony: Friendship is Magic. I can’t believe I’m adding it to my watch list.

Their advice sent me scribbling in my notebook ideas to make each volume of The Book of Dungeons a more satisfying read. What they said made sense, and it took only a few revisions to drive the character arcs home in every book. I was 90% there anyway, but they convinced me the importance of delivering. I tweaked the setups and endings of all of my previous books, so it took another week before I could dive into the second half of book 6.

I was so grateful that I emailed them a word of thanks for participating in something that improved my endings so much. I’ve never done that before.

Board Game Changes

The 15th version of my board game features two big changes. The first is a new system of wounds, which are consequences of losing an attack. Deck-builders typically penalize players with slugs, making decks less effective in the long run. But it’s so passive it doesn’t deter players from making poor decisions. Another change separates resources for dungeon actions and card purchases. Splitting them forces players to invest in their deck instead of using their resources to race to the boss fight.

Princes Familiar

I settled on the names Ozzy and Angus after Black Sabbath and AC/DC rockers because they sleep all day and party all night long. They’re 12 weeks old and nonstop fun, but they do not help me sleep.

The four cat trees I recently bought match my extensive wall furniture. I wrapped a cardboard roll from a carpet store and back-lit it with a color LED light strip. It’s my livingroom’s own kitty-stripper pole, which Ozzy (left) and Angus (right) use liberally.

Two major complications waylaid my writing progress in the past six months. The first involved a reprint of The World of Warcraft Diary and its crowdfunding campaign. My new distribution partner, Nolan Nasser of Source Point Press, is handling the production, but it still took a chunk of time.

The reprint campaign involved four new promotional articles and a rewrite of the book and supplemental booklet. I removed freshman writing mistakes like excessive passive voice, typos, and style inconsistencies. The content hasn’t changed. If you bought the first edition, you’re not missing one whit of difference. Writing The Book of Dungeons has ranked up my grammar and composition skills, and I couldn’t bear not giving it another polish pass. Of course, this involved two more rounds of editing, so we’re not talking a small amount of effort.

The second diversion came from my cat, Kiki. She was a rescued stray, who never acclimated to humans, so I had a difficult time getting her to play. Kiki disengaged after realizing I controlled the laser pointer and that the fuzzy thing at the end of the wand wasn’t alive. She was an outdoor cat. But cats who don’t play accrue extra energy, and neither meds nor rehabilitation soothed her aggression. After unprovoked attacks and stalking behavior, the animal shelter and I placed her on a farm. Her family named her Waffles. Today, she is pounding the pellets out of the regional mice and sleeping in a brand new barn. I miss her terribly, but I’m glad she’s happy.

Smaller Distractions

My hard drive’s death cost me weeks of work reinstalling software, fonts, and reconfiguring my new PC. I lost a little data, but we play the hands providence deals.

I’m traveling to Indianapolis in August for Gen Con, where I’ll hopefully pick up juicy writing and publishing tips. After a week at the con, I’ll return home and adopt my new agents of chaos.

My board game is shaping into a streamlined two-hour dungeon crawl. I’m so happy with it that my next step requires diving back into ZBrush and Blender, making art for 114 cards and three dozen minis. That’s no small leap!

I’m halfway through my sixth book and having terrific results with “discovery writing.” There’s nothing so rewarding as writing your way out of a corner, and nothing so disappointing when it doesn’t work. At 2,000 words a day, it’ll only take a couple months to write the first draft.

After book six, I’ll go straight into seven—which is already outlined, so I’m not expecting problems. When the series is done, I’ll kick off a Patreon page for The Book of Dungeons web novels. I’m excited to hear what my beta readers will think and looking forward to supporting my backers with regular articles about the writing process. I hope to launch my board game’s Kickstarter by the time the series ends.

Second Edition

I’ve signed a distribution deal with Source Point, a company out of Michigan that has inroads to retail book sales. Sales of The WoW Diary have slowed, so there’s really little downside to trusting someone else to do a better job. I’m a lousy salesperson. In putting together a second crowdfunding campaign, I’ve written several articles philosophizing the process of content creation. I focused on the development team and project timeline for The WoW Diary, not opinion pieces. The less the book was about John Staats, the better.

I took a month off of The Book of Dungeons series and returned to yesteryear, harkening back to my game development days. Distance gives a person a better perspective, and I’m very proud of how the article’s panned out, outputting 12,000 words to be included with The WoW Diary Supplemental. We’ll release them as promotional pieces for the second edition printing of The WoW Diary.

My New Boss

My biggest news is an addition to my family. The pitter patter of little feet belongs to my trusty new familiar, Kiki, a calico I rescued from surrogate parents. She’s no help on my lap when I’m writing, but enjoys watching the squirrels and birds hit my windowsill bird feeder. I love dogs, but they’re noisy and needy and there’s too much traffic on my sidewalk to expect them to behave while I work.

My Patreon supports will learn more about Princess Kiki as my web novel unfolds. Right now, she and I are getting to know one another. So far, it’s an ideal match.

Three Years Down, Four to Go

I’m editing my fifth book and amazed at how clean my writing has become. Usually the first edits are terrible, but I’m able to knock out up to three chapters a day. I also outlined book 6 and 7 to a point where I’m confident that I can finish the series. After I print the second edition of The WoW Diary, I’ll write books 6 and 7 back to back, then release the first book as a web novel.

The reason I want the entire series in the can is I want to give my Patreon supporters with articles and essays, and that’s going to be a lot of work. I thoroughly enjoyed writing essays for The WoW Diary’s second edition, and I don’t want to face a point where I’m burned out from maintaining a web novel.

The strange thing about having the series written is that I can’t imagine every writing any other way, yet I’ve uncovered no writer that follows this process. Every writer develops unique habits, but the benefits and freedom of finishing the series before publishing the first book are too powerful. There is no way I could have published this series one book at a time, and the idea of doing so seems antiquated and short-sighted. Publishing one book at a time would drastically limit me, enslaving my narrative to the earlier books. It feels like a new art form. I’m not writing books, I’m writing a series.

When the web novel finishes in three and a half years, I’ll crowdfund and release the eBooks, print, and audiobooks. How’s that for a 7-year plan?

Look for The Book of Dungeons in 2023, available on web novel sites like RoyalRoad.com.

I’m about to attend the Gen Con’s author panel, a biennial pilgrimage for writing advice. At the risk of posting multiple updates in the same quarter, I’m posting before the convention to explain what I’ve been doing in the spring. I’ve been sick for a week, and not writing, giving me time for housekeeping chores like blog updates.

Being sick hasn’t been the only wrench in my gears. Amazon closed my seller account at the end of May over thousands of dollars of purchased made by someone else under my account, costing me six-weeks of despair and unproductiveness. I won’t bore you with the details, but it involved the police, a lawyer, non-existent responses from the FTC, and weeks of emails and multi-hour phone calls with banks and Amazon’s support staff. It was so disheartening that I dreaded getting out of bed. Calliope, the muse of epics, proved elusive amid the turmoil, and I got no writing done. The ordeal wasn’t writer’s block, but its distant cousin, depression.

After the storm passed, I started book 5 of The Book of Dungeons. It’s my most straightforward narrative, but strangely, my progress has been fraught with inconsistencies and adjustments. My daily rate dropped from 2,000 to 1,500 words. After editing and creating book covers, it’s been almost a year since, so perhaps the pokey pace is understandable.

Gen Con might energize me with fresh advice, perspectives, and ideas, but hopefully it won’t derail my workflow.

Back to Minis?

The Book of Dungeons board game was based on my desire to lighten RPG rule books. After a long meditation, I determined positional play (figures on a grid) to be the biggest contributor to rules. Representing physical locations for combatants slowed down gameplay and inflated the rulebook.

By shedding over-designed systems, I culled the rules for movement, speed, range, flanking, cover, and engagement. None of these systems affected basic RPG decisions, such as, Do I heal from behind or engage in the melee? Fundamental choices for positioning are obvious to most class roles, so why have rules for them?

Without a dungeon layout and minis, RPG gameplay speeds up. While The Book of Dungeons combat engine was quick and fun, it was abstract and ugly. Everyone missed minis!

Miniatures offer players something tangible to look at and move, but I didn’t want to add them to just to check off a box. They needed to be meaningful.

WoW’s team lead, Mark Kern, once called me the most tenacious person he’s ever met. My determination to have my cake and eat it too finally payed off when I figured out how to make my board game to look as cool as it plays. I did this by adding a greatly simplified layout. Instead of using dice to represent the player’s position, players will move miniatures to optimize their actions.

Adding layouts should do more than reintroduce miniatures. Another system should eliminate the rinse-and-repeat feel of my game. Players seemed satisfied with playtests, but I wanted more game in my game. Layout enhance the value of pets—another lackluster element on my game’s chopping block.

When I finish book 5, I’ll mock up a playtest to see how my new layouts work. I’ve been chewing over minis for close to three years, so I have very high hopes.

I am editing, and I hate editing.

While I haven’t yet suffered from writer’s block, editing four books in a row is unbearable. I’m midway through book 4, so tearing my eyes out seems like an attractive alternative to my current situation. It feels like my book is better with every pass, but the number of changes makes me wonder if it’s not ready for public consumption. The few beta readers are enjoying my stories, but I can’t read them without changing every sentence, every paragraph. It feels like I’m improving, but evidence suggests I’m working laterally.

I’m shortening lots of my sentences, trying to simmer my narrative into quicker punches. I’m removing unnecessary words, phrases, and while I’m getting better, editing isn’t fun. It’s mechanical—like checking math on hairy equations and finding mistakes on every step of a problem.

The good news is, I think my first few books are ready for open beta readers, but I don’t want to uncork that genie until I have book 5’s first draft finished. Supporting a Patreon page seems like a lot of work. The other good news is the amount of “bread crumbing” I’m able to do is insane. Whenever I have a great idea in later books, I drop hints and build set-ups early, so the story holds together and resolutions don’t come from out of the blue. I can’t imagine writing a series any other way.

This quarterly update on my author’s blog is yet another stalling tactic before renewing my hateful journey into editing. The story itself is enjoyable, but it’s hard to appreciate while fixing grammar and language problems.

My first draft is an incomprehensible mess of ideas, and perhaps that’s a bad habit—but this series is far more complicated than most. My disorganized writing comes from my fear of forgetting something, so I put everything down, like throwing spaghetti at a wall, to be cleaned up later.

Why is my writing so messy? Consider most story-tellers only need to remember a sequence of events. I’m doing this while tracking the progression of stats, spells, and base-buildings—all of which change as the story progresses. Part of my job is maintaining accurate use of cooldowns, character levels, and everyone’s equipment. I have to give characters new spells and goodies along the way. They have to be exciting, but none of them can be so useful that they trivialize scenes later down the road. Combat is especially difficult to write because the character powers are in a constant state of flux.

When there are so many narrative details to remember, things like grammar, spelling, sentence structure, and paragraph structure are things to be sorted out later.

Here’s an example. A random, relatively uncomplicated paragraph from the chapter 16, book 4.

With the imminent completion of our fourth roundhouse, Ally and I had agreed to make defense courses mandatory for everyone in Hawkhurst. These would probably be much like the classes we took in Belden’s academy, but I was looking forward to seeing the arena in full use. We decided everyone would train one day for every two days working.

This is the state of my second draft. It’s horrible, right? I’m merely giving readers an update of a town’s progress, but I’m so focused on the accuracy of my references (Belden classes, the citizens’ state of training, Hawkhurst’s build order) that my language describing it is downright awful. In contrast, when I’m writing playful dialog or sorting out a character’s emotions, the narrative is far easier and cleaner. Unfortunately, most of The Book of Dungeons relates to game mechanics.

Here’s the same paragraph, cleaned up.

When we completed the fourth roundhouse, Ally and I made weapons training mandatory for all Hawkhurst citizens. Workers rotated twice a week into introductory courses, similar to what we studied in Belden, and it was gratifying to see the battle college in full use.

It’s easier to read, more descriptive, and shorter.

Editing includes eliminating weak phrases like had agreed to and was looking forward to and would probably be much like. I combine and reorder thoughts so they better relate and flow into one another. I remove unnecessary words like academy and repeated words like everyone. Shortening phases is important. Instead of one day for every two days, I wrote twice a week. It’s close enough and easier to parse.

The tough part isn’t implementing these issues, it’s identifying them—rereading everything until the proper order becomes apparent. How long would this take you to rewrite this 44-word paragraph to the level of polish where there is no room for improvement? 15 minutes? A half hour? Imagine editing 6,000 words a day, seven days a week.

Some people think writing fantasy books concerns fruity decisions, like whether your character rides a dragon into battle. Far from it, friends. In my experience, it’s grinding through these persnickety issues is what my life it like. It sucks, but it’s part of the job.

I finished my book covers! It took a month to build the 3D mesh of my basic layout, a week to paint the first book, and another month to render six variations. The grand total of time was around nine months. This is utterly unacceptable by most commercial standards, but with self-publishing, it’s par for the course. Blizzard self-publishes their products, and they invested a little more time on the box art for Warcraft III. They assigned one of their lead artists, Justin Thavirat, to do high-resolution paint overs of their cinematic stills. It took him over a year to do five variations (including the expansion).

For the entertainment industry, everything is driven by hits, so persnickety levels of polish are a must. Books, movies, and games have to look better than their predecessors, so I’m determined to distance myself from the competition. Most fantasy book publishers proffer illustrations for their cover art. Though they are well painted—publisher follow this formula because it’s cheap, so most fantasy books look the same.

Three decades after leaving Kent State University’s graphic design program, I still feel like a student who doesn’t know what they’re doing. I think that’s healthy. David Bowie warned there was a danger when artists feel confident and secure about their work. He describes the artistic sweet spot is where “your toes are barely touching the bottom.” There’s enough experimental spirit in me to harbor avant-garde ideals. If it flops, I’ll fall back on traditional illustrative covers, but I wanted to gamble on my vision first.

I’ve been staring at this design for so long I was blind to fundamental issues, so I solicited help from an old Blizzard co-work, Matt Milizia. My inner geek wanted to be faithful to the unreadable aesthetic of The Book of Kells, but Matt pointed out the folly of this pursuit. He did a quick paint-over and showed how he would render the cover. It was immensely helpful to have a fresh pair of eyes on the project.

I took the final renders into Photoshop to composite together the painted 3D model with the text and parchment background. It was strange how my earlier attempts at doing everything in illustrator and Photoshop produced failures. I still haven’t figured out why I needed 3D models. The subsequent covers will take advantage of the 3D form. I learned Blender—yet another 3D program—to light and render them. I’m not ready to show them all, so I have something fresh when the books come out, but here’s another cover.

Other News

The past month was fraught with computer breakdowns. I replaced my dead keyboard, an inadequate power supply, an antediluvian video card, and upgraded my system with enough RAM to render my artwork. Even the “on” button broke! I must have hauled my PC to a repair shop half a dozen times in February. My email got hacked, and someone ordered thousands of dollars of electronics using an Amazon credit card I didn’t know existed. Between the scams and hardware issues, I lost half the month to customer service calls and knucklehead problems.

My printer accidentally purged my remaining inventory of The WoW Diary from their warehouse, so I won’t have much of an income in 2022. It will be quite a while, if ever, when I can afford to print another edition, so the only remaining copies are signed, spot-varnished copies I’m keeping in my house. I’m sending them to Amazon.

What’s Next for 2022?

After I implement a round of edits, I’ll write book five. In summer, I’ll release my series as a web novel on sites like royalroad.com, fictionpress.com, and a Patreon to give beta readers convenient access to my work. Together, we’ll correct mistakes, smooth out inconsistencies, and clarify the narrative.

Going live on Patreon means my readers can give feedback, which means I’ll need to allocate time to respond. I’ll support my Patreon with essays about the series and give my readers insight into my creative process. Between maintaining a constant connection with beta readers, editing, and writing the rest of the series, I’m going to be a very busy boy these next few years.

If you want to be a beta reader, shoot an email to staats dot john at gmail dot com and I’ll add you to my list. Until then, I’ll see you at the deep end.

It’s never a good sign for your blog that posting counts as a New Year’s resolution. Since Thanksgiving, I skipped big family gatherings because of COVID, but eschewing holidays has done wonders for productivity.

I’ve been teaching myself a 3D sculpting program called Zbrush. It’s the gold standard for hi-res modeling for games and movies. Zbrush’s interface is a bit wonky, but it makes magic. Not many graphic designers do 3D layouts, so I feel a little bit of a vanguard in this respect. It’s either that, or everyone is doing it, and I’m simply too out of touch to know any better.

After investing nearly five months into abandoned cover designs, the prospect of beginning another was daunting, but iteration is the formula for success.

I began by making a giant letter D in Adobe Illustrator. After a day or so, I framed the space around it with separate panels, making sure I had enough room for the title and author. I formated the layout for traditional books and Audible.com’s square thumbnail. All seven novels will share the same design with distinct color schemes.

Below is my first comprehensive sketch and an early screenshot of my 3D layout in Zbrush.

For the hundredth time, I studied The Book of Kells, making dozens of notes and tracing patterns to make sense of the scrollwork. I wanted to create a proper tribute, and that would involve more than scribbling lines of tangled spaghetti. I needed to understand the method to its madness.

Scholars believe The Book of Kells was the work of 3-4 monks which hasn’t been replicated in 1500 years. The lack of replication is partly because The Book of Kells is so abstract that the page is confusing and unreadable. For these same reasons, my first covers fell short. Still, I believed I could reverse engineer the style to capture its beauty.

I learned through my previous covers that Celtic scrollwork can become too messy. I want it busy, but not overpowering, so I identified three weaknesses. 1) Celtic designs needed evenly spaced lines, or it looks messy. 2) Many of these lines needed to form simple geometric shapes. 3) Lastly, I needed to resist the urge to zoom in on the computer and work on a scale smaller than the human eye could see.

I redid designs in my panels until they looked right. Through trial and error, I discovered a process that produced promising results.

I divided the panels into simple, readable forms before adding details. In the above panel, I mirrored lines along a corner axis to create a dominant pattern (above left), figured out how to shoehorn book elements inside it (above middle), and connected the dominant lines together with smaller details (above right).

After a fortnight of sketching, I unified my panels in Illustrator and filled in minor details. From there, I took the leap from 2D to 3D. This meant learning how to use Zbrush.

After two weeks of slow death by YouTube tutorials, I acclimated myself to Zbrush’s persnickety workflow and interface. After another week of stumbling around, I finally produced unusable art. Every day, I got faster and learned more about the program’s shortcuts. I enjoy working in Zbrush, and it’s fun to watch the cover come together. Some days, I sculpted for over 12 hours.

These images are screenshots, not renders, so I’m hoping to remove the heavy shadows. It’ll be interesting to see how painting, lighting, and rendering will affect the design. I expect to be done in February, raising my overall investment into the covers to around 8 months. Ouch.

Once the covers are finished, there’s nothing stopping me from releasing my book. I’ll make them available to beta readers on webnovel websites like Royal Road for feedback. I’m also sending out my first three novels to beta readers. If you’re interested in giving me early feedback, please email me at staats.john at gmail dot com.

Throughout the sturm and drang over Blizzard’s toxic work atmosphere, I kept my head down and focused on my writing. The allegations were shocking, but the company had changed since it released WoW. My last years weren’t enjoyable ones, but I’m not always a fun coworker, so my 2011 departure was for the best.

What do I do all day? Edit, edit, edit. I’m roughly capable of editing 15 pages a day before my brain jellifies. The first three books are pretty polished, but I’m investigating new avenues to improve my work (more on that below). With my first four books written, I’m pleased the see my later books more polished than the first, so I have empirical evidence that my writing has improved.

I still haven’t experienced writer’s block, but my latest novel included a scene for which I had no plans how to resolve. It was my first attempt at discovery-writing and it turned out to be an organic and creative sequence. But the pride I feel over my most recent book only makes me worry that its successor won’t be as good. I guess I’ll find out when I write it, which I hope to do by the end of the year.

I discovered the Facebook group called Writers Helping Writers. There are over a quarter-million members so whenever someone posts, they get tons of supportive (and unsupportive) advice. I helped create a book cover for one of the group’s authors looking for design advice. She was flooded with terrible opinions, so I pre-empted my post by saying, “I’m a formally trained graphic designer from the nation’s #1 ranked school in graphic design.” It was a bit heavy-handed, but I got her attention, and we worked together to make a great cover. It was a fun exercise and I had fun chatting with another author.

The Origins Tabletop Gaming Con was amazing–it was my first convention since COVID. The con didn’t include a program booklet, so there was no advertising for their panelists, and I was the only person attending many of the events. Fortunately for me, the lack of an audience allowed me to monopolize the questions! I learned that authors formed writing groups to hone their craft, and received tips on how to join one. I learned about horror.org, SFWA, and one of the panelists, Donald J. Bingle gave me a copy of his article about how RPGs prepare writers for story-telling. How cool is that?

The Origins convention followed a week at Kentucky’s Mammoth Caves wherein I garnered story ideas and generally enjoyed the first vacation I’d been on in years. The caves and con was my first foray into the post-pandemic world. I wore out my legs with a 4-hour underground hike, slept in an unheated cabin, and ate in restaurants like they do in the movies. It was a nice diversion, but I’m glad to see my vacation time at an end. The outside world has its charms, but I’d rather get back to writing.

After a year and a half of writing and working on the front covers, I’m around halfway through my seven-book series, The Book of Dungeons. With 50,000 words into my fourth book, I’m happy to say I’m still writing at 2,000 words/day seven days a week. I’m still in love with my characters and story. At the end of most afternoons, I’m very pleased with the day’s progress. For the nonwriters out there, it’s a big deal that I’m still geeking out over this stuff. As Harlan Ellison used to say, The trick isn’t becoming a writer, it’s staying one.

Some mornings I approach the keyboard with trepidation and angst, not knowing how I’ll move the story forward, but this is as close to writers’ block that I come. After a half-hour of puttering around, I get moving. Today I nearly pounded out 2,600 words–which makes up for the lousy 1,500-word-day yesterday. I love writing.

Not all is sanguine on the work front, I’m afraid. After enough time away from the cover, I’m looking at it with fresh eyes, and I’m not loving it anymore. The Celtic scrollwork looks great when zoomed in, but it isn’t readable in thumbnail form. I’ve come to the same conclusion for The Book of Kells’ Chi Rho page, my cover’s inspiration, so it’s small comfort to know it’s not just me. I’m planning to do a third rework. The first version of the cover took three months to create. The second version took half that amount. I’m expecting this third iteration to gobble even more time. Sigh.

I got sidetracked in April, namely due to a board game idea that I couldn’t ignore, and I’ve been working on iterations of it since. It’s derivative of Clank! but it improves several aspects of the game that I thought needed improving. I’m a Clank! fan, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that everything can be improved upon. I’m particularly excited that I’ve figured out a new way of dungeon exploration using game mechanics I’ve not seen before. The first 4-player playtest went well, with the testers refusing to end the game once I got a general idea of how things went. They wanted to finish their 90-minute game–which was a positive sign.

My sidetrack also included a weekend lost to COVID shots and two more to adding windows in my home office. Now I can enjoy the outside view while I write. It’s a big upgrade and I added a 1300 lb. rock, blueberry, and raspberry bushes to admire as the season pass. When the berries bloom, I’ll enjoy watching the birds gobble them down.

With the lockdown lifting in Ohio, and all my sane friends vaccinated, I launched my bi-weekly poker game featuring plaques I had manufactured in China. I hope to sell them on Amazon, but there are so many hoops to jump through to get something like that going, I dare not set a timetable.

It took me 6 weeks to finish all these side-projects, but as of yesterday, I’ve started book 4 in my series. Every writer will tell you, it’s easy to write a book, but hard to keep writing. I’ve not had writer’s block yet, so I’m still on target for writing 3 books in 2021.

I have a complete outline of where I *think* book 4 will go, but we’ll see what happens. I was pleasantly surprised by book 3’s ending, so I was a little worried the next one will be hard to top. After my 6-week vacation, I put down 2,500 words today, and the flow felt good.

The third novel in The Book of Dungeons is one-quarter finished, and I’m happy to say I like where this series is going. The MasterClass instructors say it’s easy to write but hard to keep writing, but I’ve yet to experience what they call “writer’s block.” I’m still not sure what it is or what causes it. Sure, there are times when I want to sleep in, but once I’m up, have eaten, and I have a good block of time, I sit down and begin typing. Being frozen or unsure what to write just hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure I’ll get to a point sometime when I’m burned out. So far, I’m typing at the modest pace of 1,500-2,500 words a day before mental fatigue hits.

I cannot recommend MasterClass enough. While I’m not necessarily a fan of their work, Margaret Atwood, James Patterson, Neil Gaiman, Dan Brown, and Davie Baldacci have proven valuable sources of writing advice. I’ve also put to good use the feature for speeding up the playback, as Neil Gaiman is such a careful talker he’s too slow to listen to! I’ve even found Steve Martin’s class to be insightful. Surprisingly, advice from David Lynch, David Mamet, and Will Wright was so general, I didn’t get much out of them and bailed after a half-hour of listening.

And since we’re talking about writing recommendations, I discovered how to connect my iCloud Apple Notes (to which I’m slavishly devoted) to an editable webpage using a nifty Chrome plugin. To me, this is amazing! Now every silly thought, joke, idea, and observation I record on my phone is immediately accessible from my PC.

I’ve also made progress with my cover art. I plan to do variations of the illuminated manuscript design for each book, similar to the title shots in the Netflix series Dispatches from Elsewhere. They are works in progress.

One of my Kickstarter contacts put me in touch with an editor, who read my first novel, The Great RPG Contest. This is someone who knows the genre, the market, and has seen it all, and he gave me a couple of hours of his time in a video chat whereupon sage advice was handed down.

First and foremost, they seemed to genuinely like my book. They said the story was fresh, would have appeal to many readers, that the text was clean and well-written. That was a tremendous relief, and I was grateful for their praise. For me, criticism is a greater sign of respect, so I focused on critiques.

The biggest change he suggested was to add more dialog. I’m good at dialog, but I’m such an advocate of pushing plots forward that I have a bad habit of summarizing exchanges between characters to “keep things moving.” I was inadvertently squeezing flavor out of the story. The editor said, “If the dialog is working, readers won’t know or care if the book is a little bit longer.”

I invested another rewrite into my book, adding another month of work. With regard to the dialog, I’m currently fleshing out the conversations and I cannot express how much of a difference that it makes–and it’s not making the scenes or book any longer than what I’d originally started. It was a great improvement.

He suggested that I increase the stakes of the story and put the protagonist more on a hot-seat. In retrospect, it seems like an obvious decision, even if my story was working even without the added tension. I followed his advice again and it made the story more interesting.

He advised me to purchase MasterClass.com, a video service that connects artists and students with the most successful people in a given field. Having purchased a $40 Amazon Fire Stick, I can say the monthly subscription to MasterClass is worth it, so dutifully I’m grinding through the classes. I watched courses taught by authors including Aaron Sorkin, James Patterson, Dan Brown, and David Balducci’s class. While I’m not always a fan of their work, some of the advice is quite good and they communicated aspects of writing that I previously missed.

For example, James Patterson illustrates the importance of the first sentence, describing it as a contract with the reader about what to expect from the book. James read examples of good opening sentences and it resonated. If the author can write a synopsis in a clever way, it’s a promise to the reader that more cleverness will follow.

James’ advice was more specific than just saying, “Have a good opener,” and it convinced me to revisit my first paragraph. This is what I came up with:

“I wouldn’t have guessed that my struggle to survive a fantasy-game universe would begin with The Trials of Air Travel.”

I tell the reader what the book is about while throwing a non sequitur about air travel. The capitalization plays with formalizing the pain dealing with the airlines, suggesting that it’s so common that it deserves a proper name. The mention of the airlines appears to be a curveball until I reveal the protagonist’s anxieties of leaving home and making it on his own. Missing a simple domestic flight is just one of the unknowns he must face. It is an obstacle that many of us take for granted, but it reveals his immaturity and harkens back to the nervousness we first felt when leaving the nest.

Progress Report

I’ve finished the second pass of my second book, The Plans We Make, and am happy to report that it was cleaner than the one before it. It only took me one month to complete (an improvement of 3 weeks), so I’m seeing major strides in my writing. Still, there were so many changes, book 2’s next pass will probably not be its last.

The great thing about having more than one book to edit is that it gives me distance, so whenever I revisit my copy, I have a fresher set of eyes. I’m looking forward to beginning the 3rd book on January 1st.

I’d finished the second Book of Dungeons, The Plans We Make, at 106,000 words and finished my last (5th?) revision of the novel preceding it. My year-long ambition to write and polish 3 books and create a cover was on track when I received an email from my landlord about renewing my lease. I did the math and realized how much rent was costing me, so I began hunting for houses. A week later, I closed on my first home in a quiet little suburb called Cuyahoga Falls and will be moving in next week.

I’m taking October off and enjoying the fall colors on 14-mile hikes along the Cuyahoga River. These salubrious constitutionals calm my nerves while I arrange for my big move. The month seems like it’s lasting forever. I miss writing and feel self-conscious from stalling my series, but my nerves are too frayed to concentrate. After I settle into my new burrow, I’ll plunge into my work again.

Before my sidestep, I was about 10 pages into revising my second book and was pleased to find it much more polished than the first. In addition to being a more experienced writer, I discovered a training-wheels app called Grammarly, a $10/month gizmo that catches hiccups that spellcheckers don’t. I heartily recommend it.

I’ve also decided to release my first book for free on a website called Royalroad.com in 2021 that works in tandem with Patreon which I’ll need to support my writing career. When that time rolls around, I’ll include a linkypoo.