New Direction, New Book

Another quick one today, but significant for me!

A New Direction

A few months ago, I mentioned I was writing a book, and the time has come to take that more seriously!

Five years ago I made the decision I didn't want to be programmer again, and started on self-publishing of e-books for roleplaying games, which I've been working more or less constantly on since then.

Lots has happened since then. Covid, losing dad, moving to Exmouth, moving to Porto, gaining friends, losing friends, learning Portuguese, starting to paint, running meetups in another country!

And publishing, for DM's Guild and fantasy titles, on my own and a few collaborations. But now it's time to take my first break from that, and focus on other things.

One of those is writing and publishing my first book, a gamebook...

A Test Book

The original book I want to write, I still intend to write, but the scope is too large, as the first in a series using untested rules and no experience of writing or publishing gamebooks.

So I'm going to write a shorter book first, to test out the process and the rules.

So now I'm taking a break from my usual work of e-books for roleplaying games and doing research and writing for a new book.

This involves

• Writing each day for my new book, a typical fantasy gamebook with a British fantasy flavour
• Reading and playing gamebooks from the last 4o years, including many 'open-world' ones like the onces I'm going to write
• Continuing to explore rpg systems and game mechanics related to what I want to write
• Learning a new publishing tool, a more professional one that enables me to use Print on Demand services, so that people can get physical copies of books I publish
• Looking into the other parts of book publishing, such as other platforms (Amazon etc!), legal, an editor and thinking about networking.

Luckily I do have five years of publishing e-books to help, plus an infrastructure of gaming blogs, sites, social media and a few friends to help out!

Finishing Up

Exciting times ahead!