As it turns out, I didn’t do as many images as I thought for this book. Still, you’ve got almost all the major characters rendered. The only ones I have of Joe is the basic character reference (which is nude, and I avoid posting those) and the cover image. That was an oversight. Anyway, I hope these are useful/enjoyable. Click on the image above to see the gallery.
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No post, I just wanted to have a post called ‘mutability.’ It’s a great word.
Okay, so I lied.
First news: Titans will be coming out a week early. Since I never said when it would be coming out, this could be considered not-news, but hey, it’s a week early! Exact date will depend on circumstances, but expect it early next month, like very early next month.
Second news: UNO may get bumped in favour of the fourth Death’s Handmaiden book. I’m not absolutely certain about this, but I’m a little stuck for the middle of UNO and I had a sudden urge to write DH4 (along with a couple of bright ideas which filled in some needed gaps). Planning is happening. More when I know for certain.
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Okay, so I seem to have decided to go with UNO as my next book. I have a basic plot worked out, sort of, and a setting, sort of. Then I thought… What if?
Most LitRPGs I’ve heard of are based around a fantasy setting. LitRPG-style anime is the same. UNO is also currently a sci-fi world hosting a fantasy game. Magic and all that. I could go with a sci-fi game. Well, a fantasy-sci-fi game. We’d be talking Outriders, Destiney, and Borderlands rather than Final Fantasy, Dragon Age, or, for that matter, D&D (which shall be forever damned for introducing the idea of levels which video game designers think are required).
I’m asking for input. Now’s the time for a change in setting. I haven’t put finger to word processor. Everything is fluid. I don’t even have solid character designs done yet because I’ve been working out the game mechanics. (Even if I won’t focus heavily on those, I need to know how the game works to make this ‘realistic.’)
What do you think? Stick with the fantasy tropes? Go with something a bit different? Let me know what you think in the comments below! (If this was YouTube, I’d ask you to like and subscribe. Thankfully, it’s not.)
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Today, I bought a pack of toilet rolls at my local supermarket.
Last year at this time, there was a security guard at the supermarket, just to keep the toilet rolls safe.
We have certainly come a long way in a year.
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Someone asked for a list of what series will be progressing from here and what won’t. So, here we go. Keep in mind that this is my thoughts on things now and my thoughts may change. Also, the ordering is based on chronology, more or less, which may make little sense.
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There’s now a dump of character art available on ArtStation. Click on the image to go there.
This took a little longer than expected because I discovered I’d never done an image of Nakano aside from my character reference. He’s a man in a suit; apparently I never thought to actually render him in a suit because it’s just a suit. So, he gets a portrait where everyone else is full body, and I rendered it just for you!
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Sign of the Dragon is now available for purchase.
Links added a little late due to being out getting shot full of science juice.
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This has nothing to do with books. It just interests me. You have been warned and can stop reading if you’re not interested.
I use Edge as a browser (mostly; I still use Chrome for Google maps and translate). Recently, they added a new feature: vertical tabs. So, questions:
The last one may need clarification. I tried out vertical tabs. For those unaware, this takes the tabs out of the title bar and puts them in a vertical strip down the right side of the window. So, what this does is make the viewing window for your web page smaller. As far as I can tell, you gain nothing. Can anyone tell me why you would want to use this feature? I just can’t see it. With the tabs in the title bar they effectively take up no space. Is it to do with wanting several hundred tabs open at once? Help!
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So, I got called up for jury duty in the middle of a pandemic lockdown. That was a surreal experience.
This is actually the second time since they called me up last year in the middle of the UK’s first lockdown, but that one got cancelled because they hadn’t figured out how to actually hold trials safely. This time, they had, which is good because they apparently have a massive backlog of cases to get through. It’s a good system too. Instead of turning up and waiting to be put on a jury, they get you registered on the first day (in glorious social distanced isolation), and then you call a number each evening to see whether you should come in the next day. In the courtroom, we all sat there wearing masks with plastic shields on three sides, and you always had to use the same seat and desk to avoid potential cross-contamination. Seriously, if this was in a novel, people would call it unrealistic. We all nearly died of hypothermia because the courthouse was so cold, but catching COVID was unlikely.
All in all, since I spent most of the time at home waiting to be needed, this should not have affected my work very much. Except… I got about an hour’s sleep the night before the first day. I didn’t do much better the next night, and that was followed by sleeping through my alarm for several days in a row as my body tried to catch up. (Seriously, I have no idea how I can sleep through that. It shouldn’t be possible.) My brain is much. Stress, I suppose, though I couldn’t say I felt stressed once it was started. I couldn’t concentrate properly, and I’m still trying to get my head back in the right space. I ended up starting a new project for a bit because I couldn’t work out where I wanted the one I’m supposed to be writing to go.
Which means I have a new book partially started. Titans (the image above is the primary protagonist) will become the replacement superhero series when Ultrahumans comes to an end with the next book (whenever that happens). I’ve taken Cygnus and co about as far as I can. I have some plot threads to resolve and then I’ll be calling an end. Titans is a post-apocalyptic superhero setting, if superheroes can really be said to exist after the end of the world as we know it. Meanwhile, Verification of Intent is still slated as the next book out, though if things keep going as they are, I might end up promoting Titans to that slot. It’ll mean a delay after Sign of the Dragon (which is pencilled in for the 29th of March), but we’ll see how things go. At the moment, I’m trying to plot both Verification of Intent and Titans at the same time. I have two timelines open! I’m mad! Jury duty has driven me insane! (Though I was probably insane before…)
Oh, this all assumes the COVID vaccination doesn’t kill me. I was invited to book an appointment today, so I get my first jab in a couple of weeks. Bill Gates will be able to track me wherever I go (not that he couldn’t anyway if he had the slightest interest in doing so). What other awesomely stupid conspiracy theories could I invoke here? With the way my brain is working at the moment, I may even be persuaded to believe them.
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