STELFIRE

Hey, folks! I’m doing a prototype podcast with some author friends this month.  Not sure when/if we’ll release it, and I’ll give a link to it whenever it’s available. But in the meantime, here’s a preview of my responses to three of the questions. Enjoy! Question:  What’s your most expensive mistake? Answer:  Adding my first three books to the ad page of Doctor Who Online. Amid the 2020 lockdown, I was busy doing a cover refresh of my first three novels in the POTG series. As with everyone, my head was in a weird place. And when I re-released Repenter with its new cover, an admin from Doctor Who Online reached out to me and asked if I wanted to sponsor the fan website. He said he liked the cover, so I found that delightful, as I needed more praise for my books. More I say! The site had giant blocks of sponsors all shoved together. All vying for attention. And almost certainly not getting it. But I thought to myself, “This is thinking outside the box. It’ll totally work.” It did not.  I paid a bunch of money and got zero sales from it. The Doctor Who Online guys were friendly enough, but it was sadly not a good channel for me. The lesson, which I will steal from Joanna Penn, who has also attributed it to someone else: Random acts of marketing do not work. Sadly, I’m a random kinda guy, so much of my attempts at marketing have had similar, albeit less costly, results. Question:  What part of indie publishing surprised you the most once you were actually in it? Answer: The astounding number of people who have also written multiple books and indie-published them. This is, of course, increasingly becoming a quaint observation with the rise of AI rapid releases. But I had always thought I was a rarer bird based on the folks I’d encountered personally.  Then I remembered there are a lot of people in America and in other English-speaking countries. And if a few million of us all write books and indie publish books, that is a whole lotta product.  A glut, if you will.  And it’s also still a fraction of the US population. Probably just one or two percent. So yes, there are a lot of indie authors, and we are also elusive. Probably because lots of us are introverts and we hide. Also related to the glut of numbers of authors and books, if you don’t advertise or market, your books will not move.  Discoverability is pay to play in the 2020s, sadly.  Organic reach is less assured online, but I have had decent success moving books at in-person events by selling them at a deep discount. I think the emails I collect from in-person interactions are more likely to engage with my newsletters.  That said, I still have miles to go in standing out from the gargantuan but also hidden crowd. And then there are the AI creation directors. It’s tough out there.  But I love writing my novels, so I’m cool with it. Question: What’s the most boring habit that made the biggest difference? Answer: Tracking and momentum. I had a period of several years in the aughts and teens where I could not get more than a few pages written in any given week. I would edit it as I wrote it, wanting to make sure I polished all the descriptions of character appearances and settings.  And this. Slowed. Me. Down.  I remember feeling like I had all these story beats and character moments I wanted to get to, but having to describe some weird fantasy mindscape or a jagged mountain range’s climate or the giant undead giants suspended on chains.  It was a quagmire for my productivity. Things turned around when I was at an NWG conference in the mid-teens. A guy said he made a web-based tracker for logging your productivity. And I used it for a bit. But going onto a website and entering the info was not something I ultimately felt like doing. I think because it was basically hidden if I wasn’t looking at it.  So I switched to a low-tech solution.  I started using sticky notes where I set my goal for the week of ten pages, and tracked if I made it or not. If you write a page a day, you’ll have a book in a year. Or part of a book if you’re a fantasy writer like me. So 10 pages a week is a little more than that.  If I do better, great! If I do worse, there’s always next week. That really unlocked things for me.  The goal tracking made me realize I needed to plow through to the cool beats that I want to write with the character interactions and big plot moments. I often write little shorthand notes to myself with YY prefixes because no words have a double Y, so it’s easy to search and it stands out.  My first drafts overflow with notes like “YY More setting and description” and “YY describe this character’s armor”. It makes it easy to get the words out for the first draft. All the later drafts are much easier to work with because I have words on the page.  And a whole lot of descriptions to fill in, since first draft Jim skipped them.  But that’s okay, because the second, third, and fourth draft Jims don’t have to come up with the words from scratch.  All the Jims have their part to play in the writing process. Feel free to reply with any of your own questions or recommendations. As always, I’m happy to answer any questions you have for me on all things Players of the Game.  And I love to hear any book, movie, video game, and comic book recommendations you have as well.

Players of the Game Works in Progress

I’m making pretty good progress in Secret Fronts’ second draft.  I’m on page 377 with 89 pages for the month. So that’s better than the 79 pages of last month. I’m certainly happy with this tally.  Though, I predict that my output will be less in the next few months.  I’ve reached a spot in my second draft that requires a few newly crafted scenes.  Nothing unexpected, but it does slow me down with the second draft. All part of the process.  And above all things.  We must trust the process.  We simply must. I’ll have some updates next month regarding the Constellation 15 Convention in Lincoln, Nebraska.  I’m helping run the Nebraska Writers’ Guild table for a few hours on Saturday, March 7th.  Swing out to visit if you’re in the area.  I’ll have pics of it next month. I’m also still in the middle of a new cover refresh.  Plus, I’ll be adding hard covers as an offering.  Audiobooks are also on the agenda.  Lots up in the air with that right now.  I’ll talk more about that as I get a better idea of where I’m heading with all things audio. And Jagged Pieces is still on the dance card for later this year.  More as it gets closer. Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month: “Yeah, that’s us,” Gath said. “Two idiots who trusted too many bad people.” “Two good idiots,” Nadia said with gentle steel in her correction’s tone.

Recommendation Corner

The Fifth Season by NK Jemison I usually don’t really care for stories written in the second person.  “You walk into a kitchen and see a dead body.”  It usually feels like you’re reading an old AD&D player module. But it works with this book.  It helps identify one particular character from two others who are in traditional third person. I mention this because this book really transcends the POV switches for its fantasy world where volcanism and seismic activity are BIG problems. A fifth season results from a super volcano going off and plunging the world into an ash-laden winter that lasts decades. And orogenes, like the three POV characters, can manipulate the earth’s power. But not without extracting the heat from the surrounding area.  And people.   These orogenes are either enslaved or murdered as children by most of the societies. There are other things toying with this world.  Crystal obelisks that hang in the sky as remnants of a long-dead civilization.  Stone Eaters, animated humanoid statues that can move through stone like standing air. All the POV characters are driven to survive this world’s ire. Because a new Fifth Season is coming and it will be worse than anything before it. Good stuff.  Give it a try. Essays Out of Left Field by Scott Johnson Full disclosure: Scott’s a writer friend of mine. Other disclosure: This book of humor missives covers way more than sports. What other topics, you ask? Campers named Skamantha taken on misadventures.   Turtles vs ducks.  Just the regular kind.  Not the Teenage Mutant Ninja and the Howard or the Daffy kind.  But no less titanic of a conflagration. A horrendously bad and hilarious series of decisions concerning dog excrement storage. And so many other sagas. If you enjoyed the old Dave Barry columns, definitely give this a read. Funny stuff.

Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback

That’s all for this time. Stay smart.  Stay safe. Jim

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Yope! There’s something you should know about me.  Not a dark secret.  More of a twinkly affectation.  One that’s contained, but gloriously garish. I love Christmas decorations.   Especially the tree ornaments.  But even more especially the colored lights. Each year, my wife and I hang the hooks and string the cords throughout the tree’s fake branches.  But that’s not enough for me.  I string even more Christmas lights about the interior of the house.  MORE, I say!  It makes for fantastic TV watching and video game playing with all the other overhead illumination turned off.  Simply glorious. I anticipate that you have two, and only two, questions regarding my post-yuletide admission.   Question the first: What about outside the house?   I’m not an exterior decoration guy.  Heights ain’t for me.  Not my Santa bag, baby. And question the glaring: Jim, we just slogged through the 4038 days pretending to be 31 days of January.  Why are you talking about Christmas stuff? Because I’m one of those people. The people who keep the decorations up, because those 4038 days need something cheerful amid the cold nights and grey mornings. Take a look for yourself and BASK in it:

As you can see, my wife and I have a multitude of interests with superheroes, NES controllers, ketchup bottles, Doritos bags, gnomes, ice-skating cows, marshmallow snowmen, and pool balls.  And that’s just a slice of its unabashed goodness. Why just a portion of the tree? It would overload your mind with its wonder.  And totally not because my work area near the tree is a cluttered array of comic book piles and a snake farm of power cords for my army of devices. But I learned a lesson years ago when I kept the decorations up until May.  They lose their luster for the next season if you keep them up too long. So down they must come. I reckon I’m not the only person who keeps holiday paraphernalia up for 1/6th of the year.  Or do you have other things that you hold on to past a different kind of season?   I still have a few pairs of jean shorts that I haven’t worn in years in the era of calling people who wear them as “jorks”.  Someday, they’ll be back in style.   Right? Let me know what things you just can’t put away, be it Christmasy or anything else.  Freak flags gotta fly.

Players of the Game Works in Progress

The second draft of the combined bonus novels is coming along well.  I finished Unseen Scars and moved into Secret Fronts. I’m on page 288 with 79 pages for the month.  So that’s less than the 115 pages of last month.  But I’ve reached a spot where I’ve had to rewrite or just plain write new scenes in Secret Fronts.  So that’s a bit slower going.  Progress is progress. Plus, I’ve had some other initiatives going on. I’m doing a cover refresh with an outfit called 100 Covers.  I really like my existing covers, but they aren’t really selling a whole lot of books.  So, I’ll see if this moves the needle or not.  I’ll share the new stuff down the road once I’m farther along in that process.  I’m liking what they’re producing for me so far. A process that will include hardcover editions using Ingram Spark. I still plan to release Book 4.5, Jagged Pieces, in late summer or early fall of 2026. I’ll also keep you posted as more develops on all those fronts. Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month: “I want those days, Gath. Every last moment.” Nadia squeezed his knee a little tighter. “Even if it’s reliving disaster, loss, and violation. As long as it’s with a friend, I’ll guzzle every last drop.”

Recommendation Corner

Pluribus Or is it Plur1bus?  Either way, it’s the latest show from Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul fame. It has a similar premise to an old Rick and Morty episode where they encounter an old flame of Rick’s on an alien world that’s supplanted the local civilization.  A hive mind named Unity.  And it turns out that jerky individuals can be worse than involuntary conformity. Pluribus diverges from that episode with a lot more loneliness.  The logline for the show is “The most miserable person in the world must save humanity from happiness.” That’s sort of it.  But it’s more than that.  An alien signal results in bio engineering of a virus that breaks free and soon gets spread throughout the world through atmospheric contrails.  This converts everyone into parts of a very polite and non-violent hive mind. Except about 10 ish people.  Including Carol, played by Rhea Seehorn.  And the hive mind of humanity will do ANYTHING to make her happy.  And also stop at nothing to figure out why she and the others did not convert over so they can “fix” her. It’s a strangely small cast, with one of them having several billion faces.  The John Cena cameo in particular was hilarious with their PR campaign following Carol’s discovery of something just unpleasant. It’s a thought-provoking show with a thoroughly flawed protagonist.  Highly recommended. Also.  I gotta wonder.  If humanity became such doormats as a result of this, with the inversion of loving the “other” rather than fearing the “other”, what happens if that’s by design, rather than an unintended side effect of having singular minds outside the connected consciousness?   What happens if whatever sent the signal to Earth shows up? And then says, “Hello.  Please give us all your resources.  Please and thank you.” Not sure if that’s where the series is going, but food for thought. Puppet’s Shadow by Emersyn Park Full disclosure: I’m friends with Emersyn.  We’ve attended a few book events with our other friends, and we virtually meet as part of a monthly authors’ group. With my bias duly noted, I still really liked her teenage, mean girl thriller with one of the most evil of evil twins I’ve ever encountered. Piper’s a pleasant rule follower.  Maddy is a dark-hearted, popular girl.  And they will switch identities for fun and higher stakes.  Maddy calls Piper her Puppet as part of this switching.   The inciting incident at the beginning of the book leaves you wondering who survived a fatal house fire.  And the extended flashback paints a dark picture.  In particular, an event Maddy orchestrates that is shocking in the best way.   Something reprehensible.  Something she doesn’t even consider as crossing a line she can’t step back over. It’s not usually the kind of book I read, but it’s definitely a page-turner.  Give it a read if you want a story like Gone Girl, where you’re not sure which girl is gone.

Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback

That’s all for this time. Stay smart.  Stay safe. Jim

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Happy New Year! January, the Monday of Months is upon us.  And the only way out is through.  So stock up on your favorite caffeinated beverage, and jump into the breach with me. I often use December and January to mentally calibrate a quasi-annual season for myself.  Something without a fail state like a specific goal to make some amount of widgets by a specific date.  And this year, I’m doing something a little different. I’m refining last season’s theme of intentionality and continuing it with a new flavor.  I’m on a plateau as an author.  I’m doing a decent job on the creativity side of things, but less so with the business/marketing/promotion portion.  So I’m again going to be intentional and see what I can do to hop off the plateau. I signed up for an author business webinar from Joanna Penn later in January.  I’ll possibly be giving my novel covers a refresh.  I’ll keep an eye on Eleven Labs voice reader and explore releasing audiobooks if the quality gets where I want it.  I’ll also continue to explore in-person events. And I started on the “face-to-face meeting readers” part already.  Check out these pics of me at BookFest Omaha back on December 13, 2025.

I met and also reconnected with a bunch of interesting authors and other cool book-adjacent folks.  And I enjoyed the world’s best burrito from Cilantro’s food truck. BookFest was the best in-person 2025 event I attended by a mile.  But that’s totally last year now.  So, I’ll look to make it to at least 2 or 3 in-person events in 2026.  And I hope BookFest Omaha 2026 will be among them.  PLUS: I have a middle-sized stack of creative output goals for this season as well.  Yes, this is technically applying a fail state to have output widgets completed by year’s end, but only for a portion of my efforts.  What can I say?  I contain multitudes. Either way, read all about it in the WIP section.

Players of the Game Works in Progress

I’m up to page 209 on Unseen Scars’ second draft.  That’s 115 pages for the month, contrasted with 94 pages for last month.  I’ll take it! And as promised above, here are the creative productivity goals for this season, complete with extra-corporatey bullet points: * I’ll aim to release the Book 4.5: Jagged Pieces bonus novel in the late summer or fall.  * Finish up the second and third drafts of Book 5.5: Unseen Scars and Book 5.6: Hidden Fronts bonus novels.  * And complete the outline and start the first draft of Book 6: Back to the Dark. All realistic based on my past output.  We shall see if I can check all of them off zee multitudinous list. Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month: Xax: “It’ll be unfiltered, and you’ll feel a little hinky and rung out. Like you hiked up a mountain huffing on funky fumes.”

Recommendation Corner

Dispatch I made use of the 2-terabyte SSD upgrade I gave my PlayStation 5 for Christmas by loading it with yet another Christmas present.  An interactive cartoon dramedy taking place in a corporation that contracts superheroes with a steady paycheck. And rife with so many HR violations. Robert Robertson is a third-generation superhero named Mecha Man.  Basically, a mix of Iron Man and an anime mech suit.  But the suit gets wrecked beyond repair in a fight with the super villains of the Red Ring in the opening minutes.  And Robert no longer has the resources to fix it. He soon gets hired by the Superhero Dispatch Network (SDN) in exchange for them helping to restore his suit.  He will serve as the dispatcher for a group of supposedly reformed villains that ultimately refer to themselves as the Z-Team.  The game portion involves a bunch of puzzle games involving prioritization of dispatching the heroes and hacking challenges.  Fun little elements to keep you engaged. The writing and voice acting are fantastic.  Aaron Paul stands out as Robert, but the rest of the Critical Role crew also do a great job with the other characters. The romance options are both compelling, but I’m apparently in the minority based on the stats it shows at the end of the game.  Team Blonde Blazer 4EVA for me.  Invisigal was too much of a hot mess in my opinion. The animation is top-notch with incredibly emotive characters. It gets demerits for not letting you skip cut scenes and for only having one save slot. But it’s still one of the best superhero stories I’ve consumed this year in any medium. Even if you aren’t a gamer, watch it on YouTube at least to check out parts of the story. Great stuff. Galactic by Curt Pries and Amilcar Pinna This DSTLRY comic starts off as a blatant Star Wars analogue with a Han Solo-esque bounty-hunter character.  His furry alien buddy, who’s a short dog humanoid instead of a big Wookie.  And a princess who’s even more feisty than Leia. But it has a lot of originality with a concert of nations-style space opera setting rather than a monolithic Republic or Empire. And when galactic war breaks out, it starts very close to home for one character. The writing is snappy, and the art is up my alley.  I predict I’ll be reading this comic for a while. It pushes many of my geek buttons.

Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback

That’s all for this time. Stay smart.  Stay safe. Jim

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Yo yo! I sometimes recall my utter deflated feeling during the Covid lockdown and social distancing a few years back.  Coupled with the enduring hope that I’d be so thankful when I could get back in the world, see people again, and just enjoy.   Enjoy everything. I’ll admit I don’t always clock that in my day-to-day comings and goings.  But I definitely noticed it over the past couple of weeks when I went to the biggest city in South Dakota and days later the biggest city in Illinois. My wife and I went out to Sioux Falls to crash an author fair at the downtown public library.  I wasn’t able to participate in it due to a late submission on my part. But I was able to see my author friends, Emersyn Park, Chris Poore, and Scott Johnson.  We had a fun dinner the night before with our significant others.   At the fair, I met Randy Faustino, a comic book writer who had a cool fantasy-horror comic, Kosmotrope, which I’ll discuss more in Recommendation Corner. But a recommendation you don’t have to wait for is Pizano’s in Chicago.  I went out to the Windy City for a work trip and was on the hunt for some local cuisine.  As my Chicagoan coworkers told me: Deep dish is for tourists.  If you want actual Chicago-style pizza, get the tavern-style thin-crust pizza.  Much more crusty/crackery than New York-style thin crust.  Good stuff! And goodness abounds in my gratitude to experience all the new places and familiar haunts.  I’m writing this missive the day before Thanksgiving in the US.  And even though you’re reading this in a post-gobble-gobble, full-on holiday time o’ year, take a little time to be thankful for the positive things in your life.  Big and small. Things like meeting up with friends at an out-of-town destination.  Or seeing a big @$$ building that the locals still call the Sears Tower, complete with a misty diffraction effect with its top lights. And especially returning to a loving home.

Bookfest Omaha 2025- Saturday 12/13/25

Chris Poore and I will be selling our books at Bookfest Omaha 2025.  It’s free to the public.  Come out and visit us! WHEN: Saturday, December 13, 2025, 9:00 am-3:00 pm​ WHERE: IBEW Hall, 13306 Stevens St #101, Omaha, NE 68137 (near Millard Avenue and 133rd) Tap on the image above to find out more details on their website.

Players of the Game Works in Progress

One drawback of all my travels was a bit of a dip in my productivity on the second draft of Unseen Scars. I’m up to page 94, which is definitely not nothing.  It’s much easier to add setting and character descriptions, edit dialogue, and basically clean up all the metaphorical scaffolding with words that are already on the page. The rewriting part of writing is just mentally smoother.  Though the charge of creating something completely new, as frictional as it can be, always beckons to me.  I’ll be glad to get outlining Book 6: Back to the Dark, hopefully inside of a year. In 2026, I’m going to explore what’s needed to get a table at a regional comic con, or some other sci-fi fantasy con.  I might also partner up with Junkstock, an Omaha-area craft show. More as it develops. Players of the Game Out Of Context Quote of the Month: “Cienne. Been a few.” Frulgrath kept his body language casual, as he always did in her presence. Casual, but ready for trouble. Usually of the verbal variety, but not always. “More than a few.” Cienne grinned at him, but it came nowhere near her eyes. “Hatchet Man, eh?” “Picked up the nickname in Sufrinzon. It stuck.”

Recommendation Corner

Kosmotrope by Randy Faustino and Ashley Mortensen This comic book from the Sioux Falls-based Bamboo Panel Studios would probably get categorized as an urban fantasy, even though half of it takes place in a forest park. With a park ranger who is secretly a wearbear.   He’s called in by his colleagues to investigate the latest in a series of murders that have left the victims mutilated and twisted. Meanwhile, a psychic doctor who can see ghostly images of his patients’ ailments also encounters other horribly transformed victims. I anticipate that the ranger and the doctor’s paths will cross in future issues. Randy told me that Kosmotrope and Bamboo Panel Studios are on Instagram, so check them out there if you’re interested in some fantasy-horroresque comics. The Witcher Season 4 Is Liam Hemsworth a better Geralt than Henry Cavill?  No.  Is he worse?  Also no. I’m sure my opinion is not universally held, but I think Hemsworth has done a good job in the unenviable task of taking over the lead role. This season takes place during the events of the Time of Contempt novel.  Geralt, Siri, and Yennifer (love the character, hate the name) are all separated on their own adventures. I’ll admit that I find Siri’s storyline with the Rats less engaging with her attempting to lie low as a brigand/bandit.  It’s true to the plot line in the novel, and I wasn’t in love with that either.  Yennifer’s assembly of the surviving magic users is more of a slow burn, but the interpersonal drama keeps her part of the story from dragging. However, Geralt’s new friends: a sort-of Dryad, a group of Dwarves, a former Nilfgardian enemy knight, and a mysterious herbalist healer are the most engaging part of this season.  And Jaskier/Dandelion is always fun. Lawrence Fishburne is the standout this season as Regis.  I liked the character in the book as well.  Fishburne does a great job of capturing the character’s disquieting kindness and benevolent but unsettling assistance. I like all things Witcher.  Books, shows, comics, video games.  And this season scratches the itch.

Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback

That’s all for this time. Stay smart.  Stay safe. Jim

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Hey hey! A few years back I wrote about returning to a couple of social activities following all the lockdown terribleness.  An Ultimate Frisbee pickup group and a bar trivia team. Things have ended and evolved, respectively. The Frisbee group is still playing with a bunch of younger and/or more industrious acquaintances, but I decided it wasn’t worth the risk of injury and greater frequency of aches and pains.  All of my good friends have also stopped playing.  Bottom line: We got old.   I even updated my author bio earlier this year and redacted the mention of playing Ultimate Frisbee.  The season of disc-tossing seasons has passed for me.   And that’s fine.   I still exercise with various weights and body-weight repetitions along with a high-intensity workout video on YouTube that I’m reasonably sure I’ve watched/followed greater than 1500 times.  My wife and I also go for walks, though that’s tougher when it gets cold and dark as we get further into fall and winter. The bar trivia isn’t necessarily tougher, but it also recently changed.  Our taproom venue went out of business due to some decisions involving debt that didn’t work out for them.  It also didn’t help that their beer was so-so at best, which is why I’m respectfully not naming the defunct company.  I seldom partook of their products, though I was in the minority there. Our trivia league still has a lot of other locations in the city, but it’s not quite the same without our usual table, our friendly bartender who often gave me free lemonade, and our misanthropic, prickly, troll-jokey, but also begrudgingly endearing host. We might end up at another taproom with the same host, but that remains a hazy prospect.  So for now, Team Beerpaw is slumming it at other bar and grill locations.  It’s all fine, but not the same atmosphere.  And the new venues remain good spots to hang out with friends and chat about all manner of inane and fun topics between the questions. We shall adapt.  And we shall prevail. Luckily, none of this has affected my author endeavors.  And I’ll talk about a few such fun items right now.

The Council Bluffs Library Book Fair

Here are some pics of me at the Council Bluffs Library Book Fair from October 19th, 2025.  One photo of me at my table. And two more of me on a panel with my author friend, Chris Poore, and another author named Tim (I missed his last name, but a real fascinating guy).  The pictures were courtesy of my wife and our other author friend, Emersyn Park.  I sold a bunch of books with my in-person 7-books-for-$20 bargain bundle that I sell for marketing purposes.  Including five sets to a couple who wanted to use them with a start-up indie bookstore.  I haven’t heard back from them about it yet, but either way, the books are out there.   And hello to all the new subscribers who signed up for my author group newsletters at the book fair!  I hope you enjoy. Getting out and seeing readers is quite fun.  I’ll be doing it again in December. Read on!

Bookfest Omaha 2025- Saturday 12/13/25

Chris Poore and I will also be selling our books at Bookfest Omaha 2025.  It’s free to the public.  Come out and visit us! WHEN: Saturday, December 13, 2025, 9:00 am-3:00 pm​ WHERE: IBEW Hall, 13306 Stevens St #101, Omaha, NE 68137 (near Millard Avenue and 133rd) Tap on the image above to find out more details on their website.

Players of the Game Works in Progress

The ends and beginnings theme for this month’s missive continues for my writing as well. All of it good. I finished going through the edits of The Game War and then ran it through ProWritingAid.  So Players of the Game Book 5 is in the hopper along with Book 4.5.  I’ll release the bonus novel sometime in 2026.  And the main novel in 2027.  As long as I can keep far enough ahead on the writing, I hope to release a main novel or bonus novel each year. A few other items of note this month. I tried out ElevenLabs.  And I largely liked it, though it has a little ways to go before I’ll devote time to loading my series on audio books.  The version 3 alpha doesn’t yet allow for inserted pauses.  Which you wouldn’t think is a big deal, but totally is.  Paragraphs run together if you can’t craft them with pauses.   However, version 3 is what I want because it allows you to give more direction to the digital narrators.  I picked out a male and female digital narrator that I’ll plan to use for male and female POV scenes respectively.  I’ll share more on all of that as things develop. And I’ve just started the second draft of The Game War: Unseen Scars bonus novel.  I use “YY” notes for myself as I’m writing the first draft to track down all the spots that need attention.  And they’re everywhere.  Which is typical.  As I’ve said before, a first draft is always a drooling, sloppy mess. Now it’s cleanup time. Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month: Hekati then clasped his wrist with her mad gaze fixed on Corsis. “All the Burnhelts. Celsis Kri. Tamona of Muné. Everyone they love. I want their heads on jagged lances.”

Recommendation Corner

Peacemaker Season 2 John Cena continues to provide evidence that he’s a national treasure.  I’m not really a wrestling guy, but I’ve liked everything I’ve seen him in.  He can pull off comedy and dramatic pathos with equal poise. Peacemaker’s latest misadventures lean into a bunch of background tech from last season that now takes the forefront.  Chris Smith and the rest of the 11th Street Kids engage in dimension hopping where things turned out differently for Peacemaker’s family and the world. And Chris isn’t so sure his world is the one he wants to live in.  Especially after he accidentally kills his alternate self. Fun fact I didn’t know until recently.  Comedian from Watchmen is an homage to Peacemaker.  Chris Smith was originally a Charlton character from the 60s before DC bought the company in the late 70s.  Alan Moore switched to analogues early in the crafting of the Watchmen story.  Blue Beetle with Nite Owl and Question with Rorschach had always been the higher profile characters to me.  No longer.  I think it’s safe to say that Peacemaker with Comedian has now surpassed them.   Interesting factoid.  To me at least. Tim Meadows’s character was also most amusing with his “bird blindness” disability.  His reference to Eagley as a parrot was comic gold. Violent and over the top.  But also earnest and genuine.  I enjoyed it. Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky This sci-fi yarn focuses on two women of a far-future, space-faring civilization’s “special projects team.”  Both are highly motivated to not be put back on ice in cryogenic storage and prove their continued worth. This all goes horribly wrong when an accident forces them to crash-land a rover pod on Shroud, an Earth-sized moon of a gas giant.  Its incredibly thick atmosphere possesses the pressure of Venus and the global temperature of Antarctica. They have to figure out a way off the moon and endure lethal misunderstandings of the shell-covered, slow-moving alien life that has no visual senses.  But all have an acute sense of sound and radio waves. These aliens are kind of similar to Rocky from Project Hail Mary, except they’re more ant-like with a collective intelligence that fades the farther they get from their communities. I’m about halfway through and I’ll be interested to discover if and how the humans and the aliens ever figure out a way to communicate. Captivating stuff.

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That’s all for this time. Stay smart.  Stay safe. Jim

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