STELFIRE

Happy New Year! As has been my pattern for the past few years, I like to share a yearly theme that doesn’t have a fail state like a New Year’s Resolution.  So no specific “do X by Y date” type of stuff.  It’s more mindset and behavior based.  And even the timeline is not annual, it can be a season that’s shorter or longer than 365 days. This season, I’m going with intentionality.  Personally, that means specifically making time for friends and family.  With my writing pursuits, that means to keep outputting words on the page.  And also getting new stuff released into the world. To be intentional about sharing the epic Players of the Game saga with all of you.  I’ll talk more about that in the works in progress section.

Players of the Game Works in Progress

As part of the intentionality theme for this year, I have both the Breakers and the Repenter Collection in the hopper. The Repenter Collection is an e-book bargain boxed set that collects Book 1: Repenter, Book 1.5: The Hidden Chapters, Book 2: The Brigands, and Book 2.5: The Favor.  My graphic designer just gave me the cover components, and I’m hoping to get it released in the first half of 2025. The Breakers will come out after that in both e-book and print. With the Secret Fronts work in progress, I’m up to page 211 with 59,600 words.  Which makes it 23 pages and 6900 words since the last newsletter from a few weeks back. It’s a shorter time frame on this round, but I’ll still aim to up the productivity for the next month. The key is to keep moving.  So I shall. Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month: Goodspeed:  “I’m in. But my reason for agreeing to this is not high minded. I don’t actually want to win so much as I want my grandfather to lose. The Game. And everything else. That’s what I want more than victory. More than a lot of things.”

Recommendation Corner

Mercy of Gods: Captives War, Book 1 by James S.A. Corey The pair of Expanse authors have released a new sci-fi series under their Corey pen name.  This time, it’s about a humanity that’s on an alien planet with a separate set of biological natives, but they’ve been there for thousands of years and they don’t know how they got there. That ends up being more of a longer term mystery, because they are soon ruthlessly conquered by an empire led by giant sort of crab, sort of centipede aliens.  And in a pithy comment by one of the POV characters: “They are all assholes.” Dafyd Alkhor is the main character of the ensemble that gets shanghaied to the alien homeworld, and he spends much of the book trying to figure out how their new alien overlords think. The authors make a smart move with bridge sections that talk about how the aliens are ultimately brought low.  I generally don’t like “we’re stuck in prison” plot lines, so that explicit foreshadowing helped keep me engaged with the rest of the compelling story. But humans are nowhere near that victorious outcome just yet.  Humanity is thoroughly humbled throughout the book.  Dafyd and his brilliant scientist colleagues are tasked with figuring out how to make food edible from one alien flora to another alien fauna.  All while other competitor captive species try to sabotage them.  And the opposing side of the aliens’ war reveals itself in an invasive parasitic form. Jefferson Mays does another fantastic job of performing the characters and narrating the story. Good stuff. Nosferatu (2024) Robert Eggers’s take on the century-old, Weimar Republic-era silent film is incredibly well shot. The movie riffs on the Dracula story with a lot of differences with Count Orlok played by with unearthly menace by Bill Skarsgard.  Including his epic mustache, that is a visual but cool departure from the completely hairless original version. The movie’s use of shadows is really striking.  And all of the actors do a great job.  I’ll call out the doctor character played with understated grim pragmatism by Ralph Ineson.  Anyone who’s played Diablo 4 will also recognize him as the voice of Lorath.  Which was a cool bonus. This movie really makes the vampire seem more like an animated corpse than an urbane killer.  And his influence on the town upon his arrival is depicted as a plague smashing through town. The sound of him gulping down blood is just unsettling. The climax also makes a cool twist to the typical “exploit a vampire’s weakness” solution. I’m not the biggest horror fan, but this was absolutely worth seeing.  Especially if you like creepy cinema.

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! This has been a month-and-a-half of some technological and project pivoting on my part. I upgraded my laptop.  I really like the feel of the new keyboard.  My prior computer actually had a pretty decent one, but this new machine is an upgrade I didn’t know I needed.  It’s a Sager in case you’re wondering. I’m a person who customizes all kinds of stuff on new devices.  Very few out-of-the-box defaults for me.  Adjusting everything to my preferred specifications took a few days. Plus I just discovered Libre Writer.  It’s an open source word processing program that can save .docx files.  It’s totally up my alley.  Fantastic for writing first drafts before they get moved into Scrivener, ProWritingAid, and Atticus for the next drafts.  But Libre Office too required a goodly number of configuring steps on my part. Then I encountered a sudden need to type up a wiki document for the Players of the Game series for an editor who will be working with me on the Game War.  I churned out 73 pages or 23,500 words in a marathon session of about a week and a half, ran it through PWA, and sent it on its merry way.   I’ll be making some updates to the wiki and sharing a good deal of that content on my website and possibly Wikipedia down the road. All good changes.  But they do result in pushing other projects later than expected.  Such as monthly blog entries.

Players of the Game Works in Progress

Wuf.  I mentioned above that other projects got pushed aside with my new writing gear adjustments and the sudden wiki project. That definitely hit Secret Fronts’ productivity.  I’m at 188 pages with 52,700 words.  Which makes it 33 pages and 9200 words for the month. BUT.  I also wrote 73 pages with 23,500 words in that Wiki.  So I was not slouching with the writing. I’m guessing this coming month will also be lower with Secret Fronts’ word count, as I plan to have the next newsletter out shortly after New Year’s Day, so that’s fewer days between this one and that one. I’m definitely not worried.  I’m writing.  Just not all with the latest POTG work in progress. Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month: Nadia: “I swear I’m going to slap you if you keep invoking luck, Inventor.”

Recommendation Corner

Conclave I think this smaller run movie is out of theaters, but I saw it last month, and I highly recommend it. It surrounds the election of a new pope with a whole lot of infighting and political maneuvering. Ralph Fiennes’s cardinal character is really compelling as a man who doesn’t aspire to the papacy and just wants the conclave to make the right choice. His speech about the dangers of certainty really felt prescient to me. This movie might rankle some folks with some of its plot twists, but I’m a Catholic, and I took no offense to it. Either way, give it a watch on a streamer whenever it shows up if you’re in the mood for a tense drama for grownups. Eversion by Alistair Reynolds This was an interesting sci-fi novel that initially pretends to be a historical exploration adventure. Dr. Silas Coade is on an 18th century ship exploring a remote icy passage once trod by another ship.  Writing novels in his spare time and dealing with opiate addictions.   Or is it on a steamship a century later?  Or aboard a dirigible journeying into a hollow earth? Events seem to be looping.  Something to do with eversion, the geometric term for turning a sphere inside out.  And the doctor knows something is off.  But he’s not the only one. The narrator on the audio book, Harry Myers, does a fantastic job as well. Give it a try if you’re looking for something a bit mind bendy.

Promo Corner

Smashwords is running another sale.  And the Players of the Game series is part of it.  My books are between 75% to 100% off and are available as part of a promotion on Smashwords through January 1 as part of their 2024 End of Year Sale. This is a chance to get my books, along with books from many other great authors. You will find the promo here and on the image above: https://www.smashwords.com/she… Feel free to share this promo with friends and family. Happy reading!

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! Stressed about various world and/or national events over which you have little control? Me too. But I have a mental oasis that helps me.  Creating and expanding the Players of the Game series. And I have a few cool items to perhaps help you as well. First up, take a look above on the an epic rendering of Ashe Stelfire facing off against Svithe.

And Check Out the The Brigands to Witness the Ashe and Svithe’s Battle

Get The Brigands

Players of the Game Works in Progress

I was talking to some friends the other day, and I mentioned the latest stats of my work-in-progress bonus novella.  They kindly observed that this has crossed the threshold into bonus novel territory. I can’t deny it.  I’m currently on page 155 with 43,500 words with Secret Fronts.  That’s around 43 pages and 11,900 words for this month. Yes, this is definitely a bonus novel.  I’m maybe 45%-55% finished with it too.  The first parts deal with some disturbing hidden history in hidden worlds.  And the later parts will deal with the fallout from the events of The Game War. Onward!

Recommendation Corner

Bicentennial Summer by Chris Poore. Full disclosure: Chris is an indie writer friend of mine, so I fully admit that I’m biased.  I also don’t generally read in the nostalgia teenage drama genre.  I’m much more of a sci-fi, fantasy, or thriller reader. But I liked his debut novel, Bicentennial Summer.  It features the main character, Cole, navigating through a tough couple of weeks leading up to 4th of July 1976. Helping his friend deal with the death of his father, friction with a new kid in town who engages in a love triangle with Cole’s childhood friend, and dealing with the shady behavior of several adults in his small Nebraska town. It made me immensely glad I left that stuff behind in my teenage years.  But either way, the story is a compelling yarn.  Give it a read. Babs by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows I recently read through the first three issues of this series from Ahoy Comics. It hooked me with a cursed ghost knight accidentally creeping on Babs while she was taking a bath in a pond.  And the ghost knight’s ghost girlfriend/co-worker mercilessly teases him for it.  All while they ask Babs for directions to the kingdom they’re supposed to haunt. It’s a fun parody of a Conan Hyperborean world with a Red Sonja analogue main character who’s adept at killing and raiding.  But crap at everything else. Some of the satire is a bit on the nose with a literal troll character who acts like an incel internet troll.  But it’s still enjoyable. Her talking sword that bickers with her, and whines in pain when she uses it, is another stand out funny bit. Give it a look.

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 there! AI news and new services are inescapable these days.  Scary stuff like deep fakes attempting to sow disinformation.  Anxiety with the implications of fast generated art and writing.  And uncanny interesting things. I’ll be talking about the last one. Google recently launched a new service called Notebook LM.  Authors or other users can upload stuff from Google docs or PDFs into a local/private instance.  You can do it with anything like emails or even bank statements.  I, of course, loaded up the PDFs of my three novels and three bonus content novellas. You can then ask it questions about the aggregated content.  And it will come back with something that’s kinda right some of the time.  It’s experimental and it shows.  Here’s an excerpt example when I asked it to give me a list of named characters from the series: “Svithe: A mysterious peddler who deals in rare and valuable items. He is shrouded in secrecy, his true face concealed by bandages. He possesses extensive knowledge of Trojis’s history and political landscape, and often uses his knowledge to manipulate events to his advantage. As revealed in our conversation, Svithe is a guise of Corsis, a powerful, god-like being who orchestrates events for his own amusement.” Not bad.  It doesn’t mention Sufrinzon.  But it’s decent. “Avril: A skilled warrior and the daughter of Iuar and Zirva. She is introduced alongside Svithe at the docks. She is fiercely independent and possesses a strong moral compass.” Misspellings abound, and Avril is introduced well before she meets Svithe. “Gnorok: A red-skinned Merfenar (a race in Trojis) who is initially partnered with Rasphir and Runanker. He is interested in acquiring the “Ruul Kand,” a powerful artifact hidden by Uraulings.” The misspellings completely screw this one up along with confabulations like Merfenar instead of Murdrake. Yes, definitely not ready for prime time.  Very fascinating, even at this nascent stage.  However, there’s something that’s even more interesting. A podcast summary hosted by two incredibly realistic-sounding AI hosts. If you want to give it a listen, the link is below.  It lasts about 10 minutes.  PLEASE NOTE: You’ll need to log into a Google account to listen to it.  Also, I might be having it try another iteration by October 18, 2024, so the link might be broken if you listen after that.

Check Out the AI Podcast if you have a Google account

I have a fact check commentary in the post below. But here are my big picture thoughts.  You know that scene in Billy Madison where he completely BS’s his way through an oral test asking about the Industrial Revolution? “The industry, my friends.  That was the revolution.” And the moderator’s response: “I award you no points.  And may God have mercy on your soul.” I kinda feel like that.  It deemed the heroes of the second book as the villains.  Epic fail.  And much of the praise was generic “what does it mean to be human” stuff that you could say about just about any story. But I can’t award it no points.  The quality of the back-and-forth with the hosts, and some of the stuff it got right like the kliosts. This is something that might be able to help out a lot of people writing large projects.  Not yet.  But it might.  I’ll be most interested to see where it is in a year or two.

Players of the Game Works in Progress

I’ve got a good flow going with Secret Fronts.  I’m up to page 112 with 31,600 words.  So that’s 41 pages with 12,000 words this month.  I had a few off weeks this past month, but I’m still happy with the progress of the first draft. Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month: “I should have listened to him.” The Master of the Game slapped his hand on his chair’s leather arm. “I’ll rectify that mistake. And a few others while I’m at it.”

Recommendation Corner

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 This is the softest of recommendations. Yes, this show is overblown.  Some of the plot lines are borderline or beyond borderline pointless.  I’m still not sure I’m sold on feisty warrior Galadriel. But by golly.  This show did something I didn’t think was possible.  (Minor spoiler ahead.) It got me to enjoy a story line with Tom Bombadil.  His interaction with the Stranger was cool.  As was the test that ultimately yielded him the name I wanted him to say.  And the song they sang on the season finale.  I just liked it. I thought Sauron’s manipulation of the elf blacksmith and later coercion in crafting the dwarf and human rings was decent, but a little plodding. But dang, that Battle of Eregion was pretty cool.  I took a look at the LOTR Appendices, and I’ll be most interested to see how they finish out the Numenor plot line and the founding of Gondor beyond it. This show is aggressively mediocre.  But I’ll watch the next season. Unicorn Overlord Oh, my.  I love this game. An anime-style Ogre Battle homage.  Shut up and take my money. It has squad based real-time movements with battles that occur based on the squad formation.  Promoting units.  Expanding the squads.  Liberating a continent town-by-town.  It is sublime. It’s not completely perfect.  The writing is a little generic and the lack of an unhinged howl for the werewolf characters is a gargantuan missed opportunity.  But these are minor quibbles. This is one of my favorite games of the 21st century.  It’s right up there with Symphony of War from a few years ago. So fun!

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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Hi, all.

This is a rare website-only post on October 6, 2024. I’m mentioning the date, because there’s a decent chance the link below will be broken after a few weeks. I’ll likely update the podcast again sometime later this month, and I doubt the link will work following that. Or it might be talking about different things if the link keeps working as I iterate the podcast. Either way, it might be nothing or it might differ from my commentary.

In this brief window, I’m sharing an AI podcast from Goggle’s Notebook LM that talks about parts of my six books (three main, three bonus content) that are publicly available, which you can see on the sidebar. A bunch of fact checks on the confabulations of the two synthetic hosts does not make for compelling reading on a newsletter, and perhaps not in a straight blog post. But this experimental AI service is incredibly interesting to me. And I’m betting others may find it interesting too.

PLEASE NOTE: You must login to a Google account to listen to this recording.

Click or tap here to listen to the AI podcast.

And here’s my commentary on the artificial discussion. I’ll also have another newsletter entry above where I discuss it further in a day or two, which will summarize my thoughts and the general uncanny vibe, even if the link no longer works if you’re looking at this later in the future.

Minute 0:

False: The POTG series has no prophecies.

False: No summoning the dead with pyromancy. That’s necromancy with Durduun’s cultists and the struggle to possess the Mosul Flute, not Ashe.

Minute1:

False: Ashe doesn’t bend time. Tempes does that.

SO FALSE: The Brigands are not villains. They’re initially distrustful of each other, but they are Ashe’s allies.

Interesting: The AI hosts will insert laughter and insert verbal ticks. It’s very realistic.

Minute 2:

False: Nirva and Svithe are not part of the Brigands.

True- ish: Frulgrath is the only antagonist who was a former member of the Brigands. He’s not really a force of nature. More like a poisonous weed that keeps popping back again and again.

False: Ashe doesn’t serve Corsis

False: “No one knows all the rules.” There are multiple conversations in all three books about the Game’s rules.

Minute 3:

True ish: The kliosts emerge as a big threat in Book 2.5. Ashe and the other Brigands don’t deal much with the kliosts, though ViRauni does. This podcast version doesn’t talk at all about Ed, Harry, and the other Book 3 characters, though previous iterations of the podcast did.

Interesting: The female AI’s mumbled “exactly”. Again, that is very realistic.

True ish: Unseen force of kliosts. Sort of. It’s either airborne or imbibed. Their effects aren’t exactly visible, but they aren’t unknowable.

Interesting: Million dollar question. People do speak in cliched sayings like that.

False: The question of who’s wielding this thing in reference to the kliosts. It’s plainly Hekati, as shown extensively in Book 3.

Minute 4:

False ish: The specifics of the Game are mysterious. It’s not immediately apparent why Corsis is playing the Game. But it’s no mystery that he’s the one in control and the Rules are told in each of the main three books.

False: Another mention of Ashe using time bending. That’s Tempes.

Minute 5:

False: There are ZERO mentions of destiny in my novels. I hate that “chosen one” stuff. My characters earn their greatness.

True: I like their discussion of the Battle of the Two Cities, though they keep it vague to defending a city.

Minute 6:

True: Talk of mancy’s versatility is accurate.

False: Ashe never looks into the future. He cannot see future possibilities. Avril looks at the past and jumps through the time hole. Nirva looks in her painting to see possible futures, which might be the source of the confabulation.

False ish: Nirva is utterly lost by her obsession with her painting, which makes Avril sad. But Nirva is consumed with bringing Avril to heal. Her love for her daughter, if it exists, is utterly twisted by madness, fear, and hate.

Minute 7:

Interesting: The AI hosts mention layers. I really doubt they actually detect narrative nuances. I think that’s just verbal slop they put together through ingesting thousands of hours of people doing reviews.

Minute 8:

Interesting: The mention of “It’s still our choices that matter.” Very generic. You could literally say that about any story.

Minute 9:

Interesting: “Oh, man. That’s tough.” Again, very realistic dialogue.

Interesting: “In a world where the lines between wonder and horror are blurred… what does it even mean to be human?” Again, a generic statement you could say about any sci-fi or fantasy novel where the characters have powers.

I’ll have more thoughts above, but all-in-all, while Notebook LM clearly has some miles to go, I’ll be interested to see where those miles tread.