The Eye Of the Storm

Ah, Sunday mornings. Nice and early. A little oasis of calm for me. No-one else is up, no noise coming from Radio 4 or the Discovery Channel. Just me, my keyboard and the tweeting birds. Lovely.

The rain has finally stopped after two days of almost constant downpour. Luckily I live on the top of a hill at the mouth of the Tyne, so if I flood, you're all fucked. However, it does create a sort of stir-crazy mentality in the house. Luckily, due to the extension, we all have our own rooms now so yesterday we were able to retreat into the various corners and hide! I think there is probably more rain to come. The skies look a bit heavy and well, since we seem to have lost our delivery of summer this year, we should just get on to winter as soon as possible, if thats OK.

I've made up my mind to get a job rather than pursue the self-employed option. That was a reasonably hard decision for me but I made it. So I have four applications out in the wide world and two more heading out this morning. Its that lull period between the chirpy optimism of application, the crushing inevitability of rejection and the hollow dread of interview when you realise there are at least four other people who would happily shiv you in the face for the position.

Duty & Honour is, for all intents and purposes, done. I'm waiting for two adverts to come in and the replies from two people doing read-throughs but other than that, we are cooked. I have set up my account with the printer, designed the cover, sorted out the bleed and worked out what I can get initially with my scant budget. By this time next week, I will hopefully have a .pdf at the printers and a proof copy winging its way to Chez Gow. Pre-orders are good and if my maths is correct, a decent showing at Furnace will result in a tidy profit and future printing fund. Moreover, I have answered that perennial question - "What are you going to do now?" with the answer being "More of the same!". I've settled on a new name for the nautical version, 'Beat To Quarters' (because Hearts of Oak was taken already, dammit) and that will be next. I'll be going ahead producing my free .pdf almanac of extras and I'll have some content in the Collective Endeavour 2008 annual too.

In about 10 hours we'll be cracking ahead with our fourth session of D&D4e - a gaming fix which really cannot come around quickly enough every fortnight. This week, I believe we are going to suffer the consequences of our actions last time when we killed a high-up witch in the Cabal. They have rained retribution on the City of Kings and the Rebellion in general and thats going to come home to roost at our feet. It should be a lot of fun. There should also be a lot of intra-character conflict at the table as well, which I hope will really power the direction of the game. This could well be a pivotal session for our story and I have no idea where it is going.

So there you have it - everything is quiet and peaceful at the moment, just about ready to kick off in all sorts of directions. But until then, I think I'll sit and be mellow in my hole.