The Slow Medical Drama that is Requesting a Physical Library Book

I do not watch The Pitt. I do not follow other medical dramas. I live them, vicariously and very, very slowly, through the borrowing of physical books from my local public library.

I will read something. A book. A column about books. Or perhaps someone will mention a book. My interest perks up, and I will reach for the public library app and search for that book. Perhaps fifty percent of the time the library has a physical copy, and I will place it on hold.

There's a slow excitement as the weeks tick by. I was number 129 for The Devils for much of 2025. Oh but how my excitement rose when that shifted into double digits in the first third of 2026. 

Next comes the faster excitement when the book moves from "Not ready" to "In transit." Once the physical book is in that part of the hold, I amuse myself by clicking "Check location availability" to see where the book is.

Most of that time it says, "CHECKED OUT". I can relate to that. I have been checked out of one thing or another for many years. 

Some times it says "TRANSIT HOLD" and I am enamoured of the mystery behind that phrase. Is the book in motion, moving from one location to another? Is the book pinned in one place, held? Quantum states and both at the same time? The more I stare at that phrase the more I assume I resemble Heisenberg's Uncertain Library Patron. I'm both waiting patiently for the book to move to me yet I am affecting its motion by observing it.

Today I learned of two additional status states that physical book might be in. I did not take screen captures of all of them. I wish I had. That would have added depth and verisimilitude to this post. I swear, though, that one book briefly provided its location as my local branch of the public library in my city. 

The next day, though, today, that switched to WORKROOM.

I don't like doing work. I am much better at doing play. The notion that this book, or any book, had a room devoted to work interested me, though. So while I was in my local branch I pestered one of the many very, very patient staff who put up with me.

I understand WORKROOM is where a book is placed when it needs some attention. A cut or a tear, perhaps. A bruised cover. A damaged spine.

I understood immediately. Physical books, like physical people, need physical attention. They need doctoring once in a while. WORKROOM is library speak for "this book is in the ER. We're going to try to save its life, as best as we can."

I nodded as this was explained to me, and returned to the waiting area where civilians must pace while the librarians work to repair the damage this cruel, harsh world inflicts on books. Oh, and people. But mostly books.

Hours later I cried. I have learned of a new status:

The book did not make it. DISCARD is a polite way of saying the book has been sent to the book morgue. Gone, leaving me to my lonely unfulfilled broken heart. It is my hope that the librarians may do a full autopsy and discover why this book died. 

I'm a realist, though, and I know that budget cuts and time constraints mean that sometimes we civilians will never learn what specifically sent this book to the afterlife. All we are left with afterwards is that final status of TRACE, vague and undefined, unknowable, un-located. The physical book has given up the ghost, and the only thing left are the moans and that haunting look from patrons who never got those final three weeks to read the book, then say goodbye. 

Identity, Authenticated by Friends

A friend and I were talking a few Saturdays ago. He mentioned that while he is looking forward to retirement one day, he is not sure what he would do. "My identity is tied to my job."

I do not feel that same way. 

I get what he meant.  Many people put a lot of time and effort into an education and then a career, and some are lucky enough to work at that career for a long time. I know of one man who worked for the federal government for thirty-seven years in more or less the same role, definitely the same department. 

Not all employers are that consistent nor enthusiastic. Not sure I ever want an employer determining when my identity changes.

Identity, tied into one's job, is a common trope. We identify characters in stories by their role as policeman or doctor or carpenter. "What do you do?" is a common enough question at parties when meeting someone. That phrase "what I do for a living" ties together life and action and identity.

I told my friend, "Your identity is not your job. Your identity is every single thing you've ever posted to the Internet, ever." (Hello 👋 government agencies building a file on me!). He smirked.

I do not believe that, either. I also do not believe that my identity is every book I have ever owned, not really. For example: some times a book is a gift, and you read it, and you think I really did not like that. The book doesn't reflect your values nor your interests. Is that still part of your identity? Is "negative identity" a thing, where one is identified by what one does not participate in? Is part of my identity the ideas I reject?

Substitute for book other story vehicles and art forms. My identity is not every song I have listened to, every movie or T.V. show or video clip I have every watched, every poster I have ever collected. All that stuff contributes to identity, of course. I know the lyrics and tune to O Canada much better than Ще не вмерла України і слава, і воля. That's tied to my identity as someone who went through the public school system in Canada and not Ukraine.

I like to think there's a part of me in everything I have ever written. Yet my identity (who I am) is not tied to my writing (the final product, the art I make). My art can get savaged by critics and rejected by agents and I am still me, uninjured. If no one reads what I write, I still exist. (I can tell because I still get hungry, still need to pay for rent, still want to write!) The art can go anywhere, and I have no control over where it goes. It might even burn into nothingness after a hard disk crash during a house fire. I am still writing. I'm still me.

As part of AAA, the Authentication piece I've implemented for some employers is built around three things when determining that Michelle really is who she says she is:

1. Knowledge Something one knows, like a password or PIN
2. Possession Something you have that can be thrown away after a limited time, like a card with a RFID chip as a hardware token
3. Inherent feature Something you have that is a lot harder to throw away, like your fingerprints or your retina pattern or your DNA sequence.

I believe a writer could be somewhat identified using these three items. Only one writer would possess that stack of notebooks with those scribbles and scratch outs. Only one writer would have the knowledge behind why "a lich wizard is restored to health by her fashionable clothing" seemed like a good idea for a story. Even if some other person could forge that knowledge and possess those notebooks, only the first writer would have the inherent tenacity to sit at a desk for two hours every evening for the month of November to produce those notebooks, gaining inherent back pain and RSI for her efforts.

I've been thinking about identity because I have an idea of a story where a wizard decides the path to immortality is to write her identity into a set of books, really smart books. Books smart enough that they start writing their own books, then start rewriting themselves. The wizard passes on but part of her identity remains in her books. These Arcane Intelligences (or AI agents) take on a "life" of their own. Not finished yet, that story.

I told my friend that my identity is constructed out of every good visit / beer / coffee / walk / dinner I have shared with a friend or a group of friends over the years. Later, I realized that all those friends could contribute to a web of trust identifying who I am. A guarantor on a passport helps to prove identity when requesting that hardware token made out of paper and government red tape. In the same way, my drinking pals confirm I am authentically who I say I am. As well as an authentic friend.  

At the time on that Saturday, I was thinking only of how I enjoy all those memories of all those good visits. We toasted each other with our pints and the afternoon was identifiably fine. 

Pick Up

I am a human being. I am not an AI agent. This means I have moods. 

I was walking home from the bus stop today in a mood of disillusionment. Yet again I was ruminating on all sorts of things outside of my control. Will the stuff I write ever be picked up? An agent, an editor, a publisher, beta readers, the mythical critique partner (or partners) who could constructively point out areas to improve and at the same time we encourage each other onward and forward: all of that seems hidden. A paying audience that reads my work with enthusiasm lays further away, dispersed and concealed. 

I mulled that over then imagined a lich, but not an evil one whose powers of resurrection and restoration arise after building a phylactery. I pictured an incredibly devoted and detailed-oriented wizard, well-dressed always, whose clothes put him back together after he died. He was restored to health by his wardrobe. Wardrobe here does not mean the piece of furniture. I mean his extended ensemble of all his fashions ever purchased or gifted or possessed. The Clothes Make The Man.

My disillusionment vanished in a snap.

Back to writing! This next story will be a hit, I am sure of it.

Compelling Writing

I swear this has never happened to me before.

I woke up, walked and fed the dog, started writing. This is the third draft for a first novel. After about an hour I realized I had not yet made any coffee! 

I stepped away, made a mug of my favourite coffee: JJ Bean Railtown. Most mornings are the other way around: I need to make something first, a caffeine key to unlock story mind vault, and re-read what I've done the day before to get everything rolling up to speed before I am caught up in the flow of my story. 

When it happens like it did today, when I am writing and engaged and up from the first moment, I know I have something good here. Cannot wait to share it.

Normally I make my coffee and give it five minutes or so to cool to the perfect temperature. 

The thing that has never happened before is: I made a mug, went back to the kitchen table, wrote for fifty minutes, and then remembered about the coffee on the counter! 

Thankfully my set up of ambient room temperature, thick mug, and great coffee means that even at the temperature the coffee was when I remembered it, it was still good. 

Almost as good as my writing. 

A Precious and Rewarding Morning Spent Writing

I am lucky enough to have a dog at home, and for the past nine years the dog has been very clear that she wants to go out early in the morning.

The birthday of my only child is this week, so I have taken the week off work. My child is asleep as I type this, still. I woke before six, walked the dog, then made a mug of Railtown coffee and took one biscotti from the tin, a cocoa biscotti with chocolate coating. My partner went back to sleep and I went downstairs, but not to the room I work in for my employer. I sat at the kitchen table, cleared of all flatware, with Pieces Of Novel spread everywhere. One happy fed dog retreated to her nap.

I am very thankful to have spent the last two and a half hours working out the first chapter of my next novel. The world is quiet, the neighbours' dogs are not barking, the lot down the street has all chainsaws and wood chipper and the backhoe silent, a brief respite in the ongoing [de | con] struction. Time to think, time to write, without interruption, when the day is fresh and full of potential. When anything might happen.

I hope you have a chance to get what I had this morning.

I know I am looking forward to morning after morning like today's morning.

The Storyteller's War by J.C. Corry

Go out and get your copy of The Storyteller's War by J.C. Corry published by Black Rose Writing! Whether you are a student of medieval studies, a lover of literature, or (like me) all of the above, this collector's item will improve your bookshelf.

In The Storyteller's War: Geoffrey Chaucer Reluctant Spy, Corry pulls enough detail from the age to ground his tale of espionage and personalities without halting the momentum of what is a compelling story.

At the time of the major battle in Chapter Thirty-One (3 April 1367) Chaucer is about twenty-four years old. More than twenty-four years ago, when I was younger than twenty-four, I studied Chaucer's words (yet only a small bit of his life). I wish I had had this book then.

The family of Chaucer has connections to both the wine trade and King Edward's court. This, plus Chaucer's ability to meet notables of the age then pull stories out of these captivating characters, makes for a solid spy tale. Young Geoffrey Chaucer's faults and foibles add dimensions. These strengthen the work.

On The Consolation of Philosophy has a close place in my personal history. As I hold my own copy and consider what this book meant to me, I am cheered to see the place Boethius' work holds in this story of Chaucer as well.

I really enjoyed the interactions between Chaucer and Pippa, how their desires and worries collide, mix, and form witty wordplay. The relationship between Chaucer and Pippa seems vivid and alive. I found their scenes compelling, riveting, and engaging.

I loved the exotic castles and palaces of Zaragoza, Olite, and other places in the Iberian peninsula.

The capture of Ayala is very moving. I don't want to give anything away, but the lines about "Chaucer and Ayala...  side by side, two storytellers bonded by fortune, fate and courage" pulled much of the novel together for me.

Corry adds a depth to the life of Chaucer I have never read about before.

I learned a great deal about Chaucer's life, about historical fiction as a genre, and about writing a novel from enjoying The Storyteller's War. I anticipate the next novel in the series: The Storyteller’s Reputation.

I seek the publisher of Title Undetermined

My local public library lists new books.

Each new book usually has both a title and a cover.

Sometimes a new book has only a title and a grey rectangle substitutes for the cover.

The new book at the bottom left intrigued me:

Now, that is an interesting way to market a new release! I thought. 

Intrigued, I clicked on the rectangle. 

The mystique increased:

Who is the author behind “Title Undetermined”?

Did that person have a title in mind and argued with the publisher over it, then both sides gave up but decided to print it anyway? Or did the author never determine the title, ever? How long did the author slave away at a work without even a working title? (Is this work created by AI and the title was not part of the parameters?)

Setting aside authorial intent and the marketing team's effective yet murky method of hyping this book by obfuscating the title,  I really want to learn more about any publisher who decided to go ahead with promoting a book called “Title Undetermined”.

Perhaps this is a publisher I could work with!

I pulled up the Full details and scoured the Original record for this work:

Obviously the author and the publisher value their privacy. In today's digital age, when so much information is out there, I can respect this. 

Still, I remain very intrigued, and decided to place a hold on this work.

Here, I became devastated:

It appears that both maximum secrecy and minimum utility have been achieved.

I am not able to secure this work using the app.

I intend to seek it out In Person at my local public library branch. 

If I successfully determine Title Undetermined I will update this post.

What made you smile?

I had a really good time at the 32nd Annual Surrey International Writers' Conference October 25th to 27th 2024.

Friday I pitched to an agent who asked for the first one hundred pages of my fantasy novel and a synopsis. That's very exciting!

Later on Friday I had a very good conversation with Darren Groth. I really liked one particular scene in his novel Are You Seeing Me?. I'm very thankful he signed my copy.

I had a great time visiting with friends and making new friends in the seminars, over meals in the banquet halls, and even waiting in lines to register for Pitch Sessions or Blue Pencil Cafe sessions. While there's a stereotype that a lot of writers are shy introverts, I found I had no problem asking, "What do you like to write?" then listening to the answer and taking the conversation from there. Some of the new friends I made include Penelope Rose who has already published Deviant Desires and Magnus Skallagrimsson who runs Noir At The Bar in Victoria and Vancouver.

The agent Laura Bradford helped answer a question for me about finding beta readers. I'm thankful for that chance meeting over lunch Saturday in the banquet hall.

Prior to the conference, the thought of taking a novel of 91K words and boiling it down to a 750 word synopsis would be impossible and frustrating. I now see it as another piece of writing, thanks in no small part to Mira Landry's seminar Saturday.

One of my favourite parts of the conference, and one I hope inspires me and you for a long time, came about because I took a chance. Sunday morning at 08:05 I started standing in line to get a second Pitch Session and a second Blue Pencil session. By 08:45 I had both. For the second Pitch Session I pitched a trilogy; I kept it to myself that the trilogy has only gone through two drafts and is not ready to be sent out. I learned a number of things. The first is to not pitch an entire trilogy; pitch the first book as stand-alone. Since the title is a play on words with a homophone, I asked the agent to read my query letter. She did, which meant I could watch her face as she moved her pen across and under the sentences.

At one point while she was reading, she smiled.

I listened to her feedback. I then asked her, "At one point when you were reading, you smiled. What made you smile?" She indicated one specific turn of phrase, and I said, "Oh, I was worried about that, because it uses profanity and I wasn't sure about including that in a query letter."

"No, it's not a problem here. For one, you are using it to good effect. For another, your query letter is not full of needless profanity. And for a third point, all sorts of query letters get written but you've made yours stand out."

When I am down and when I am lonely, I'm going to come back to this memory, when my writing made another person, an agent, smile. Not a family member, not a sympathetic friend, not an aspiring writer newer to this than myself. An experienced successful literary agent from a named agency in the USA.

If it happened once, I can make it happen again.

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If you liked this, you may find out more here:

• Faster Gamemaster - my blog
• Bluesky: @standardeyre.com
• www.standardeyre.com
• info@standardeyre.com

SiWC 2024

I will attend the Surrey International Writers’ Conference for 2024 this upcoming weekend, October 25th to 27th.

I feel a range of emotions, but mostly excitement. I am very glad to know that a number of friends will attend this year at the same time.

If this SiWC 2024 is your first introduction to this site, I encourage you to buy my novella Battle Stove Spectacular via Amazon.

I can also be reached via info@standardeyre.com

I have a number of works on the go. I hope all of them get published and shared with enthusiastic readers soon!

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Isometric Maps

GM Achievement Unlocked: I create Isometric Maps

I have been having Joy Out Of Measure with two tools for making maps. Today, though, was a massive step forward.

When my friends and I first started with Roll20, my first thought was: “This is totally optimized for combat. Number-crunching combat. Guess all that role-playing and talking and writing is put on hold for a while.” 

My second thought was: “This is going to totally drain all my free time as a GM, creating all these high-quality maps. I do not want to go broke trying to find and buy good quality digital maps.”

Thankfully, two sites have saved my bacon and my wallet. They’re also rather fun to use.

I’ve done more with Inkarnate at first. I poked around it a bit, and thought, “This is a very good bargain for a year of Pro level access.” I’ve made both regional maps and Roll20 battle maps. I even had success creating the catamaran that the players in my campaign have just boarded and will be on for a session or four.

My players have to date not seen all the maps I’ve created. They are a very intelligent bunch, so I’m not going to give them here additional hints of undiscovered locations. I will show some maps of places they have already encountered or are not likely to reach.

This is my first cut at a catamaran.

This is the first bar I put together, run by a dwarf and made of stone. It’s called the Solid Favour.

I also am very thankful to have Dungeon Scrawl. Dungeon Scrawl makes some things quick and delightful to do. Other tasks are nearly impossible: I spent 45 minutes trying to make the white square in the bottom left room red. I eventually did it, but decided I’d just annotate the square differently next time, or mark it red in Roll20, or something else.

The truly outstanding achievement I unlocked today, though, is something I have always thought was beyond my skill set:

Isometric maps.

I remember looking at Ravenloft in 1983 (or, rather, peeking over the shoulder at the GM’s copy in 1984) and being stunned by the utility of the isometric maps that module had. I thought, “Wow! Those must be really hard to make!”

My pride at creating my first isometric map in Dungeon Scrawl fills my house today. I normally make a throwaway map when I try something new. Today, though, my first cut at an isometric map was for a setting my players will ideally reach. That first cut worked so well, I’m keeping it hidden. I have created a second isometric map to prove I can actually do it to anyone reading this blog. This map is a hasty slap dash born of memories of the shopping malls in the suburbs near where I grew up.

My map making skills are only going to improve. I am very thankful to have found these tools, and to have an opportunity to build with them.

For Maximum Fun, Follow the Instructions

This Gamemaster is overjoyed to have run two sessions of Fun City to date. Overall the prognosis is good. The campaign looks healthy, there is no shortage of players expressing interest in participating, and everyone is having a good time.

Last session had two serious challenges attacking the level of fun around the virtual table. To address this, a royal commission was struck. Today the findings can be made public.

Let’s address the two major considerations that came out of the last two gaming sessions one at a time.

The players found it hard to see everything at once

More than one player said something along the lines of “I cannot see everything all the time for all characters” or “I found it hard to know what was attacking.” With Dynamic Lighting and limited vision and barriers to sight, the characters had limited visibility. This led to the players having limited awareness.

Partly this is by design. The Gamemaster has paid some coin to Roll20 to explore their Dynamic Lighting feature. I did this to push the edges of what the VTT offered, and to instill fear and terror in the players. The dark is meant to be scary, and not seeing how many opponents there are is meant to be disconcerting.

However, the game is still meant to be fun. This Gamemaster is willing to concede that particularly with the most recent battle against the animated skeletons in the crypt, the terror sliding scale may have been set too far in the “Stark Raving” direction and needs to be pulled back to the “Giggling” setting.

Plan for next time: Instead of Dynamic Lighting, the Gamemaster will set the map underground to Explorer Mode. Intent here is that everything is blacked out and hidden until one player explores it. After one player has seen it, all players have seen it. We can try it. Perhaps for the most scary dungeons underground the Gamemaster will go back to Dynamic Lighting.

The Gamemaster reported poor system performance

Roll20.net quit once on the Gamemaster. Browser just said "No!" and went away. The site was very slow the rest of the evening. The “Spinning Beach Ball” showed up much more frequently than requested.

After a thorough investigation (and by that I mean “actually reading the site instructions” on Graphics Performance Troubleshooting and Optimizing Roll20 Performance ) a number of solutions presented themselves:

1. Stop using Dynamic Lighting. Yes, yes, yes. Already addressed above. We’ll try that route.

2. Limit the number of lines on Dynamic Lighting. Essentially this means the room with the skeletons, which had lots of pillars, puts more load on Roll20.net than a standard box of a room. Understood, but some rooms have to be complicated to contain complicated threats.

3. Reduce number of light sources. Check. Install Gust of Wind traps to blow out torches, leaving the Player Characters in the dark. I can do that.

4. Reduce number of tokens that have vision. This one I had not thought of. Currently the game has seven players and two of the PCs have animal companions or familiars. I thought about introducing a deposit of $150K to reduce the number of active Player Characters. That kind of goes against the spirit of Fun City, though.

5. Keep map sizes small. Aha! Here we go! One page lists a default size of 20 cells wide by 20 cells tall. Another page says:

   Maps or pages are typically recommended to be 25 x 25. As the map size increases, the effective area that must be rendered increases which can negatively impact performance. This can also be highly subjective to the individual systems used by players in your game.

Aha!

The first map used by the Gamemaster, created with Inkarnate, was 40 cells wide by 40 cells tall. This was the surface map of Fort Runefort.

The second map, the one of the crypt beneath Fort Runefort, was 52 cells by 67 cells, and was created by Dungeon Scrawl.

Personally, I blame the tools, for being so delicious and wonderful to use. The Gamemaster got carried away

Plan for next time: Maximum map size with Dynamic Lighting enabled will be twenty-five cells in any one dimension.

That sounds like fun.

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Campaign? No. One-off? No. It’s a Bash!

I sent out invitations to “Fun City” and one of my dear friends wrote back:

Is this intended to be an ongoing campaign or a one off? I admit to being sorely tempted.

First: Small Victory Dance! Always celebrate when your friends express interest in what you write.

To answer his question: “Fun City” is a Pathfinder First Edition campaign. It is not a One-Off. I prefer the term bash as in: “Fun City will be the latest bash set in County Playground.”

Let’s take those one at a time.

“Fun City” is a campaign because it is a continuing set of interwoven adventures. Each single session will be a scene or an act within an overall story arc. “Fun City” (the Pathfinder First Edition campaign) will also span multiple playing sessions as the Player Characters learn more about “Fun City” (the place).

However, it’s going to be the most flexible and forgiving campaign I’ve ever run, for a number of reasons.

• I expect some of the players will drop in and drop out, as everyone has different demands on their time. I want to be flexible and accepting of player schedules.
• The last campaign I ran, I got deeply caught up in the background details and tried to, uh, make them the foreground of what the players faced. I’m not sure how successful that was.
• I put a lot of pressure on myself to have a deeply compelling complicated campaign last time. Not going to do that to myself any more.
• This time around, I intend to stratify and simplify the setting. I’m still enthusiastic about the setting. I will provide background details if the players want them, while the majority of my efforts will be focused on “let’s have a simple and fun time tonight with the game pieces in front of us.”

A One-Off, by contrast, is meant to be a single self-contained adventure. Ideally a one-off lasts a single session. “Make It Big,” the last one-off I ran, went for two sessions. I guess that says something about my skill at estimation. I estimate I can only get better.

I considered running a sequence of unconnected one-off sessions for “Fun City” and decided against it.

• My personal preference is to build a setting full of interesting people, places and things, all connected. With a campaign, it’s easier to share my enthusiasm for that unified setting.
• Some of the players may drop in and drop out, but some will want to game regularly. For those regulars, I want to provide an opportunity to take a character from Level One up to Level Double Digits. That “growing a character” is something I always enjoyed as a player, and I want to provide that as a GM.
• It’ll be easier for players to contribute to a setting they’re familiar with.
• I have the time and resources to prep a campaign.
• I want the game world to be internally consistent. A campaign just logically seems to flow from that.

The noun bash is what I think of in my head, though, when I think of what I’m doing. Instead of “a campaign set in County Playground” or “a one-off set in County Playground” I consider what I’m doing as the latest bash set in County Playground. All three of the definitions for that noun line up in a way I admire.

1. (informal) A forceful blow or impact.
   • Just to be clear, I am not advocating in favour of hitting players here.
   • The Player Characters, on the other hand, frequently give and receive bashes with the NPCs. Often to much merriment.
2. (informal) A large party; a gala event.
   • There might be eight characters at the first “Fun City” session. That there’s a large adventuring party.
   • I like attending a gala event. Hosting them, too.
3. (UK, informal, often in the phrase ‘have a bash’) An attempt (at doing something).
   • Yeah, that also tracks. I am making an attempt at creating maps, at trying new tools and using existing tools in new ways, at evoking an engaging setting, at showing my friends a good time.

When I was pulling together this blog post, this diagram came to mind:

Complete        Where                  The GM hands your PC his lines
Extemporized    this Bash                  and a script. "Your cue is
Chaos           probably lands            when the dragon bites you."
|               |                                                   |
V               V                                                   V
+---------------+---------------------------------------------------+

I am not enthused about running a series of unconnected one-offs like the far left would imply. County Playground is already plenty comical because, hey, that’s how I roll. Some structure would help.

On the other hand, I don’t want to veer too far to the other end and structure out everything.

The final point I wish to make here is that in preparing for this I found email messages from November of 2007, back when I had a different setting but the same comic tone. It warms my heart to think of every dice roll, every pun, every word written in every email or blog post and every word shared across a gaming table for the last few decades contributes to a fulfilling time. I reserve the right :-) to throw out all the terms used above and say that I’m working on a Pointillist style of RPG Gaming and I hope you’ll contribute to the art.

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Moderating My Desire For Crunchiness

I like role playing games that are crunchy, like Pathfinder First Edition. I could extend that word from crunchy RPG games to include other interests. I prefer Linux over other operating systems, Vim over other editors, and extensive world building in my RPG settings. I like getting into the details.

• I like figuring out how big a flying castle has to be to feed air cavalry.
• I like digging into the core of Pathfinder rules to determine how many languages there are.
• I like having a highly detailed story behind the setting of my campaign world.
• I like having maps in my games.

Occasionally this has led to problems

Obsessing over the details can slow things down. Some examples:

1. Let’s say this is the first time you are playing Pathfinder 1e. You learn that you could do a Full Round Action, a Standard Action, a Move Action, a Swift Action, a Free Action, an Immediate Action, and/or something that is Not An Action. By the time you finish understanding all of that, I would bet it is next week.
2. I did up a campaign, and created a Epub book as a guide for my players to create PCs, and I gave the book an ISBN. Because I thought I might sell that Epub book on Amazon to… someone…. The logic of that escapes me now.
3. I am the GM who likes drawing up a wiki that details out how the opponents fight with each other, manipulate their underlings, and motivate the characters. After a long day at work, coming back to this once a week, it’s doubtful my players have the same enthusiasm for this exposition that I do. I remember vividly the night I was trying to rush through some world building to force a plot point and one of my players in my gaming group said, “Please. It is too much.”
4. I like role playing games. In a pandemic, my group has shifted to Virtual Table Top games like Roll20. This expects a map. I’ve created a lot of pressure on myself to produce “High Quality” maps, so we can obsess over whether the character is five, ten, thirty or thirty-five feet from the target monster.

That last point is really telling. When I first started playing RPGs, we sat around a table in a comfortable room. No one in my group could afford miniatures nor figures, so we played without a map.

We had a blast.

I have a plan to solve the problems caused by Sybaritic Crunchiness

I’m staring a new campaign called “Fun City.” My goal with this is to share my enthusiasm for these topics with my friends, without drowning anyone.

My specific approaches to achieving this goal:

1. I’m going to expect players to drop in and drop out of the campaign. I’m going to expect new players to join and for familiar players to say, “I don’t remember who our opponent is, and I’m exhausted. May we wing it tonight?” And we will wing it, and that will be okay.
2. I’m going to leave the background for the campaign in the background. If the players ask, I will answer their questions. If they don’t ask, I will let the campaign world simmer, and eventually turn it into a novel or six.
3. I’m going to work on a small number maps, not a volume of maps.
4. The maps I do work on will be of varying levels of quality. That is okay. The initial maps might take a while to get adequate. Later maps will be better and will be done in a shorter amount of time. All art works that way. At least, the majority of art that I produce has worked that way.

In the past, I’ve started a campaign, devoted time and energy to the details, set unrealistic expectations for everyone, and felt burnt out. I’d like to break that habit.

I started a new job in October of 2021. It’s fulfilling, but so often I find myself looking at the task list in front of me and thinking, “I’d rather be Gaming with my friends.” When I dig into why I’d rather be Gaming, what specifically I like about RPGs and Pathfinder and world-building and map making, I find soon enough I can’t stop thinking about ideas I want to share with my friends.

So, I’m going to moderate my approach. Build something to share, and always start each session by thinking, “How may I best share this enthusiasm I have with my friends?” The best nights in the past have come from that starting point. Future sessions will grow out of those seeds of enthusiasm. I will build a city one piece at a time, and the end product will be fun.

Fun City, here we come!

This Linux-loving beta reader wants your book draft in Microsoft Word format

A friend I have known for twenty years has completed a draft of a novel. I look forward to being a beta reader for this work.

My friend, to whom I shall refer to as M, asked me earlier today:

What format would you like the book in? Word? PDF? Google doc? Pages? Paper? I can generate any output you want from Scrivener (okay, okay. Probably not markdown or LaTeX or anything ‘exotic’.)

This question from M got me asking several other questions.

I am, at my core, a book nerd. For over twenty-five years I have been paid well to be a computer nerd. Occasionally I play at being a gamer nerd hence the title of this blog, but that’s a divergent branch for another blog post. Today I’m going to take everything I’ve learned about tech for the last twenty-plus years and force what I believe about beta reading and book editing through that tech perspective. The end result is ideally a blog post but my metaphor reminds of a machine I once cleaned; it was used to make hamburger.

To squeeze out this delicious meaty repast of well-grounded answers which you, gentle carnivorous reader, will delight in consuming, I shall consider these questions.

How does a book draft get made?

Well, when a pen and a spiral-bound notebook love each other very much…. nine months later a draft emerges, crying for attention. Actually, I have completed a fifty thousand word draft in thirty days on five separate occasions, so this metaphor has fallen apart faster than an inebriated hookup.

My main point: I prefer to create a physical first draft of a book using 250 pages of spiral-bound notebook and a pen with blue ink. There’s usually two paper books, one of 150 pages and one of 100 pages. If I use fancy books, I feel pressure to produce fancy thoughts, so I use cheap spiral-bound notebooks to produce my, er, enlightened bespoke masterpieces. Call each page two hundred words. I try to complete ten pages a day. Get it done fast, get it down, don’t worry about the coherency. Capture the idea, the feeling, the passion within that concept and between those characters. Some days I only get eight pages done. Usually I get ten. If I get eight and change done in a day, then over the course of thirty days that creates 250 * 200 = 50,000 words.

The first problem after that: my handwriting makes the eyes of the reader bleed. The second problem: not all of those fifty thousand words are shining, beautiful, coherent or even worth keeping. The third problem: who wants to receive an unreadable set of spiral-bound notebooks? Probably the same number of people who want to pay to post that package: zero.

So, next comes a second, digital, draft. I transcribe my handwriting into a file in Markdown format. I do it myself because at this stage in my writing career I cannot afford the transcription service who could read my chicken scrawls. If I wait a month or two, I have a better sense of what to add (and what to remove) when creating that digital draft. I have a lot more freedom to edit and improve and revise that second draft knowing that there is a physical backup in the spiral notebook. I also adore the comfort of having a completed off-site digital backup in case my paper copies burn away.

So, a digital draft is in place. Now what?

What happens during a beta read?

The beta reader reviews the draft and provides feedback. My favourite questions to ask of a beta-reader include “Where did you stop reading?” and “Which parts were confusing?”

This process goes easier if a set of requirements is addressed:

1. The feedback comes in the form of comments.
2. It should be easy for the beta reader to add the comments.
3. It should be clear to the author what part of the text is referenced by each comment.
4. If there is more than one beta reader, there should be a plan to pull all comments by all readers together.
5. Once all of the conditions above are met, aim for simplicity. If multiple tools can get the job done, choose the least complicated one.

As I said above, I’ve been a computer nerd for a long time. I find Linux easy. So, easy is a relative term. “Easy” is a goal we’re seeking here.

What difference does the file format of the draft book make?

Lots. Exploring the pros and cons of eight different file formats covers the rest of this blog post.

Paper sheets in a box

Paper is my favourite way to start to start a book draft. I go back to paper during later drafts, printing off a copy and reading it while annotating a second “outline book” in Post-It notes with improvements.

Pros:

1. Scale out the display. Instead of looking at my beloved book through a small laptop-sized pane of glass, I can (and have!) spread out a paper draft of a novel across the entire living room floor.
2. Operating System independent. I can use paper no matter what OS you choose.
3. A universal transfer format. (As long as we agree that universal here means “you write in a language I can read.”)
4. Batteries not required. No Internet needed, neither.
   • Works well during power outages.
   • Works well during ferry trips
   • Works well at that island retreat you’re staying at where the Internet connection is spotty at best.
5. Understood by a large swath of humanity.
6. Well tested. Proven to work for hundreds of years for countless authors and beta readers.
7. Arguably the lowest initial “up front” cost.
8. I cannot tell you the last time I had to upgrade the OS on my pen because of some stupid vendor requirement.

Cons:

1. Expensive to transport. One day, I hope to live in the same building as my beta readers, but until then, I will fling bits and use a digital file format.
2. Difficult to maintain. A single master paper copy is easy to lose, to damage, to destroy, to misplace, or to fragment.
3. Storage can become challenging. Child, dog, all the other physical papers crowding the shelf and The Ravages of Time conspire to hide that one draft I want.

Markdown in vim

This is what I use and love. I’ve raved about it before. It’s not a good fit here for beta readers, though.

Pros:

1. Markdown is plain text. I like plain text for editing. I really, really, REALLY cannot emphasize this enough.
   • Markdown is essentially plain text with some additions that add some (but not all!) of the structure you’d want. Headings are distinct from list items and both are distinct from emphasized text.
   • Text files are files I can take anywhere. This is extremely important to me.
     • I wrote a hefty novel in StarOffice format. When the vendor discontinued that software, I had to figure out how to export that to a different format. Eventually I got tired of tasks like that and started writing in Markdown.
     • I wrote a large wiki of facts about my novel’s setting in TiddlyWiki format. Platform independent, right? The theory is that all the facts could be stored in a single HTML file; the browser read from and wrote to that file. When the browser vendor discontinued local file system writes, I had to figure out how to export that to a different format. Eventually I got tired of tasks like that and started writing in Markdown.
   • The Page Layout, margins, widows and orphans, and all of that typesetting can come at the end, later, after you’ve decided which words to keep and which to toss.
   • Text files are going to be with you after vendors discontinue their file formats.
   • Text files can be read by any of your friends. I’ve written files in OpenOffice and LibreOffice format, sent them to friends, who then say, “I cannot read this. Can you send it to me in Microsoft Word?”
   • Don’t just take my word for it. Some stranger on the Internet :-) wrote

   These Markdown files can be edited anywhere, on any device. You’ll never corrupt or break them. They are future-proof, and infinitely portable. And they sync like butter.

2. From plain text I can produce any output.
   • With Pandoc I can (and have!) taken Markdown input and produced output in the following formats:
     • Microsoft Word .docx
     • Rich Text format .rtf
     • digital books .epub
     • HTML output for web pages
     • LaTeX
3. Vim lets me run a wiki and a text editor in one platform-independent tool.
   • I have over a million words accessible in one place.
4. Vim works through a terminal
   • In theory, this would let someone start an ssh session to a home machine and work on a novel while somewhere else.

Cons:

1. Vim is not easy to learn.
   • After using it for over twenty-five years, I find it makes everything easier.
   • The first five years were the hardest.
2. Comments are not easy for beta readers to create.
   • Comments in Markdown are a confused term.
   • I want comments from a beta reader. “Commenting out” a line means something different to a systems administrator.
3. Hard to transport.
   • If my novel is 38 chapters and each has its own markdown file, then you’re sending an archive of files to someone else.
   • Kind of the opposite of the Google Docs option below.

If you’ve got a way to change my mind, please let me know!

PDF - Adobe Portable Document Format

Adobe PDF has been around since 1992 and is a great way to read documents. I’m highly confident that if you create a file in PDF format and send it to me, what I read will match what you read.

Pros:

1. Easy to open
2. Every OS has some sort of PDF viewer
3. Pagination and page layout is consistent across all Operating Systems.
4. There is a way to make comments on a PDF file, in theory.

Cons:

1. No one creates a draft in PDF. One always creates a file in some other format, then creates a PDF output and sends this second file on.
   • That’s creating a second step.
   • I’m not against multiple steps in practice. Things are easier if we can avoid additional steps.
2. The author has to have two files open: the commented file to read from, and the source file to incorporate those changes. Additional displays help here. Not everyone has the screen size to make this enjoyable.
3. PDF comments can get caught up in OS and Adobe details.
   • The ability to write comments to a file, send that commented file back to the author, and have the author read those comments varies from OS to OS.
   • I’ve had problems with this in the past.

LaTeX

Pros:

1. I can specify in gory detail exactly how I want my document to look.
2. You can find gems like the SFFMS typesetting class. As in, write your novel in any kind of plain text, then convert it to LaTeX, then apply this style sheet to handle margins and all the other typesetting details.
3. Platform independent
4. Free

Cons:

1. The reader has to chew through the gory detail of exactly how I want my document to look.
2. Only typesetters and mathematics professors care for this level of detail.
3. The SFFMS class was created in 2003. I’m dubious about how thoroughly it is used these days.
4. Not easy to set up.
5. Not easy to become proficient in this.

Pages

This brings us to the first product in the set of proprietary vendor tools. Pages is what Apple Incorporated calls a word processor.

Pros:

1. Free with Mac OS once you’ve bought your Mac.
2. Can open Microsoft Word files in docx format.
   • This allows using the “Comments and Changes” function in Pages to read and write comments on a MS Word file.

Cons:

1. Not OS independent.
   • Everyone has to have an expensive product from Apple Incorporated to make this work
   • “Other than accessing iCloud through a browser, there is no program that can officially view or edit a Pages file using Windows or Linux.” - quote from the Pages wiki page.
2. So proprietary that pandoc cannot create output in “Pages” format. Pandoc has to create something like Rich Text Format or Microsoft Word format, then import it into Pages, and hope that the formatting and “smart quotes” and such doesn’t get kicked too hard.
   • Note that RTF is itself (a) a proprietary format, and (b) released 34 years ago, and (c) last updated 13 years ago.
   • This is another reason why I like plain text for editing.
3. Not easy to work with very very large files in Pages. Also not easy to sew together numerous smaller files.

Scrivener

I haven’t tried Scrivener, so I should really stop here. I’m putting forth my opinions based on what I’ve read and heard about from second-hand sources.

Pros:

1. Great way to collect individual ideas, and sort them. (“The Corkboard”)
2. Supports numerous output formats.

Cons:

1. See “Pages” above for my rant about proprietary formats. Content in Scrivener is stored in /.scirv format.
2. I don’t want to spend the money for the licence for a proprietary format.
3. Personally, I think I have built part of what Scrivener provides using Vim and Markdown.
4. To the best of my knowledge (and I confess I have not tried this), there’s no way for one Scrivener user to send a draft in /.scirv format to a second Scrivener user.

Google Docs

What if, instead of moving files around, the draft existed in a single place In The Cloud, and everyone involved in the process worked on the same single draft? Hello, Google Docs! I have used this at employers for corporate information that was, er, “internal”. (Now I’m wondering again about how “internal” your document is when it’s stored In The Cloud.)

Pros:

1. If there are more than two people involved, this provides a clear consistent method to ensure everyone is looking at the same copy of the same file.
2. Free
3. Easy and straightforward to use.

Cons:

1. There Is No Cloud. It’s Just Someone Else’s Computer
   • Do you trust that “Someone Else” with your novel?
2. The editor I worked with on my first published work thought the lag with Google Docs was so slow, the editor rejected that option outright.
3. This goes against how I think.
   • I prefer to think of First Draft, Second Draft, Third Draft, … Final published work.
   • Google Docs just extends and adds comments to one file, indefinitely, until all parties are exhausted. Or that first file is cropped and a second file is created.
4. Google is still a vendor. This is still a proprietary product.
   • What happens if/when Google goes out of business? If you tell me Google will never go out of business, I will tell you that Blockbuster was also popular for a while, as were Compact Discs for music.
5. Not easy to use this once your Internet connection goes out, gets slow, is spotty while you’re at that island retreat writing.

Microsoft Word

Pros:

1. Used everywhere.
2. “Track Changes” feature is easy to use for comments and feedback.
   • If you move a block of text within the draft, the comment follows it. Nice.
   • Pages can use the same “Track Changes” feature that MS Word provides.

Cons:

1. I am not a fan of Microsoft
2. I am not a fan of Microsoft Windows
3. I am not a fan of the Microsoft Word GUI
4. Proprietary file format.
   • Microsoft already changed it from .doc to .docx and you just know they’re going to change it again.

Final recommendation is Microsoft Word

As a beta reader I would like that draft in Microsoft Word format. I will open the draft in my copy of Pages and add comments, and M will see my comments when I send it back.

I also reserve the right to improve my position on this after time and experience. I mean, that’s what I’ve done throughout my life. Over twenty-seven years ago I wrote a master’s thesis in Microsoft Word, and did not enjoy it, so I started looking for different products. I will keep looking.

First Post in almost Four Years

I blow the dust off this blog, put the key into the account and get it to turn over, at least once, after a gap of almost four years. 

This blog has been quiet. The good news behind that is: I've been writing. Completed four more NaNoWriMo-equivalent drafts, each over 52,000 words, in the last three years and change. One in November 2018, one in June 2019, a third in November 2019 and a fourth in November 2020

Next step: getting much of that published.

Novel Accomplished

I've finished 50,100 words for my National Novel Writing Month entry.

I had a really good time. I thought hard about an outline, I made progress every day, and I have a completed first draft that I really enjoy. It was not easy, fitting the writing of a novel into working full time and raising a family. It was, however, truly rewarding. Now, to take a deep rest, then Christmas. After that: revising and producing the second draft while finding an agent and a publisher.

Why All The Silly

Recently I watched Thor: Ragnarok in the cinema with my family. I am a fan of the Marvel movies and I enjoyed this movie the best of them all.

I met a good friend of mine a few days later for dinner. He told me that while his wife and daughter went to the film, he decided to skip it because, as he put it, he "thought it looked too silly."

His comment surprised me in three directions. For one, I began to wonder what a Serious Super Hero Movie looked like. I guess that would be Batman: The Dark Knight by Christoper Nolan. Or the Daniel Craig set of James Bond movies, like Skyfall or Spectre.

For another direction, I wondered about the campaign style I run, and what this friend and the other participants must think of it. My campaign setting is called "County Playground." It is not called "The Suffering of Carlos the Grim on His Descent Into Hell." I'm trusting that at least one of the players will give feedback when I ask for it. I have asked for feedback, and no one has said, "Too Silly. Dial it back."

For a third, I am really enjoying the novel I am writing for National Novel Writing Month. It is not a "GrimDark" tale. It is an adventure comedy in a fantasy setting. When I have bad days, I wonder how it will sell. When I have good days, I ignore whether it will sell or not, and just write.

I can appreciate A Song Of Ice And Fire and the moody television it inspires. Myself, I like to use my free time to make stories and role playing game (RPG) campaign settings where the plot, tone, and characters promote laughter, not weeping. Although to be honest, some of the puns do evoke tears.

I read an interview with Taika Waititi, director of Thor: Ragnarok, and thought he said it best:

This film is so bold and colorful and vivid and bright. 
It’s a celebration of comic books. I think in this day and age, 
when cinema’s so dark and sad, and such a reminder of how 
dark and sad the world is, it’s so nice to have a ray of light, 
and a movie that makes you smile.

The director's words are on my mind, when I get inspired by Kings Of The Wyld and Galavant, and when I work on my own creative pursuits.

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Four Books At A Time reviews Battle Stove Spectacular

I am very thankful to have received my first book review. Four books at a time was gracious enough to review Battle Stove Spectacular. Please enjoy the full review. I would like to know what you think.

National Novel Writing Month

I've created my NaNoWriMo account and plan to write a novel in November, as part of National Novel Writing Month. A short post, this one. More time spent on the outline for the novel, code named EFALS. I hope your writing is going well!

Battle Stove Spectacular available through VPL

My ebook accepted to Vancouver Indie Authors collection

It is my delight to announce that my novella Battle Stove Spectacular has been purchased by the Vancouver Public Library as part of the VPL's new Indie Authors collection.

Here is a direct link to Battle Stove Spectacular in the VPL Indie Authors collection.

I live in Vancouver, B.C. and I am an independent author. The VPL Indie Authors collection gives this mission statement on their site:

As part of our commitment to helping residents share their own stories, Vancouver Public Library is creating a collection of self-published books by local authors. The goal of this collection is to promote local books that might not be available through traditional channels, both to increase exposure for local writers and to increase the selection for local readers. We welcome both print books and ebooks.

I hope this encourages you to seek out more ebooks.

More

If you like what I've written here and want to help support future posts, please:

• Like or Retweet this page
• Follow me: on Twitter, FaceBook, or Google Plus
• Check out standardeyre.com
• Take a look at my contributions to the StackExchange collection of sites.
• Add a comment to this page

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