Steady progress

I'm watching the European Grand Prix (Formula One racing, of which I'm a big fan) on video right now. The coverage was over almost two hours ago, but I didn't get up in time to watch it live. So far I haven't missed a single race. I saw several live (including the Australian Grand Prix, which ended at 4:30 in the morning back in April), but most on tape. It's been a great year for Maclaren fans (of which I'm one). Maclaren is in the lead in constructor points, and young Lewis Hamilton ha been having a great year (this race not withstanding). It's been an excellent F1 season.

So how have we been doing? Okay, I guess. Logan is about three weeks away from going back to school, which still throws me as I'm just now (mentally) used to us being in the summer. This has been a weird summer, as I've been busy working on the roleplaying supplement pretty much every day.

As some of you may be wondering, the book is going pretty good. I'm not as far along as I'd like, but I've been concentrating on the truly creative parts of the book, the parts I knew would take the most time. This means that for the rush to the end I'll be mostly writing historical facts, which takes a lot less time.

I hope to be at the 40,000 word mark by the end of today. I finished the chapter on the combat rules (which is going to end up about 10 pages long instead of my estimate of 4!). The introduction and reference sections are done. I'm mostly finished the adventure, which is the last chapter of the book. We're playtesting it, with one session under our belts and another planned for next weekend. I know in my head what will happen in the adventure; I just have, oh, 6 pages left to write, plus the stats for the non-player characters.

I'm currently finishing the first chapter. The book is based on the idea that super-powered humans (we're not talking Superman abilities here, but more like psychic powers, and the bending of the laws of physics, rather than the breaking of those laws). This is the chapter describing "The Gifted" (the "parahumans" of my universe), the Ethereals (a physical manifestation of The Gift), and the four organizations directly affected by The Gift and The Gifted. I originally had five organizations, but I'm going to have to drop one for space reasons. I can always write it up and release it in a PDF or something after the book comes out. In fact, I have enough ideas running through my head that I might throw a couple of ideas into a PDF file.

Each of the sections I've written has gone over my estimated word count. I'm not that worried about it. I know I'm going to have to trim stuff out of the final manuscript. I expect to have to trim at least 10,000 words some time in September, for an early October finish. When I signed the contract, that date seemed such a long way off...

That's it for this post. I have a lot I'd like to talk about, just no time to do it! Not when I'm spending time watching F1 races! This one has been a good one, though. Incredibly wild with a downpour early in the race, and rain for the last couple of laps. Maclaren came in first, with Fernando Alonso just beating Massa's Ferrari. That puts Alonso within 2 points of the phenomenal Lewis Hamilton, who is leading the championships in his first F1 season. Hamilton was thrown into 10th place due to a mechanical problem in qualifying, and then he fell to 17th after he went off the track due to the rain, but he still finished a respectable 9th. It's going to be an interesting finish to the season.

Okay, enough of that, back to writing...