He's alive!

Howdy, folks!

Yep, I'm alive and kicking!

I finished the manuscript for This Favored Land, the American Civil War supplement for the Wild Talents roleplaying game last week. I was technically late, getting it in about 12:30 a.m. on October 2 (it was due October 1), but everything was cool.

I wish I had about another two weeks to work on it. I didn't have the time to sit back and not think about it for a week and then go back and edit it. I know it will need some editing, maybe some substatinal editing. On the other hand, Alana said to just forget about it for a while. She realizes I'm second guessing myself.

I wish I had another 10,000 words. I had to strip out some good stuff that I wanted to leave in. I didn't get a chance to write a couple of things I wanted to include, such as what it was like to be a sailor during the Civil War. There were a couple of really cool bits, like the loading procedure for cap and ball pistols, that I had to strip out for space reasons.

I'm sure the manuscript will require some heavy editing. I was writing it in a vaccuum, as far as what the publisher wanted. Did I focus too much on the backgrounds of the four groups I created? Was there too much information about life as a soldier? Is the adventure good enough for inclusion, or should it be scrapped?

The adventure was the hardest part to write, which was surprising. I realized part way through testing that my home-grown scenarios are designed with my group's characters in mind. Writing a generic scenario isn't easy. The location is pretty interesting (Missouri), but it's not where I would set a long term campaign of my own, which would either be set in New Orleans, or as a spy campaign in Virginia. I also sort of wich I had created a scenario set in the mountains of North Carolina (I have a thing for hill and mountain country) but I thought that might come out a bit too much like Cold Mountain. I ended up re-writing most of the scenario in the last two weeks based on playtesting. I think the adventure is tighter now.

There's nothing to do now but wait for the feedback, at which point I'll probably be back into heavy-duty writing mode again. I'll keep you posted.