The Quest for a Title

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I’ve been struggling to try and come up with a title for my sequel to Kensei. The general theme of the sequel is about family expectations. Or, at least, that’s what I’m trying for. Who you want to be versus who your parents (or grandparents, or whatever) want you to be. A lot of family legacies come up for Jamie and other characters.

Mixed into this is that my villain is an Italian WW2 supervillain brought into the present. I worked with an Italian friend to develop the character, and tied the villain into the Italian Futurist movement, which later had connections to the Italian Fascist movement. Especially since there’s an element of breaking away from the past. So I thought I might also tie into that.

Some titles I cribbed from the Futurist Manifesto include:

  • Sing the Love of Danger
  • The Love of Danger
  • The Cure for the World
  • Demolish Museums
  • Useless Admiration of the Past
  • Our Insolent Challenge

 

From looking at quotes about ancestors and inheritance, I turned up, The Violence of Our Ancestors. And then I had also jotted down Heir Apparent and Heir Unapparent, both of which have been used many times.

Thoughts? Alternatives? I appreciate any help I can get, especially from friends that have been beta readers.

Kensei: Rereleased

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KenseiTwo years after being published in the ebook bundle titled Cobalt City Rookies, the rights have reverted back to me and I’ve been given permission to self-publish it. It marks an opportunity for me to do some new things with the book that I couldn’t do when Timid Pirate put it out. First among these is the opportunity to offer it as a stand alone book with a print edition.

Where can you get a copy? I’m glad you asked! It will be distributed a bit farther afield as time goes on, but here is where it is currently available. I will update this info as more options become available.

  • Goodreads Giveaway: I’m giving away five signed print copies! Winners will be selected December 25th.
  • Patreon: Patrons who support my Patreon page at $5 or higher get immediate access to the ebook, as well as every other digital book I’ve put out either as myself or as Mad Scientist Journal. Those who are backing me on December 31st at the $10 will receive a print copy as well.
  • Amazon: Available on the Kindle or in print. Those who order the print version will also receive the Kindle version at no extra cost.
  • Other eBook retailers: Smashwords, Txtr, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iBooks, Oyster, Scribd, Inktera
  • Other Book Stores: Barnes & Noble. Within six to eight weeks (so, around January) this should be available through other book stores. It’s unlikely to be on the shelves, but you can special order it.

Kensei Universe?

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Ever since a friend suggested on my Patreon page that I do a Kensei serial, my brain has been picking away at the idea. When it first came up, I pitched it to my wife, Dawn. Any writing I did on it would have to go through her for editing. Assuming a weekly short of about 5,000 words, could she handle that on top of the work she does for Mad Scientist Journal?

The short answer is “No.” But we compromised and said, “We’d do it for the right amount of money.” So I put it as the second milestone on Patreon. (The first is to cover the costs of Mad Scientist Journal.) Mostly the money is intended to compensate my lovely wife for helping with another one of my weird schemes.

Since then, I’ve been poking around ideas for what I would write. I have a lot of little seeds for sub-plots that I’ve jammed into my Kensei books. I don’t necessarily know how I’m going to resolve them all in the other two books I have planned. It may be easier to just turn them into plots for serials.

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Space Cowboy Archetypes

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After watching Guardians of the Galaxy a few times in the theater, I’ve felt more inclined to try and dust off my idea for a space cowboy Apocalypse World hack. I’ve yet to successfully complete an Apocalypse World hack of any sort, so this might be a dubious effort. But I figure I can at least poke at it for a bit.

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D&D Starter Set!

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I recently ordered the new Starter Set for D&D 5th Edition. In part to get a cheap look at what the new version was like. In part to check it out before I tried buying one for my niece. It’s a pretty big box, and looks like it’s filled to the brim:

D&D-box1

After a cursory glance at the stuff on top, I dug out everything to see what all they included. And I ran into this:

D&D-box2

It appears that the majority of the box is really just that filler box. The actual contents are just two booklets (the basic rules and an adventure, which has some GMing tips), a set of polyhedral dice (though only one d10, even though it notes you’ll need to do percentile rolls in the book) and a few pre-gen characters.

D&D-box3Somehow I thought they’d include something like a grid mat, maybe some cheap cardboard miniatures, something. Nope. This box is mostly filler.

I’ll probably still buy it for my niece. It looks like it’s an approachable intro. I’m just underwhelmed by the presentation.

 

Leadership Training!

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I recently completed the four days of training in King County’s “Leadership Academy“, which was offered through the new Training and Development Institute. It’s free for County employees to attend, and open to “community partners.” So in addition to other County employees, I met people who work with local non-profits and other local government.

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Checking in On the Whole “Figure Out My Life” Thing

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This post has ended up being longer than intended. There’s a lot of frustration. You’ve been warned.

I haven’t written much recently about my progress for a couple reasons. Part of it is that I’ve been pretty busy during Camp NaNoWriMo, working on a novel that I under outlined and had to improvise frantically with. So that was fun. I hit 50,001 words and stopped. I need to send it to my wife to see how awful she thinks it is. It’s gone into a lot of places I hadn’t intended or anticipated, and I don’t know how I feel about that.

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My First Date with Centerpoint

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Before I get into my recent visit to the Centerpoint Institute, I thought I’d share a couple other related bits of news that don’t fit in elsewhere.

First off, the HR person from the Career Support group sent me some pages from a book called Do What You Are, specifically listing out likely career possibilities that fit with my Myers-Briggs personality type (INFJ). Some of what it says in abstract seems like it matches my personality. But the specific jobs seem less like a good match. I half wonder if they mean the same thing I do when I think “introvert.”

A lot of the things listed are very social: career counselor, teacher, social worker, “director, social service agency,” crisis hotline operator, “diversity manager-human resources.” A lot of these leave me with a feeling of cold dread in my stomach. “I have to talk to how many people?!”

There’s also a part of me that wonders if my general stress level is exacerbating my social anxiety, making it harder for me to think about jobs that require a lot of human interaction.

Second, in the interest of trying to offset some of my expenses (especially related to Mad Scientist Journal), I’ve started a Patreon page. So you can show your love with moneys: http://www.patreon.com/bolthy

So anyway, let’s talk about my visit to Centerpoint.

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