Life Reset Button & the Future

“Have you turned it off and on again?”

— Roy, ‘The IT Crowd’

I did not know that life had a reset button but now I can tell you that God is the one who gets to push it.

My life changed one night when that button was pushed. Before that moment, I was an author, a writer of books in a publishing marketplace that was increasingly hostile and rapidly dissolving in front of me. The next moment, I was working as a full-time employee (something I had not done for over thirty years) with actual health benefits and paid time off in a leading edge company where I work with an amazing team of young creatives forging the future of immersive entertainment. I am the Director of Story Development at THE VOID — and if you have not yet seen what we’re doing there, please visit the website. For me, the work we’re doing there makes me feel young again.

Now THAT was a major reset!

I felt like my previous life had been switched off and an entirely new life emerged instantly with the reboot.

You might lose any progress

One of the problems with just ‘switching off’ your computer (at least, so I am often warned by my operating system) is that ‘you might lose any progress made in your work.’ Interestingly, the same applies when one’s life is reset.

More to the point, one has to deal with the remnants of the life before the reset.

So, for those of you wondering just what ‘progress was lost’ in the reset and what it may mean to you, here is my current list of life and work changes caused by our reset. I deeply regret the inconvenience to you in many of these issues and can only ask for your understanding and forgiveness. Laura and I emerge from one of the most trying times in our lives into what we are beginning to think of as RLife 2.0. Let’s hope it’s not a beta version. Even so, this is a blueprint which time may, of necessity, modify.

BOOKS

I currently have eight book titles which need to be finished outside of my 9+ hours each day at THE VOID. These include (in order of my new expected completion):

• UNDERWORLD ASCENDANT: This is a book I am contracted to complete for the Underworld Ascendant computer game project as part of their successful Kickstarter. The reason this one is first is because this one is the shortest of the outstanding contracts and offers the quickest route to completion. I am expecting to finish this manuscript next month. Contract fulfilled.
• MORDALE: This is the last book in the collectable book series which Laura and I are privately publishing. We have just three chapters to write in that book to complete it. It is well over a year overdo at this point. Given my schedule, we now expect to complete that book over our family vacation in the first week in July. This fulfills our commitment to our backers and concludes the series.
• SHARDS OF THE AVATAR: This is the second book in the ‘Shroud of the Avatar’ series I have been doing with Richard Garriott for his amazing online MMORPG game. This book I am looking to complete this fall. This leaves one book remaining in this contract.
• UNSUNG: The third book in the Nightbirds series I have been doing with my wife. I very much look forward to completing this book with Laura this coming winter, hopefully before the end of the year. This completes this series and contract.
• AVATAR BOOK III:  This would be the final book in the ‘Shroud of the Avatar’ series with Richard Garriott. I suspect this would be completed next spring and would conclude this series and contract.
• KNIGHTS OF THE RED BAND: I have wanting to write these three books for several years now and have been most appreciative of the patience of my publisher in getting this series underway. The first book is going to be expanded from its original outline and, with all of my other contracts completed, I will be concentrating on these final three books at the rate of one each year beginning next year.

These are all of the contracts that are outstanding from my ‘pre-reboot’ life.

Conventions

I have attended every Gencon Convention for over thirty years. I regret to announce that I will not be able to attend the GENCON convention this year for the first time in three decades. My work schedule simply will not permit it.

For that matter, I will not be available for convention appearances for the foreseeable future unless very special circumstances present themselves. I will miss seeing you at the cons — we have many dear friends we see when we are able to attend — but this is RLife 2.0 and Laura has become very protective of my time off.

Sojourner Tales & Other Websites

We still love Sojourner Tales. We’ve had a few setbacks, not the least of which was our websites all going down and being inaccessible last weekend. Laura’s popular Baking Outside the Box website is now back up and running but it was a frantic few days trying to get everything operational again. However, it also gave us an important opportunity. The original website structure we chose for Sojourner Tales was a multi-site installation which at the time was required given what we were attempting to do in the marketplace. Since that first design, however, there were great improvements to how we could handle producers and their ability to put up their own product. This makes possible a much simpler, stable design.

So, I’ll be redesigning the website. I don’t have a great deal of time for this (as you can see from the above) but while we’re at it we’ll be folding in a number of our other websites into THIS website. Dragonsbard will be brought into this website as will our Scribe’s Forge Writing Seminars. I guess there really isn’t such a thing as a ‘little remodeling’ once you get started.

Meanwhile, we are actively pursuing a new distribution deal for Sojourner Tales. We’re very excited about that — and about not having several pallets filled with game boxes choking our garage.

Our Apologies and Thanks

So our life is rebooted. We are sorry to anyone we have hurt along the way of this transition: we have only ever wanted to serve you as best we can. If you are still waiting for that game or that book, please know that we are keenly aware of you and that we will fulfill our promise in time.