My latest sprite artwork for Era of Four Moons:

…So naturally there are a bunch of things that look odd, or don’t work, or whatever.

I fixed the first one. The card game I coded a while back didn’t work when I first put it up online. Apparently the code snippet I used for sorting your hand neatly by rank and suit works great on my computer, but is too advanced for the server. So for a quick fix I took out the card sorting, and the game now works.

I still have a bunch more to track down and deal with, though.

For five years (and a couple months) I have been working on the “first draft” artwork for Brotherhood of the Black Flag, Volume One: Flag in Flames. Today I completed the last page.

I think I’m in shock. Five years. I’ve been working on this draft for five years. And it’s DONE!!! It’s done, done, done, done, DONE!!!! Yeeehaw!!!

Of course, I still have edits and betareaders comments and more edits. But I can wait to think about all that tomorrow. Today I’m going celebrate.

Yesterday I managed my best performance ever in a round of disk golf (that’s the kind where you throw frisbees into baskets). I actually finished all 18 holes. I’ve never done that before. I’ve always collapsed wheezing and shaking with exhaustion somewhere in the middle.

Of course, it was the least atheletic of all the full-sized golf courses we go to — with only one notable hill to climb. Still, the last time I tried this course I only managed 11 holes, and the time before that about 8. So, go me!

This makes up somewhat for the fact that the family greeted the New Year with a round of stomach flu, and when 2012 arrived I was curled into a ball moaning instead of celebrating. Everyone else in the house followed suit a couple days later. Um, yeah, great way to start the new year. Luckily I don’t believe in omens. I think that I was out of bed and finishing a round of disk golf less than a week later, is far more indicative of how 2012 is going to go, than what I coincidentally happened to be doing when it arrived is. I’m pretty tired today, though.

Across a Jade Sea, the book I wasn’t supposed to be writing, not only suddenly (just over a year ago) decided that I must write it, it also suddenly (a couple months ago?) decided that I must transcribe it. (It was written longhand.) I have finally finished that effort, and although the resulting draft is still pretty rough, I finally have a wordcount for this thing. As of this draft, it’s just over 230K words. (As a reference point, most publishers prefer to see “first novels” of about 100K words.)

So yesterday, I went into my database, and declared by authorial fiat that I didn’t write and transcribe one (huge) book this past year–I wrote and transcribed three 75-80K books: Serendipity’s Tide, Treachery’s Harbor, and Fealty’s Shore. (Lengthwise, dividing it in two might have been better, but structurally three is the better split.)

That means I’ve written not ten, but a full dozen novels so far.

…and it also makes me so far behind on the revising, polishing, and editing end of things that I don’t even want to think about it. Especially since I was just doing that… Serendipity’s Tide is in pretty decent shape, it’s the other two that still need boatloads of work done to them. And I still haven’t got the second Bambi book revised and polished yet.

What happened to my nice little schedule that served me so well all those many years?

I’m feeling proud of myself, because I went a little further than usual on my evening walk two nights in a row.
Here’s to hoping the new distance becomes the usual one. ::crosses fingers::

I spent hours last night and this morning telling the story of Compelled to my family. It was the first time I had told the story since I had written the script, so although many of the kids were familiar with the basic concept, this was the first time they had heard the story in full detail. Telling the story to an interested audience was very, very fun for me. But, at the same time, I kept forgetting exactly where all the little conversations went, and I kept having to back up and fill in important bits that I missed, and I never remember all the really good lines, and, and…

So I feel a bit wistful about how I didn’t really do it justice, and can’t help wishing that someday that story will get told the way it’s supposed to be told… as a graphic novel with really awesome artwork. Or maybe a movie. It would make a really good movie.

The Era of Four Moons expansion for Battle for Wesnoth now has a new campaign available for download called the Panther Lord, and I have just got another project off my to-do list. (Until we start getting player feedback with requests for fixes, of course. But hopefully there won’t be many, and none of them will be in my area of responsibility.) ::crosses fingers::

Would the person who sent me private feedback asking me a question about my “8 Kinds of Camera” writing tutorial, please get in contact with me again? I received the question just fine, but somehow no email address came with it. So I have no way to send an answer back.

The fireflies have been putting on quite a display the last several nights as I took my walk. It’s nice to see them back in their glory — for a couple years after the new drainage system was installed, they were pretty scarce.

And speaking of my nightly walks… the local YMCA is doing a “marathon in a month” challenge to try and get people to walk/run/jog 26 (and change) miles in the next month. I’m used to thinking of myself as being invalidish, and wimpy and stuff, so it was with a bit of amusement that I realized this “challenge” isn’t much of a challenge at all for me. My nightly walk is roughly a mile long, so all I have to do is keep doing what I’ve already been doing and I pass the challenge with ease. It doesn’t really make me any less invalidish and wimpy, but at least it shows that its not because I don’t even try.