Witches and Ray-Guns

Today, I bought a pack of toilet rolls at my local supermarket.

Last year at this time, there was a security guard at the supermarket, just to keep the toilet rolls safe.

We have certainly come a long way in a year.

Someone asked for a list of what series will be progressing from here and what won’t. So, here we go. Keep in mind that this is my thoughts on things now and my thoughts may change. Also, the ordering is based on chronology, more or less, which may make little sense.

• Thaumatology: I keep making plans for another book, but after all this time I don’t think it’s going to happen. Unless I get a brilliant idea, this series is closed.
• Aneka Jansen: Similarly, I don’t think there will be another Aneka book unless I have a revelation.
• Ultrahumans: I’ve gone almost as far as I can with Cygnus & company. There’s to be one more book which wraps up various threads, then the series will end. The book I’m currently working on will fill the superhero genre slot.
• Unobtainium: I have plans for a third book. However, these things are hellish to write, so don’t expect them to appear very regularly.
• Fox Meridian: There’s one more book in this series, then, for personal reasons, I’ll be bringing an end to this series. The Tatsu Yamada books will fill the cyberpunk/detective genre slot.
• Princeps Venator: I do currently plan to continue this series, but not soon.
• Misfits: One more book, when I get to it. No idea when that will be.
• Twilight Empress: Two more books to write, but I’m stalled on the second one. Another tough one to write.
• Death’s Handmaiden: Will continue.
• Tatsu Yamada: Will continue.
• Reality Hack: I have plans for a second book, but I’m having trouble getting it started. Consider this a solo until I actually get the second book out.
• The Zanari Inheritance: Is probably not going to continue.
• The Vanity Case: I started a second book. It may get finished sometime.
• The Eyes of the Huntress: Probably not going to get a second book.
• Gunwitch: Rebirth: A second book is possible, but I have no idea when. I do know what will happen in it, which is a positive sign.
• The Girl Who Dreamed of a Different World: Plans for a second book. Not sure when.
• Age of Atlantis: Return: Plans for a second book. Not sure when.
• The Empress’s Mage: There’s a second book when I get there.

There’s now a dump of character art available on ArtStation. Click on the image to go there.

This took a little longer than expected because I discovered I’d never done an image of Nakano aside from my character reference. He’s a man in a suit; apparently I never thought to actually render him in a suit because it’s just a suit. So, he gets a portrait where everyone else is full body, and I rendered it just for you!

Sign of the Dragon is now available for purchase.

• Smashwords.
• Amazon ASIN: B08ZYR4RVR
  • US
  • UK
  • CA
  • DE
  • AU

Links added a little late due to being out getting shot full of science juice.

This has nothing to do with books. It just interests me. You have been warned and can stop reading if you’re not interested.

I use Edge as a browser (mostly; I still use Chrome for Google maps and translate). Recently, they added a new feature: vertical tabs. So, questions:

• Is anyone using them?
• Why?
• What’s the point?

The last one may need clarification. I tried out vertical tabs. For those unaware, this takes the tabs out of the title bar and puts them in a vertical strip down the right side of the window. So, what this does is make the viewing window for your web page smaller. As far as I can tell, you gain nothing. Can anyone tell me why you would want to use this feature? I just can’t see it. With the tabs in the title bar they effectively take up no space. Is it to do with wanting several hundred tabs open at once? Help!

So, I got called up for jury duty in the middle of a pandemic lockdown. That was a surreal experience.

This is actually the second time since they called me up last year in the middle of the UK’s first lockdown, but that one got cancelled because they hadn’t figured out how to actually hold trials safely. This time, they had, which is good because they apparently have a massive backlog of cases to get through. It’s a good system too. Instead of turning up and waiting to be put on a jury, they get you registered on the first day (in glorious social distanced isolation), and then you call a number each evening to see whether you should come in the next day. In the courtroom, we all sat there wearing masks with plastic shields on three sides, and you always had to use the same seat and desk to avoid potential cross-contamination. Seriously, if this was in a novel, people would call it unrealistic. We all nearly died of hypothermia because the courthouse was so cold, but catching COVID was unlikely.

All in all, since I spent most of the time at home waiting to be needed, this should not have affected my work very much. Except… I got about an hour’s sleep the night before the first day. I didn’t do much better the next night, and that was followed by sleeping through my alarm for several days in a row as my body tried to catch up. (Seriously, I have no idea how I can sleep through that. It shouldn’t be possible.) My brain is much. Stress, I suppose, though I couldn’t say I felt stressed once it was started. I couldn’t concentrate properly, and I’m still trying to get my head back in the right space. I ended up starting a new project for a bit because I couldn’t work out where I wanted the one I’m supposed to be writing to go.

Which means I have a new book partially started. Titans (the image above is the primary protagonist) will become the replacement superhero series when Ultrahumans comes to an end with the next book (whenever that happens). I’ve taken Cygnus and co about as far as I can. I have some plot threads to resolve and then I’ll be calling an end. Titans is a post-apocalyptic superhero setting, if superheroes can really be said to exist after the end of the world as we know it. Meanwhile, Verification of Intent is still slated as the next book out, though if things keep going as they are, I might end up promoting Titans to that slot. It’ll mean a delay after Sign of the Dragon (which is pencilled in for the 29th of March), but we’ll see how things go. At the moment, I’m trying to plot both Verification of Intent and Titans at the same time. I have two timelines open! I’m mad! Jury duty has driven me insane! (Though I was probably insane before…)

Oh, this all assumes the COVID vaccination doesn’t kill me. I was invited to book an appointment today, so I get my first jab in a couple of weeks. Bill Gates will be able to track me wherever I go (not that he couldn’t anyway if he had the slightest interest in doing so). What other awesomely stupid conspiracy theories could I invoke here? With the way my brain is working at the moment, I may even be persuaded to believe them.

There’s a game coming out on April 1st named Outriders. It’s a cover-shooter with superpowers, so nothing special there. It offers solo and co-op play, nothing special there either. The basic plot is that Earth is doomed and a sleeper ship has been dispatched to colonise Enoch, an Earth-like world about 80 years away. You play an Outrider, an explorer/mercenary type with the task of finding out what’s what on the planet. Of course, Enoch holds a deadly secret and blah, blah, now you have to save humanity with lots of bullets and some awesome new powers. It’s different from other game plots, and yet also the same. I’m underselling this: I’m interested enough in finding out what’s what that I plan to play it. If you’d like to see what you think, there’s a demo available for PC, PS4/5 and XBox, which will be available right up to the release date. Link above.

So, more of the same, but there’s a mechanic to this game I find fascinating. The mechanic itself is different, but not so much: in order to heal within a fight, you need to kill things. Each of the four classes has a slightly different mechanism, but they all revolve around you getting HP back when an opponent dies. My personal favourite, for example, is the Trickster, who heals when they kill someone within a certain (short) range. Essentially, you need to play aggressively to win. This has an interesting effect on boss fights.

Typically, due to the limitations of game AI and the lack of imagination of designers, developers make boss fights hard by tossing in adds. You don’t get to face the boss alone, no. Instead, he’ll summon dozens of minions to chip away at your HP and make it impossible to focus on the boss. You need to diminish the opposition and then work fast on the boss before more grunts turn up. Frankly, I find this annoying.

There are two boss fights (one a lesser boss) available in the Outriders demo. I won’t spoil anything by revealing the nature of the fights, but you basically have a fight against a serious boss, solo, and a fight against a lesser boss, with minions. The big boss fight is way harder, despite him having no support. Why? Because minions are your healing mechanism. Yes, the minions make it harder to focus on the boss. They shoot at you and chip away at your HP while their leader is trying to burn you alive. But, if you get low on health, you run over and kill one: instant HP! With the solo fight, you have to be far more tactical, seeking cover and watching out for lingering damage effects. You have to try to kill the boss and you know you’re not going to be able to heal any damage until he’s toast. It totally reverses the general strategy of this kind of game. I like minions in Outriders.

Anyway, if you’re into this kind of thing, the demo takes an evening to play through and I think it’s worth looking at. And it has an interesting game mechanic.