Another good day of writing & Stuff - July 17

[Kevin]

Today was another long day of writing, and it felt good.

I wish I could say I wrote the rest of Heroes of the Megaverse®, but I can’t. I only spent about an hour or two on it today. I did spend eight hours on it yesterday.

Somehow, I ended up spending two hours writing for Rifts® Vampire Kingdoms™, two and a half hours on the Rifts® Vampire Sourcebook, six hours on Thundercloud Galaxy™ and even half an hour on Warpath™: Urban Jungle. That’s not counting the half hour in the middle of the night when I woke up with ideas and dialog spewing out of my imagination for Warpath™. I had to turn on the light and jot them down in the note pad I keep on the dresser. I also spent a couple hours doing odds and ends, like a brief chat with Alex and Kathy, answering some emails, signing some books and assigning out some artwork for upcoming books.

See, that’s that bad part of trying to stay focused while working on 3-4 titles simultaneously. You can’t -- or at least I can’t -- stay focused on the most pressing topic. I blame Palladium’s intern, Matthew for my mind wandering off on vampires (it's all he's talked about for days) and Kathy for my thoughts on Warpath. Mike Mumah is responsible for Thundercloud Galaxy™ because he needed me to skim more text and send him new art assignments for it.

Hey, at least I was hot writing, did a lot of creative work, and it’s all darn good. I read Alex some excerpts from my Vampire Kingdoms™ writing and he loved it. As for Warpath™, I think I have finally found the “voice” and tone needed for that RPG. That’s important, because without it, you've got junk, and until now, I couldn’t find it. Now that I have, I’ll have to think hard about putting it into the early 2011 production schedule and actually write the darn book with Jeffry Scott Hansen.

Other Odds and Ends

No more electrical outages and Kathy saw her power restored yesterday evening.

This is the last week to purchase Christmas in July Grab Bags. $55-$65+ worth of product for $28 – do it. Order today! Take advantage of this deal while you can. As always, I do my best to give you books you want and need. PLEASE spread the word. The offer ends July 25, 2010.

I wanted to include some select comments that we got with Grab Bags, but forgot. Grrr. Maybe I’ll do some as a Murmur or in the next Update.

Online sales have picked up, but are still sluggish.

The Rifter® #51 looks great and ships Monday to distributors, subscribers and contributors.

The Rifter® #52 is in development. So is a killer new T-shirt and a couple of what I hope will be fun surprises.

I also forgot to mention that I’ll doing a live podcast on Gateway to the Megaverse® on Monday, July 19, around 6:00 PM, east coast time. Its my first one in quite some time.

I’ve put in 13 excellent hours of work and I’m heading home to watch Doctor Who and collapse. I’ll be back bright and early to work on Heroes of the Megaverse® Sunday morning.

Sincerely,
Kevin Siembieda
Publisher, Writer & Game Designer
Palladium Books, 29 years of publishing role-playing games

© Copyright July 17, 2010 Palladium Books Inc. All rights reserved.

Rifts®, The Rifter®, RECON®, Splicers®, Palladium Books®, Phase World®, The Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game®, Megaverse®, Nightbane®, The Mechanoids®, The Mechanoid Invasion®, Coalition Wars® and After the Bomb® are Registered Trademarks of Palladium Books Inc. Heroes Unlimited™, Beyond the Supernatural, Dead Reign, Warpath, Shemarrian Nation, and other published book titles, names, slogans and likenesses are trademarks of Palladium Books Inc., and Kevin Siembieda.

Robotech® and Robotech® The Shadow Chronicles® are Registered Trademarks of Harmony Gold USA, Inc.