A big, nasty snow storm is blowing in (it started snowing around 6:00 AM this morning), so I thought I’d come into the office to get 5-6 hours of work in before the “an inch an hour snowfall” starts around 3:00 PM. Not looking forward to the 9-14 inches being predicted. Looking out my office window at 11:30 AM, and it has suddenly started to snow much more heavily than it had been. Even the birds and two squirrels that were here eating at the bird feeder have flown off for cover. That can't be good.
The Winter of 2013-2014 is shaping up to be a brutal, snowy and fridgid one for Michigan. The kind of hard winters I remember growing up in the 1960s and 70s and even the early 80s. Plus temperatures have been very low; teens and single digits. Wind-chill factor has put us in the subzero category a number of days the last week or two. Ick.
I don’t mind snow or shoveling or brooming off one or two inches of snow, but when you start getting above 4 inches, it can be miserable. I usually try to clear the driveway, patio and street every 2-4 inches, which means I'll be out shoveling several times today.
The last 8 years or so, our Michigan winters in the Metro Detroit area have been unusually mild and the snowfall seldom more than an inch or two at a time. As a result, I have not invested in a new snow blower (haven’t had one since 2004). Brooming or shoveling off and inch or two of snow is no big deal, and with my diabetes, I figure the exercise does me good. Sure, we would get one big snowfall, dumping 6-10 inches, but the rest would be light, 1-2 inches with the occasional 3-4 inch snowfall. No big deal.
But this year we are getting hammered.
8-10 inches fell on the weekend of December 14th. The heaviest snowfall that early in a couple of decades. We got another 9 inches in our area for New Year's Day last week, and now we’re getting clobbered with 9-14 inches today through tomorrow morning. Yikes! I just hope the rest of the winter isn’t going to be like that. Not sure if Julius, and especially Wayne who lives 30 miles north of the Palladium offices where they are expecting 11-15 inches of snow, will be able to make it into the office on Monday. Roads are still only so-so from the New Year's Eve and New Year's Day dumping. And temps are dropping down for 30 today to 4 or 5 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday. Even colder on Tuesday. I might have everyone just stay home tomorrow.
I’m sure glad the reprint of Dragons and Gods™ arrived early, on Friday. It was scheduled for a Monday delivery. We sold out of it and a couple other titles during the Christmas season, but this fun book – suitable for use in Rifts® (complete with M.D.C. stat notes) as well as the Palladium Fantasy RPG® – is so popular that I sent it to the printer for a full reprint. This is a dynamic sourcebook with big ideas and rules for creating gods, their powers and their followers, as well as presenting an array of deities and dragons common to the Palladium World you can drop right into your game, be it Fantasy or Rifts®. Great artwork too. This title also has fond memories for me, because I wrote it with my pal, the late, great game designer Erick Wujcik. If you’ve never taken a look at Dragons and Gods™ , I highly recommend it. In fact, with the Minion War™ soon to erupt on Rifts® Earth via Megaverse® in Flames™, you may find a book about dragons and gods to be very useful.
A lot of other stuff is percolating too. I spent most of last week working on end of year and business related stuff. I’ll be assigning the rest of the artwork to The Rifter® #65 and other projects today and tomorrow. I’m dying to get back into the final editing and writing of Rifts® Northern Gun 2 and Megaverse® in Flames, among other things. There will certainly be a lot of good stuff to talk about in the weeks and months to come.
Keep your eyes peeled for the next Weekly Update as it will be a new and expansive one. From reprints, special editions and a batch of new releases in the pipeline, there is a great deal is going on at Palladium. And all are things that should interest our fans. Until then, keep those imaginations burning bright.
Kevin Siembieda
Publisher, Writer and Surrogate Santa
© Copyright January 5, 2014 Palladium Books Inc. All rights reserved.
Rifts®, The Rifter®, RECON®, Splicers®, Palladium Books®, The Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game®, Phase World®, Nightbane®, Megaverse®, The Mechanoids®, The Mechanoid Invasion®, Coalition Wars® and After the Bomb® are Registered Trademarks of Palladium Books Inc. RPG Tactics™, Beyond the Supernatural, Chaos Earth, Coalition States, Dead Reign, Heroes Unlimited, Ninjas & Superspies, Minion War, Mysteries of Magic, SAMAS, Thundercloud Galaxy, Three Galaxies, Vampire Kingdoms, 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.