Here we pause for a moment

It's pretty nice.

This weekend, I'm going to be away at the National Eisteddfod (my son, who as I have mentioned before is more talented than me, is in the finals again) with nothing but a notebook, the Penguin Thomas Ligotti collection and a copy of the Gospel According to Luke. So there won't be a fiction update until Wednesday, probably.

In the meantime though, I have four copies of the Chariot ashcan edition remaining from yesterday's convention (it was rammed, seriously, people being turned away at the door) after I gave a talk about politics in role-playing games without managing to offend anyone.

Does anyone want one? It's the full game text, spiral bound on nice paper, minus the number page and a couple of the poems. They'd be £10 plus postage, and I'll sign them. Leave a comment if you want one. First come, first served.

(Un)Conventional

So tomorrow – that's May 28th – I'll be at the Swansea Comics and Games Convention, manning a table with copies of MSGtm, ashcan copies of Chariot, and copies of the martial arts fantasy game Honour, which I was kindly sent from Hong Kong by a lovely bloke called Dom Parry, a fellow member of the IGDN, for the selling. All of these things will be on sale at a cut price.

At 12.30 I'll also be a panel of one with a talk entitled "Dice Problems: Politics in Role-playing Games." It's not, regardless of what you might think, about ethics in game journalism.

You'll also, by the way, want to stick around for my friend Drift in his guise as donotrunwithpixels, maker of the angriest music ever made using old Game Boys.

The Prince of Exiles, 9

I am sat in the mouth of the cave. I've been here for most of the night, unable to sleep for fear I might dream about what I have done. The light of the sunrise spreads now in golds and violets and fleeing shadows across the far side of the valley. A grey-furred wild dog of the kind we were eating last night stalks something I can't see, vanishes behind a stone.

The Prince of Exiles, 8

While I locate my pack – it contains a woollen jacket of sorts, which I shrug on and lace up with a sort of gratitude – Svaathe pulls the meat away from the fire, sniffs it, then picks up her knife and stabs it.
 

"Done." She starts carving hunks off the bone. "God, I'm hungry."

Chariot is now available at Createspace

The proof copy of the Createspace version of Chariot (which will transition to Amazon in the next couple weeks) arrived today, and it's fine, so I activated it, which means you can buy the colour/matte cover version here. The gloss cover and black and white versions will be available from DriveThruRPG presently.

I have a shop page for my wares, by the way, meaning you can find the various formats and outlets for Chariot and MSG™ with ease.

And buy them, so I can start eating again. 

The Prince of Exiles, 7

I know their names.

The Prince of Exiles, 6

I can see a figure appear, briefly; it raises a hand. I reciprocate and the figure withdraws. I push a lock of hair from my eyes, and begin to make my way down the valley wall.

Buy Chariot

Chariot is now available to buy in PDF format. Print formats – colour and black and white – are coming soon, as is a Kindle version.

Edit: here's the Kindle version.

(Note that because there's male and female nudity in the art and it's really not for kids, you have to be logged in to DTRPG to be able to see the description. Can't help that.)

The Prince of Exiles, 5

Not apparent from the plain, a path, well-worn, winds around the side of the hill, fringed by rocky grass and the occasional bladed, hostile-looking palm. Further into the hills, a few miles back, I realise that I have left what I own – not a whole lot – in a cave, and I have left the others there.

And then it comes to me, as surely as the name I had in that other life of disappointment and failure has faded, leaving me with no name of my own, that I left others behind.

This is what the cover looks like

That is literally it: this is what Chariot's cover looks like (and thanks to Winter-Hébert Design for making it so very, very beautiful).

Which is notice that Chariot is heading off to be approved by Amazon Createspace and DrivethruRPG.com today; while I won't quite have print copies ready for the Swansea Comics and Games Convention there will be ashcan editions which will include vouchers for the final version, and which will be collector's items in their own right.

The Prince of Exiles, 4

The blade drops from my own fingers, thuds onto the ground. I look at it, with the vague knowledge that it wasn't mine anyway. Weariness spreads like a stain through my body, across my shoulders, over my brow. The smell of slaughter begins to overwhelm me.

No one's going to bury them.

The Prince of Exiles, 3

I open my eyes. Breathing heavily, panting, the growing feeling of acid across my shoulders, my chest, my calves, record of long, hard exertion.

Everything smells of the slaughterhouse.

The Prince of Exiles, 2

It's worst when I'm alone; when I am doing chores in the house, the repetitive tasks that force me to be alone with my thoughts, in the moment, where I can't drown it out with TV, or books, or writing. Laundry, washing dishes. Then I get flashes, things pass across my mind's eye and hungrily my mind pounces on them, gnaws on them, snaps at me if I try to push them away.

I have come to be afraid of silence.

The Prince of Exiles, 1

Fig. 207. Sigil of the Prince of Exiles.

"What is it you see now? Tell me."

A mishmash of images, smells, feelings. Few words, fewer I understand.

On bite-size serials

A ledger, well over 30 years old, with nothing yet in it.

So from about 1999 to 2011 I had a personal blog, and for big chunks of that time I used to write -- along with the usual arguments about politics, annual Eurovision Song Contest reviews, film and TV talk and poetry -- fiction in small daily serialised chunks, which I somewhat cutely tagged "bite-size serials".

Imminence

Svaathe, Knight of Cups.

OK, so. The final update before publication.

Helio Arcanaphus is Not Impressed

Judgement

The new art for Pren.

An update, then.

So over the last year, while writing, I've been making art for Chariot.

He leaves behind his sweetheart, to fight

Stel, a woman of Kudra.

I count the time in years before you came
And time since I have left you;
And in between is gain, and loss.
I grieve for you; I dread that I might see you,
Wonder if you're happy where you are, I
Dream of you as if you were forgiving,
Graceful, kind, the traits that I imposed on you
Because I loved you.

I don't love you anymore.

Like one told she is an addict when the
Question of her drinking is suggested,
You took upon yourself the name of monster;
Yes, you'd kill a child, you say, in order
To protect your own and yet you'd call
Me less than decent, less than good
For standing by a bias for the weak.
I couldn't stay here.

I don't love you anymore.

-- Lament of Gideon, Prince of Exiles,  addressed to his Kudrahite Sweetheart