10,000 Miles

Six years ago, I set myself a goal to cycle 10,000 miles. I'm not sure why I made this decision. At the time, I hadn't cycled consistently since I was a boy. But, I'd been watching the Tour de France, and I had bought a used mountain bike...

Well, six years, two bikes, and three broken bones later, I made it. I crossed the goal line somewhere between work and home, which is appropriate since most of those miles came on my daily commute. 

Now what? Do I go for another 10,000? Do I set my sights on 100,000? I don't think so. I don't think it is necessary. I'm still going to keep track of my mileage, because it's fun, but I don't believe I need a goal anymore. Cycling has become a part of my life. I don't do it quite as much as in years past, because my commute has gotten significantly harder, but I still enjoy it. Now, I look for opportunities to get out on the bike.

So, hopefully, me and 'Bonebreaker' still have a few milestones left to hit and adventures left to undertake
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Frostgrave, Info and Images

I have no idea why Amazon has a cover for Thaw of the Lich Lord and no additional information, but here is the official blurb:

Thaw of the Lich Lord is a complete campaign for Frostgrave that will challenge both new and veteran players. Through a series of linked scenarios, players discover the existence of a new power in the Frozen City, one who was old when the great city was still young, and who saw both its rise and its disastrous fall. Warbands will confront the Lich Lord’s minions, race against his agents to seize possession of mysterious artefacts, and brave the perils of Frostgrave in search of his lair. Eventually, they will need to muster all their courage to venture into the depths of the city and face the Lich Lord himself. Not all wizards will seek to stop the Lich Lord, however, and full rules for giving into his corruption and following the dark road to becoming an undead lich are presented for those who crave power and immortality above all else. While the campaign presents many new threats against which wizards and their warbands must test themselves, including an expanded bestiary, it also offers additional resources, such as new henchmen that can be recruited and unique magical treasures that can spell the difference between survival and oblivion.

Also, just released by Northstar today, the first full photograph of an official Frostgrave miniature, sculpted by Mark Copplestone!

Thaw of the Lich Lord

Look what just popped up on Amazon! Due out in November...

Frostgrave - The Countdown Begins!

Two weeks ago, I had the chance to look over the layouts for Frostgrave. It was a nerve-wracking experience. This was my last chance to correct any mistakes or request any changes before the book went off to print. You would think, after the dozens of times I’ve read through my own rules, there wouldn’t be anything left to change, but I managed to find a couple of spells where I thought the wording needed just a little bit of tweaking, just to make the rules clearer. Anyway, the book is out of my hands now, and, I believe, out of Osprey’s for the moment as it has been sent off to the printer. The real waiting begins now.

However, while we are all waiting to the see the finished product, I can, at last, start to talk a little more freely about it and reveal more details.

Here are the basics. The book is hardback, of a similar size to other Osprey hardback wargames. It’s about 140 pages long; I can’t remember the exact page count.  It’s going to retail for £15 or $25, which I think makes it one of the best deals in wargaming.

The game is be supported by a range of miniatures that are being produced as a joint project between Osprey Publishing and Northstar Military Figures. The range will include 10 wizards and 10 apprentices, one pair to represent each of the ten schools of magic in the game. These will be cast in metal. These have been sculpted by some familiar names, including Mark Copplestone, Mark Simms, and Mike Owen.  Also in metal will be a selection of the more unusual soldier types, such as the thief and barbarian. The more common soldier types are going to be covered by a multi-part plastic box set, sculpted by the guy responsible for the Fireforge plastic sets. This box is going to have lots of options for making the rough soldiers of the Frozen City.  Northstar is going to be revealing some shots of the figures over the coming month, and I’ll try to repost them all here. 

All of these will be revealed for the first time at Salute. Northstar will be setting up a display on the Osprey stand to show off the figures. Hopefully, the layouts will also be there so people can have a flip through them. They will also be running a demo game of Frostgrave over in the Wargames Illustrated section.

A week or so after Salute, Northstar will be launching a ‘Nickstater’, where everything will be put up for pre-order and there will be a chance to get special figures and perhaps even get new figures sculpted for the range.

So, that’s where things stand at the moment. I’ll obviously be sharing a lot more in the coming days and weeks, including any imagery I can lay my hands on.

Oh, I can also say, the rulebook is definitely not the last Frostgrave product that Osprey is attending to publish...

Fatherhood

Some days, it means sitting in a rocking chair at 3AM with tissues stuffed up your nose, because you have the same cold that is keeping your baby awake.

The Pace of Writing

I have been writing books nearly continuously for the last six years. In that time, I’ve had seven books published, with three more due out this year. Most of these books have been shorter works, but, considering I’m only a part-time writer with a full-time job, it has been a major time commitment. Now, I’m nearing a break. My last, major commissioned project is nearing completion. I have a couple of other projects on the go, but they are comparatively small.

            The truth is, I’m worn out. My writing pace is incompatible with other life events, most notably the care of my young daughter. With the end of my current projects in sight, it is a good time to take stock and reassess.

I need some time to refill the creative well which is running a bit low. Certainly, the amount I have called upon it has outstripped the time I have spent filling it. For me, there are two ways to restock creativity. The first is through reading. Reading is by far the best way to collect ideas, and ideas breed and multiply. Absorb a few from other writers and pretty soon you’ll be overflowing with new ideas of your own. The other method is travel, seeing new stuff. This doesn’t have to be long trips to strange foreign lands (although those are great), this can really be as little as going to a new neighbourhood, or the valley just over the hill, or even going to a new museum. It doesn’t hurt that I live in a country that is covered in history.

So, going forward, I intend to spend less time and less mental energy on writing and more time reading and seeing new things. I especially want to devote some time to revisiting a few of the authors who originally made me want to be a writer. 

This doesn't means that I’m going to quit writing. I don’t think I could even if I wanted to. I just want to free myself from long term commitments and work on more short pieces. Most importantly, I want to return to writing fantasy short stories, from which I derive the greatest satisfaction. Heck, I might even manage to write a few more blogs.

 Also, I want to spend more time enjoying my works. This is most true for my forthcoming wargame, Frostgrave. I want to be free to participate in the excitement the game will hopefully generate in the gaming community.

Bad Military Science Fiction

I love military science fiction, but the truth is, you could probably read all of the really good examples of the genre in a year or so, and exhaust all of the movies in an explosion-filled long weekend. So, to keep experiencing the genre, I am forced to look to lesser works, in the dwindling hope of finding a lost treasure.  Here are two examples of lesser works that I have recently experienced.

Live. Die. Repeat

This Tom Cruise movie did so bad at theatres, that when they released it on DVD they changed the title from Edge of Tomorrow to the original tag line, Live. Die. Repeat. Secretly, I was hoping that the lack of success of this movie was mainly a reaction of the last Tom Cruise sci-fi ‘blockbuster’, Oblivion, which was truly a piece of space poo. Well, this movie was better than that one, but not by a lot.

The plot is basically Groundhog Day meets alien invaders. While this is amusing and interesting for the first 45 minutes or so, it quickly becomes obvious that the idea works much better in comedy than it does in action. In fact, it is a self-defeating idea. If you can live the same day over and over, changing things until you get them right, then there is no threat. Yes, at some point the repeat cycle is broken, but only after I had quit caring. It’s just as well; the second half of the movie is much worse than the first, becoming such a by-the-numbers Hollywood action movie that I actually groaned a couple of times.

Probably the biggest disappoint for me was the infantry battlesuits which gives the movie its distinctive look. These prove to be mostly irrelevant to the story, in fact they are discarded before the end. However, for most of the time they are on screen, they look kind of ridiculous. Only the main characters are actually shown to be combat effective in them, and Tom Cruise only in the later part of the movie. Everyone else looks weighed-down and generally immobile. This is believable enough, obviously they are trying to turn a soldier into a tank, but if this is the case, why are they using them like infantry, in a D-Day-like assault the beaches attack, where the suits are more harm than good?  

It is now safe to say that Tom Cruise has used up all of the sci-fi goodwill he got from War of the Worlds.

Major by Rick Shelly

In the world of literature, I just finished reading Major by Rick Shelly. This is book four of a seven book series that follows a mercenary soldier up through the ranks. I have not read the earlier books, but this didn’t make any major difference to the plot. That said, if I had read the earlier books, I wonder if I ever would have made it to this one.

Rick Shelly is not a bad wordsmith, in fact, his prose was so smooth and engaging that it kept me reading a lot longer than the plot warranted. The truth is, very little happens in the book. The first four chapters are taken up with the main character sitting on a court martial. It’s interesting enough, but there are no real twists, no surprises, and the whole thing proves irrelevant to the rest of the book. Several chapters of family life and day-to-day routine later, the hero is finally sent out on assignment. A chapter in transport. A chapter meeting the guys who hired him. A chapter looking over the temporary barracks. A chapter meeting the officer in charge of the men he’s hired to train... well you get the idea. By the time there was some action, I’d kind of dozed off. 

I accept that this book is probably a decently accurate version of what a soldier’s life is really like, but I’m not reading this kind of book to hear about ordinary days!

Well, I’ll keep looking.