The Irvania Blog

Check out the Irvania.com front page for links to new material just posted.

“New material” in this case means “never before posted on the Internet”. Those few of you who have proof-read my first novel, They Who Are Having A Bad Day, will have seen these bits before in earlier revisions.

After five years of no luck trying to catch an agent’s interest and getting the first book published, I decided to change course and start writing a new book, based only somewhat loosely on the first Bad Day book and the material I had planned for the second and third books in that series.

As part of this new strategy, I went ahead with an idea I’d been mulling over for the past few years and posted selected sections of the first novel here on Irvania.com as freebies, to repay you loyal readers out there, to give y’all a teaser of things to come, and maybe even dig up some word-of-mouth interest. If you enjoy the bits, pass the news on to your friends.

The three selections I settled on are sections from the Bad Day book that I felt stood well by themselves, were entertaining and amusing, and yet weren’t likely to be used in the new book. The three selections are:

• Voltoon Walks Through Town - most of the opening of Chapter 2. Following the battle on Gwinn in the first chapter, the Great God Voltoon trudges through the Bad Day capitol city to the traditional post-battle inquest. Voltoon takes a shortcut through the park and encounters the ever-present protesters.
• Benster Aconoyde’s Last Guard Duty - most of the opening of Chapter 3. A background character is introduced, suffers, bemoans her fate, then gets smitten. Includes a brief explanation of the structure of the Bad Day military.
• The Deity Convention - nearly all of Chapter 22, minus the header quotations and chapter intro. Following the Monstrous Jake’s unexpected deification by the desert nomads on the planet Tzuke, The Great God Voltoon takes Jake to a deity convention. While Voltoon tries to get some answers, Jake meets up with a fertility goddess and runs across some old friends. Meanwhile, at the emperors’ convention next door, Todd, the emperor of They Who Are Having A Bad Day, learns some important things about his occupation.

The new book project, tentatively entitled Stories Written on the Side of a Battlecruiser or simply SWOSB, is a first-person account of the Monstrous Jake as he floats in the vast emptiness of space and looks back on his life and loves, his hopes and fears, and tries to work out why he got kicked out of a spaceship yet again.

[I think this one was written in 1998 or 1999. I’m pretty sure it started out as an e-mail on one of the wargaming mailing lists.]

Over the years, a number of game projects have been mentioned from DIPCo, the boardgame (cough) brach of ArmourSoft. Whereas a few of these projects have actually been produced (e.g., Napoleon at Chattanooga, Slargeball) many of them have not. As a public service, we present here a brief list of some of the DIPCo games that never quite made it to life.

• Fallen Empires, Fallen Pants: Originally planned to be a strategic-level Napoleonic campaign system, 24 full-size maps, 18 counters, winner of 8 Academy awards, recommended by 9 out of 10 dentists, currently dating Julia Roberts. Minor changes have been made to the Terrain Effects Chart so the game is now being developed as a strategic campaign game system set in the Generic Legions/Red Chicken Rising universe.
•  Bureaucrat Slayer: No work has ever been done on this, we just thought it was a great title.
•  Great Battles of Lord Alfred St-John Bubba Fumpleton, Duke of New Swansea: Intended to be the most comprehensive and accurate wargame on the Fifth Anglo-Tuscany War. Graphics done by one of my cats. Later on it was decided that the title was too long, so it was shortened to “Excellent Battles of Lord Alfred” (EBoLA). 
•  Hey Sarge They’re Shooting At Us: Dave’s Obligatory Bulge Game: After trying all the WWII games out there, we decided that none of them were historically accurate or detailed enough for our tastes. This game is designed to rectify that situation. In these rules, each player controls a group of muscles or nerve endings inside a single soldier. For instance, one player controls the trigger finger, another player controls the right forearm, another player controls the right shoulder, and so on. The players much work together as a team or disaster is inevitable. We feel this is the only acceptable way to simulate WWII combat in a satisfactory manner.
•  Guys with Guns and Stuff: A new super-grand-tactical Napoleonic miniatures ruleset emphasizing command and control. Each stand of infantry figures represents the entire French army. A follow-on module for Ancients called Guys with Swords and Stuff is also in the works.
•  “Wait for It!” A thoroughly researched, painfully accurate simulation of an infantry battalion on the parade ground on the Queen’s Birthday. One counter represents one man. Six maps, 1600 counters, 64 pages of rules, 32 pages of charts, 196 pages of errata. Special rules for Leaders, boot shining, weapons cleaning, facing the correct way, standing at ease, marching in step, and unintentional discharge. Estimated retail price: $460. In stores by  Christmas. [October 2007 note: little did I know at the time that just a few years later, there really would be board wargames that sold for over $400!]
•  Operation Slargeball: A strategic-level variant of the Irvanian national sport, using the maps and counters from FGA’s boardgame Operation Crusader.

        [Commentator’s voice:] “The 8th Hussars pass the ball to Durham Light Infantry. Durham attempts  to toss to the Welsh Fusiliers AND THE GERMANS HAVE INTERCEPTED!! Yes, the 21st Panzer has intercepted the ball and is tearing down the coast of Africa like there’s no tomorrow. The crowd is going wild as the 21st turns south and attempts a pass to the 6th Light and FUMBLES! The ball bounces twice AND WE HAVE BALLBONK! WE HAVE BALLBONK! The 6th Light has been knocked unconscious and so has the nearby 15th Panzer. The Ariete is mulling about aimlessly with its hands in its pockets and the 51st Highlanders are taking advantage of the situation by going through 15th Panzer’s wallet. Coach Rommel looks like he’s not going to take this lying down. But there’s the timeloser’s whistle and that’s the end of the third half of this exciting game, here in the Qattara Stadium.”