The Irvania Blog

I know, I know, it’s been so long since my last update that some of you have been sending me “Hey Dave… are you still alive?” e-mails. I’m still here, I’ve just been busy with “real life” stuff, meaning all the stuff I don’t normally cover on this web site.

Overall the news is good: I got a promotion at work finally (aced four out of five tests, and only missed one question on the other test — woohoo!) and aside from another brush with kidney stones (ouch!), my health has been good and Hanna is doing fantastic as always. The dogs are fine too, although Polly had another rush to the doggy emergency vet hospital. (That was her third visit to said hospital in the past 12 months. Reminder to self: keep all chocolate on the top shelf in the kitchen, preferably sealed, locked away, behind barbed wire, and protected by armed guards.)

I have been busy with the sort of thing I do post about here on Irvania.com though, I just haven’t had time to update the web site lately. Three big projects specifically:

1. A new, fast-play, easy, fun-centric, old-school (those terms may be considered contradictory by some) wargame ruleset for 6mm WWII miniatures, entitled Panzers in Peril. I’ve got most of the game mechanics hammered out and about half the research done for the unit data charts, but this project has been pretty much sidelined for the moment since the following two projects have much higher priority.

2. Rewriting my book. I haven’t had any luck so far acquiring an agent, due I think in part to changes in the publishing industry making it even tougher for new writers to get a foot in the door. It’s particularly tough for a new writer to break into the “general lit” category. As a result, I’m doing a major overhaul and rewrite of the whole thing, keeping the major characters, story elements, and timelines, but revamping the narrative and changing focus so it fits more easily into the “sci fi comedy” genre. I’ll be chopping an awful lot of material, but nearly all of the chopped bits will be useful for later novels.

3. Another creative project, based on the They Who Are Having a Bad Day characters and timelines. This is still in the early planning/plotting/testing/pondering stages, meaning we don’t know if any of it will work or not yet, so I can’t say too much about the project until later. Yes, it does involve Jake.

In the meantime, there are a couple of new ways to keep in touch with me, which I will explain in my next post.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 4:07 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.