Current Projects

I have a tendency to overwhelm myself with projects.  The problem is that I have too many things that I want to create before I die.  In fact, I have currently have more ideas in me than I likely have life left.  So I try to get as many of them out as possible.  I’m like a sinking ship with passengers who I’m trying to put onto lifeboats before I sink into the waters of mortality.

Here is a list of the projects I have coming up later this year:

RPG Storytime podcast

Finish RPG Storytime Star Wars

Re-release Pro Bono

Release a companion piece for Pro Bono

Relic Worlds Adventures board game

Relic Worlds RPG

Relic Worlds short stories

Relic Worlds podcast

Command Combat 2^nd edition

Book about Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant

Book about my childhood with Ryan

Star Wars fan fiction

 

We’ll see at the end of the year how much I get done.

Star Wars 2.0

We all had problems with the Star Wars prequels.  The reason for the passion is because of the extreme potential that was lost.  There could have been so much to it, and they could have been some of the best movies ever made, but the opportunity got wasted.

But rather than just complaining about them, I choose to do my own version of them; what I believe could have made them great.  I set out to write them a couple years ago, and got several chapters into the first story when I ran out of time to write them.  I felt bad about dropping this story as I had gained a few fans.  But it turned out to be a blessing because when I saw Rogue One, I had a whole different vision.  I call it Star Wars 2.0.

Initially, I was writing the prequels as episodes 1-3 and was finding ways to sort of dodge around revealing Anakin as Luke's father to preserve the surprise for Empire Strikes Back.  But I happened to see some old interviews where some of the actors from the original series talked about how the movie after Empire was supposed to be a flashback to the prequels.  Having learned that, and seeing how good Rogue One worked as a precursor to the original, I determined to follow this pattern:

Episode 1 - Rogue One
Episode 2 - A New Hope
Episode 3 - The Empire Strikes Back.

Then my story, episode 4, begins as a flashback.  We spend the next 3 episodes learning about Vader's past and the fall of the Jedi.  It's mostly a story of two brothers, Anakin and Owen; both of whom have the force, but one has turned away because he knows how much damage he could do, and the other has joined the Jedi order despite the danger.

Finally, episodes 7-9 will come back to the present and it will present the Rebellion's strike back at the Empire, and the fall of it.  Instead of the Death Star being rebuilt, the rebels will go after the clone facilities, and try to kill the emperor.

Below are the prologue and chapter 1.  Chapter 2 should come out tomorrow, or soon after.

Star Wars 2.0 - Episode 4 - Prologue

Star Wars 2.0 - Episode 4 - Chapter 1

RPG Storytime: Star Wars!

Last week I wrote about my Star Wars fan fiction.  This week I'm writing about a different sort of fan fiction that I'm writing and producing.  It's the Star Wars role playing game which I'm playing, then making into videos in which I use miniatures to tell the stories.  I'm doing this with several different RPG games where I play it out with a group of people,then make the stories into little videos.  Over the next year I hope to do these games:

Star Wars
Star Trek
Dungeons & Dragons
Deadlands
Top Secret
Gang Busters
Pirates!
Outbreak: Undead

It's a lot, and I probably won't get them all made, but I'd like to do a lot of those.  RPG games are becoming the new staged readings, which excites me because I've always loved the idea of this sort of community storytelling.

Also, I use these as a way to bring in new readers.  People are more likely to watch something new than to read something new, so the idea here is to make videos that appeal to something a lot of people already enjoy, then gain their trust and being them into my own books.  It's been useful for me in the gaming world as I've gotten a number of gamers as readers over the past year.

My show is called RPG Storytime, and you can see it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGdeEs8YJtA&t=1s

Star Wars 2.0

I've been putting together a fan fiction version of Star Wars over the past year or so.  It went very slowly for a while because it's low on the priority list.  However, lately I've determined that if I'm going to do this, I need to freakin' do it.  So I'm getting it finished and set up.

The reason I'm writing fan fiction is because it's very difficult to get readers to look at something new, especially those who are into sci fi and fantasy.  South Park has parodied this behavior very well with their "member berries" where they keep remembering old things rather than appreciating something new.

Well, Relic Worlds benefits from being similar to two old, popular brands, Indiana Jones and Star Wars.  So, since people really like to read things about Star Wars, I figured I'd do my take on how the prequels should be done.

In fact, I've really enjoyed this because, like most people, I was disappointed by the prequels, and feel they could have been so much more.  So I've created this story about the two brothers, Anikan and Owen, both of whom have the force, but Owen has turned away from it, recognizing the hatred and fear that exists inside him.  Anakin has embraced it and become a Jedi, something that Owen, who has become a smuggler, thinks is a bad idea.

The story is continuing on fanfiction.net, and you can find it here: https://www.fanfiction.net/story/story_edit_property.php?storyid=11228268