Fantasist's Scroll

It must be storm season again…

This morning, shortly after I finished shaving, we lost power. There was a great roll of thunder and a flash of lightning then all the lights flickered and went out. Luckily, I knew where there was a flashlight and my wife has lots of candles around. In short order, I had several candles burning and could navigate around without fear of tripping on one of the cats.
Then, I had to get enough candles and light together to take a shower. And, since the hot water heater’s thermostat is electric, I decided I should hurry and get a warm shower!
It was actually a bit of fun, after I first made the adjustment. I think I got a slightly better understanding of what it was like in earlier times for workers who got up before dawn. A bit of fumbling about and a fair amount of squinting in the mirror, really. And, I really appreciate the fact that I didn’t have to shave in the dark! I would have had all kinds of odd whisker shadows on my face if not for that. But, just as I was trying to decide whether or not to put on water for tea, the lights came back on and my fun was over.

We talked about living by candles on purpose for a day, one weekend, though. Just for fun. My wife and daughter both thought it might be an interesting experiment. Reading by candle-light. Cooking over an open fire, or on the gas stove. Warming ourselves by the fireplace. It’s good to remember the old skills of seeing by candle. To relearn what it was like for our ancestors to live ruled by the cycle of day and night, their lives changing as the seasons changed.
So, today, I got a little inspiration from the dark and I move from the darkness to the light.

Everything is grist for the mill.

My wife and I went to Half-Price Books this weekend and I found several books on type and typography. One of them was a book of type samples. Then, we went to Texas Art Supply and I found even more books on type and samples of typography. One of them was a book of foreign type samples that included sanskrit, Japanese and arabic. So, it’s time to fire up the old font foundry and stamp out some fonts.
Sure, I’ll have to alter the scanned fonts some, but at least it’s a place to start. Especially with the foreign language fonts. And, of course, I’ll want to take my scans and alter them significantly enough to make “unreal” languages. I think that gamers and conworld builders and conlangers would love to have some original, but alien, fonts for their use. I know that I would like it. In fact, that was what started me on my quest to figure out how to create fonts in the first place.
So, soon, I hope, I’ll have some updates and some downloads.

Can you make money at a hobby?

Well, that’s an interesting question which I hope to answer in the next year or two. I’d like to see my terrible mapping habit pay for itself somehow. Oh, I did a couple of maps for a game company, but they didn’t offer much and the project is on hold, so I’m not getting paid. I’d like to find a way to make maps myself and sell them off my website. Is it feasable? Is it worth the effort? I don’t know. And, if I never try, I’ll never know, so try I will. Eventually.
If I could just get my butt in gear, I might turn out a story or two that I could sell. Of course, to make my writing hobby pay for itself, I’d have to churn out a few novels. Between the hundreds of books I’ve read on writing and the software and the computer hardware, I can’t count how much money I’ve spent on writing! But, I’d be happy with enough money to pay for my Writer’s Digest subscription, a subscription to Locus, and dues for the SFWA. That’s not a lot of money, but it’s not chump-change in the writing arena, either.
And, finally, I’d like my terrible addiction to role-playing games to pay for itself, too. Maybe I could write some nice adventures and sell them. Dungeon Masters always need new adventures. And, I used to be fairly good at original, themed adventures….. Well, the idea has merit, but who knows if anyone will actually pay money for my work? Only one way to find out, I guess.

All of which leads me to say, “stay tuned”! Who knows what lies on the horizion when I set sail on the ship of crude mercantilism!?

Forgive me, it’s been two weeks since I blogged last.

Where does the time go? It seems like it was just Thanksgiving and now, here it is almost Christmas! At least I have almost all of my shopping done. Of course, I cheated and sent a bunch of stuff from Bells Farm again this year. I look at it this way, those folks up North have to pay a small fortune for fresh fruit and it’s cheap down here. Everybody wins!
My wife and I have one more gift to get, for her sister. It’ll be like pulling teeth to get her out to a store at this point, too. But, we’ll get it done in time, or my name isn’t Howard Johnson! (Er, sorry, bad reference to “Blazing Saddles”.)

One cool thing that’s been happening, though, is that my step-daughter has expressed a serious interest in learning to play Dungeons and Dragons. So, I’m sure Santa Claus will bring her something that has to do with D&D. The other cool thing is that it gives me a reason to get off my big, fat butt and learn to play the new edition. Great to have some motivation! And, I’m sure I’ll start designing adventures again, so we’ll have cool, original dungeons to crawl. If I do well enough with them, I might even offer them via this webiste. Maybe, even as shareware. (Insert dramatic music here.) Or, maybe not. Motivation only goes so far, then I have to actually do the work. Well, we’ll see…

Happy Holidays!

Whew! Have I been busy the past couple of weeks!

Readers may notice that I’ve been rather lax in posting any new entries here for several weeks. Well, there are some good reasons. For one, I’ve been waiting for almost that entire time for my old ISP/Web Host to get a couple of problems straightened out. They never did, so I moved to a new home. That meant backing up all my hard work, exporting my Fantasist’s Scroll, signing up for the new ISP, and getting everything reinstalled and moved to the new home. Which I have, almost, finished doing. I hope that will let me get caught up on my other websites, too. Of course, I’ll be moving them soon as well. The new place has such better support and I get a discount for multiple accounts!

In any case, my blog was looking sad and under appreciated, so I thought I should put in some kind of update. Mainly, out of guilt.

More soon. Honest. Really, I mean it this time.

Well, I had a close call with the blog last night.
I was trying to set up a test blog and experiement around with adding some functionality to the blog system for my own site. Naturally, I set up a second blog, just for testing. Well, I didn’t like how that turned out, so I deleted it. Except, somehow, I didn’t delete it. Instead, I deleted the main blog, the Fantasist’s Scroll. Yikes!
So, thinking quickly, I pulled the contents out of my firewall’s cache and was able to recreate the majority of the blog. I had a couple of articles saved for a rainy day that are lost forever, though. It was a close call and had me all freaked out last night. For a little bit, until I realized that I had copies of everything, I actually had gotten the shakes! That mellowed into a headache as I did the mind-numbing work of rebuilding the blog, one entry at a time.

In any case, it’s up again, in case anyone noticed!

I haven’t been so good at keeping this site updated lately, I know. That’s due mainly to RealLife interfering. I started a new job last week and it takes up most of my day. See, I do this for fun, not profit. And, I have two other websites besides this one. I try to work on my writing, but with the reading I want to get done and family and all, there’s not much time.

So, I try to make the best of it. For instance, this update is being done from work during lunch. The first half of lunch, I just read some in a rather dry book, which I’ll mention in another update. Then, I talked to the Boss a little and now I’m doing a quick update.
I’m not sure how other people manage to maintain a family and a job and still find time to write. Maybe it’ll be easier as I get used to the schedule I’m on right now, but I’m getting 6 hours, or less, of sleep a night as it is! Well, maybe writing when I’m tired will let me tap into my subconscious more than I do. God knows, my writing needs all the help it can get.

In any case, that’s what’s been keeping me from updates on this site. Look for more entries soon!!
In the meantime, keep writing!