I just did a very difficult thing: I withdrew from an overdue RPG writing project that I thought would easily be within my capabilities and that turned out (for many reasons) not to be. I should have done this months ago; I did not because of pride (I’m a writer; I can do this, no problem!), unwillingness to give up on a dream (but I’ve always wanted to write for this company!), and fear of further corroding an already tarnished reputation with this company. On the other hand, I had to do it tonight because it has been hanging over my head for months and I start three days of vacation.
The whole point of this vacation is to take a few days where I don’t have to worry about my day job so I can take a running start at the massive piles of unfinished personal projects. It didn’t seem right to put off the inevitable and keep this project hanging over my head when I’m hoping to wake up tomorrow and start on the projects that I can get done. I was originally going to take five days, but it turns out I’ll be heading to an Exchange conference here in Seattle all next week.
While I’m not happy about facing up to the fact that I was not a suitable author for this project, I’m not totally destroyed. The Cookbook finished the copyedit phase a few days back, we’re heading into QC1 next week (we read over the PDF mockups and have our last chance to correct errors), and the book’s page on the O’Reilly website is finally up. I’ve resolved several logjams in my fiction work and now am reasonably free (once I get the pile of pending projects shortened) to jump into those stories, including the next few chapters of Silicon Cats.
Here’s a question for you: should I just leave the first three chapters up as a teaser, or should I post them all until I manage to sell it to a publisher? I’m inclined to post the whole thing in three-chapter chunks as I get them finished.
Alaric has joined what is now a three-generation tradition for male Gangers: shaving our heads. See the results here. My note to school on Monday (so they didn’t call CPS and file a complaint that we’d joined a cult) follows:
Just a note to let you all know that Alaric has not joined some space surfpunk band, nor has he announced his intention to relocate to Dagobah and use the powers of the Force to raise X-Wing fighters from the swamps where confused Tatooine farmboys landed them.
He has been begging me literally for months now to shave his head just like I do. He has been needing a haircut lately, so last night, he assured me that he still wanted to be completely shaved.
I never knew I was raising the Dalai Lama!
If we’ve joined any cult at all, it’s the “Women will pet my head when it’s bald” cult.
