Welcome Back
Wherein the author gets back to the business of making things
Hello friends,
It’s been a minute or two or twelve or—checks calendar—nearly fourth months. But it’s all okay between pals, because, you know, things happen. The world spins backwards. Up goes sideways. Down takes a holiday. All sorts of things. But we carry on. We keep dreaming things and making things and showing up. And that’s what I’m here to talk about today.
Some months ago, at a function, I made an off-hand comment about doing some sort of reveal on some very specific date in the future. I said this nonsense while standing in a kitchen or around a portable firepit. Making shit up on the spot. Like you do. Well, someone made a note about my off-hand comment, and I noted that they noted and made a note of my own, and well, here we are.
So, yes, I promised something back in the day. I have no idea what it was. It doesn’t really matter. There weren’t any specifics at the time. It was merely a promise. “I will show up on this day.”
And here we are. This is the Vortext of Blood, the newest Night Office project. It launches today tomorrow on Kickstarter.1 It’s a version 2.0 of the Night Office format (which has been a tried-and-true Choose Your Grisly Demise format). This one involves strategic planning, resource management, and tarot cards. It’s still a solo adventure. It still wanders into strange territory, and there are still space jellies which are out to get you.
Some battles are eternal, dear friends.
Vortext of Blood crystallized during a drive about a week ago. I had just finished fulfillment on DOOM + MADNESS, and Kickstarter was polite enough to greenlight this without delay, so why not leap into another project? I did some prep—various graphics and a decidedly weird video—and hit the ‘go’ button. I could wave my hands and say this has been months in the planning—I did make that promise, right?—but that’s not the case.
Though, if I go back through the daily note log, I will find elements of this. I’ve been wanting to so something for Kickstarter’s ZineQuest for at least three years now, and every year, there’s been an excuse to not launch. In the months following, I would get some notes down and write a few thousand words on a thing, but other projects and publishing matters would eclipse this half-formed thing and I would wander off. And that’s been the day-to-day for several years now. I’m ready to get back to finishing things.
So, yes, I showed up, as promised. Present Me is pleased to have met the challenge raised by Past Me. Present Me woud also like Past Me to put a sock in it for the time being, while I shake off the dust and get this engine running again.
DOOM + MADNESS packages have gone out. In addition to two fabulous special editions of the first two Night Office books, the boxes also contained a multitude of Night Office ephemera. It was a lot of fun to design and build all these objects, and I got some practice at making things in several different formats.
I do have more Night Office things to do: reconfiguring the Guide solitaire card games, building out more marketing tools (because, man, I’ve got to figure out how to get the attention of buyers at game stores), and scoping out the Queen in Red sequence. But, for today, we’re going to vortext it up, baby.
Somewhat releated to all this, there is a new umbrella imprint: Feather Made Games. It’s where things that are, well, more game-like, are going to land. The landing page is on itch.io. You can find it here. In fact, one of the things you’ll find there is a new bit of fiction, written for the Mörk Borg Nameless Scriptures game jam. The lads wanted “lore” for this one. No game mechanics. Nothing that looked like a random table. Just lore. Which sounds a lot like “write us a story” to me, and so I did. Get yourself a copy of “A Pact,” and if you aren’t familiar with Mörk Borg, you should go poke at that.
It may poke back, but that’s a reflex action that you see quite often in not-quite-undead things.
Anyway, here we go. Let’s get our creative engines cranking again.
I fully intended to launch it today, and frankly, I should just go turn it on, but yesterday afternoon, I discovered that someone had fractured the back window of my car. Naturally, being Sunday afternoon on a holiday weekend means there’s not much that can be done until, oh, Wednesday, and last night was spent sorting out a temporary solution that wasn’t going to go all flappity-flappity when I made the weekly drive this morning.
Oh, and it definitely flappity-flappitied.
Anyway, my brain’s a little off today, and so you get the note but not the launch. Sorry. But you can still hit that notify me! button and everything will be peaches tomorrow.