Thursday 29 May

Was up early. Managed to get cleaned well. Nobody downloaded my ebooks and played my game, SeTT, online. Nobody read my Medium article or viewed my YouTube video. Don’t feel like doing anything much today. I am after all retired.

Last night, we play-tested Fragment and it was fun to work out the strategy. It is actually quite a good game. But there are ways to lose easily or stalemate one’s opponent which is why some, looking into the future, saw it was bogus.

My novella seems like won’t be published in the UK / America if I scry that right. Witches saw it published in China, re-told and translated into Mandarin. Chinese publishers are not averse to releasing shorter works. And they found my writing suitable for it. I never got much from my efforts, just a hundred or so USD a month on average.

Chinese people also liked my game, and it sold well there, wooden pieces on strong white paper just like XiangQi. I made a million Yuan easily. They said, ‘a Chinese person invented such a game!’ as it was a long time since such as this occurred. It also sold okay in the west but in a more expensive form, made of attractive plastic.

Just speculation, tho. Nothing is moving much yet.

…

Back from a medium long walk. Tried to find stuff to make my PencilStencil. Wound up using some old air-dry clay and my X-acto knife to sculpt one. Later, when it’s dry, will shape it more nicely with the blade. This took just 5 minutes. I’m calling it the ‘Piglet’.

Had dinner. Quite tasty and simple. Didn't eat too much. Talked to some of my readers, who read iS -my novella. Liew witches have been degrading / deriding it for fun, knowing I'm not a good writer. Normally this would give a person imposter syndrome, but I wrote iS purposely in a plain-sounding narrative, hiding nothing from the reader as it had become my style, since I wrote 'Lizards'.

There is something important about revealing everything on purpose, immediately whenever strangeness / doubts occur. It makes the plot easier to well... plot while preserving the reader's interest, knowing they get instant gratification, and keep them wanting more.

In the Blood Dagger, there is much hidden, perhaps as it will be a novel vs. iS -a novella.

Wrote a bit, as a distraction. Feeling a bit sore in the head. The tale is getting exciting. I need more plot details to fill in the interesting bits. And to introduce the moon cult soon. Trying to avoid filler. Maybe there will be a subplot hatched soon, maybe 3 -one for Herod, Imogen, and Luis, maybe Pedro too.