With Wild Abandon and a Mad Heart

Hello All!

It’s been awhile since I’ve had an opportunity to take a deep breath. There. I just took one. Seriously, though, we want to thank everyone for their enthusiasm and support of tremulus. The madness has indeed spread, and continues to do so. The tremulus forum has been growing by leaps and bounds and we’re excited to report people are already getting their games going. This is absolutely fantastic. Some folks are looking forward to my insights on the entire KS process, and I’m going to write some reports on the different challenges we faced, and how we dealt with them. I’m wanting to process it all a bit more first.

You might wonder why we didn’t jump on here about the conclusion of the KS. The key reason is while the funding ended. It hadn’t ended for us. We had set a very aggressive timeline of getting the initial PDF out into the hands of our backers. We said we’d do it before Halloween, and would likely start distributing them after allowing for all the funding to come through and allow Amazon to collect all the payments (which is two weeks from the close of the KS). However, as there were only a handful outstanding on the 15th, we began getting them out into everyone’s hands, and, despite a few hiccups, everyone had them by the 16th. The day we initially planned on starting to get them out. I have to mark this as a win in the success column. And, yes, there is more work to be done. The overwhelming success of the KS has unlocked a lot of stretch goals, and I’ll be meeting with the Blurry Ones to discuss the deployment schedule of them. And there is the fine-tuning associated with tremulus as we prepare it for print, more art assets to get ready, and all the other bits and pieces of releasing a print product. And this has to be woven into our existing production schedule. In short, yours truly will be quite busy for quite some time. (And this is is no way a lamentation. This is fantastic. And I can’t wait to throw myself with wild abandon and a mad heart back into the creative process.)

But I need to recharge. It has been one continuous blur of early mornings, late nights, lots of coffee, and little room for any bits of quiet contemplation. And, as much as I love what I do, and nothing truly exceeds like excess, the batteries need to recharge, the tank needs gasoline in the form of distraction and diversion, before I can resume the writing. I won’t be gone long. I’m not wired that way, and I’ll likely be drawn back to the keyboard in a handful of days. Or scratching notes on napkins. Or noting ideas in the back of my brain. That’s just how things tend to be. Heck, I planned on staying away from the computer today, yet, here I am writing about being away and the twelve quick words I could’ve let fly from my fingertips- Gonna take a break. Much love. I’ll be back soon. Peace out. – has turned into a treatise on the fact I’m going to cut the computer cord and a reflection on things. I’m certain there’s a bit of irony in there somewhere, if you look for it. (It’s near that empty coffee cup on the edge of my desk, I’d imagine.)

I have a few games I want to dig into that I did manage to pick up during the past 30 days. Borderlands 2, XCOM, and Dishonored all await further exploration. And the thing is, I get lots of ideas while playing games. Something will invariably spark a thought as I lose myself in the digital landscape. And there is a bit of reading I’d like to catch up on in preparation for the playset development. And movies. It’s time to let myself gorge on more than a few horror movies as well. So, I’m looking forward to doing all this stuff. Or sleep. Maybe I’ll just catch up on that. Or both. Who knows?

Until next time, I bid you, dear reader, adieu!