When I see our engineer playing something in Early Access, I always make a note to come back and check it out - but Gabe beat me to it. This time it's The Planet Crafter, which just hit 1.0. It's a multiplayer techy buildy enviro sim type thing, but the couple screens and videos I saw didn't really communicate the arc. The arc is terraforming a hostile world into a paradise, which you can see in the video below. I've done the first part a ton - picking up all that shit, making shit from the shit, so many times that I don't really get out of bed for that layer anymore. I sure as shit haven't done this:

I've been finishing up both of the Acquisitions Incorporated novellas, and I hope they're something you can have soon. I have been surprised to learn that the way I normally, just… do stuff, this ritual where I reveal choice cuts from my world collection every couple days here on the site, has prepared me to write florid romance novels. The regular version of the novella - Acquisitions Incorporated: Initiation - is maybe lightly upmarket from where I typically land but nothing crazy. It has occasional pretensions toward a literary turn of phrase, because it's a book, alongside a more personal, friendly tone. I think it has an interesting texture. You will, of course, be the judge.

When I'm writing the Dranmagic book, though - which, it should be said, is essentially a version of the other one - it's too easy. Words that don't have the right flake or crunch just settle down on top of the document like streusel, baking down into a delicious crust. I feel like I'm getting away with shit. It feels naughty! Which is, I suppose, appropriate.

I hope people like both books; I'm confident that they're for somebody. They're certainly for me, I've had so much fun writing them. But it's going to be very weird to learn that what I've been doing for the last twenty five years is becoming the Kwisatz Haderach of Harlequin romance.

(CW)TB out.