Well behind ...

Okay, I am far, far behind where I wanted to be at this point on just about every project I have ongoing. Hey, I even just posted this as a blank post a second ago (hit the return key by mistake).

Work has only been done in bits and pieces and usually on different projects/books as the fancy has struck. While I have been very busy with "real life" I have no real excuse as I have had free time here and there with which I could have accomplished quite a bit more. My youngest is now 2 1/2 and the weather here has improved to the point that, quite honestly, we have a lot of fun together going places or just playing outside. The good thing is that this helps spark a number of ideas for me, the bad part is that it really does use up my time.

My goal for this year was to have 24 releases, 20 of those as City Streets locations. Four of those are releases in the Great Creators line which I put an end to because they simply weren't selling and the person doing the real work on them has been relocated several times. I have a fairly lengthy list of titles/outlines right now, I just haven't taken the time to really flesh out these locations as I need to.

I am still working on the Sparks Primer. I am planning a new layout for this, some additional information, and I am hoping to have new artwork for it. Tomorrow is Veteran's Day and my dear wife has off from work. This means that maybe I can convince her to watch DS#3 while I go have some work done on the van. Ideally, I'll be able to write in the waiting area while the van is being worked on. It also means that maybe she and I can have a nice lunch date (with DS#3 along, but that is okay) someplace.

I will try to be better about posting here in the future, but in general, no news tells you pretty much what you need to know.

Recovering

I am spending time recovering from, well, all the work that piled up when I was sick. Tomorrow is my oldest boy's 14th birthday so I'll be spending a bit of time working on getting some things done for that too. Then I guess we'll hit the weekend and soccer games again.

A little while back I did get the website upload done. Not much to it other than an erasure of any possible release dates ;). I have gotten a little bit of work done, just not enough to be pleased with right now. Ideally, I'll have more news soon, but my focus is still getting the family fully recovered from our battle with the flu.

Flu

Massive delays right now due to the flu. I'll try to have more information up soon.

Sick

Well, I have a bug and I am dealing with family that also have the bug so work is pretty much not going anywhere.

I hope to at least upload the changes I made to the website over the weekend later today. I have a few more changes to make though, so I'll just have to fight through the headache and try to get them done.

The Sparks Primer/Intro change has been more time consuming than I thought, but that always seems to be the case when making changes. I hope the change works out well. I am thinking about "opening" up the Sparks Primer for use by other publishers but honestly don't know if anyone would bother using it.

Zero

Well, no excuses here, I just simply haven't been getting anything done. Okay, at least not anything for GU. While I expect that to change today and tomorrow now that I have a few things out of the way, I will not have anything ready to release this weekend.

In other news, I have decided (95%) that I will pull the Sparks Introduction from the already released .pdfs. This is easy enough for the RPGNow (OBS) releases but it looks like I'll probably need to send the new files to Paizo and ask them to put them up. We'll see how that goes.

The compilations (such as the Summer Tavern Special) will probably still include the Sparks Intro, but now I will be substituting in the Sparks Primer. This is partly because I am trying to do the layout on those as if they will go to print.

My list of things to do is very long right now. Many of the things on the list are pretty minor (or sound minor) but are very time-consuming. I'll try to post a progress report this weekend.

Whoopsie!!!

Okay, another whoopsie! I am signed up to automatically enter the promotions at RPGNow (and all of the OBS stores) and they ARE running a "Talk Like a Pirate Day" promotion and I DO have products offered at a discount there. The following products are 20% off from now through the weekend.
Brandy's by the Bay
Tavern Denizens-Book I: The Dives
The Mug and Bottle

These are exactly the books I would have offered at a discount anyway. Odd how that works ;).

Talk Like a Pirate Day

Well, I had hoped to run some sort of promotion or discount this weekend for "Talk Like a Pirate Day." According to several other publishers despite the internet postings, etc. about "TLPD" it isn't much for sales or promotions. I guess I'll be waiting until next year to find out.

I am revamping the Sparks Primer and that is taking time. I have had long term plans to introduce other "generic" products with slight variations on the Sparks introduction but it would be much easier to simply expand what I have now to cover all of the potential planned products and make that the Sparks Primer.

Essentially, I am backing up a step and taking time to redesign a few things and alter a few plans. I like to think that this is a good thing for the long term. Honestly, I can't say that it is going to hit sales as I have had numerous delays lately. What it does is slow down having a series of regular releases. Regular releases DO drive sales of "backstock" -which in electronic terms simply means older books. This means having a release every 2 weeks helps even out sales.

I would love to say that I'll be getting lots of work done this weekend with my mother here to help out but the reality is that I'll be spending most of the weekend either AT a soccer game or DRIVING to a soccer game. I want to have another release for September. My goal is to have 20+ RPG releases during 2009 so I'll really need to get cracking if I am going to make that.