Warlord Games’ Action Fiction Competition

Warlord Games are inviting players to write short pieces of action fiction for Beyond the Gates of Antares. Whilst there will be up to five winners for a some store vouchers, Warlord will publish the best shorts on our websites, we’ll also be looking for more fiction from the best writers for future supplements.

There’s only 4 weeks left.

We’ve had some great submissions – and multiple submissions from the same person, too! It is an action fiction comp, deliberately short to match what we’re looking for and can use. And I’m happy to offer first-cut once-over advice to those who have never written before.

The link for more details is below. Do read and follow the instructions!

https://www.gatesofantares.com/fiction-invitation/

Isolation of the Grieving

I’ve heard about it before, that those suffering the loss of close family members are often isolated in their grief, ostracised by those closest to them, those who could offer the support and comfort they need. The courses and study on pastoral care for those that grieve point out the issue and stress the need for those offering such care to reach out to those who are suffering such a loss. For many, perhaps embarrassed, it is all to easy to just offer a perfunctionary ‘if you need me’ and disappear, not contacting the bereaved for weeks.

This completely ignores the fact that it is extraordinarily difficult to reach out when you are in so much pain. I know – we know – for we have just lost our child and we are experiencing the problem, to an extreme.  And we have become isolated from all but a few friends, and ostracized by most (though not all) of our family.

Dronescourge Pre-Order

Yes, it’s absolutely a relief to see a supplement finally out on pre-order. I mentioned The Taking of TOR 563 recently, but that was just a fiction lead-up to my latest book, a supplement for the ‘Beyond the Gates of Antares’ game by Warlord Games – The Dronescourge Returns.

To say ‘my’ is a bit of misnomer. Whilst the design, writing, testing was by or organised by me, the production of a full-colour book like this needs loads of graphic artists, painters, and quite technical proof readers. It is agroup effort, and the design studio did a great job on the interiors as well as coming up for the look of the dangerous drone race at the core of the narrative: the Virai Dronescourge. Some of the work they did can be seen in the snapshot below.

If you’re interested in the models, then the first starter force (a swarm) is already up on the Warlord’s site: the Starter Swarm. There is a huge amount of background information about them already on the Antares Nexus knowledge base, with more to come (I know, I wrote it).

Another book release. It’s a huge releif to be back on the writing road, again.

The Taking of TOR 563 Serial

I’ve been quiet on here, but it’s simply because I’ve been busy. There’s a number of serialised novellettes coming out to support the release of the supplement I wrote, The Dronescourge Returns.

The first of these episodic tales is ‘The Taking of TOR563’ and is published on the Warlord Games Antares Nexus, right here: https://www.gatesofantares.com/taking-tor-563-part-i/.

There’s a lot more to do – hope you enjoy!

Freeborn and Family

Another novelette has been released in the saga of Batu and Baray in the Beyond the Gates of Antares universe. This time, we discover how Batu got his terrifying drone and how the cloud of bionanocytes he carries – and fears – was awakened, as well as why he is considered such a threat to the Isorian Senatex.

The novellete is called Freeborn and Family and is in PDF format accessible from this overview page. If it’s difficult to see, it can be downloaded directly from the Warlord Games website.

I’ve also built a Kindle .mobi format file that can be downloaded to a kindle directly or emailed to your amazon kindle account from your your own, approved emailed address.

Batu and Baray’s adventures started in The Claiming of Shamasai, continued in the Open Signal anthology and on the Beyond the Gates of Antares website (coming soon: to be assigned). Other stories include the series in Plaguespore, set in the timei between Shamasai and Family.

An odd experience proofing…

An odd thing happened the other day that I thought was worth sharing, for it isn’t something I’d either been told about, or read about or seen.

As mentioned before, I’m a fan of the big red/pink pen and always give my proofreaders and first readers one so it’s easy to see what they find or where they struggle. Though that requires a hardcopy, still nothing beats it – read through material on the screen and it’s easy to skip over errors.

But what if someone radically changes the format?