A Chapter from Heavenly Devices

I'm posting this today because a friend (Matty Tibaldi) is going to be doing an interview with her college radio station and I guess she's gonna talk about me, the 10th Age, and the unpublished book Heavenly Devices. This is a chapter about Apollonia di Perugia, the nun who helped begin the Clockwork Renaissance:

CHAPTER TWO

Roma

Apollonia wished that Sister Mary would stop fussing. Matins was only a few minutes away and she was as pretty as she was like to get already. “Who am I going to impress?” she asked angrily, swatting at Mary’s hand.

“Sister Apollonia!” Mary chided. “You’re a member of the Papal Curia. Who are you going to impress? Everyone!”

“Not with my hair, I’m not,” she grumbled. “Hand me my wimple.”

“Oh, Sister, no,” Mary complained. “please don’t cover it up! God gave you such gifts of beauty.”

Apollonia closed her eyes and ground her teeth together. Try as she might, she couldn’t get rid of the sound of the orologe on her bedside table, ticking and parceling up the moments of every day with its knife-sharp hands. “Sister Mary Rose,” she asked, playing at calmness, “What would the Mother Superior say about wearing your hair exposed to the view of man and God?”

“Nothing,” said the frumpy nun. “She’d have let you do it, too, because you’re in the Holy See.”

D&D and Writing

I think I may have discussed it before, but there are things that differ, fundamentally, from playing D&D and writing, and I think the reason I have such a hard time when writing novel-length endeavors is because I'm stuck in some kind of D&D mode. I finally finished my second manuscript (a clockpunk piece set in 1486 that follows the PoV of a Florentine spy and a Roman nun) and only now have I begun to break out of my DMing chains in writing long-form work. For some reason short stories and I don't have that problem -- maybe because I've written so many of them over the years that my style has been allowed to diverge from the way I run a D&D game.

The precise problem is easy to trace: an overabundance of descriptive words which hangs up the action. In D&D, every time you see something new you have to have it described in detail. Those details matter! They allow your players to make complex decisions (usually decisions that you never even considered) at a moment's notice. Is it important that the stones of the tower are unevenly spaced? Surely, in case someone wants to knock it over. Does it matter that the man you're talking to has a beard? It does if you want to set his face on fire.

The Great Gencon Adventure

Having never been to GenCon before, this trip is assuming something of a Meccan quality to it. I have been in consultation with some of my players and we are working on producing a free hand-out by the time GenCon rolls around—an "Adventurer's Guide to the City of Miles" with a small DM's pamphlet which will contain an actual runnable adventure.

IF you're going to GenCon, I hope to see you there. For now, I'm in overdrive as I try to finish my second manuscript (Heavenly Devices) as well as the Adventurer's Guide.