All right. October happened. This last month has honestly been a bit of a blink-and-you-miss-it blip for me, having been sick for the first time in years in addition to the usual speedbump in sleep provided by the shifting seasons. I do feel as though I’m starting to come out the other side of both, however, and thought I’d share a bit of an update on productivity and personal life.
Firstly, the brief sabbatical I took in the wake of Valley of Renewal’s release has proved fruitful, as I have one new novel (the first in a portal fantasy series with connections to other works for eagle-eyed readers) approaching its final draft and another (the first in a science fantasy series exploring Deyrnas, the world of Future’s Birth a millennium in the future) nearing the ol’ six-digit word count milestone in the rough. Given various matters on the production side, the first of these likely won’t start dropping on Patreon until early next year, with a wide release a few months after, but I thought I should let you all know that I haven’t gone into complete hibernation with my series hangover. If anything, I’m more excited than ever to continue crafting stories!
Episodes of (Tem)Portalers have also been going up on Spotify, via Patreon, which is apparently a thing creators can do now. Pandemic times previously derailed our TTRPG adventures, but hopefully this platform will prove a bit more stable than PodBean. And hey, if people are still interested in the characters and story, perhaps they will find a way to continue!
On the personal life side, we at Riverbank Publishing are currently addressing some mental, physical, and work/life scheduling bumps in the road that may impact the approach we take to production, moving forward, but sometimes you need to downshift gears around a tight corner and hope for a straight stretch soon. Amid all the troubles of the world, from global to personal, we are still highly fortunate to be afforded the opportunities we have to create, and we’ll continue to use them to the best of our ability as long as we’re able!
In lighter news, the latest series of Taskmaster has been predictably great, thus far (it’s all on YouTube to watch for free now, so please go do so, by the way), I’ve had the time to play probably too much Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous while sick, favorite artists of both the musical and literary variety have been dropping wonderful new creations (I’m positively savoring Star Wars: Supernatural Encounters), and Psych is always a wonderfully cozy rewatch, especially when one is under the weather.
Wishing you all good health as we head into the holidays,
Seth
PS. As you may guess from the attached image, I've also been dabbling in Star Wars fan art. This one is Kyle Katarn expressing his frustration amid a squad of stormtroopers.