By the time this post goes out, another year will have passed into the history books for better or worse. I wish I could say whether Hellhound will be finished in 2025, but I do have a good idea of what’s going to happen, if not how I’m actually going to write it. I know that I will probably be dealing with more POV characters than I have in either Tamed Hearts or Closer Than Family–and as you know if you’ve come along this far, I expect it to be the culmination of most of the plot threads I’ve been building in so far (most importantly, Backy’s confrontation with both her old Alpha, Nic, and her own fear). I have already expressed that I am quite anxious to ‘stick the landing’ on this one. Fans needn’t worry about me getting too paralyzed to write though: I’ve already done some pretty significant groundwork, if not what I would consider any actual writing. (I did, way back, write a couple short chapters. Even farther back, I wrote about 20,000 words on a VERY different version of the canon. While neither of those will probably be used in themselves in the version of the manuscript I’ll start in a few months, they are likely to inform what I do, along with some of the other outlining and navel-gazing I’ve been doing.) I also know that Hellhound will deal with Hunter Packs and the “big picture” more than anything I’ve touched on so far.

That’s all the book stuff, but that doesn’t mean that’s all I’m doing. As many of you who know me are aware, I’m a huge nerd for tabletop roleplaying games, and I’ve been spending a lot of my time lately on two in particular. I’ve followed Savage Worlds for about 10 years or so, and it’s still my favorite game. I’ve run more campaigns than I care to think of, and I don’t think I’ll run low on material any time soon, but sometime in the near future, I’ll be on the hook to run a game using my homebrewed rules for Star Trek, so I have been scrambling to finish those, and lay out the course the campaign may take (given that I only have a vague idea of who the characters will actually be). I’ve also been immersing myself in another, new, game called Draw Steel, aka “the MCDM RPG” aka “the game by That One YouTube Guy, Matt Colville”. I’ve only been able to run one session so far using the first backer packet (the second one released a couple weeks ago as of this posting), and while I didn’t think I did great, the players seemed to enjoy themselves. While packet 2 doesn’t include updated versions of the introductory adventures (or sample characters) it does have a MUCH nicer character sheet, more polished rules, and more levels. What I someday want to do with Draw Steel (at least, to start with) is a version of “Keep on the Borderlands” though, as I have done with lots of D&D material before, I expect to fold, spindle, and mutilate the original until it fits the vision I have in mind and what I think will be fun.

There are some other personal things going on, as friends may know, but that’s all I think I’m going to go over for the moment. Hope everyone has a great 2025!