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Steve’s Update 6/14/2016

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

Evening everyone, so let’s get to an update!

First of all if you want to hear me talk old ahead-of-their-time DOS games, tune in to this DOS Nostalgic Podcast.

Now let’s get onto the status update!

 

Seventh Sanctum:

Still not doing any new generators – I think it’s going to be another month or so before I get back to one.  That’s because I’m busy with . . .

 

Way With Worlds:

Book one is pretty much ready, though I’ve got one more print copy to test.  If all’s well then we’re good to go!  I’ve also got some guest blogging going on during July when we build up to launch!

Book two will come back to me end of month, though not sure when I’ll do the first edit.  I’d like to get to it right away, but . .

 

Sailor Moon Book:

This gets formatted this weekend – and if all goes well I’ll have a hard copy before the end of the month.

My only concern is the cover.  The cover is actually wraparound, so there’s issues of centering the different sides of the cover, titles, etc.  I’m going to give it my best, but I may nee to reformat the whole thing, which usually means going through 2 copies to get it right.  Fortunately we have 3 months to get that right – but I always find this cover formatting to never be as smooth as hoped.

 

Other Books:

My skill portability book is about ready to go, and should drop to ebook in the next few weeks depending on my schedule.

I’ll also be working on some Way With Worlds stuff beyond the books as noted.

However, though I have other things I want to try . . . yeah I seem booked into 2017.

 

So pretty much no new projects except the above for the rest of the year.  Well, as much as I’m able to stick to that . . .

– Steve

Civic Diary 6-10-2016

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

Well the California Primaries are over, my Twitter feed and news feed are filled with politics, and I’m of course thoughtful.

So I haven’t always followed up on primaries in the past, but as I’ve become more aware of politics and civic engagement, I see their importance.  It’s not just the presidential Primaries, but its the local voting as well – local politics has an influence on people’s lives, change minds, and build future political careers.  Those local bills and policies change a lot.  You’ll want to pay attention to.

Since that political meeting I wanted to go to was cancelled, I scheduled two more this month, figuring A) I can make at least one, and B) No one is going to cancel both of them.  I pretty much decided I want to find out how to do get out the vote work as a start to real civic engagement.

There are also local political clubs I found and joined one.  I figure it can’t hurt to check one out if I have time.

And speaking of time, I’m feeling the time crunch from work, social obligations, my projects, and more.  It really takes effort to make time for civic engagement, especially NEW civic engagement.  I’m having to rethink my plans and schedules.  That’s good, but man, it’s a bit of a pain.

Which brings in another realization – being civicly engaged is a long-term commitment.  yes, I knew this and understood it, yes some of my civic work has been long term, especially my more local and geek stuff.  Yes, I usually think long term.

But then I realized a good chunk of what influenced me was the 2016 election and the realization people could be better engaged in politics.  But still a apart of me had stopped thinking about anything past November.  I’m realizing that’s (obviously) short-sighted.

So yeah, I want to get more involved politically and see if there’s anything I can do for this election.  But I’m trying to shift my mind to long-term engagement beyond my flirting wit the idea of being on a city board – and I’m kind of drawing a blank right now as to what that is.

I mean I have my civic engagement in the form of social groups and museum work and speaking at cons and the like.  But it doesn’t quite feel like its got a lot of long-term planning in it – or even the long-term planning of doing “yeah, that’s good enough.”

However, I have come to realize about 70-80% of what I do outside of politics is pretty satisfying civicly.  I may need a bit more thought of what I’m doing, a few changes there, but I feel like my whole elder geek/geek job guru/social integrator thing works pretty good.

So that’s it for my Civic Diary.  How are you doing?

– Steve

Steve’s Update 6/9/2016

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

Hey all, so where are all those projects . . . well still busy. New job has my busy, but here’s where we are.

Sailor Moon Book

Sent to my co-author, who in turn just edited it and sent it back. I plan to take one more crack at it next week or so then I can actually format it. If all goes well, we’ll be looking over a print beta sometime in early/mid July.

The editing went really well. Frankly, there wasn’t that much left to do considering how many times we’ve been over it. I’m starting to think extended editng periods of sometime and/or swapping among people has real benefits. It makes me wonder if editing is best done by long editing cycles – or many smaller ones.

We’re looking good for September people!

Way With Worlds Book #1

I’m editing the second print copy. Still a bit annoyed I’m finding issues or things I want to change (mostly a bit of formatting and such), but that’s the way it goes. I’m going to give it two read overs to be sure, then try to make the last run count.

The strangest things?  I find more errors at the start of the book, even when I reread it.  It’s like somehow I have to get into an “editing zone” to do my best work.  Go figure.

As much as I enjoyed doing this I kinda confess I’ll be glad to get it finished. I think there’s only so long you can read your own advice, and I’m there.

Way With Worlds Book #2

Comes back from the editor end of Month. I’ll probably make the first editing run in July just because it’ll be fresh, but I might save it to August as I will be busy with Book #1 and the Sailor Moon Book. It sort of depends how well those go.

Skill Portability Book

This fun little experiment is probably out end of June. It’s pretty easy to do and needs only about one more big editing run – basically its my columns on skill portability expanded and improved.  Going to be a neat little experiment.

The Blog

Holding off starting a new series for now as I’ve got so much on my plate. I will continue to blog on No Man’s Sky however, and Civic Diary.

New Generators

I’m afraid with everything else on my plate there will be no new generator in June. Now as for July, let us see . .

And that’s it for me! How are you doing?

– Steve