April was a full and busy month, with the new book coming out, finishing the supplements, processing backer rewards, attending a convention, and ramping up my next projects. That’s one of the reasons this post is being sent a week later than usual. The other is because I wanted to wait for the details of my launch party before I posted.

Projects

I’ve been winding down Champion Impact, though a lot of the final steps are taking longer than expected. There’s a good chance I will be done with everything by the end of this month, as long as I don’t get distracted.

I’m ramping up the next projects. The primary project is The Colonel Lieutenant, Book 3 of the Renaissance Army series that people keep asking about. I’m hoping to have that done by Easter of next year, but I’ll have to keep focused.

There are other projects I’m working on, but nothing major to report or confirm. The two bigger ones are Champion Impact, the sequel to Champion Bold, and Orcfyre, my fantasy novel I’m eager to finish.

May Goals

• Complete draft of The Colonel Lieutenant
• Get Champion Impact forms out to backers.
• Finish Orcfyre re-plotting and start writing
• Knock 10 items off Project To-Do List

Books

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Non-Fiction)
• Homemade Sourdough: Mastering the Art and Science (Non Fiction)
• Armageddon’s Children (Fiction)
• War and Peace (Fiction, Audiobook)
• The Seven Basic Plots (Research)
• Complete Idiot’s Guide to Game Theory (Research)
• Without Remorse (Fiction, Re-Read)
• Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan (Non-Fiction)

Actually finished two books this month, which is great. Still behind on my goal for the year, but at least I’ve knocked a couple out. The two I finished were both great reads.

Sapiens was in a similar vein to Guns, Germs and Steel, only without being as preachy. It provide a good, well-structures history of human development and how progress is not always beneficial. It also gave me some ideas of how to work out issues with some of the histories I’m working on for my own projects.

And the book on sourdough was about answering some questions on sourdough, and some fun recipes to try.

According to Goodreads, I currently have nine active books, including the audiobook, I’m working through. That’s a lot. Some of them are in niche places (my patio read book, my Kindle ebook, the audiobook). The rest are just books I need to sit down and pull notes from.

Which is all a long way of of saying I need to read more.

May Goals

• Finish Game Theory Book
• Finish Two Fiction Books
• Finish One Non-Fiction Book

Movies and Shows

• Scrapped Princess (Re-Watch)
• Rurouni Kenshin Reboot (Season 1)
• Andor (Season 2)
• Last Kingdom (Re-Watch)
• Marco Polo
• The Last of Us (Season 2)

This last month my roommate put Crunchyroll and Max on the main TV, so now I’ve got even more options to watch.

I watched two season of anime off Crunchyroll. I re-watched Scrapped Princess, which I haven’t seen in 20 years. I’d forgotten enough that it was almost like watching it for the first time. Almost. I still remembered bits here and there.

Then I watched the first season of the Rurouni Kenshin reboot. This is my favorite anime series, and to see it redone was pretty fun. The story-telling is tighter and the animation cleaner. That being said, it’s not perfect. One of my three favorite fights occurred at the end of the season, and though it was visually stunning, it wasn’t as exciting as the original fight.

The two big shows from April and early May are Andor and The Last of Us, both in their second season. Andor continues to be a fantastic show, with excellent writing that isn’t dependent on huge action sequences and space battles. There’s one more trio of episodes to go; expect a bigger write up in June.

The Last of Us was a show I really enjoyed, based off a pair of games that I also really liked. I even did a whole post about the first season; the second has yet to disappoint. They are making a lot of changes to the story on so many levels, I can’t really get into it here. I will have to see how it ends to really see how the changes work out.

May Goals

• Watch One Best Picture Winner (Three remaining)
• Watch One Fix-It title (Four remaining)
• Finish One Started TV Show
• Start One New TV Show

Games

• Space Marine 2
• Madden 2025

Not much in the gaming department. I’m working through Space Marine 2, and playing some Madden 2025 with my roommate. Also revisited Stellaris some more, but that’s nothing special.

RPG wise, the game I run, Atonement, has advanced to the next chapter. The party is now in the high mountains, preparing to fight trolls and undead. I’m excited for this chapter; it’ll be much more straight forward than the pseudo-politics of the great city of Erasmus. Simple fights leading to moderate puzzles. Good, old-fashioned role-playing game.

May Goals

• Finish Space Marine 2
• Start new PC Game
• Continue a game in progress

What’s Next

I have a launch party set for June 8th at Inbound BrewCo. Here’s a link to the Facebook Event Page, and an image below with the appropriate info.