We have commented in-house that Game Ideas Unlimited Volume 1 has not gotten much attention, at least in terms of sales.  It was admittedly an experiment–those of you who visit this site are undoubtedly aware that this book contains twenty-six of the roughly two hundred articles in that series, all of which are available on this web site for the individual patient enough to seek them, and indeed the ones included in this first volume easier to find than most, as work has already been done to clean up the articles themselves and the access links to reach them.  Thus on one level we’re not all that surprised that the book, available here directly through Cafe Press, has not been selling well.  On the other hand, we’ve also wondered whether we had adequately promoted the tome, indeed, whether gamers were at all aware of the effort.

One way to raise awareness is by getting reviews posted.  It is not always easy for authors to get reviews of their works; however, in the role playing game world there are sites eager to post reviews, and one in particular which is rather popular and which guarantees that any game-related books it receives will be reviewed.  We have dithered about sending a copy, because of course we have to pay for copies and are still uncertain how the book will be received by gamers generally (and reviewers in particular), but at this weekend’s Annual Stockholders Meeting, after being elected one of two new directors, former and now returning director Evan Young directed me to stop dithering and get the book to them.  After all, even a bad review would promote the availability of the book, and we do have confidence that the contents of the book are particularly good.  The doubts which arise come primarily from the question of whether anyone else will think it a good idea to release in print for money what is already available free electronically and has been for most of a decade.  Thus today I finished packing and mailing a copy of the book to the site in question.  It will take this week to arrive, additional time to be assigned to a reviewer, and ultimately will be reviewed.  I am watchful.

As long as I was sending a package anyway, and paying for postage and packing from my own pocket, I included a copy of Faith and Gaming, which is available here, for which I have similar concerns, although this has sold a few copies probably to members of the Christian Gamers Guild who consider the series one of their strongest assets and view the availability of the book as a boon even though the series has long been hosted in the Chaplain’s Corner of their web site.  Thus this has the double whammy, first that it is a collection of materials already available free on the Internet, and second that it is very clearly a Christian book about role play gaming, which can very quickly garner animosity in the gaming community.  But again, a review will put the book in the public eye, and to some degree a reviewer who is not “religious” himself cannot slam a religious book without blackening his own reputation, so hopefully it will get a fair treatment.

On that note, I wait.

–M. J. Young

As I have mentioned before, I publish a daily Bible study under the auspices of the Christian Gamers Guild, being its chaplain.  It is not your run-of-the-mill study, more on the order of an undergraduate course in Biblical Studies; and its subscribers include a fair number of ordained clergy and educated laymen.  At present we are working our way through I Corinthians, and you can learn more about the list on my site, if you’re interested.

The study began several years ago with Romans, for which I have copious notes which I have been editing.  The originated as preparations for a course I had hoped to teach which never materialized, but when I had finished the postings on the Bible study list I was encouraged to put them into book form.

Over the weekend I reached the end of the editing of the last chapter of those notes.  The edits need to be incorporated into the text, but that is more than half finished at this point.  The text will then have to be reformatted for printing, but in all it looks like the exegetical and logical study of Romans might well go to print before the end of the year.

Of course, I still have to get Do You Trust Me? in print, and I don’t have the cash to launch that formally at the moment (I don’t have the cash at the moment for a family barbecue, and am not certain how I’m going to get enough gas to get my mother-in-law to the store tomorrow, but that’s the way it is sometimes).  It won’t be that way forever, though, so I’ll line up the books and see what works.

I’m also giving serious consideration to doing an abbreviated study in Romans, something which covers the structure of the book without going into the sort of detail the full study does.  That’s a bigger project, though.

–M. J. Young

I would love to tell you that Ubercon X was great, but I would be lying, and although I will obfuscate and conceal, I do attempt not to lie.

It was not without its highlights.  I very much enjoyed meeting Timothy Zahn and his wife Anna, and hope they will find the time to drop me a note eventually.  He and I sat on one panel on early influences, along with Josepha Sherman, and the Zahns came to our otherwise sparsely attended Sunday morning Christian Gamers Guild-sponsored worship service.

That panel was recorded (were I to say “taped” I would be showing my age) by a group that produces a broad and podcast program under the name Non-productive, and it will be airing on the Rutgers radio station and another local station fairly soon.  They also tapped me to do a promo for the show, which they let me write:

This is Multiverser author M. J. Young encouraging you to listen to the most Non-productive broadcast in any universe.

The tech says I have no idea how accurate that is, and that it will go over well with their fanbase.  Now I wonder whether anyone in their fanbase would have any clue as to who I am.

I was on two other panels, one entitled How to Write a Game Anyone Can Play, but I’m not sure that the panelists all agreed that was a suitable goal.  Chris O’Neil, Peter Schweighofer, Tony DiGeralamo, Dave Simpson, and someone who did not make any of the program listings were part of that.  Much the same group also talked about how to attend cons and buy books without going broke, although we all joked that if anyone had any ideas on that we’d love to hear them.

However, it was a very slow con.  Tony DiGeralamo agreed with me that there were fewer people here than at previous cons, and most of them the same people.  Even so, many of the expected people were absent.  One fan purchased copies of the two new books, Faith and Gaming and Game Ideas Unlimited Volume 1, but when it comes to it my mother bought more books (one of each of those plus copies of About the Fruit and What Does God Expect–and yes, my mother bought those books, as gifts for her pastors, but I charged her the convention discounts for all books).  If my count is accurate, we had three new players at the table; no one had any money to spend on books, although several expressed sincere-sounding regret on that point.

Of course, conventions are always tiring for me.  I get booked rather solid, with just enough time to sleep overnight before returning in the morning.  I also lost most of an hour of time to a late Friday night phone call which burned up my cell minutes and my sleep.  I should have cut that shorter, but I do enjoy talking to friends even when I should know better.

Further complicating life, I realized sometime on Friday that my resistance was struggling against something, but I had forgotten to bring the Cold-Eze Tropical Fruit drops that are so good against this.  The next morning I found no drug store open, and the next morning although the drug store was open I was late for the first session (a meet and greet Kaffeeklatsch that was mostly guests and staff chatting about games and conventions).  I finally obtained this important medication on my way home after dinner with my parents, but it was too late as I was already plunging into a serious case of bronchitis.

Since I am already a respiratory patient (the asthma), it was insisted that I be seen by the doctor today, and that I obtain an antibiotic for the malady.  I must thank one of my sons for assisting me with the obligatory trip to take my mother-in-law shopping, especially as it seems to have gotten him in dutch with his girlfriend.

All of this means I am collapsing, with little to show for my efforts, and posting this only because I did not want phone calls or e-mails asking where I am.

Thanks for your understanding.  It is to be hoped that tomorrow I will be able to begin catching up on everything that has backed up since Friday.

–M. J. Young

I pushed through the end of my work yesterday, because I knew that I was being called upon to do a longish errand. I underestimated how long. I must express gratitude to my wife, who undertook a number of errands–including getting an oil change on the new car we had promised to get as soon as possible–so that I could focus on my work.

The errand was ostensibly to take a son to visit his girlfriend, who is rather demanding and petulant when he is not there even though he tends to be there more than here and has more things he can only accomplish here than there. However, she indicated that if he did not arrive last night she would not come here for Thanksgiving (I’m assuming that since he did arrive, she will come, and that perhaps her reason was more to do with the fact that she will be catching a ride with his brother, whom she does not really know so well). Thus, after numerous delays on everyone’s part, somewhere around nine last night we pulled out of the driveway. It is two hours up and two hours back, although since I would never push the old cars faster than fifty and the new one seems to be able to handle the posted sixty-five on the major roads I expected to shave a bit off that. We lost that bit going up, though, to pit stops along the way. It was after eleven when we reached College Avenue, and almost eleven thirty when we began the return trek.

I will not blame my wife for the next, because in truth I was thinking of suggesting it; however, she initiated the decision without consulting me. Our eldest and his wife (whom we considered our daughter before she was our daughter-in-law) had just moved into their own apartment. There is a rather complicated background here. He had gotten a job that required him to train in Delaware, and so had moved in with her at her mother’s house; then two unexpected things happened: her mother was killed in a car accident, and his job wound up being in Delaware instead of back here. In order to keep the house, they struck a deal with the mother’s boyfriend, who moved into the house and took over a certain amount of management, including putting his name on the lease. Then the older sister moved in, with her boyfriend and her baby and her expected, and the house became rather crowded; at about the same time, our son got a promotion that moved him to another office, which also is not here but happens to be in this state, so he was commuting over an hour each way. The combination of the extended commute and the crowded home prompted them to reorganize, find a job for her up that way, enlist the assistance of yet another of our sons to move in and help with expenses (something he never did here, but he just turned eighteen), and get an apartment.

They moved yesterday. We had too much else to do to help them, but some of the young men who have stayed with us and/or befriended our sons over the years leant a truck, a driver, and some strong arms and backs.

This long story leads back to our drive home. It happens that when we were less than halfway back, we would be passing within a few miles of this new apartment; it happens that they, like us, keep odd hours, and would probably be awake. We called to suggest that as long as we were up this way anyway, we might stop in around twelve thirty to see the place. Oh, guess what–they haven’t eaten and have no food in the new place. We’ll take them out to eat.

Getting to the apartment was easy enough, even simple; we took the seventy-five cent tour, the dollar tour not being available.* Then we climbed in our car and drove out to the highway to find an all-night diner and get some food. We were only about two or three towns away from the diner where my wife and I had our rehearsal dinner, so we went there.

It was closed.

In fact, everything was closed. We drove around for hours looking for a place that was open. We asked a guy in an all night gas station/convenience store, who sent us to a night club and grill, that was closed. We asked the night manager of a twenty-four hour Walgreens drug store, who sent us to a Denny’s twenty minutes away–which had already locked the doors. I was beginning to feel the absurdity of the situation. We live in the boondocks, miles from any major roads, but I can find half a dozen places to eat at any time of night. They live within five miles of the New Jersey Turnpike, Interstate 295, and three other federal or state highways, one of them a mere block away. You can almost smell Philadelphia from their balcony. We spent at least an hour driving around, and had to fill up the gas tank which might otherwise have gotten us home. Eventually I suggested that I knew of a twenty-four hour diner in the next county, the one my mother-in-law frequents.

It was after four by the time we had finished eating, and it was fifteen minutes in the wrong direction to take them home. I pulled into the driveway after five thirty, and while my wife went to bed so she could work tonight, I stayed up to get the youngest to school and then drive one of our houseguests to the hospital for a seven thirty surgical appointment. He was told that it would take four to six hours, so I kept the phone near the bed while I tried to nap starting at eight, ignoring all the calls which woke me which were not about him but answering one from his doctor around ten thirty telling me that he would be released around one, and another from someone else at the hospital saying it would be between one fifteen and one thirty. I pulled myself back out of bed around twelve thirty, set up the coffee but didn’t have any, and drove out to get him (it’s about twenty minutes to that hospital). Then I drove my wife to work, and finally started my new day around three thirty.

I’ve managed to get supper in the oven, and am planning to get to church tonight, but we’ll see how all that goes.

The truck was not finished today. The mechanic is so overworked, he says he’s hoping he can persuade one of his people to come in on Saturday to get some of the projects completed, so it might be back tomorrow–or not, there’s no knowing.

I did get a slice of about half an hour yesterday evening, while waiting for everyone else to be ready to begin this trip, during which I played through seven of the twelve songs Collision will be doing. I’d like to steal a bit of time tonight to do the other five, but I’d also like to write up the sheets for them and do a million other things, so that’s not likely to happen. Also, in a slice of time that was just the wrong size to really do much of anything useful, I started (and later finished) a draft for what might be a new Faith and Gaming article, about whether it’s inappropriate to care about fictional characters or be upset if they die. I don’t have time to figure out how to upload it, or even to download the new page format (the Christian Gamers Guild got a new webmaster a year ago who has moved and redesigned the site), but maybe I’ll get to it eventually.

Speaking of getting to things, I’d better check on dinner.

–M. J. Young

Some months back, when Ubercon IX was announced, I started looking at the problems and seeking solutions. There was a transportation problem even then, as the Caravan was already off the road and not coming back, but with several months I at least hoped that something would be resolved in that time, and there was plenty of talk to that end. The other big problem was that the convention had moved south a good distance, from Secaucus to Edison. We do not make enough money at Ubercon to justify funding a hotel room and restaurants (and dealers have commented that it is a small convention with slim return on investment), but it has always been perhaps forty minutes south of my parent’s home, and I’ve stayed with them each time, covering room and board through a family visit. This move makes that drive ninety minutes, so I knew I was going to have to find another place to stay.

Where that was doesn’t matter; suffice it that someone said tentatively yes, if roommates agreed, and the roommates voiced agreement to me, so I thought that was settled. It was only a couch with a roof over my head, but that would be sufficient, considering how little “free” time I have at these events. Then, last night when I called to firm up details, it all fell through.

I have been assured that we will be able to manage this, that alternative housing is already being arranged. It was just quite shocking and not a little disruptive, given that today is devoted to finalizing the transportation arrangements (a long drive to the end of the world) and I got shorted on sleep last night in preparation. However, I have not yet given up my expectation of being there, even if I do not yet have my sermon for Sunday morning’s Christian Gamers Guild sponsored worship service which is not yet on the schedule.

In other news, over the past few days I have been poking a stick at a review of a book, Evil Star. I think I will post it today, if I have time. It’s not a very good review, perhaps, but then, I’m not certain it was worth doing, and as the inverted saying goes, anything not worth doing is not worth doing well.

In brighter news, as I was digging through all the papers and piles here yesterday evening, trying to find everything I needed for the convention (I did find it all, although I had already started printing replacements for some of it before I got that far), I came upon a stack of papers which looks very like the lost edits for The Third Book of Worlds. I’ve stuffed them in a place where I do not think I can lose them–between the glass and the screen of the window behind my desk–and hope to examine them upon my return next week.

–M. J. Young

At some point last night I did a few weeks on my own web site, M. J. Young Net. Most of what I did involved hooking up from the index page to various aspects of the Christian Gamers Guild; after all, I have a substantial amount of material in the Chaplain’s Corner there, as well as in The Way, the Truth, and the Dice, the group’s e-zine. I also created a page, and linked it, inviting people to join the Corinthians study. At least a couple of my participants spoke well of the Romans study, and I picked up some new members from that, so I’m encouraged.

I’m not sure whether this was before that or after that, but I also took the time to view Primer again, and to put together a first set of notes. There are still some very confusing sections which will require my attention, but at least I’ve got the beginning of a framework.

There’s other stuff happening, but nothing worth reporting at the moment, so I’ll move to the forums.

–M. J. Young