All my thoughts about writing and publishing.
Gods and Heroes: The Trading Card Game?!
February 1 2025
I grew up in the 90’s. When Pokemon hit, I got into every aspect of it; the anime, the video game, the merch, and of course… the trading cards. As an adult, I experienced a resurgence in love for trading card games; I got back into the Pokemon cards, and then the recent Star Wars Unlimited by Fantasy Flight Games. Even more recently, I’ve begun dipping my toe into Magic: the Gathering.
And then, in the middle of last year, it hit me: what if I could make a Gods and Heroes Trading Card Game?!
YouTube is a wonderful thing. That is not a non sequitur. I started looking up advice on how to create a card game, and I was introduced to a whole community of people I never knew existed. I learned so much, not just about how to create the game I wanted to make, but about card games as a whole, about strategy and gameplay mechanics. I learned how much time and effort and thought goes into building a game.
I started building my game from scratch. I took inspiration from existing games, of course; but all of the designs, the icons, panels, borders, and effects, were painstakingly designed and built by my from the ground up. I’m used to world building, but I can tell you right now, game building is something else entirely.
The stats and information came first, though. And that was the easy part; I could keep it thematic to the books, and to the world from which they came. I know Pandeia inside and out, and coming up with ideas for cards felt as natural to me as writing.
At first, I put together mock-up artwork using screenshots from the website Hero Forge put through a cartoon filter. It’s a brilliant site, and I’m still genuinely happy with the mock-up art. I have a small collection of prototype cards with that art and I intend on keeping them. Unfortunately, Hero Forge does not allow use of their artwork for commercial projects. It’s completely understandable, but it meant I had to search for a new source of artwork.
I’m working on that now, along with all the other things that need to be done to launch a card game. I will be launching via Kickstarter, mainly so that I can pay a professional artist. Speaking of which, I’ve found an artist who has worked for Fantasy Flight Games and Wizards of the Coast, and I’m in contact with his agent right now.
If everything goes well, the artist will join my project, and my new game will be launching when the art is all done!
I’ll be running a pre-launch campaign very soon, once all my ducks are in a row.
Worldbuilding fantasy novels
September 30 2024
Every now and then, an idea appears that instils within me a sense of immense excitement. Sometimes it’s in relation to a story I’m already working on, but sometimes it’s about a whole new story. A new world.
I love worldbuilding for fantasy novels. I love worldbuilding in general. And so, when a new world peeks through the opaque fog of the subconscious, I rush to write it all down. It’s never fully formed, of course, but the spark is the important part. The fire, the real detail, comes later.
A lot of worldbuilding comes from context. A world needs to take its shape from the important and unique aspects of the story you want to tell. So when I get the initial idea, I try to identify what the story might look like, what kind of people the characters who inhabit the world would be, and whether there is magic and how that magic would work. With those building blocks, a lot of the following details can be teased out simply by following contextual information. There is a thread of logic, like links in the evolutionary chain, that can provide the information you need to create a fantasy world.
I’m sure it’s said a lot in the writing community, but a really great example of this kind of worldbuilding is Brandon Sanderson. His magic systems are build into the creation story of his worlds, built into the evolution of his characters and creatures. Think of your magic system like natural forces in our real world; gravity, fire, oxygen. Without those, the world would look completely different. We would have evolved into drastically different creatures if our lives depended on a different set of elements.
Then there is culture. Most cultures are based on (or at least informed by) geography. What they value, what resources and technologies are available to them, the food they eat, how they travel, even religion; all of these can be dictated by the world around them.
The process of worldbuilding is just as much fun as the process of writing.
All of this to say, even though I am still working on Gods and Heroes book 5, I’ve recently been struck by inspiration for a new series of novels intended for slightly younger readers. More information will follow, but suffice it to say I’m very excited!
Endings…
August 20, 2024
Hey! Welcome to my first blog post!
I’m currently working on Book 5 in the Gods and Heroes series. It has been… interesting, to say the least, delving back into the world of Pandeia. In between Book 4 and 5, I wrote my mystery/crime novel the Rosetown Man, and then a stand-alone fantasy novel which I’m keeping secret for now.
Book 5 (which has a title, I just haven’t revealed it yet) will be the final entry in the Gods and Heroes series. It might surprise you to know that, though Rise of Fire came out in 2018, I have been world-building Pandeia for around twenty years.
All of this has been on my mind lately, as I’m beginning the second half of G&H Book 5. Finishing a novel is difficult enough. My biggest struggle as a writer has always been resolutions. But finishing an entire series is a task in and of itself. There are so many characters, so many conflicts, and so much detail in the world that I can’t help feeling intimidated. How do I round all of it out in a satisfying way for my readers?
Don’t get me wrong; I’ve had the ending planned for years. It’s not about how it ends, exactly. It’s about doing justice to the characters and the world itself.
Imposter Syndrome is common for writers, and I’m no stranger to it. But there have been three times it has been an actual problem; writing my first novel, writing the Rosetown Man, and writing G&H Book 5.
I’m looking forward to finishing the Gods and Heroes series, but at the same time I’m dreading it.
Endings are tough.
But so as not to end on a down note, I want to officially announce something cool:
Though Book 5 will be the final book in the Gods and Heroes series, it will not be the final book set in Pandeia.
After all, some endings are really just the beginning of something else.