Tidings from the Vaporous Realms
Things to look forward to and posting schedule for 2025
Greetings!
What a start to the year, y’all. Winter germs nigh on the heels of fall germs. The tax pre-season. A (welcome and much needed) surge in editorial consulting work. Bribing toddlers (mine, to be clear) with granola to let me initiate them in the ways of hobbits, medieval combat, ‘80s cartoons, and country music when their mama needs a break.
It’s all prompted an early reevaluation of my Vaporous Realms priorities and schedule. I want to be more clear-eyed about what’s possible and to be pleasantly surprised if circumstances shift and more opportunity for creative work arises. (Realism, as opposed to unfounded optimism, is all the rage these days, but I’ve been a proponent for years, even as I’ve struggled with it.)
What’s going to change? Not much, yet enough I thought I should offer a heads up.
My priority remains doubling down on the writing of more books, slow and steady, even at the expense of creating content specially for this platform. A Sceg novella and an expanded Len novella, both underway, are my minimum objectives this year.
Vaporous Realms at War tabletop content is still a secondary preoccupation, but my priority will be on creating rules and profiles for the occasional, small-scale Kickstarter (crowdfunding) campaign. I’ll explain any Kickstarters better and make them less complex. And crafted miniatures will take a back seat: they’re fun but inordinately time-consuming. I’ll mainly make them for my limited event appearances.
The hard work of online self-promotion must be shelved, because I just can’t—not right now. I value y’all as an audience and hope more folks find my stories and such, but if I don’t put my minimal creative time into writing stories, there won’t be anything worth promoting anyhow. So I’ll post on Instagram when I feel I’ve got something interesting to share, not for the sake of posting.
And in terms of the substance of what I share with y’all here:
Weekly to monthly. There are only so many hours in a day and a week, and the math just isn’t adding up. I’ll offer the same kinds of content (an Annals snippet, a codex entry, notes and recommendations, and a tabletop profile), but I can be more reliable and less stressed about it if I shift to a monthly posting schedule.1
As recompense, for paid and complimentary subscribers, I’m adding an excerpt, likely a whole chapter, from my work in progress each month.
That’s it! I look forward to being pleasantly surprised by the twists and turns that lie in wait the next eleven months.
Thank you for subscribing. And happy reading!
–M. B. Heywood
That said, I will post editorial articles more frequently over on M. B. Heywood’s Editor vs the Machine. If you’re in love with generative AI, you’ll probably be mildly offended from time to time, as I’ve made the considered decision to be a principled, unashamed contrarian on the matter. I’m not judging those who disagree, though I wish some would be less patronizing; it’s not personal. But my typical posts are mostly about practical, professional suggestions for self-editing.