So, uh, that took a while. A long while. When last we saw our hero - that's me - I was trying to figure out how to tell stories online. I tried a whole bunch of different stuff, hit a rough patch, got distracted... and now it's more than a year later with nothing to show here, not even spam comments killed by my spam fighting software.
Well, I'm back.
I won't say that means that Jaspar & Co. are up and running again, though I've been rereading my efforts to date and would like to get back to them. I'm not quite sure how, exactly, because things as I left them were veering far too "action movie" and not nearly dark and personal enough. I'd started with some over-the-top D&D 4th Edition characters modded for the world I wanted, but I think the temptation to have superheroes jumping out of airships - which I do enjoy - may be overwhelming the sense of gothic horror that I also hoped to engender. The problem with superheroes is that it's all escalation, because power limits are essentially arbitrary once you move into that realm: even Batman does stuff that is clearly inhuman and impossible. I'm not quite sure what to do with all of that, because I do want pulp elements to come to the fore as well, and at a minimum that means characters who are top-notch in their respective fields... so, blah blah soul searching in my writing; we'll see.
Definitely my menagerie of little side projects is done for the time being - all the distractions from the main thrust of storytelling were amusing outlets, but didn't serve to actually get the job of writing a novel done.
But this space doesn't have to be only about storytelling. I love writing and I love fantasy, but there's a lot more to me than that. I'm not quite certain exactly what this is going to turn into, but I've done a lot of pondering lately on owning my digital content: making certain that stuff I post to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ is mine, in a meaningful way. I don't care how good any of those services are about letting you export your data, unless you have it in a place where you can do something with it, it's not yours.
So, as ever, I'll be experimenting with owning my own content online. I don't know yet how that will shake out, but that's the part of the internet that I love: the uncertainty of novelty. There will be plenty of stuff here that has nothing to do with steam, punks, or Cthulu (or even Cthulhu), but hopefully it'll be worth reading anyway.
Perhaps eventually in all that novelty, I'll get a novel out as well. Thanks for reading.