Q1 2024 Update

 

Blah, blah, blah.

As much as I know you're eagerly awaiting the next installment of my Jerry Springer Chronicles,

I need a moment to look back at the first quarter of 2024 .... before the second quarter is over. 

The busy-ness of the Perty Nerdy business has become snow-ballingly ... busy.

(I'm a writer, right? Meh ... whatever.)

Fine, let me rephrase.

When 2024 started, I created a vision board for Perty Nerdy. There's a goal in sight. Or multiple goals, really. What better way to make sure that I'm on track than to look back and see what I've accomplished so far.

The year started off with a bang as one of the more difficult goals of being on a convention panel sort of ... fell into my lap. You can watch that story unfold with the video above. The entire experience was unreal! 

Word to the wise, participating on a panel is intoxicating - it will immediately make you want to do more and make them bigger and better!

Also new this year, I started creating "mood music" videos with built-in worldbuilding prompts. The intent is to immerse yourself in music and gain motivation from the many prompts provided - whether you're sitting for a focused writing session or homebrewing your tabletop world. 

If you get stuck, you can just look at the screen for inspiration!

The images are all very slightly animated - enough that the images are engaging but not so much that they distract you from the task at hand - sort of like LoFi, if that's your thing.

I usually live stream these 2-3 times per month, on Saturday mornings (Pacific Time, where I live). Afterwards, they live on my channel for you to use whenever you like!

They seem to be a big hit! Some of them were even requested by followers of mine (Coastal & Combat). If you would like one created for your needs, let me know!

My published short story, Minor Keys, finally received an "audio" treatment and is now available for your ears, as well as your eyes! 

Voice actors are some of the most colorful and engaging people you'll ever meet. Every meeting that involves our (Dungeon Studios) voice actors is highly entertaining. The experience is only heightened when you play D&D with them. And if you become friends?!? Whew - watch out! 

One of our female voice actors was kind enough to lend her voice to my project and I couldn't be happier with the results! Her pacing enhances the drama. Her tone is beautiful and she captures the voices of each character, from a young curious girl to a stodgy old politician!

If you like Bladerunner, you might want to check out my post-modern sci-fi about a young girl that makes a pivotal discovery with far-reaching consequences after the President's death. 

I wouldn't be where I am in my writing career with out the Writing Excuses podcast. If you're interesting in learning more about the craft of writing, I highly suggest this 15-min podcast run by very well-known authors. There's twenty or so seasons and each episode includes homework. You could go through every episode and re-listen to them all over again and you would STILL learning something new! 

(If you're a big fan of Brandon Sanderson, he was attached to the podcast in it's older seasons)

A while ago, Writing Excuses started hosting writing retreats. It started with a cruise, which is an excellent idea for getting away to write, however I couldn't afford to go at the time. Over the years, they expanded these retreats to other locations, like Minnesota and Scotland. 

I've always admired the Writing Excuses team because they make it very evident that representation is important to them. To this end, they started issuing two scholarships for these retreats:

Scholarship #1: Out of Excuses Scholarship: This scholarship is designed for those who cannot financially afford the retreat on their own.

Scholarship #2: Writers of Color: This scholarship is for writers of color.

Why I never thought to apply for one of these scholarships until now, I'll never know but ... do you wanna know something creepy?

I did an interview earlier this year with a tarot-card reader. She read my fortune with numerology, tarot cards and she read my palms. At the time of the interview, I had no notion of submitting for the writing scholarship. 

A week or so AFTER the interview, the idea of submitting for the scholarship popped into my head. It felt like I was Harry Potter and someone had slipped me the Felix Felicis potion. My mind felt clear as I typed up my entry essay. My hands felt cosmically guided as I put all the pieces of my application together. Luck was on my side as I reached out to other authors I've interacted with requesting recommendation letters. It all just ... came together. Every fiber of my being told me that I would get this scholarship - even while my experience was telling me the chances of that happening were slim. It was a wild experience, just submitting.

You can watch my reaction video above after I received news that I was accepted. It includes some Dr. Jones footage - because dogs are cute and his will is strong. 

If you go back and watch my fortune being read, I sincerely wonder if the universe was trying to tell me about this writing retreat.  And I now wonder if June will truly be the beginning of everything .... just as she had said. 

If you're interested, you can watch my fortune being read here:

The retreat is in June, so you can expect another video describing the scholarship process and another debriefing the retreat. 

If you like podcasts, we've made some updates over at Dungeon Studios.

The Game is our tabletop talkshow and podcast. My co-host and I discuss everything related to tabletop and occasionally, we have guests like Keith Baker!

If you don't know who Keith Baker is, he's the creator of the Eberron campaign setting for D&D. To put it into context, he's the H.G. Wells and Jules Verne of tabletop. If you love steampunk, you'd love Eberron. He merges science with fantasy in such a unique way - it's the best of both worlds. It was a real joy getting to meet him. I'm hoping he'll soon interview for my own channel so we can talk more in depth about his worldbuilding processes.

The Game is now only an hour and we've really streamlined the process so we get to the point quicker, wasting less of your time ... and probably ours, to be honest.

With The Game now in Season 2, we decided to roll out a new show, Nerd Newz.

Still a talkshow, this podcast reports on all newsworthy topics relating to many nerdy fandoms - not just tabletop. Henry Cavill seems to find his way into our conversation most shows, as does Wizards of the Coast and Baldur's Gate.

For those of you that enjoy radio plays, we've rolled out a new form of audio drama called Fables From the Forgotten.

Imagine H.P. Lovecraft's storytelling merged with Tales From the Crypt showmanship, set in a fantasy realm and produced with top-notch voice-acting and music for an unparalleled audio experience.

What I love about this project is that everyone from Dungeon Studios is involved. Our writers, myself included, wrote the stories. Then another team of writers took inspiration from those stories and wrote scripts. Our voice actors played their parts and our media team produced the episodes. This project is such a labor of love, and I'm SOOOO proud of what we created. I hope you give it a listen.

And lastly, we're going to be participating in the largest D&D game in the the world! And not only that! We'll be there reporting on the event as Nerd Newz!

You might have heard about a little shop in Provo, Utah, that set a Guinness World Record for the largest D&D game ever played. Twelve hundred (1,200) people, playing the same game, at the same time.

(If you know anything about D&D, you know it's hard to get 4 people to play the same game at the same time!)

We interviewed Andy Ashby of We Geek Together on our show, The Game, because he's planning to do it again this year with three thousand (3,000) people!

I'm not sure if we're "just that cool" or he enjoyed working with us THAT much but ...  he gave us a table near the main stage to participate in the event both days. And THEN, he gave us a separate news table so we could report on the event. 

The main stage will have actors performing key moments of the game, an entire mall will be filled from top-to-bottom with nerds, and the fate of a fantasy realm will be determined in a game spanning two days. 

There are some big names that will be there - some haven't been announced yet. My secret hope is that Brandon Sanderson, who lives in Utah, will be so interested that he stops by to roll some dice with us.

These are just the highlights, folks, of all that has happened to me in the first quarter of the year! Now that I've organized it into one place, I can see why I get little sleep these days and have more greys. That's alot!

And yet - I'm not really crossing anything else off my 2024 list ... Or am I?

Guess you'll find out soon!

Later nerds!