Tag: Metacast (Writing About The Site)

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The First Ascent

Setting goals, keeping perseverance, outreaching to others, and accepting help; these acts are what made this happen. These acts are what have made what started as a hope into a truth. What made April 4, 2020, our founding day of affiliation. Thank you, all of you, who have helped make this possible, who have hyped me, who have watched, and who have followed. Each of these are stones that have set a foundation together, and made the climb up the mountain possible. Thank you.

And that’s how we’re going to start April.

We’ll launch with streaming content since we’re already on the high of the topic with the affiliate announcement. Last month we set expectations across a number of MMOs, but found ourselves realigning about mid-month. Destiny 2’s Season of the Worthy is fun, but it didn’t quite scratch the itch of previous Seasons. We’re still playing it but it’s showing up less on stream than previous months. Similarly, Warframe also is less present on the main line. Operation Scarlet Spear has fun content but without the draw of the rest of the clan, I’m less inclined to throw it into co-op content. Monster Hunter World co-op content, on the other hand, is still going strong. We reached the endgame two weeks ago, and have been playing with the post Iceborne content in the Guiding lands. That said, it may be soon time to move past active MHW content, and we might be looking at something new in the future.

Fridays and post-raid Saturdays we’ve been playing a new single player experience, Cross Code. This game is a lovely action-adventure RPG puzzler, reminiscent of Secret of Evermore and other SNES titles. It is amazing. The game play is smooth on keyboard and mouse, the puzzles range from cute to I HATE THIS SO MUCH. It’s a blast. The developers, Radical Fish Games, really put a lot of love into the project and it shows with how each region unfolds, the hidden lore, the animations, everything. I don’t know how much longer we have left with the game, but we’ll be digging in until it’s done. There’s also a new game plus option, but we won’t be jumping into that right away. It’ll be something worth revisiting later this year or the next.

A follow up on the Eden Raids in XIV, Dinner First has reached e8s, the new Shiva battle and the final part of the current raid tier. I’m rather happy with how the group has progressed. It’s certainly faster than we managed it last raid tier, and hearing the communication going through our team has been inspiring. By the next monthly update, we’ll be done, I’m certain.

There’s a lot to go over with the Twitch affiliate content, so I’ll be separating that out to another post. Thank you again to everyone that helped that happen.

Following up on the spring Patreon poll, we’ve started work on this month’s short story. The patrons wished for a revisit to the land of Manta and Draco Artifactium, and so I spent time digging into the setting and making sure anything I write becomes consistent with the past and future novels. Revisiting the agents of the dragon Harbinger and her world has been lovely, and working on the initial draft has gone well. Pop into the Patreon for details of how that story is progressing, and to get a free copy of it and January’s short story.

By this time next month, we’ll be chapters deep into the next novel. Epicus is ready to go in terms of outline, so once we’re done with the short story prep, we’ll hit the ground running. Ideally, we’ll knock out the first draft by June’s status update, and see a launch of the novel maybe two years after the release of Doppelganger: Draco Artifactium. Crossing fingers for this September.

Finally, let’s talk about the discord, The Hiddennode. We just went live with public access to the server, and supporter access areas. I’ll be mirroring update information from those supporter routes to those channels, so while fans can connect with each other on the discord, they can stay up to date with the different threads of my content. The discord is publicly open, so come visit. My goal is to grow that community; to make it a thriving center of cool people who like hanging out, like my content, and help me with developing more worlds. Everything starts small, so I know this will take time.

And that sums it up. April is ready to go with some awesome content coming in streams and writing releases. Stay tuned for more Patreon posts, join the Discord, and keep an eye on public announcements via Twitter, Facebook, and Twitch.

Otherwise, see you in May.

featured Image Source: Photo by Victor Duarte from Pexels
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A Promising Month

I sit down to write this with the sound of cool synths and drum machines on loop in my headphones. Something about listening to retrowave, chillwave, synthwave, whatever-wave feels like the future. A grungy, wonderous future perceived by so much cheesy 80’s sci-fi flicks and imaginative cyberpunk novels. Loud hair, neon lies, and the hopeful grasp of the underdog.

A retro future so bright, you gotta wear shades.

It’s the head space I’m entering as I think about the next project. Rusty ships sailing between worlds, capitalistic stellar empires, strange mental powers, space whales, and a menagerie of diverse aliens dotting the cosmos. Culture drives their worlds, and influence and style are all at the core of what makes Phased and the new novel’s setting thrive.

We spent January neck deep in that universe. On the 19th we released our first Patreon Early Access Short Story, Phased: Hand of Void. This short represents the quarterly fiction projects I’m bringing to people who sign up for the Patreon, and I’m excited to see the growth the story has caused. April will see the next story show up, but the plan is to start voting on that piece later this month. I’m curious if readers will be hungry for more from Phased, Manta, or seek out other settings I’m interested in playing in.

HoV kept us busy through January, fulfilling our promise of getting a new short story out. Yet working on the short wasn’t a one-time jaunt into that universe. It was meant to be a kickstart, a flavor test, a change to expand the range of the writer’s bible and help that galaxy come to life both for readers and for myself. It was an exploration to prep me for working on Epicus and help accelerate the progress on the next novel. And accelerate it has. During the last week of January, we reclaimed many of the various outline documents for the novel, the light drafts we had put into place, and have begun indexing and merging them into a single unified document. Charlie has a lot of work going for her, but I know her story better now. Soon, so shall you.

Speaking of knowing more, I spent time in January going over plans for expanding how much information I’m sharing and how I’m sharing it. Weekly updates are going up on Patreon every Friday. While the monthly blog post is meant to be a digest of the entire month’s cycle, the Friday updates are meant to serve as a richer experience. More exacting numbers, direct screen shots and minor spoilers of how things are going. It’s an accountability exercise for myself while keeping readers and viewers in the loop. The same can be said for the Patch Notes page that now appears here on the site, both are tools meant to provide accountability to people interested in my works and want to know their payments are being invested wisely. It’s something I like seeing from those I invest it, so it’s more than reasonable to expect others to want the same from me. Future plans for communication include a newsletter that should be launching next week. The newsletter will also be monthly, but will be less narrative and more bullet point. Essentially between the blog, newsletter, and Patreon posts, readers and viewers can decide how much or how little information they want to know about my projects.

We had a good month on the Twitch side of things. Views are up, we’ve attracted some lovely people who are coming about regularly, and we’re now officially at 3/5th of the follower minimum we need on our march towards affiliate. While officially we’re only streaming Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, we’ve started to add more days (Friday and Sunday), which has helped expand that capture net for collecting new viewers. Streams are now regularly at least 4 hours long, and I’ve started to put together a plan for what games the channel will start to focus on over the coming year. On the back end of things, I learned a bit about Adobe After Effects and made a thing. It’s the first of many features I’ll be adding to the stream as I learn more about that program, and understand how OBS’s and Stream Elements’ notification work. I look forward to seeing how the stream will look six months from now.

February holds so much potential after such a powerful January. This week will see the completion of the new outline and production begin on the first draft of Epicus. The rest of the month will include a lot of pushing forward to have the novel sitting at least 50k words deep like NaNoWriMo was rearing its head in the shortest month. Twitch streaming will officially expand to fit the new days, with Tuesday and Thursday being my official “off” days. I can’t say for sure if we’ll hit affiliate in the coming month, but we’re going to keep at it. The new raid content coming later this month for FFXIV will help with that, but the steady hand we’ve been keeping since October has been our greatest asset for growth. The newsletter will go live, and more effects will enter our Twitch stream. New pixel art variants of the Dinner First crowd will appear once I know who everyone is going to be, so keep an eye out for that. I’d also like to do more pixel art in the coming month, but don’t hold me to that. It’s the long plan, not the priority.

That’s it, our February update. I’m looking forward to sharing more over the next few weeks via the Patreon posts. Putting together the newsletter later this week will be a fun exercise, and you can expect updates on Twitter, Facebook, and Twitch for when that goes live. I’m especially looking forward to seeing how the novel goes during it’s first few days of production.

Blog Image Source: Pixabay on pexels.com

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Status Update

I started today with a strange dilemma. My work day typically begins with loading up a stable of programs I use in relation to writing or editing the current novel project. Word for the core writing content, Scrivener for compiling, OneNote for my world building Wiki, Excel for a few of the math world building factors. It takes a few moments to get them all situated and where I like them on my displays, but in the past two years of work I’ve become adapt at getting started. Today, however, I’m having to pause because the routine is broken. You see, that novel is currently done.

I started the novel (Let’s just call it code name DAD for now) years ago, when I started braining storming a setting had started high fantasy but moved into a cyberpunk timeline. It wasn’t a copy of our own world, but many of the events that happened in our world would funhouse-mirror inside of Manta, just with the added factor of elves, orcs, dwarves, and elemental deities being a factor in world events. The threads of the story are almost a decade old, but the story of Micara, and her struggles in the city-state of New Castle were born back in 2014. By 2015, we had already created the first part of the book, part 2 came along in 2016, and March 2017 was the day the book was finished. A year came and went, and several surgeries later I was able to get back on task in March of 2018 to start the first full edit. Finally, after more than 4 years of writing, editing, world building, and podcasting, the book’s first edit draft came to fruition on July 2, 2018.

Is the book done yet? No. No, it’s currently at the editors, getting reviewed, poked, prodded, and overall ripped down and apart. I’m trying to not think about that too much because I’ve been in that book for so long. It’s hard for me to not want to think of the book as precious, but I have to distance myself from it. There will be more books in the future and I’m sure this will become an easier practice, but it’s the first one. That is special in its own right.

What next, then? Well this is a status update for July, let’s see what we’ve accomplished in the last month compared to our goals from May.

June Review

  • Writing – We accomplished the most important task here; finish the novel edits. Everything else was tertiary to that task. We didn’t do much here in the blog, nor over on Hiddennode, but that’s fine. Now’s the time between big project moments to get rolling with that.
  • Streaming – This has gone… poorly. I’m just not getting the population I want in here, and we’re coming up on our three-month deadline. It disappoints me, but I’m determined to not be broken by that disappointment. I’ve got a few new single player games I’m going to running with this week. Let’s see how they do (see below for details).
  • Podcasting – Hiddennode went the way of the blog. That’s okay. We’ll be picking it up soon. Hiddengrid/Codex podcast… That’s a long story, but one that I need to address in another post. I had ideas that didn’t work. That doesn’t mean I’m stopping.
  • Overall – We accomplished the most important task, but we slacked heavily in everything else. July is the chance to bring that forward. So let’s set some goals!

Writing

Focus: Short Story development

  • Bloggy activity
  • Short-Story-a-thon
  • Novel Concept

These three goals are meant to dominate my July. The blog content is meant to be the lifeline to my works to the rest of the world, or to sound more poetic “All roads lead through the blog.” The second goal focuses on the creation of short stories meant to sustain myself between the novels. While the novels are my flag ships, the shorts are meant to be teasers of content, tastes of my world, writing style, and way of thinking. I’m only supposed to write one per month, but hey if I can create a couple of them, I won’t be upset. Finally, I need to decide what to work on for the next novel. August is intended to be the month we outline and start book two. By the end of July I need to know what that concept will be.

Important links:

https://www.patreon.com/jsamueldiehl – sneak peeks, weekly updates, and more.

https://twitter.com/jsamueldiehl – Announcements and thoughts.

Streaming

Focus: Get on Schedule

  • Back to work
  • New Games
  • Schedule in place

The biggest problem with Streaming lately is I don’t keep to my schedule. That’s a flaw on my part I’m correcting this week. I’ll put out a post later this week with the new schedule listed. I’ve got several dozen games sitting in my Steam Library that I haven’t streamed yet, and keeping to my schedule will help me get through these. That’s really our goal for the month. The achievements I spoke about in May aren’t as important as just getting on schedule.

Important links:

https://www.twitch.tv/nulloperations – The official stream

https://twitter.com/nulloperations – Stream announcements and schedule changes

Podcasting

Focus: Hiddennode activity

  • The weekly audio -or- video log. We’re doing both on occasion.
  • StGM is going strong
  • New RPG content is delayed

June was a rough month for podcasting. July will have our Hiddennode return, but Codex and Hiddengrid needs some serious rethought. I’m iffy about those these days. I’ll have a workshop post later this month.

Important links:

http://www.hiddengrid.com/ – the podcast that was

http://www.hiddennode.com/ – the podcast that is

http://codexpodcast.com/ – the podcast that will be

https://www.patreon.com/hiddengrid/ – change is coming to this

July Goals

  • Short Stories
  • Weekly episodes of Hiddennode
  • Streaming Schedule
  • Weekly blog posts here
  • Weekly updates on both patreons

There’s a lot of good that happened in June, but we slacked here and there. July is about catching those issues and bring them back to the forefront. I’m not too panicked about those slips though because they took a back seat to the important editing project. That’s our flagship, and so it’s vital to be make the call to slice those off if they’re in the way. The flagship is currently docked through August and September, so it’s time for the skiffs to dot the lake.

I’m not sure where that metaphor is going. Boats I guess?

Okay, off to work. Have a great July and we’ll be back soon.

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Status Update

Let’s say it’s early May 2017. My wife is recovering from her hip replacement nicely, I’m still taking care of her but she’s getting stronger every day. I’m in between projects at the time, the plans being put on hold while I perform the important duties of household caretaker during her healing. One night, as I’m indulging in the grind for video game supremacy (really it was just trying to max level all jobs in Final Fantasy XIV before the Stormblood expansion drops), half of my left side vision drops. It’s like a curtain falling before my face and a cold fear fills my gut. I know what this is. I’ve seen this before.

It’s a retina detachment.

I debate what to do. Trish is recovering, but she still needs my help. If I go down for surgery I won’t be able to help her move about or take care of things around the house. I’ll be useless as caretaker and instead need a separate caretaker of my own. I’m quiet for the first few hours, but in the end I reveal my fears to her in the morning. She insists I go to my eye doctor. I relent, I go, but the doctor declares it’s just likely map dot fingerprint dystrophy. Nothing to be concerned about. Schedule an appointment with a retinalogist for next Friday and we’re good.

Cool. Nothing to worry about despite my vision darkening over the weekend. Nothing to worry about except that growing fear in my gut. I see the eye doctor at the specialist. Trish comes with me. She’s there when the gut punch come.

It is a retina detachment. No mistake this time.

There’s complications, issues with getting the surgery planned (What doctor can’t do surgery at a hospital?), and delays. I don’t have my surgery until early June.

The eye does not do well.

I’m out of sorts over the next year. Fear of loss of sight, the depression that sparked, my muddled mind between recovering from the anesthesia and pain meds after the surgery; it all adds up to a mess of creative garbage.

October comes, I have another surgery.

January comes, I have another surgery.

My vision isn’t restored. The eye isn’t dead, but it’s not working right. Daylight, bright lights, anything beyond a dimly lit room is rough for it. I wear a patch these days. Things are spinning.

But March comes. March brings with it desires for creativity. I start editing the book again, I start wanting to play role-playing games again, I want to do more than what I’ve been doing in the quagmire that’s been the past year, and I’m doing more. I’m doing this.

So after almost two years it’s time for a status report. The last one was July 2016, but it’s never too late to start back up. Because we’re starting back up we need to develop what we’re going to make the status report. I want this to be something valuable to me as well as followers of my content, so we’re going to start each report with a blotter on a given a section then thoughts on that section. Afterwards we’ll have a round up of what’s to come in the next month. Consider this our June 2018 update.

Writing

Focus: Editing Novel for publication

  • 61,515/136,966 words edited
  • We’ve completed part 1 of 3, and part 2 is editing smoothly
  • The blog is now relaunching

March saw us start the editing of DA:D, and the first third of the book held us up in April. We’re going to be doubling down in the coming days as I’d like to see part 2 finished by the beginning of June and have part 3 ready for Alpha Reading/Editing by no later than mid-month/the 15th. Once that happens we’ll pass this along to a few interested parties and then get started immediately with another novel. I’m still debating if I want to work on the TA.M. stuff or if I want to work on the J Samuel Diehl content. We’ll see.

Important links:

https://www.patreon.com/jsamueldiehl – sneak peeks, weekly updates, and more.

https://twitter.com/jsamueldiehl – Announcements and thoughts.

Steaming

Focus: Reaching Twitch Affiliate

  • Completed 2 of 4 needed achievements.
  • Completed 2 of 3 needed achievements for partner.

In early May we began streaming. This week marks our fourth week at the project, but it’s been slow going. I’m looking to expand my advertising of the stream over the next few days to try and draw people in. I also want to look into joining a community that might be able to assist with getting me into a group of active streamers. Admittedly this might mean pulling away from some of the normal folks I game with to get this occupation rolling.

Important links:

https://www.twitch.tv/nulloperations – The official stream

https://twitter.com/nulloperations – Stream announcements and schedule changes

Podcasting

Focus: Hiddennode reboot, StGM assistance, Starting the new RPG project

  • Hiddennode has been silent since November.
  • Seize the GM has reached a nice biweekly schedule
  • The New RPG podcast announcement is coming in a few minutes

We’ve been out of podcasting really since March of last year when Trish went into surgery. While we did some NaNoWriMo and Dog Days of Podcasting work, we couldn’t find the focus we needed to complete those projects. The Seize the GM work I’ve participated in is helping me to get back into the grove and the software I’m using for streaming will help me get recordings out the door quicker.

Important links:

http://www.hiddengrid.com/ – the podcast that was

http://www.hiddennode.com/ – the podcast that is

http://codexpodcast.com/ – the podcast that will be

https://www.patreon.com/hiddengrid/ – change is coming to this

http://www.seizethegm.com/ – Affiliated show, great RPG discussions. My voice returns in June/July

June Goals

  • Complete editing of Da:D
  • Weekly episodes of Hiddennode
  • Weekly episodes of Codex Podcast
  • Develop and stick to Streaming Schedule
  • Weekly blog posts here
  • Weekly updates on both patreons

The next six weeks are about getting on schedule. I’m cleaning up my language too going forward. I notice while writing these I say we, we’re, etc. I use a plural for myself when I should just say I, me, mine. I’m also taking out words like trying, going, or other “maybe” statements. The lack of definitive statements gives my mind the chance to “cheat” goals. I’ve built myself an out. So that’s two new June goals.

  • Stop using passive “maybe” language
  • Use definitive self-identifiers in my statements

I’m set to have a strong showing in June with these goals. With that the June Status Report is good to go. I hope you’ve stuck around long enough to read this, and if you have please leave me a comment. Feedback is something I’ve sought but haven’t asked for a ton. This time, I really mean it. Let me know if I’m reaching anyone out there. Let me know if my textual voice is carrying. I want to succeed, and I need your help to do it.

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That New Widget

I don’t always get to talk about milestones on here. At least, not as often as I wish I could. The cause lies somewhere between my production cycle and what I actually consider a milestone. So when I say I have a milestone to celebrate it really is something important. Today we have a milestone to celebrate: The Patreon is live.

Okay. I know. I’m celebrating the ability for people to give me money, but hear me out. It’s a milestone because a few important factors have sprung up from this going live. It’s the first time (aside from a poorly advertised short story) that I can actually make money as a creator. That’s pretty cool. I’ve also already lined up two supporters and that’s mind blowing to me. Between the two of them I’ve hit my first Patreon goal: supporting the website’s hosting. Granted that is an every two-year expense but knowing that it’s taken care of is a burden I’m really relieved to have off my shoulders. I’m still reliant on my biggest patron for support, my wife, but we’re on our way to being able to sustain this business model.

This does create a certain level of accountability now. First, I’ve made a promise of 3 days a week flash fiction. We’re a week into that already but now we have the expectation that these stories will continue. Yay accountability. This also applies to 3 days a week of podcast episodes. That’s rolling well into the new week with today’s episode where I talk about the Patreon, what I’m watching, and what I’m working on. Now I just need to take care of some short stories for the future and get to work on the novel.

Until then I want to say thanks to anyone who is just taking the time to support me by sharing the word about the podcast or my fiction. I know not everyone can toss into a Patreon but liking the Facebook page, sharing a post, a story, or an episode helps a ton. It’s a long road I’m traveling and every helping hand is appreciated.

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Foundation: In Which We Begin a New Journey

hidden_node_logoThis post is my official announcement I’m writing full time. I decided to come out swinging instead of trying to find a fancy way of dropping that bomb on the end of this paragraph. It’s a scary ass choice and one my wife and I don’t make lightly. The new year is full of many great opportunities and this is my chance to try and see if I can be that writer guy that’s in my mind. It’s time to start laying down our ‘reasonable’ expectations. First, I’m not expected to fund the family’s coffers all by myself this year. Starting a creative career isn’t that easy and even if we get close to having a decent finical flow we’re still going to be playing it safe with any fiscal choices we make for some time. Second, the idea is to do an all-consuming creative approach. Writing for long form fiction and the blog will become my main focus, but podcasting on the regular and producing weekly (and sometimes daily) short fiction will also be a focus. I’m going to be trying this from as many angles as I can reasonably juggle. First short fiction should be up a few hours after this.

This means a number of changes in terms of my online presence:

This place is one of them. The J Samuel Diehl thing is my main announcement channel for works that are out there. I’ll get a category up with those posts and I’ll associate those with the newsletter (yeah, we’re getting one of those). Other posts such as my reviews of books, games, shows, etc. will also show up here, as well as opinion pieces, but those won’t be as flashy on the main page (At least not once we get a theme rolling). Audio fiction will also show up here, but the audio blog is reserved for the Hiddennode. Hiddennode will also mirror that fiction. Free fiction will show up here as well, and my intentions are to get a Patreon up and running in the coming weeks to post the fiction to early (as well as providing full copies of upcoming works before they become site exclusives).

The Hiddennode site has been archived. The old version is available here but except for fiction I’m bringing to J Samuel Diehl, most of the posts will remain in the archive. The site will be my audio blog, which will be daily, baring health and holidays. Many of the comments I make on blog posts here will be expanded on in that format. I don’t think of the podcast as a super strict thing so expect more casual conversation there.

Beyond my sites, we’ve got a few points to reach me. First, the nulloperations twitter thing isn’t changing. That’s my feed for personal posts, opinions, etc. The J Samuel Diehl account, though, that one is reactivating as my official “here’s stuff coming down the pipe” feed. Basically the writing stuff without the ‘Me’ fluff. It won’t be all of the posts here, just the ones that are about writing updates. Same with Facebook. The nulloperations account is me. The writer page is here. The ‘Me’ page gets the fluff. The author page gets the official announcements and such. I think it’s straight forward. No, I don’t really have much more than that. I mean there is a Tumblr thing but I’ll be honest I still don’t get that site. We’ll explore it more later. Anything else we’ll look at as the year passes through.

I don’t pretend to how things will turn out. I think my writing is pretty rad, and I think people will like it, but I don’t know. We’ve got a year to plan, act on, and then review. Unless something incredible happens beforehand I’ll let you know next year if things worked out. For now, let’s get down to business and defeat the huns. I meant write. I’m going to write. Not be in an animated movie. That would be weird.