Author’s Ideas Blog

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Steam Highwayman II nearing 75% funded

Wowee! What a week it’s been. Steam Highwayman II: Highways and Holloways has been live on Kickstarter for a week and 117 backers have already joined the project. Approximately 65% of those are backers from last year’s kickstarter and I’ll be so pleased to be acknowledging them again in the back of the book – but I’ve also see real growth, with gamebook fans, steampunks and kickstarter-lurkers all joining in.

Once again, Steam Highwayman proves to have strong international appeal. The aph here shows that nicely to date.

I’m right in the middle of editing, working with Ben on the cover and generally messaging the new backers as much as I can, but I’ve also been spending some time preparing for the autumn, when I hope to be running some ‘Write-Your-Own-Adventure’ workshops in primary schools. I’ve had success creating these books in each school I’ve worked in and even managed to create a book in 30 minutes with a class for an interview earlier this year – the observer commented that it was one of the best literacy lessons she had ever seen. I’ll be sharing more about that later this summer, as well as creating a new section of this website to host / attract professional traffic – ie teachers wondering who I am and what I do!

Anyway – payday has come for many and with that, a warning. The Steam Highwayman is no fool and lurks in wait: if you’ve been delaying your pledge, better do it quickly before the costs of living snatch your hard-earned cash away from you!

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Off to a Good Start

Steam Highwayman II has been live on Kickstarter for just less than 24 hours and currently has 50 backers – putting it at approximately 30% of my funding target.  A great start!

In this short amount of time since the project’s launch, there’s been a lengthy livestream, a rivalry for position as Backer #1 (narrowly stolen by the pork-pie obsessed Ben Roberts) and a re-gathering of many of the backers from last year’s campaign.  It has felt a little bit like a reunion.  In fact, of the 50 backers I am currently estimating that 60% were previously included.  That implies the other 40% is growth so far – and if that continues, I’ll be a very happy man indeed.

If you’ve seen my account on instagram you might have noticed that I’m moving on from my #steampunk #definitions series (although I’ll certainly return to that) to feature some extracts from passages of Highways and Holloways.  If you haven’t yet seen that account, please take a look and see what you think of the #definitions series – I’m considering turning them into a steampunk lexicon…

GamebookNews.com has featured the project again and I’m anticipating some other coverage in the next few days.  If you have any channels through which to publicise the project and help us reach our target, please share away!

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Steam Highwayman II Live on Kickstarter!

Here it is!  Steam Highwayman II: Highways and Holloways went live this evening at 7pm and has already reached around 10% of the funding target.  I entertained myself with a mammoth 90min livestream while watching several old friends and backers from SH1 reappear and two new faces I’m very happy to greet.

You can watch the video of the livestream on the Kickstarter page if you missed it!

And don’t delay – there is still a chance to get your likeness in your copy on a unique, artist-drawn wanted poster.

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Steam Highwayman II on Kickstarter Tomorrow!

From tomorrow, Tuesday 17th July, you can fund your copy of the second book in the Steam Highwayman series: Highways and Holloways!

Set around Henley, Wallingford and the Chiltern villages, SH2 sees you take to the air on extended missions, engage in factional rivalry, encounter dozens of combats, meet a dangerous sky pirate, build new friendships and discover new secrets, find ghost-ridden vales, bitter noblemen, vengeful revolutionaries and inspired inventors!

The book is 1500 passages long – 50% more than Steam Highwayman I: Smog and Ambuscade – and interlinked passages allow you to continue your adventure and travel between volumes at will.

Who is the Steam Highwayman?  YOU are the Steam Highwayman!

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Steam Highwayman I Revised

While preparing for the soon-to-be-announced Kickstarter for Steam Highwayman II, I’ve also completed a revision of Volume I: Smog and Ambuscade, incorporating further map labels, typography corrections and fixes for broken links.  That should mean that any copies printed from now on (identified by ‘Revised July 2018’ on the copyright page) will include all these revisions.

Thanks to everybody who identified mistakes and errors in the gamebook.  I’ve learnt a lot about how to work with proofreaders and playtesters in the process and hope to provide a cleaner, more correct Kickstarter print of Volume II.  If you’re still confused by some of the broken links in your copy, take a look at the corrections page I created a while ago.

 

 

With this done, I’m confident about including Steam Highwayman I: Smog and Ambuscade as an add-on reward in the Volume II Kickstarter.  I’m excited to think what it will feel like for a newcomer to the series receiving both books through the post together.

Proofreading for Volume II is about to begin, as I’ve prepared a draft copy for printing as well as e-versions, so do get in touch if you feel like helping out.

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Trickling Stream

Steam Highwayman I has now been live on Amazon for around 3 months and I’m very pleased to find that it is continually being discovered by new readers from around the world.  My intention with distributing through Amazon was that potential readers would experience the minimum of clicks between hearing a recommendation and being able to order the book: it’s something like a minimum of 3 clicks if you’re already signed in and a regular customer.

But on top of that, Amazon is also a great place for me to make my own brand.  I’m very happy to see the excellent company in which my book finds itself – ie Messrs Thomson, Morris, Gresty and Green.  I’ve seen my book on shelves alongside these writers – now I’m seeing it on sale alongside them.

Because of Amazon’s special recipe, I won’t be paid for any of the sales for some time yet, but once the first few pounds a month begin trickling in, I am convinced that this will be a stream of interest and income that will last a very long time.

In other news, I’ve been editing and formatting SH2 this week: yesterday I corrected all the dice-rolls and today I logged and fixed all the codewords.  A few more stages like this and I’ll be able to send it to proofing.  Ben has some more work to do on a provisional cover and then I’ll be able to start the buildup to Kickstarter 2: SH2.

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SH2: Highways and Holloways Draft Complete

Calling a piece of writing ‘finished’ is not something I like doing… but I’d better get better at doing it.

This evening, after a marathon 7000+ word day, I finished the second volume of Steam Highwayman.  Highways and Holloways allows you to continue the open-world Steampunk journey that began in Steam Highwayman: Smog and Ambuscade.  But it also stands alone, bigger, better, badder.

I’ve written nearly 140,000 words of content.  There are well over a hundred quests and adventures, repeatable events, double- and multiple-entry plotlines, re-occuring characters, strongly-defined and engaging factions, a vast map of road, river and sky.  Five separate airship adventures layer on top of the adventure of robbery and escape, which has been redesigned to make the Constables a more challenging and reactive threat.

There are 1481 passages of interactive text.  This number will almost certainly round to 1500 during my editing process.  You’ll visit some of them many times, but there are some you’d better hope you never read.  There is calamity, tragedy and terror in these pages – as well as intrigue, wealth, surprise, adventure, sky-piracy, sous-cheffery, archaeology, arson, politics, woodsmanship, poaching, exorcism, angling, burglary and croquet.

This is the kind of book I always wanted gamebooks to be.

Ben is hard at work on a new cover for this followup to Steam Highwayman I.  So far, we’ve got all sorts of plans to make this a worthy successor – to match and surpass the first volume.

My plan is to launch a kickstarter later this summer to fund a full illustration and the best editing process that I can.  With the magic of print-on-demand and the wind in my sales, this could be the second Steampunk Adventure Gamebook in the series available this year.

 

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Steam Highwayman II Nearing Completion

That’s right.  If you’ve been following my Twitter updates or returning to look at the natty graph below, you’ve now that Steam Highwayman II: Highways and Holloways passed 1000 passages in draft a short while ago and has been accelerating onward.

I’m not planning on going on forever – in fact I mean to complete a few large quests that will help tie the whole book together and then call this draft finished.

What does that mean?  Well, I’ll be putting the book through an editing, proofing and checking process after that and then proceed to lay out the book interior – one of the jobs I enjoyed the most during SH1.  I’ve also been discussing and commissioning a cover design with Ben and have seen his first sketches.

A lot of what I used to get Steam Highwayman 1 published is still standing: I even have an ISBN number reserved for SH2.  Today I’ve been going over the numbers to plan a second Steam Highwayman Kickstarter to run during this summer.  Exactly when… will depend.

The Kickstarter will run much like the previous one, allowing keen backers to help contribute to the costs of the project, receive a written acknowledgement in the book and a copy ahead of general release.  However, I am discussing extra reward levels with Ben and am hoping to be able to reveal a particularly exciting way you could play a part in the book quite soon.  If there are things you’d like to see as part of the campaign, please let me know.

I’m hoping that a good proportion of my backers from KS1 will be keen to fund the sequel so they can expand their adventure, but I’m also hoping to broaden Steam Highwayman’s appeal to new readers, who will be able to receive copies of both books as rewards.

I received a nice message recently from a member of the online gamebook community who has been on a bit of a spree and bought SH1 online: his picture of Smog and Ambuscade and his comments really made my day.  If you’ve enjoyed volume 1 – and particularly if you bought it online – please recommend it with Amazon’s review system.  You don’t have to write a lot and you don’t have to have bought it through their shop, but online reviews are a really crucial part of increasing the project’s visibility.

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Steam Highwayman II

I’ve been working on Steam Highwayman II since November 2017, during the first lull presented by the SH1 Kickstarter. However, in the last few weeks I’ve been progressing through my draft of the sequel gamebook and enjoying myself developing new plots, new games and new mechanics.

The blue line is the important part at the moment: the closer it gets to the purple, the happier I’ll be. But will I need to extend the passage-count for SH2? My current estimations make me think that this book, Highways and Holloways, may be 150-160% of the length of SH1: Smog and Ambuscade.  I may be suffering from feature creep or perhaps the map I drafted back in November was simply too ambitious…  Either way, I plan on learning a lot from this process!

I’m hoping that this graph will remain live as I update my master spreadsheet.  Yummy.  So check back in here if you want to know where I am!  Don’t forget that you Steam Highwayman I: Smog and Ambuscade on Amazon now, too!

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