Tag: kickstarter

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Warming the engine…

Unlike an internal combustion engine, a steam-powered motor can’t simply be switched on. The fire has to be carefully built, warming the machine from the inside so that metal parts expand gently, gases flow smoothly and the temperature increases gradually. In the old days, it made for a whole career for those engine-shed firemen whose job it was simply to ready the great locomotives for their day’s work, rising early and stoking the fires of the particular engines they knew and cared for before handing them over to the driving team.

In my world, many of the road engines must need the same care – and I fancy that big Guild engines aren’t allowed to cool overnight or on stops, in order to prevent wasted time and fuel. In the case of the Ferguson velosteam, well, I created the ‘friction igniter’ – some sort of kick-start mechanism, hahaha – and I presume that a coal-gas system must have a bit less expansion in it… Or something. Anyway – that’s what fiction’s for, isn’t it? To gloss over the difficulties of reality and escape into a world of fun and adventure.

Some time ago I came across this fantastic video shot at the Colorado Railroad Museum. The detail is just great and it assured me of a couple of things: firstly, I do love the technology of steam engines! The weighty components, the awesome engineering and the primal urge to master a fire – a furnace, no less – are all part of the appeal. On a recent trip to the East Anglia Railway Museum outside Colchester, I even found myself enjoying the handiwork of the century-old door latches and wishing I could fit a few into a house I’d love to build.

And secondly, I realised that life as the Steam Highwayman could never work if you needed an hour to get your machine up to temperature before riding it away! The invention of the Ferguson is key to the adventure actually working – structurally speaking, as a gamebook, and technologically speaking too. So God bless Mr Ferguson, whoever he was – presumably an ancestor of Harry Ferguson, whose Antarctica-crossing tractors I so enjoyed learning about in this other (excellent) video. Alternate history is really powered by anachronistic technology, whether it’s the Guns of the South or the Guns of Spain… In my case, that’s not a weapon, but a mode of transport.

That’s a long metaphor for the current situation. I’ve been spending the last few weeks preparing for my upcoming (fourth!) Kickstarter and now I’m looking at the fire and beginning to add fuel to it. This morning I completed estimated shipping costs – phew! – for the various rewards and regions, which is a major piece of work – and one I’ll probably need to give a lot of detail about in another post. The world is not what it was, back in 2020 when I last ran a crowdfunding campaign. Why, the world isn’t even what it was last week…

So despite international tensions, I’m continuing with my project. Who knows what tomorrow holds? Whether we’re on rails to a doomed destination or have an open network of roads before us, it’s better to get moving, rather than to become frozen by fear. In the micro, trying to estimate shipping costs and publish them to backers is the sort of thing I hate: what if my estimates are all wrong? What if people complain? What if it means far fewer people choose to back my project? Will it turn off all my European backers – including some of my most committed fans? That’s why, I think, I left this task until so close to when my platform review deadline – when I have to submit the campaign page to the Kickstarter team for checking. Because I’ve never liked this bit and the submission to a world of unknown variables.

But in the macro, I’m not personally worried by the chance of a global war, although I can see it is possible from where we stand in late June of 2025. Part of that is no doubt due to the distance between me and Tehran or Tel Aviv or Kiev or Vilnius or Taiwan – although I know I have readers far, far closer. Partly it’s my own personal outlook: if I acted as if the worst were going to happen, I don’t think I’d be typing this. I’ve a faith perspective and a historically-informed one, yet I don’t believe that I will be somehow shielded or insulated from any potential imminent conflict about to kick off. But war and disaster have never been as far away as we like to think – just hidden, or not thought about. And there’s a time to think about them and a time to get on with the job, I think.

That’s quite a serious meditation for now. What I’ve got before me is this small project – not one that seems to have much relationship to the real world – but it is mine and I feel led to it. So I’ll keep working at it with all I can. So tell me – anyone been to the Colorado museum – or the Colchester one? Or both? Now that would be a very Steam Highwayman thing to do…

See you all soon.

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Back Princes of the West Early… and Receive a Free Thankyou Gift!

The Adventurer’s Logbook will be a real must-have for seasoned players, completionists and anyone hungry to unpick the secrets of the Steam Highwayman series.  And it will be ENTIRELY FREE in the first 48 hours of the upcoming Kickstarter campaign!

Last year I was prompted to create a list of 94 things to do in Steam Highwayman: Smog and Ambuscade.  It was offered as a hint list for those struggling to make progress and as a set of achievements for anyone keen to feel they had made the most of the first volume.

Now with the Adventurer’s Logbook, you’ll be able to record your adventures, tracking which events you have experienced and edging ever closer to “completing” the books.  Much as a modern crpg will give you a percentage tracker, indicating how much of the map you’ve explored, or how many side-quests you’ve finished, the Logbook will allow you to tick off the quests, the events, the friendships – and even the beers drunk – in each of your playthroughs.

The exact design of the Logbook isn’t set yet, but I want it to be a notebook that sits alongside the Touring Guides, with separate sections for friendships established, beers drunk and encounters met.  There’ll be a rarity indicator of some kind to show what’s harder to accomplish or rarer to find, and probably some other bells and whistles included.  I don’t think it will be a full replacement to the Player Companion, which is really a glorified Character sheet, but rather a record to look back over, maybe with the dates of your playthroughs and sessions.

And what do I mean by free?  If you order Princes of the West with the new map pack (The Touring Guide Number 2) within the first 48 hours of the campaign, you’ll be able to get the Adventurer’s Log bundled in for no extra cost. Look out for the Earlybird Committed Villain and the Earlybird Mastermind to take advantage of the offer. When the time comes for fulfilment, the Log will be shipped along with your Touring Guide, with no increase to the shipping cost. 

Earlybird Committed Villain reward tier

Essentially, I want this to be a real thank-you to everyone who has previously supported the project.  Perhaps it will also encourage people to join the campaign early on, and help us reach – and surpass – the funding target…

So please share this opportunity with friends who haven’t yet discovered life on the midnight road, and are yet to taste the adventure found astride the Ferguson velosteam. They’re all welcome to back the Kickstarter in the first 2 days and receive their own free Adventurer’s Log!

Finally, make sure you’re following the Kickstarter to get a notification as soon as it goes live. I’ll be updating again here too. After all,

YOU are the Steam Highwayman!

Earlybird Mastermind reward tier
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A Bright Future

Ben has completed his design for Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West, and at last I’m able to share this vibrant and adventurous cover with you. The West awaits!

Over the next month I now need to get this image everywhere I can – together with a link to the Kickstarter campaign that will run through July, raising funds for the publication. The largest cost (after the printing of the books themselves) is Ben’s fee for the internal illustrations, and once raised, these are also the most time-consuming part of the process. That means I’ll be able to use the time while he works on the pictures to complete the editing and bring the book up to the best standard I can.

I’ve also been having a lot of fun working on the large map for Princes of the West. This isn’t completely finished yet – and I will wait until the book is totally complete before declaring it done, as I may need to add in further locations or notes – but it is ready enough to provide me with some great backgrounds and textures for splash images.

The Kickstarter is already being followed by around 150 people – which is very encouraging – and I’m working hard on making sure it reaches as many as possible. Any help you can give, as readers and supporters, would be greatly appreciated.

If you haven’t yet had a peek inside the draft of Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West, take a look at the sample, which can be read online or downloaded here – now with a nice, bright new cover.

To the Kickstarter!
To the sample!
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Amuse Bouche, anyone?

I’ve just completed a little taster (70-ish) passages of Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West as a downloadable pdf – but it also works on this rather nice pdf viewer I’ve installed on my website. This will be a sample available to backers for the Kickstarter in a few weeks’ time – and I hope it’ll answer that immortal question – who is the Steam Highwayman?

If you haven’t yet, do follow the Kickstarter. You’ll get notified directly when it goes live, and a slowly-increasing indication of interest helps attract others who haven’t yet ridden the Ferguson over the midnight road.

More soon!

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The Princes of the West draft finished… for now.

Yesterday I reached a milestone of Steam Highwayman IV: Princes of the West: I told myself that I had ‘completed’ my draft.

What does that mean?  First question from interested parties (eg my wife).  “Is the book finished?”

No, it isn’t finished.  It won’t be finished until it has been edited, improved, illustrated and printed.  We’re a little way off all that.  But I would say that I am now at the beginning of the end.

Why did I call a stop to drafting?  I actually have around 100 passages still reserved to write, but I recognise that at the current rate, I would keep expanding the book.  That’s a problem for a few reasons – one being, that eventually this volume will need to be printed, and I think we could be looking at a whopping 1800 passages, or around 300 pages, already.  I also could tell that at my current rate of writing, I would exhaust myself badly.  And the next stage of the writing process is a one I badly need to get some perspective: sharing the draft with early readers for their opinions and ideas. After that, there’ll be a good deal of corrections and edits to write, and when I do those I’ll also finish and finalise the last loose ends.

So I’ve begun to reach out to people who have been committed readers of Steam Highwayman and stepping back from the coal face.  I need to do some other work to get the project to succeed, so it’s time for a change of mode.  I think that there’ll be a few months of long conversations, tweaking around the edges, and then a big editing sometime in the late summer or autumn – maybe at the same time as a trip down to Cornwall myself.

Ben has been working on the cover and I hope to have some things to share very soon.  The big thing I’m waiting on is a colour draft of the front cover – with that, you’ll start to see a regular posting that points towards my next Kickstarter campaign.  I have a plan something like this:

April-June – Preparation for Kickstarter, production of marketing materials, drawing of the map.

[April/May – birth of fourth child…]

July – Kickstarter campaign to publish Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West.  It’s going to be great.

Presuming the Kickstarter succeeds in raising enough funds…

August – January – Ben creates the illustrations, I edit the book, proofreading and further playtesting, layout and preparation for printing, creation of extra reward materials…

February 2026 –  Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West sent to backers and available online.

How does that sound?

So what is Princes of the West like?  Well, early readers are already favourable about improved, modern mechanics, atmospheric adventures in the West Country, and a continuation to the epic tale of the Steam Highwayman (that’s you, then…).  It covers a large area – probably about as large as the first two books together – but uses efficient networking to save on repeated passages and cram in as much content as you can.  You’ll be able to go mining, tame Dartmoor ponies, find hidden gold, assist wreckers, join smugglers, blow things up (a lot of that), take a musical tour of the pubs of Devon, use all your velosteam customisations, negotiate with multiple factions and leaders, help lonely people fall in love, rescue cows from the mud, eat Cornish pasties, smuggle clotted cream, drink a lot of beer in many pubs and lonely inns, find places to stay, get a black eye, sleep under hedges, bribe guards, take airship rides, impersonate an orchestral conductor, defend the poor and marginalised, ally with a visionary (mad?) King, join a fishing crew, play croquet (again), meet old friends, play cards, fix the stock market, use steam computational engines to decode messages and secretive notebooks, use your special skill of haute cuisine (you know, the one you gained in Highways and Holloways when you had to distinguish between different heritage vegetables while in an airborne kitchen) and rob the rich, give to the poor and steam off into the night.  It is great.

Current draft is about 1630 passages long.  I think I’ll probably cut around 100 and I might add in another 200 or so – I expect it’ll round out around 1800 passages.  I’m toying with the idea of producing a lengthier book with more quests as stretch goals…  Four extensions, say, of 50 passages each?  It’s an idea.

And the break from working on the draft is good for me.  I’ve already experienced a massive difference in my focus and no longer have an over-full head.  There are several things I’ve been putting off reading – and writing – over the last months that I can now get back to.

So watch this space!  I’ll be on here pretty frequently until July, I think, although there may be a hiatus while child #4 appears.  And then we should all get to enjoy the pleasure of a lively crowdfunding campaign together.  I know I can count on you all to join in.

Until then, may your boilers stay ever at pressure!  YOU are the Steam Highwayman!

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Steam Highwayman IV progress

Does that sound as if it is written from personal experience? Ha! Sleepless nights and runny noses are a bigger part of my life as a father than ever before.

Three years ago, when snow lay on the ground and my daughter went outside with the cry ‘Dig, dig!’, my last Kickstarter for Steam Highwayman III was still in progress. It feels like far too long since I rode that particular pony… But then two years or so developing a Viking-themed adventure will do that for you.

Steam Highwayman IV: The Princes of the West has just reached 40,000 words in draft. That’s about 4/15 complete – call it a bit more than 25% written. That’s taken me 30 writing days, spread over a complete project length of 122 days, although I began planning looong ago. Even back when there was snow on the ground and my daughter spoke in mere monosyllables.

What are the standouts for SH4? Well – the interplay of several key characters, their rivalries and power-play is one. I committed to that with the plural ‘Princes’ back when I drafted the titles of my six book series in 2016… But Cornwall is proving excellent fun to write. I’m also seriously considering adding submarines.

The map for SH4 is wonderful. I’ll draw up a giant one, like I published for SH1, 2 and 3, and probably some smaller, regional ones too.

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How the Wheels Turn…

My next update for the Steam Highwayman III: The Reeking Metropolis has gone live on Kickstarter, and it looks like it will be almost the last.  Over the last eighteen months, I’ve been regularly updating my backers on the progress of the project.  Now, I’ll only need to update individuals, as a large proportion of backers already have their rewards in their hands and the vast majority are shipped and on their way.  What a lot has changed in those eighteen months!

There’s also been a great deal of change for gamebooks in that time.  Brian Hazzard’s excellent Instadeath Survivor’s Support Group podcast has appeared, providing the gamebook community with interviews and playthroughs, Alba and Legendary Kingdoms have been the two most successful gamebook Kickstarters ever (I can give them that, even if some of their other statistics are up for debate!) and countless individual titles have been released by independent authors.  There are entirely new gamebook authoring careers blossoming, like Kurosh Shadmand’s – who you can find featured as Lord Hadrian Beaufort in a duel atop the Monument in The Reeking Metropolis, courtesy of Russ Nicholson.

But as for me, I’m keen to get Steam Highwayman III fully fulfilled.  I’ll then spend a little more time working on this website – so watch out for some changes – and do some preparation of marketing materials.  Then I’ll be releasing The Reeking Metropolis for general sale.  I’m currently helping my wife prepare a book of her own for publication – I’ll certainly write more about that here – and I have a couple of stories I would like to write without the pressure of delivering them to an audience.

Oh, and there’s the app coming.

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Reader’s Companion for I-III Ready

I’ve just posted my 38th Kickstarter update for Steam Highwayman: The Reeking Metropolis.  More than half of the rewards are on their way and it’s been very exciting to see pictures of my books being unwrapped and appearing on bookshelves all over the world.

As part of the project, I promised to produce an updated Reader’s Companion to accompany the first three volumes.  It’s ready for download here.  Did you use the previous one for books I and II?  Fancy sharing the possession you really couldn’t put down?  Fancy showing how much you stashed away in Coulter’s?  I haven’t seen any of these filled in, except for my own.

 

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Steam Highwayman Coming to Mobile this Summer!

My latest update (number 37) is now live on Kickstarter.  It gives some tasty stats about how far along the fulfillment track I am (with some much-appreciated help…)

But then it veers off, like an over-powered iron-framed velosteam on a narrow country lane, into announcing this.

Steam Highwayman will be available as a mobile gamebook app this Summer 2021.

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Steam Highwayman III Kickstarter Update 36: The Book is Ready

You can read the update here.  But the update doesn’t tell you what it feels like to see a little green tick next to the mini image of the book that has been waiting for release on my IngramSpark account for over a year…  It feels great.

I’m also excited and emotional because of another little Steam Highwayman treat that was sent my way today.  Not the two backers who already let me know that they received their maps and that they loved them – that was nice.  Something even better…

Something I’m going to post about on Saturday.

In the next few weeks I’m looking forward to re-jigging this website so that Steam Highwayman is front and centre, uploading some new images and generally having a spruce-up, and also to writing about the process of making SH3.  I guess this is a spring in my step.