Thanksgiving was fun.  Spent it at the in-laws but they are only a few miles away so no traffic.  I took a four day weekend and as usual it is ending far too fast.

I did manage to get the latest Otherverse release up.  Look for one to follow after it falls off the front page.  I also got an email from Chris about his upcoming releases; plenty in the pipe-line.

With six hours to go on NaNoWriMo I am not gonna make it.  O did get some good work done, and will continue the project.  It relates to our game publishing so it should see the light of day eventually.

I picked up the new Space Marine Codex over the weekend, as well as a Tactical Squad of Space Marines.  Don’t know when I’ll get around to putting anything together or painting them, but I decided to pick them up.  I wanted to get that new Palladium RPG about Zombies, but they were sold out.  I am getting all my stuff at my local game store rather than going the discount internet route.  They deserve the business.

I rented HellBoy II: The Golden Army and Hancock over the weekend.  I really enjoyed them both.  I can see where they said Hancock fell off in the third act, but I enjoyed it anyway.  Jason Bateman is a hoot; I love his acting.  I have always enjoyed Will Smith and have had a crush on Mrs. Theron forever. What’s not to like?  As for HellBoy I love Guillermo del Toro’s style; and it really lends itself to the subject matter of HellBoy.

While sales have been somewhat down overall, I am pleased with the amount we are bringing in. We are hovering at the top 20% ofOBS publishers, so it’s time to step it up and see if we can’t make the top 10% this year so we can make the Platinum list.  I also want to get into the traditional distribution channel with some dead-tree products this year.

Oh, still no word on the revised GSL.  Yaaay WOTC.

Haven’t posted in a while, sorry for the dead air.  Lots going on.

I am seriously behind on my NaNoWriMo project, but have a four day weekend coming up.

Saw the new James Bond flick the other night.  See my review of it HERE.

Working on some new releases; look for one this weekend.

Today is a slow day at work cuz everyone is gearing up for Turkey-Day.  I expect to be off early today as well.  Have a great holiday everyone!

I finished the campaign on Gears of War 2 Sunday morning.  Loved it.  I was very disapointed when I found out you can’t do four person co-op on the campaign, but since I have played the new “Hoard Mode” I am hooked.  It has nudged Halo out of the top spot.  Very fun.

Still no word on the revised GSL.

Quick post before I head out the door.  Today is our once-monthly “Geek Day” so we’ll be continuing our Star Wars Saga Edition Sith Campaign.  Our GM is putting a lot of effort into it and we are having a blast!

Fantasy Firearms II just dropped off the front page, so I’ll be getting another new release up shortly.  Look for it soon.

NaNoWriMo is progressing, but I have fallen behind.  I haven’t updated the widget but I am at about 14,000 words.  Not good.  I need to pick up the pace this weekend and the following week to get caught up.  But since I tend to write in bursts it is still quite manegable.  I should be at 25,000 so I need a quick eleven grand to be back on track. Looks like tomore is gonna be a busy day.

I went by my local game store the other day right before my trip to the gun range.  I want to do a Space Marine army for 40K and was poking around.  (Not just any Space Marine army, but a homage to my first 40K army using all beak marines and studded pads like the first GW Space Marines plastics.) I picked up a White Dwarf and saw it was eight bucks!  When did WD get to be eight bucks cover price?  Jeeze.  I like a good WD but it should be “magazine” priced, not “gaming suppliment” priced.  Sure, sure it’s a top quality full color rag and all that.  But it’s still a magazine, a periodical and a GW catelog.

I’ve been hearing a lot about the fires buring out in Santa Barbera. I used to live there and know the exact area where they are hitting.  Of course, when I was there twenty years ago I sawe the same thing.  I went through a neighborhood where all the houses were gone, just chimneys and foundations left.  The fire jumped an eight lane highway to do it.  I hope they get it under control and no one (else) gets hurt.  It’s a shame to see such lovely properties be destroyed.  I miss California, despit the fires, the earthquakes and the smog; I really enjoyed my time out on SoCal.

I finally got Fantasy Firearms II finished and released on OBS.  Check it out!

I am behind on my word count for NaNoWriMo, so after this post I’ll be logging some keyboard time.

At lunch I stopped by Best Buy and picked up Gears of War 2, and a couple of CD’s.  P!nk-Funhouse and Taylor Swift-Fearless.  I have Darrius Rucker’s CD on order from Amazon as a gift for my daughter.  It’s nice we have similer music taste; she’ll like the new CD’s as much as I do.

I’ve also been updating my other Blog pretty regularly.  Feel free to check that one out if your interested in more non-gaming related stuff.  (Guns, politics and other crap.)

I managed to get over ten thousand words last night! My next goal is to reach twenty thousand words by the end of the weekend.

I closed out our “New President’s Day” sale and am pleased with the results.  It will give the month a good boost.  Still working on the new releases as well. I realized that I have not loaded all the fonts from my desktop to my new Laptop.  I need to transfer them over so I can work on the Fantasy Firearms II cover some more.

More later.

I managed to get some more writing done last night for NaNoWriMo.  I am up to 8,397 words so far.  I want to see if I can top the 10,000 mark tonight, which I think is well within reach.

I also plan to get some more work done on our new releases for the month.

The New President’s day sale started off slow but picked up yesterday.  I am pleased witht he results; they gave us a good bump in sales early in the month.  I don’t do a lot of sales, but sometimes they are just the trick.

First off, congratulations must go out to President-Elect Barack Obama.  I may not have voted for him, but the will of the people has prevailed and he has been duly elected in a fair democratic election.  He will be my President; and I pray along with he rest of America that he carries the mantle of leadership with the same poise and skill he demonstrated in his election campaign.

(I really do mean that.  Back when Clinton won, I remember seeing a lot of bumper stickers proclaiming that “Charlton Heston is my President”; that never sat well with me despite my un-wavering support of gun rights. The President of the United States is our President, even if you didn’t vote for him.)

My thoughts on the McCain campaign:

Frankly, it never should have been a McCain campaign in the first place.  Romney, Thompson or Guiliani should have been at the top of the ticket.  McCain got the nomination because he kept coming in second place.  All the other candidates had a core of supporters and brought real strength to the table.  McCain brought what, exactly?  He’s never been conservative enough to appeal to the small-government, fiscal conservative Republicans and Libertarians.  Palin was a great choice to appeal to that core of the party, but you don’t win over “The Base” by tossing them a bone for Vice President. The case could be made that he was centrist enough to win over people that would normally have voted Democratic, but clearly you need to sew up your conservative base before you start worrying about taking away Democratic votes.  The Republican Party failed to do that.

David Codrea over at The War on Guns put it thusly:

Seems to me, now is the time to send the GOP a message, loud and clear: This is what happens when you abandon core principles. If you intend to regain center stage, you’re going to need to actually become leaders in liberty.

That was the ultimate failure of the Republican Party and the McCain campaign this election.  Republicans squandered their chance to accomplish something…anything…during the first years of the Bush Presidency. Sure we got a couple of good Supreme Court justices; but where was the Social Security fix?  How about a balanced budget?  Did they fix the tax code?  Did they decrease government spending?  What did they actually do to move a conservative agenda forward?

They lost the base because they became indistinguishable from Democrats.  And you don’t win elections by voting against the other guy, you have to put up a candidate that people want to vote for.  I for one was never so fired up about McCain that I wanted to paste his sticker on my car, or talk him up to my friends and collegues.  Sure, I was behind the Conservative/Libertarian message, but McCain never quite measured up to that message.  (Stimulus package, anyone? How about all the “F%$k it, McCain” web banners displayed throughout the Blogosphere?)

On Hillary:

America doesn’t like royalty or dynasty.  The Clinton and Bush names now represent such political royalty and dynasty in U.S. Politics. I think this is the real reason Hillary lost the nomination to Barack Obama.  (I also think that Jeb Bush should take notice as well.)  We’ll put up with it in the Senate or the Congress; just look at the Kennedy’s and the vast number of long-term politicians.  But President is a different animal.

On America:

Our political system has been working for over 200 years now.  No revolutions, no bloodshed, just lots of words and a peaceful transfer of power.  (No, I didn’t forget the Civil War; just follow the thought.) We’ve survived incompetent Presidents and truly great Presidents.  We will survive this President, and the next, and the one after that. Out country cannot be undone in two years (the time until the next mid-term election).  While I don’t share the political views of those in power now, I do believe in the strength of our political system.  I am not despairing at the outcome as some seem to be. Our country will veer one way and then the next over the years, but the rudder is ultimately in the hands of “We the People”.

What do we do now?

We take the day off.  Let everyone take a deep breath.  Celebrate the fact that America has elected the first Black President.  That’s a big deal.  Lets not forget that there were two women the mix this go-around as well.  It’s only a matter of time.

Then, first thing tomorrow morning get back to work.  Get to know you local and state representatives.  Be sure to know who your Senators and Congressmen are.  We are going to have one hell of the first two years; the Democrats will try to pass many things we Conservative/Libertarians must oppose.  The political process does not only take place on November 4th every four years; it takes place Every. Single. Day.

Today is the day, get out there and vote.

(Unless your dead.  For some reason the Democratic party has sewed up the Necromantic-American crowd.)

My wife and I voted this morning, took us about an hour.  We got in line just after seven a.m., and when we left the line was significantly shorter. I dropped my wife off at her job and headed in to mine, got here just before 9:30.  It’s always nice when you can come in late and not get into any trouble at work.

I managed a few more words on the NaNoWriMo novel last night, and am at 6,640 as of this post.

In honor of the day we elect our new President, Skortched Urf’ Studios is holding a “New President’s Day” sale!  Now through Wednesday, November 5th (when we should all know who the president-elect will be, barring another hanging-chad fiasco) most of our titles will be on sale for 50% off the regular price!

Now is a great time to pick up some of those titles you have been wanting for, from our Dept.7 Advanced Class Updates, to the Adventurer Essentials and even our line of top-quality stock art!

Skortched Urf’ Studios approves this message.

See our whole catalog of products HERE.

One more day until the election.  Whoever you support, please go out and vote tomorrow if you have not done so already.

Went for a motorcycle ride Saturday with my realetor and a friend of his.  My wife joined us as well.  My other friend was going to come but his battery literally exploded while we were charging it!  Battery acid everywhere, and getting the actual battery out of his bike was a royal pain in the @$$.  Then we found out they had sold him the wrong replacement battery, so he was off to the store while we had to go meet the other guys for the ride.  Took some awesome back roads form Woodbridge, Virginia down the Fredricksburg and stopped for a burger at the local Moose lodge.  (My realetor and his friend were members.)  Then back on the road for a jaunt through old town Fredricksburg and back north.  We didn’t get back until just about eight PM.  I was freezing my butt off by the time we got back, as the sun had gone down and dropped the temperature a good twenty degrees.  But man was the scenery beautiful.  I took the bike in to work today as well, making sure I was well bundled up.

I got a very good start on this years NaNoWriMo.  As you can see from the little widget thingey on the right I have 5,072 words for the first two days.  I want to get ten grand before the weeks out.  That’s part of the reason I rode the bike to work today; it lets me save all kinds of time on the drive home.  That’s and extra forty-five minutes at home tonight in front of my keyboard. I’ll try to sneak some time in at lunch today also.

I’m trying out a new program called Writers Cafe’ from  Anthemion Software.  It helps you outlining and organize you novel, screenplay or other creative work.  I find it to be very useful so far.  I am using the trial version but may just upgrade to the full version at the end of the NaNoWriMo experiment.  Check it out; I can see many of the features being useful not just for fiction but for organizing RPG projects, modules and other products.

Yesterday was my daughters 14th birthday.  I made a big dinner and birthday cake, and we had my wife’s parents over along with some friends.  Dinner was followed by a game of Apples to Apples.  A good time was had by all.  Then I got to watch the new episode of Dexter and channel surf for a spell before bed time.  It was a nice day.

No, I haven’t forgotten about our new releases.  I am still chugging away at the Fantasy Firearms II release, and will follow that up with the North Side Spiders.  I am going to make November a big month for releases in addition to my participation in NaNoWriMo.