This is frustrating to me, as well, since this entire thing is a one-man operation, and while I work at the school district and at developing products for Sword and Sorcery Studios (see below) and struggle to get my house construction finished and see to the wonders of single parenthood and try to maintain something approaching real friendship/relationships with members of my preferred gender (see here), there's always the looming specter of the Wulf Archives in the back of my mind... "You're not working on wuuuuulllllffff... People will think you're deeeeaaaaddddd...” and so on.

Well, here’s my first journal update since July -- I sent out a newsletter a couple of weeks ago to let everyone know I was alive, and got a decent response, so I presume you folks are actually interested in what’s been happening lately. I guess I’ll begin at the beginning.

Late last July I attended the WOMAD festival in Seattle with Rie and Magen. Devon was there, but arrived in her mother’s care, and though I got to see her a few times, she was mostly elsewhere. The experience was overwhelmingly positive, and I chronicled it here for those who are interested. It was quite an epiphany for me, and sharing it with Rie, and those moments that I spent with Dev, were both enlightening and inspiring. And oh, yeah... Magen was kind enough to share her home with us, and was a fine companion for the weekend (and we still love you, Magen, but your phone is disconnected... where the heck are ya?). Peter Gabriel performing for the first time in eight years didn’t hurt, either...

A few days later, I jetted off to Gencon to go be part of the White Wolf/Sword and Sorcery Studios family and help run their booth. I met a bunch of my fellow writers, the powers that be at WW, Necromancer Games, Malhavoc Press and Fiery Dragon, all together under the SSS umbrella. Another ephiphany after just a week, and a sense of finally having come back home to the industry that I left so long ago left me almost in awe, and I flew back to Portland with a glad heart. I was about half-way through my writeup of Gencon when the world blew up in our faces, and I don't know if I have the heart to finish it.

I admit that I’ve been a little reticent to share details of my private life here -- not necessarily out of any shyness in discussing it, but because I don’t want to be sharing details that involve other people, and I don’t wish to reveal anyone else’s private affairs. Recently, I found no less than two friends (well, ex-friends I guess since I haven’t really heard from either of them in ages) had been publically trashed elsewhere on the Internet (one in a fashion that left me virtually homicidal, though eventually I came down and simply wanted to break the kneecaps of the f*ckers who posted the material), with some very intimate details of their lives and extremely personal and insulting comments made.

That’s the nature of the Internet, I guess. Every shmuck with a computer and a modem can post whatever he wants, and since it’s a free country (and increasingly a free world), there’s really nothing one can do to prevent it. And I wouldn’t have it any other way, save for the fact that I reserve the right to respond to such things in kind. But I suppose that responding to these items would simply draw more attention to the offenders, so I’m not going to do so.

I say this because there have been many times that I’ve wanted to talk about my personal life here, but haven’t for fear of revealing personal information about other people and causing embarassment or anger. So forgive me if the following is a teensy bit sketchy; I think you’ll understand my reasoning.

This is just a long way of saying that Rie and I had a very good conversation after I got back from Gencon, and a lot of things were settled, all favorably. As there are other people involved, I’m not going to be too specific, other than to say that she appears to be doing quite well at maintaining a polyamorous relationship with two separate people, and I’m one of them, and I’m pretty happy with the situation. And also that she’s proved to be among the finest, most patient and understanding friends that I have ever had, and I’m enormously grateful.

Also upon my return I began the paperwork to get a substantial loan to build living quarters for my mother. As you may or may not know, Devon and I have been living at her house since my return from Los Angeles, and my dilemma was what to do next... stay there and help her financially (the simple fact is that she does not make enough money to keep her house and pay all her bills) and be slowly driven crazy by the close proximity and the onus of “living at home” at age 40, or move out, leaving her to fend for herself. The solution was something she’s been wanting to do for years -- we converted the garage into living quarters and she moved in.

It wasn’t quite that simple, of course, but overall it went quite smoothly. I obtained a loan for $50,000, engaged a higly-reputable contractor, went over plans and blueprints, spent a great deal of money getting our plumbing fixed (and it still doesn’t work that well, but it’s better than it was), landscaping, painting the house, and a wide range of other things, rented a truck and hauled several tons of trash and junk out of my garage, and by September, had reduced the old garage to a shell of its former self, ready to be transformed into real live living quarters.

So it was that I prepared to face the coming year, with a decent if slightly unstable job with the Portland Public Schools (see below), a fun if occasionally discouraging and frustrating freelance relationship with Sword and Sorcery Studios (see below), the prospect of my own living space combined with security for my mother (see above) and what I liked to think was a better, more healthy and happy attitude toward the world.

Then I woke up one morning to my clock radio telling me that a plane had run into the World Trade Center in New York. And I sat on the couch watching with my mother and my daughter as first one, then the other tower fell in ruin and wreathed New York in dust and smoke and death. I was talking on the phone with my best friend when the second tower fell; by that time I was numb and couldn’t even comprehend what was happening -- at that point they were talking tens of thousands of fatalities and didn’t even know who was in the buildings. That the final body count is in the neighborhood of 3,000 is a horrific, unbelievable tragedy, but the only comfort I can take is that it could have been much, much worse. And, as far as the perpetrators of the atrocity are concerned, probably should have been.

I went to work that day because I figured I had to. I told Dev to go to school, but asked my mom to come get her if she felt she needed to come home. I think it was best, since she got to share her feelings with others at school, but as for myself I kind of wandered through a haze that day, wondering what the hell was going to happen to the world, and what kind of mind could possibly consider what happened in New York to be in any way justifiable or rational.

My only comment to those who appear to feel that somehow this country “deserved” or in some fashion “asked for” what happened is to suggest that they go and blame rape victims for wearing short skirts or murder victims for walking through bad parts of town. As you might guess from my previous comments, I am no fan of much of my nation’s foreign policy, and I am not for one moment going to try to justify the idiocies visited upon the world by the likes of Ronnie Rayguns or George Shrub Sr. But nothing they did justifies what happened on 9/11. No act committed by this nation should in any way explain or excuse cold-blooded mass murder. We need to address and understand the anger of the arabic world -- some is justified and some is not, but we need to better understand the culture and history of the region, and change the way that we deal with the rest of the world, to avoid having to deal with a new generation of bin Ladens and their spawn. But there is nothing that can make me forgive the crime that was committed against my country, and nothing that could make me think it justified. I could probably go on like this for quite some time, but I don’t think I will.

So it was that the last three months passed. There was fear, there was anger, there was hatred, and there was war. In a matter of weeks the Taliban was overthrown and the people who committed this crime against us were fleeing like the cravens they were. And when they saw the Afghans celebrating, playing forbidden music, shaving off their beards and dancing in the streets at the hated Taliban’s downfall, all talk of the US being “at war with Islam” appeared to be silenced (save of course for the lonely voice of Osama bin Laden himself, whose wan and sick face appeared once more on al Jazeera today, still desperately trying to say that we did this because we hate Islam, and not because of the brutal crime that he inflicted upon us). Our dispute is not, and never was, a war against the enlightened and peaceful faith of Islam... it was against those who would twist the words of the Prophet into a weapon and use that weapon against their own brethren, and against the innocent. They are not moslems any more than the bastard who blew up the Murrow Building in Okalahoma City is a christian.

The anger of this nation is a fearful thing, and I suppose it’s good that it isn’t aroused all that often. We’re mostly content to sit on our asses and watch TV and reassure ourselves that we’re the greatest, living in quiet, affluent complacency, unconcerned about what the rest of the world thinks. But we should be concerned, and we should be aware. Bin Laden and his organization were born of anger and frustration, and of errors that we committed in the past, as well as out of anger and frustration over a loss of power and a history of decline that this nation had nothing to do with. But like all others who have fought us (with the single exception of Vietnam, who knew that the US was a power to be respected, fought us accordingly, and won), bin Laden and his cronies misjudged and underestimated the strength of a people roused to anger, assumed that we were soft and decadent and would retreat at the first sign of danger.

I’m no chauvinistic, flagwaving super-patriot. I didn’t vote for George W. Bush Jr. and would not even if you paid me -- despite his handling of the war effort I still think he’s a conservative moron without an original thought between his oversized ears. I feel more loyalty to humanity as a species and the world as a community than to the United States as a nation, but all the same I understand what happens to those who underestimate a country’s strength and resolve. In the words of Admiral Yamamoto, “I fear that all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

And so it was that the sleeping giant stirred, and the Taliban, the al Queda and their allies had reason to reconsider their assessment of the United States’ resolve.

And the above is from a guy who doesn’t consider himself to be terribly patriotic. Think what it was like for those who did...

And yeah, I was concerned for the people who would be fighting in Afghanistan. And yes, I was horrifically fearful over the innocent people who might die, and those who would suffer for the crimes of another. I know that many people were wounded or killed who had nothing to do with the nightmares of 9/11, and it’s a sad and terrible thing that whenever those with power and money and guns and bombs decide to go to war, it’s the poorest and weakest who are caught in the middle.

Afghanistan has been at the crossroads of conflict for so very long, and I can only hope that the overthrow of the brutal Taliban regime provides that weary and noble people with some small measure of peace. Not that the realm hasn’t been fought over for thousands of years, from the days of Alexander to this day. Over a century ago, Rudyard Kipling wrote, in The Young British Soldier:

And as fear and anger gave way to grim resolve, and the forces that 9/11 unleashed a storm upon Afghanistan, the Taliban and al Queda, it simply didn’t seem appropriate to work on this page. Yes, I worked at the district. Yes, I was a father to my daughter. Yes, I worked (sometimes quite hard) on my relationship. Yes, I edited and developed for Sword and Sorcery Studios, because I had contracts and deadlines. But Wulf was put on the back burner. There simply wasn’t time and I simply wasn’t in the mood for the delights of sword and sorcery eroticism.

Hopefully, that’s changed now. The world is still a bright and wondrous place, and I still have a family to take care of. And although there have still been moments that gave me pause (my ex father-in-law passed away, and my ex-wife has remarried, and I was not asked to attend the associated services at either; four people, including one good friend, were laid off from our department at work and we were informed that we still had the same work load and standards as before, a somewhat sly way of implying that we simply weren’t working hard enough), there is still a lot of good in the world. We’ll never be the same, but I hope that in the end we’re better for it.

When I saw the Afghans celebrating, and heard music playing from shops and homes, and saw the end of a nightmare of oppression in a battered and disheartened nation far away, I thought that perhaps the good guys can win occasionally. When I saw a peaceful transfer of power to a man who seemed both intelligent and courageous, and felt the hope of a nation that at last the wars were over and at last the terror had gone, I felt that there might be redemption possible, and that a bright future for Afghanistan and the world might be a fitting tribute to the innocents and the heroes who died in those fearful, desperate hours on 9/11, and to those blameless people who were caught in the crossfire and died or were maimed because of a conflict they never wanted. And I pray to whatever powers there are that Devon will grow up in a world that knows peace and can finally put the horrors of the past behind it.

If nothing else, the past few months have taught me some amazing things. That darkness can fall even on the brightest of September mornings. And that the sun can shine even on a cold and foggy October night.

The construction is finished, and my mother is moved into her quarters. It isn’t quite as roomy as she’d hoped, since she has a surprising amount of possessions, and as per her wishes, we built almost no storage space, but that’s how she wanted it and we’ll deal with it. I bought new furniture for the entire house and gave our old furniture to a friendly Ukrainian man who restores items for his church, who then gives it to needy families. I bought Devon (and me, I guess) an X-Box for pre-Christmas (I had $500 burning a hole in my pocket... what the hell). I persevered at work and overcame my doldrums over the layoffs (I’m still pissed, but there’s not a lot I can do about it). And I continued development for SSS.

Our products have been released to good reviews, but not many people can see the travails that went on behind the scenes. My doldrums over work and over 9/11 and my sense of being overworked and overwhelmed resulted in some problems with two major products, to the extent that I had to do extensive rewrites, and had one product sent back to me from the layout artist because I had made major omissions and mistakes. After long and involved discussions with the powers that be at SSS, we decided that I needed to focus more strongly on what I call the crunchy bits -- that is to say the hard-core rules aspects of the game: statistics, rules, spells, NPC descriptions, and the like. Knuckling down and doing serious proofreading and rewriting, checking and double-checking the numbers, making sure that every stat and format is correct, proofing all header and text tag... all this and more is part of a developer’s job, and in the end I think it paid off.

Two reviews, one here and one here typify what happened. The first review, containing glowing praise for Hollowfaust: City of the Necromancers also notes that the editor might have a few issues with d20 statistics and formatting. The reviewer is entirely correct -- this was only the second product I’d developed for SSS, and the first that I’d developed entirely on my own. Yes, there were glitches, but the fact is that the authors created a good enough book that it overcame such deficiencies. The second review, for The Divine and the Defeated, is far better from an editorial standpoint, and doesn’t really find any major glitches. I agree with many of his comments, but hell, these are decisions we make during creation and editing, and you can’t please everyone. The fact is that they’re both great books, and I’m enormously proud of them.

However, as a result of the hard lessons I learned in developing The Divine and the Defeated, and the upcoming Warrens of the Ratmen (which was a bitch in development, let me tell ya), I think I’m a better developer, and I hope that I can keep doing this for a while. I am working closely with a gent from my home state (who is apparently moving to my home town in a month or two), who is now SSS’ other developer, and between the two of us, I think we can create some really outstanding products. If you don’t play 3rd Ed. D&D, then you should start, and buy all the Scarred Land products. And if you do play, well what the hell are you waiting for?

Anyway, as you can see, the adversity of the development and editorial process has actually proved very positive for me, and I’m really glad that things have turned out the way they have. And if it turns out that the development racket isn’t for me, I’m determined to maintain a good relationship with SSS, and keep my hand in as a freelance writer in future.

So, moving up to date... Christmas was one of the nicest (if not THE nicest) in years. Our home looks like a home. My mother, my daughter and I had Christmas eve dinner at our real, live dining room table, and we decorated my real live artificial tree (I’m having to start my ornament collection all over, so I figured I’d do a different color every year... this year was silver), stayed up and drank eggnog and got up early yesterday. I didn’t get any presents, save a nice candle that Dev had painted for me, but I didn’t really care; this was for Dev, and as usual she made out. I got a scarf, sweater and hat for my mom, and we spent a pleasant day without any stress or grief. I went to bed and slept in my new bed beside my new dresser and nightstand, and later on I’ll be writing Wulf stories on my new work station in my real live home office. For now, I’m back at the district... there’s only me and one other guy in the office -- even the bosses are gone, and no one appears to be calling at all, giving me lots of time to work on this entry.

Rie is in Japan, visiting her other partner, and appears to be having a good time. In her absence, we’re feeding her birds, and awaiting her return. I’ve missed her, but I’ve been way too busy to get too overwrought. Yeah, I admit that I'm pretty stuck on her. But I suspect that you'd feel the same way about her in my place :)

Anything else? Oh, there’s lots, but I’ll get to that later. For now, however, I should tell you that The Lord of the Rings kicks every other movie’s ass, and Peter Jackson, proud son of New Zealand and director of this adaptation, is a f*cking god. Everything about this movie is perfect, and I have not enjoyed a movie so much since the original Star Wars. Drop whatever you are doing and go see The Lord of the Rings. Now. (I think I’ll post a review of it later on, too... I’m going to go see it again when Rie is back, as it’s not due for release in Japan until March.)

So I hope that this heralds a return of this site. I’m working on Tomb of Sorrows, a mummy-type Wulf tale, and I’ve got all the software for ikonboard loaded so we can do our discussions again (I just need to ask my hosting company how to get to the page where I loaded it so I can run the install), so I’ll let you know the minute we’re updated. I’m going to fix broken links and update some other pages this week, too, so all we have to wait for is the next Wulf tale.

Sorry I’ve been gone so long. Love to you all, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Let there be peace now. Let justice be our creed, not vengeance.

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