I was lucky to have some time this week that wasn’t entirely swallowed up by my main job or my main side job. I didn’t get a ton of TTRPG stuff done, but the little I did do was quite important. Furthermore, in doing these things, I felt a little spark of excitement for Sand & Stars. That’s something I had missed for the last few months, partly because editing can be very boring and partly because life has had its challenges over that span. But it feels good to look at this project as a whole right now and push it a little closer to completion.
Here’s what went on with it this week:
Sand & Stars
(Desert survival x Cairn, Ashcan here [link])
I got through the list I set last week:
Connect my Three Nine URL to this substack account.Make a QR code for the S&S ashcan so I can easily share it with my in-person writers group.Take a photograph to use as reference for my S&S front cover.Start a Publisher project for S&S.
The publisher project was especially easy thanks to Yochai Gal’s wonderful decision to post the Cairn publisher project file online and provide free access to all. I’m not going to clone Cairn, but having the size and margins already plotted out is going to save me a lot of work.
Here’s my reference picture for the front cover. I want to try and sketch this image, with more sand covering the palm. I might even omit the thumb entirely. I want a minimal cover and the whole thing to a have a bit of a zine feel to it.
I quite like this list-making stuff. Here’s what I’ll try and do for next week:
Print reference picture and experiment with tracing/sketching.
Finish the copy editing of the ashcan.
New Rules: I’m not allowed to get mad at myself for not doing this on the list.
*nods