New Beginnings...

1. Cryptic name?...Check.

2. Minimally altered template to give the illusion of actual design?...Check.

3. Overwrought introductory post?...Check.

Looks like I'm ready to start a new blog...


I've had a lot of blogs over the years. I work in various technical and creative capacities as a writer, and I've been a tabletop/board/video-gamer for years, so all of my past blogs have either been about writing, or gaming (in fact, I still have a free fiction blog which I really need to update more regularly - I'm hoping that this blog will help me do that). Some of those blogs were pretty popular, and some of them I just left to die on the vine when I, or my readers, lost interest. It's sad to say, but sometimes projects you've put work into just don't work out.

I think one of the most common reasons for a blog to fail is the tedium of the act of blogging itself. Chronicling your favorite hobby should be fun, but the whole thing can easily become a weight around your neck when the focus shifts from having fun with your pastime, to only doing it so you can have something to blog about. Once that happens, the blog is usually dead in the water, and more often than not it's simply abandoned. It's happened to me, and it sucks. While my past blogs have all had a specific goal as their focal point (finish modelling and painting this or that army, finish writing this story, etc.) I want to do something different here to try to avoid that blog-tedium I've run into in the past.

I want this blog to be an opposite of sorts to those other blogs. I don't want this to have an end-goal that I feel like I have to meet in order to declare it a success. Instead, I want to use this space as a workshop of sorts. A mad scientist's laboratory.

I want to gather together all of the things that inspire me creatively from the different artistic disciplines I'm interested in, mash them all up in one spot, and see what kind of projects I can synthesize out of their convergence. Turn this into an R&D department where I can experiment with all sorts of creative...things, and see what works before taking it out to the showroom floor.

To the right there's already a long list of blogs and websites of the people and projects that I'm drawing recent inspiration from. Authors, artists, comics, gaming, crime, horror, occult, grimdark, and creative and productivity processes of all types.

 Lately, I've rediscovered my love of the Games Workshop, Warhammer 40K universe in a number of blogs centered around the Inquisimunda and Inq28 game rulesets, the gamers who are championing a real groundswell for innovative miniature modelling and painting within those worlds, and a mutual love for the work of one of my favorite artists of all time, John Blanche. You'll find a lot of that in here too, and while I eventually want to include some of my own painting and modelling here in the blog, examples of my own work will be few and far between until I can settle a few real-life issues that would get in the way of doing so.

I think this should be fun, and I hope that the things I bring into the blog will serve as a source of inspiration to you as well.