Oh hey, I remember you, Internets! Man, 2016 has gone in a very weird, very cool direction — one that I didn’t quite anticipate. Lots of exciting things on the horizon, and a few changes. As such, I think it’s almost time for a major blog overhaul. I haven’t posted in a long time, but I hope to change that.

My short-term plan is to re-establish this site as the place to see what I’ve been up to and hopefully learn some cool tidbits to put what I’m doing to use in your own creative projects, whether you’re creating books, video games, or other cool stuff.

Here’s sort of where I’m at and what’s ahead:

The TL:DR version: 

I’ve been super swamped with game development this year, and I’m loving every second of it (mostly). In the short term, I aim to re-design and turn this site into a home base for all of my work, including a dev blog to share tidbits from my game dev projects and learnings.

Meanwhile, I have other book projects in the works, but they’re on hold until I get caught up on game dev project deadlines.

The detailed version:

Self-Publishing Projects, Ebooks, and Courses

I’ll admit, my book writing and launch plans for 2016 got a little derailed. I have several new books I’m excited about that are in various stages of drafting and near completion, but nothing is quite ready to go. There’s a good reason for that, as you’ll read in the next section.

Based-on how this year has been going so far, it’s likely that I won’t be in a good position time-wise to finish and launch those book projects for at least a few months — and it’s feasible (RE: highly likely) that delay will spill into next year a little.

Now, to be clear: I haven’t bailed on writing books and sharing writing and self-publishing advice. It’s something I’m very passionate about and something I plan to keep on doing. Except, I’m putting that on a side burner until I can wrap up a few more pressing projects (more on that in a sec). In the meantime, I have an extensive backlog of published books and courses for writers, freelancers, and self-publishers to check out.

Game Dev Projects

So…if you’ve been following me on Twitter, you probably already pieced together that my forays into indie game development are what are taking up the vast majority of my non-freelancing time (I’m still slinging words, full-time by the way).

I started making games about two years ago, when I co-founded Touchfight Games, and since then I’ve also begun doing solo game projects, too. The more I learn how to make games, the more I absolutely love it. I’m also learning that it’s SUPER TIME CONSUMING. Hence the lack of updates, lack of new books, and lack of anything around these parts lately. I’ll be changing that up soon.

Right now, I’m in the middle of a pretty major pivot towards the game side of my creative professional world, as my studio Touchfight Games is very close to launching our next game, Nuclear Golf, which will arrive on PlayStation 4 and PS Vita later this summer — then on PC and other platforms early next year. It’s a crazy and totally ridiculous project and we’re really excited to have it almost ready to rock. Peep the trailer here:

The game is almost done, but the home stretch of getting it prepped for launch is…let’s just say…a little intense.  The next month or so is going to be a pretty insane.

Meanwhile, I’m also working on several solo projects that are super weird, super dark, and very cool. Which brings me to my plans for this blog going forward:

Game Dev Blog

I’m learning new things on a daily basis and crafting lots of cool snippets of game progress I’ve been dying to share. Some of that is making its way to my Twitter feed as GIFs and random updates, but I’d like to be able to talk about game dev-related things in more than 140 characters.

So the plan here is to revamp the blog soon and start posting content again on a semi-regular basis. My immediate plan is to write about my creative process, game development updates, and progress on current projects.

I know some folks here follow the blog for self-publishing-related content. While there won’t be a ton of that in the immediate future, I’ll eventually be weaving that together as I dig back into book projects.

Basically, because I’m expanding the scope of my creative a professional world, I’d like to get this place better aligned with what I’m doing across the board — while finding some middle ground that’ll appeal to folks who follow me for writing and self-publishing shop talk AND folks who are interested in my game projects and looking behind-the-curtain at the process of crafting small quirky games.

Ultimately, learning new things and sharing that knowhow is all part of who I am and what I do. If you’ve enjoyed my shop talk on writing and book publishing, expect to find a similar treatment with the upcoming dev blog updates side of things.

Be well and keep the words (and code) flowing!

-Nathan