Today I should probably bail on the help I was promised two weeks ago by one of the Shawty's aulden friendfolk and settle the last half hour of the wedding playlist on my own.

Moving on up to another threshold of mailing list subscribers over at Chancers, so in the hopes of hurdling that line today, here's a link to the Abbey, where folk can find a prose/format sample and a glimpse of the worldbuilding in this community-minded game: wrackwellabbey.com/2025/09/15/c...

Always a little annoying when it turns out a WIP has a few vague resemblances to an existing property that's sold a couple million copies.

Today's jaunty juxtaposition involves an article on winning over lonely male voters (part of the Male Loneliness Crisis series) and an article on conservative men lying about or hiding their political beliefs in the hope that they might be able to bluff their way into a heterosexual relationship.

Writing wedding vows, and struggling to negotiate the fine line between the whimsical and the weird.

I am pleased to report that I made two Tylenol jokes in two classes today and they both landed as intended.

I was dead certain that the wedding poem I was looking for was to be found in Robert Bly's Selected Poems of Rilke, but lo, 'twas in the J.B. Leishman translation. My life has been a fib! Let this expiate!

The Shawty and I are winding down from a fantastic weekend, but we are two tuckered truckers.

Both of my go-to gaming shirts are in the laundry, which means I must entertain the terrifying possibility of The Third Shirt.

Working on Chancers (see my pinned post) in earnest for months, and I’m delighted to feature Emily’s art therein. A real pleasure to work with!

Pay a visit to the link and you'll find a few downloadable pages of Chancers, which will give you a player-facing feel for the haps in the Drifting Kingdoms! Please feel welcome to share far and wide with folk you think might be vibishly inclined! wrackwellabbey.com/2025/09/15/c...

Pay a visit to the link and you'll find a few downloadable pages of Chancers, which will give you a player-facing feel for the haps in the Drifting Kingdoms! Please feel welcome to share far and wide with folk you think might be vibishly inclined! wrackwellabbey.com/2025/09/15/c...

The new haps over at Central Michigan University Press!

Didn't win the lottery, so I'm consoling myself by drafting a pseudoscientific hypnosis experience that milks both the locus coeruleus and the fusiform gyrus.

Wedding cake tasting this AM, so my low-sugar boo is ready for a knife-fight.

NGL - character concept for tonight's adventure in the Rainy City is basically a chunky puree of 1990s alt rock.

The great perk of knowing the backyard raccoon is built like a tank is that I can be reasonably confident he doesn't live in our attic or in a nest only accessible by the roof.

The image-generation subfolder of the LLM Discord I intermittently look in on has exploded, which probably means one of the big image vending machines has changed in some way. The 150+ posts suggests that someone has interfered with the smut.

Savvy shoppers might have nabbed the digital copy already, but this critter will be released into the wild today. Have your nabbin' nets at the ready!

I can think of few surer signs of the overall incompetence of the CEO set than the failure of the new Target guy to do a noisy public runback of his predecessor's business-killing policy shifts while the Cracker Barrel nonsense was front and center in the spotlight.

The very sexy chapter on very sexy Chancing magic is revised and sent off to the layout sorceress. Now to eat a celebratory salad. If you enjoy inclusive, diverse, very sexy TTRPGs, be sure to sign on to the project for updates! www.backerkit.com/c/projects/b...

Had a breakthrough on Chancing magic in Chancers and devised a (Taylor) Swiftian wrinkle for Nefarious Secret Project XX.

Just got a booster, but it looks like my chonkitude will allow me to get the updated version in a couple months or so.

It's 8:00 on a Wednesday morning, which means I've allowed myself to get bogged down in defining areas of effect for Chancers.

Peak performance on the first day of skool, by which I mean I had to address the "Low Tire Pressure" light on the car and also replace batteries in all the fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors in the Abbey. Now to the writing I planned for the day, and then to meet the first batch of students!

Reading some fine reporting this week. Here’s the piece on local goings-on that started it off.

New local cable company has been hammering, digging, and drilling about 40 feet from my home office window for the past two days. I suspect I will never, ever sign on to Frontier Cable until they have atoned for this sin.

Super-important news for the fall, especially for those who are getting ready to return to campus. Our local CVS said they had one dose left on Monday, but more had been ordered for later in the week.

TFW you're trying to rescue a very fast spider that somehow managed to land in the sink, but every time you lay out a towel for him to climb up, he instead hides under it and makes a dash for the drain the moment you shift the towel.

I regret to inform you that my broadly benign experiments with the Olfactory Hypnosis Experience will today be reconstituted in light of entire suites of fragrances--candles, lotions, body washes, hand soaps, and lip balms all centered on the same scent.

A helpful gloss on the latest Wrackwell Abbey Hypnosis Experience: www.youtube.com/watch?v=B29Y...

Though I’ve not quite finished my bourbon beard shampoo, I suspect the summer trial beard might be sacrificed this week as I prepare to Make Some Changes.

Though it were chewy, I think I finished another chapter of Chancers today. Tomorrow we dive into the extra-chewy chapter on the pragmatics of magic once again, armed with some kindly feedback and, in all likelihood, dilated pupils from my eye exam.

18th-c folks with Netflix might deserve to know that Love, Death, and Robots has a Christopher Smart episode centered on Jeoffry. 🤘👹🤘

Taking a break from writing game mechanics to flesh out the history of the game world. Funny how the complexion of things changed when the last royal failson died and rule of the main island passed to an earnestly progressive transgender man.

I have been informed that the scent I have chosen for the Olfactory Hypnosis Experience is perhaps inappropriate for the summer months. All signs point toward a four-season array, assuming I can work out suitable pseudoscientific language for the other fragrances.

This sent me away with a fine, fine feeling.

Missed my trip to the gym today thanks to botching the timing, but I've got two chapters of Chancers set to send to my formatting wizard and solid leads on a couple supplements I hope will help me sleep a bit better.

Low-key morning browse swerved from researching saffron supplements to a deep dive on phenomenological control in hypnosis. Relaxation paralysis and phantom sensations make for S-class horror content.

Apocalyptic fiction entitles the writer to more murther than usual. And fewer Maureen McGovern allusions than usual.

TFW wildlife control mounts a night cam to monitor your yard, and the raccoon that meanders across the screen dwarfs the trap cages behind him.

The real difficulty of game design is that I can't keep on noodling with a manuscript in perpetuity once I've sent it off to my InDesign wizard in the same way I'd noodle with a story document.

I would characterize myself as "slutty little glasses"-curious.

Today's irony is that researching supplements to help improve my sleep and get my stress under control has become inordinately stressful.

My kink, at least today, is books on hypnosis that back up their premises with reference to recent neuroscience studies.

Complicated day at the Abbey. My visit to the dentist involved breaking in a new assistant, who hip-checked me in the head while taking scans, and my lovely fiancee's workday was torpedoed by a power outage when she was slated to create the plates for major writing awards in her sign shop.

I am pleased to report that I've signed on to a new primary-care doctor, a significant revision of my original plan to adopt a chimpanzee and teach him to flash placards reading "Lose Some Weight," "Get More Sleep," and "Stress about Less" in the manner of "Subterranean Homesick Blues."

One of the more compelling tells of make-believe machine art is that the prompters are ultra-dedicated to slapping their digital signatures on their "work," usually right over any feature of the image the machine got almost right. The need for cred without effort compels them.

I'm not saying I'm committed to the imprudent summertime beard, I'm just saying I've invested in a fresh tubule of bourbon-scented beard shampoo.

Grew up in the Boston broadcast area and caught the Creature Double Feature on channel 56 every Saturday afternoon when I was wee. But these days, as a monocle-wearing member of the cognoscenti, I require more highbrow Double Feature fare. I reckon you might, too. www.backerkit.com/c/projects/c...