As my lovely spouse as mentioned on more than one occasion, I always have a project going on. Usually two or three or even more. Lately, I feel that I'm starting a lot of projects and not actually finishing anything. With some of my recent projects, that may change since I actually see a finishing point on both MfGames Culture CIL and Sand and Bone.

MfGames Culture CIL

On the programming side, I'm working on a C# library called MfGames Culture CIL (all of my .NET libraries end in “CIL”). This is the fantasy calendar system I've mentioned before. The project is somewhat ambitious for me, which makes it scary, but also something I've been thinking about doing for a number of years. I also think it is something I can actually finish and make into a proper library.

I hit a pretty good point with the library. It now handles cultures, multiple calendars, translations, and a combination of a number of cool things. Everything is hard-coded in C# code, which I'm planning on solving with the next few steps. In the end, it should be completely driven off XML or JSON files.

I'm tracking my “to do” lists toward a 1.0.0 release over on Github.

Sand and Bone

After a number of deaths I've had to deal with in the last few months, I finally got a chance to go back to my writing group. When I had to take some time off at the end of last year, there was a huge group of submissions. Now, not so much. Which means I had a chance to get Sand and Bone finished.

The last fifteen chapters were still very rough since I wrote almost all of them in a single week. I took the last week to do another round of editing against it, cleaning it up and making it ready for the group.

After this week, I have five more submissions and then it should be done with that round of editing. After that, a pair of rounds of professional editors and it will be ready for being published.

Sand and Ash

If I mention Sand and Bone, I probably should talk about Sand and Ash. I've gotten a number of beta readers for the sequel to Sand and Blood and it has been pretty positive. I'm excited about getting it done, but…

WisCon

I had a choice between getting Sand and Ash out or going to WisCon. I choose WisCon because it gives me a chance to visit my grandmother (she lives in town), reduces a long haul for a family trip, and gives me a chance to meet up with some friends.

This year I'm going to try doing a reading. We'll see if I get in, but it will be the first time I've read something I've written since I've done poetry readings in Illinois. I'm thinking about doing a chapter from Flight of the Scions, mainly because the entire world was inspired by panels from that convention.

I'll find out how to get Sand and Ash out this year, hopefully by ICON. I'm going to sign up for doing a reading there too, probably because I'm hoping to be a lot more comfortable with reading my novel.

I'm also assuming I can pronounce my character names smoothly by then.

Coming weeks

I'm hoping to finish MfGames Culture CIL in a week or so. And then I'm sure I'll move on to another project.

There is always another project.