Well, my second book is completely finished now and in print!
If you want you can get a hard copy direct from Cafepress. You’ll only be paying for the production costs, as Mutabilis is a strictly non-profit making affair.
Feels good to have done this a second time, and hopefully this book will be as successful as the first.
My next project will take all the lessons learnt from the previous two – and I’m hoping to go down the proper publishing route this time. More on that later!
The cover competition for my latest book ‘Mutabilis’, was won by Neil Badman, who got 27% of the vote. Well done Neil. Really pleased with this image; it looks extremely professional and captures the mood of the book very well. The complete online version is available from the Elite Wiki page on Mutabilis.
At the bottom of the wiki page you can see the other entries, they are all worth a look. I was very impressed with the quality of the entries, all were worthy!
I’ll be preparing the hardcopy version shortly, via Cafepress.
Neil’s image is below!
The last chapter of my Oolite sequel is now up on the Elite Wiki. Once the competition for the cover page finishes (see previous entries) there will be a single download and a hard copy available.
Always a bit bittersweet when you come to the end of a tale, particularly in this case as I almost certainly won’t be writing anymore in this sequence.
However, since it’s a ‘Creative Commons’ work, there’s nothing to stop anyone else continuing it!
Well, not a real one, obviously! That would be extremely dangerous!
Due to the wonder that is open source software and community collaboration, I have penned an ‘addon’ (OXP using the correct nomenclature) to the Oolite space trading game (an open version of Elite – in case you were wondering), which adds a Pulsar to one of the star systems in the game.
I’ve presented the pulsar as a ‘tourist attraction’ in the system, and so have also added space liners, visitors and other assorted traffic to ‘flesh out’ the system.
This is the nice thing about Oolite, you can add anything you want to the game, within the limits of your ability.
Each object (ship, planet, rock) can be give a ‘role’ to play in the game (eg. Pirate, Bounty Hunter, Trader, Police, Dumb) and you can modify this behaviour by writing ‘AI’ code for the object.
Which all in all, makes for a very immersive gaming experience. If you’re an Oolite player, you can download the Tianve Pulsar here.
I’m no artist, and as such I am always impressed at those who can capture the imagination and convert it into an image by hand. As a keen photographer I’m pretty reasonable at composition, framing, light and balance, but give me a pencil or some paints and my 5 year old can beat me hands down.
At the risk of shameless self promotion (hey, what else is a blog for? 
) I’ll refer you to the competition that is currently running to design a cover for my upcoming short story, Mutabilis. The idea was to allow readers to design a cover for this creative commons licensed non commercial work – a sort of community collaborated book. The results? Well, decide for yourself. I’m amazed.
The penultimate chapter of my Oolite story has just gone live on the Elite Wiki. Last chapter goes up next week and this story is complete.
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