Shores of Night

 Hi, Photo by Mira Kemppainen on Unsplash It's been a while, hasn't it? Not since I posted -  I was generally grumpy about the festive season (humbug!) last weekend - but since I talked about my life here. Reflection is something that comes pretty easily to me, and it feels natural to take stock at this part of the year. It's a natural part of winter, where things are slower and the world a little quieter.  This year has been a bit crazy and it feels like it's been tough, emotionally. In some respects I've ended up running as fast as I can to stand still, as Alice in Wonderland put it. As we grow closer to the end of the year, I'm trying not to feel too aggrieved by things, as well as girding my loins for whatever comes next. Please forgive me because I don't feel I can really go into immense amounts of detail in some areas but will at least touch on the parts which have been difficult.  The good news is that my job is now safe. My employer has had to downs...

 I don't like Christmas.  There, I said it. I've committed heresy, possibly the biggest one I can. Christmas has become such a huge tentpole in our calendar, so associated with happiness that it really does feel like it's a crime to dislike it. Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash Partly, the reason I dislike it is that it starts too early. Here in the UK, you see Christmas items in the shops as early as September. That's usually just as the "back to school" tat gets taken down but before the Halloween stuff gets shelf space. Christmas Carols can be heard as early as the start of November, which is usually when the deluge of seasonal adverts for shops invade the media, in whatever format you're watching or listening. The world and his wife tries to convince you that they're more caring and "Christmassy" than the next brand over, in what feels like a rather hollow exercise in "us too, we love Christmas!" Towns and cities fill up with C...

 Hi,  Welcome if you're new or welcome back if you've stumbled onto my blog in the past. It's been a few weeks since I posted anything — sorry for that! Life got busy, and the posts I write take time to put together.  I've also been fully immersed in a world building project and so haven't really had time to come up for air.  In a change to the planned topic, I'm going to talk about what I'm making and why I've been deep in the creative well.  A few years ago I started writing a novel called Army of Shadows. It's an Epic Fantasy story set in a pseudo Celtic set of islands, inspired by Celtic culture and mythology, and starts with a young woman on the run from the law who takes refuge in a barrow and accidentally frees something ancient and malicious.  From there we pick up with a bunch of other people as the situation worsens and something else ancient is reborn — an underground resistance to the things in the night, as the ordinary people have to st...

 Welcome to the blog, or welcome back if you're a regular reader. Thanks for stopping by. This is Shores of Night. On Sundays we talk about Werewolf: the Apocalypse , White Wolf's eco-horror roleplaying game. I talk about things within the game that interest me, explore areas which I think need to be considered, and sometimes try to make stuff.  Apologies for missing last week, life got in the way. I'm finding things a bit hard at present because I'm consuming too much news content and even though I'm in the UK, current events in the US are weighing heavily on my mind. It feels like life has become that much more difficult and, in the themes of Werewolf, that what's happening will only lead to the planet suffering more. It feels like our cities will become darker and less pleasant too, though perhaps not to the extent that they would be in the World of Darkness. At least we can be relatively sure that what's happening in the "real world" (if such a...

Welcome back to the blog, or welcome if you're new.  Apologies for the gap in posting, as you can tell I'm struggling to be consistent at the moment and life got in the way last weekend. Thank you for bearing with me, and thank you for reading – I know the world is very strange and chaotic at present and things aren't looking positive. I guess, though, that when life is hard escapism is incredibly tempting... so we might as well dive into our creations, right?  One thing we might wonder is how the world would look if things were different, if there was an element of the Fantastic within it. Magic, superpowers, advanced technology, supernatural creatures and other elements can, and must, alter the worlds they exist in – if we allow them to.  My feeling is that if they don't have some effect, why are they present at all? Let's talk about some things to consider when we introduce these elements to our creations.  I've chosen to consider these elements through so...

 Welcome back to the blog, or welcome if you are new. This is Shores of Night, where we talk about Werewolf: The Apocalypse on Sundays. As usual, I'm assuming the reader has some familiarity with the game, if only because otherwise I don't see why you'd be reading about it. (If you are new to the world of Werewolf, let me know and check out my initial pieces which attempt to serve as an introduction to this version of the World of Darkness). I'm referencing the 20th Anniversary Edition of the game, and haven't invested in 5th Edition. I'm still on the fence about buying it, to be honest.  Recently, we've been talking about cities in the game, as the urban often runs contradictory to the ways in which the Garou operate. We've already discussed elements like sensory overload and the hostility of the Urban Umbra to the werewolves. Cities are not the Garou Nation's friends, they're strongholds of the Enemy. A Garou pack here must be canny and self re...

 Welcome back or welcome to the blog if you're new.  Firstly, let me apologise - I'm really not hitting those Wednesday pieces at the moment and I think it's probably fair to say that world building posts are going to drop at the weekend for the foreseeable future. I'll try to get back on track, as soon as I can but life is taking things in a less than brilliant direction of late.  With that in mind, I want to take this week to post a more personal piece reflecting on what's going on in the news. Inevitably, that means talking about the USA, because of course the events there are dominating the headlines and overshadowing things that the UK government is doing.  My Political Beliefs To be upfront about my perspective, I lean left politically and while I've always seen myself as being on the centre left, I oppose the rightwards drift we've seen since the start of the 21st Century. I do believe that the state should provide a safety net for people and that cla...