What I'd basically like you to do is tell me which bits to build first. Or, cool things I should add, or, well, anything really.
Mostly this is to motivate me to finish the thing.
It is, as you might guess, mostly about writing Ars magica supplements. So, it's on topic here to say "Hey, I'd really like you to do the bits on "Coveannts" first or "Can you put in non-spoilery teasers for Rivals" or whatever.
I don't see it as a high volume blog. I'd prefer to still talk Ars here, and talk Librivox over at Librivox, and talk books over at book coasters, and talk game design at Storygames...but I do really need this so at the job interview when they say "You say you have blogging mojo...demonstrate your mojo!" I can go "Well, I use X, and some of Y, oh and I have this one just for me."
So, if you'd like to roam around its many empty pages and tell me where the furniture should go, I'd be grateful.
If the wordpress framework allows it, I'd throw Twitter feed into the blog for starters. Rightly or wrongly, people are currently putting a lot of stock in the "always on", "always accessible" social networking. If you don't have a Twitter feed, go start one for the purposes of the blog. And stick up an article on the blog about why you were reticent, how it's changed your life, how you'll never go back, blah, blah, blah, or you could be a little more honest. That just shows that you're away of social networking, you know how to integrate it with your blog, and you've given some thought to what it all means.
Why don't you start either with Covenants or with how you do research for a book. The reason for this suggestion is. For a librarian both these topics must be home ground.
In general, I'd love to hear how you write a book. Do you write some essays and bunch them together? Or do you start with a Grand Plan? Does David send you an email and says: Write a book about the Houses of Hermes (or 3)? Few of us know how an Ars Magica book comes into being - and that is a story you can tell because you are on the inside and you are qualified to talk about it.
As for your working promotion, try to avoid debates about being right on your blog. Do not (or only carefully if you must) respond to criticism. You usually are right, but I've observed many forum debates in which people reacted to you as the guy-who-is-right-but-who-is-such-an-unbearable-wise-guy. It either makes you look less than perfect, or your company (right that's us, the krazy gamers). And most people have a hard time not to confuse Ars Magica with weird stuff.
Afterthought:
It may also be a good idea to explain why you write for Ars Magica (and not for another RPG).
Yes. (But not just to Timothy. Not at first, anyway.)
And as a result has signed an NDA meaning that he can't. Actually, Timothy, if you want to do something like this, send me a draft to OK. The process in general isn't supposed to be secret, but it's probably better for an author to write about it than for me to.
Actually, I don't know how working with David Chart is, but I would take the opportunity to say that, from a customer's point of view (at least thiscustomer's*), his work as a line editor has truly been of superb quality.
If you come across any good books or articles as you research for Ars Magica supplements, I for one would be interested in hearing about them and how they could be useful to a player. Of course you would probably have to wait until the product was officially announced before you posted your review.
My blog is powering along, and I'm emptying all of the old notes from my files onto the web page. It's a good thing to do - it means I'm finding little plot hooks, spells, faeries and so on which were cut for length, and that I never got around to using later. So far I have emptied out the files on six of my books. I have no idea what else I'll find as I clean out all my old notes.
