Authorised - Bill's Monthly Column

May 2003

First Milestone and a New Look

Hello and welcome to the first anniversary of Trollslayer.net. The site went live just one year ago and its been a good year. I would just like to thank Angela and all the regulars who have made the site work, and the bulletin boards entertaining to read. Angela in particular has done a very fine job and I am really proud of this site and particularly pleased with the new look - hope you like it too.

Gamesday

I will be off to the LA gamesday at the end of the month- should you be at the convention, come along and see me. I will be at the Black Library booth. I will also be at the American Book Expo so if you are in the vicinity, drop by and say hello.

Wolfblade

The fourth Ragnar book is into the final stretch, I expect to be delivering the manuscript sometime this month.  There’s not much to add to what I have already said elsewhere.

Keynote

In my essay on writing a couple of months back, I mentioned how valuable I found using the Outliner in Microsoft Word when it came to writing novel synopses. Well, in the past month I have found something even better. It's a program called Keynote. This little beauty allows you to structure an outline in all manner of different ways, storing all of your notes in one place and making jumping between them a breeze. It has a very clear visual display that lets you differentiate between all the different types of information as well as letting you view it hierarchically like a normal outliner. It can export to RTF and HTML, and link to external websites and files on your hard-drive. 

I have found it really really useful, not just for outlining but for keeping track of my RPG campaign notes and assorted other projects. Astonishingly enough, it's freeware, and you can download it from here. There's no ads, no shareware fees, no nags- just a great piece of kit. If you’re looking for an outliner and project structuring program, take a look. This is a much more useful tool for a writer than many programs I have seen costing hundreds of dollars. 

A Blast From The Past

I got my hands on a copy of d20 Call of Cthulhu this month and I must say I was impressed. As a long time fan of the Chaosium version of the game, I was very prepared to be disappointed by this Wizards of the Coast's offering, but I wasn't. They've kept all of the things that made CoC such a classic, and integrated it really well into the d20 rules system.

For many years now I have been wanting to run a Robert E Howard low magic style role-playing campaign but have been too lazy to write up the magic system. Now I wont have to bother, I can just use the rules from this game instead. I am looking forward to it.

Right, back next month with a report from LA Gamesday.

All the best

Bill

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