Well, 12 days into my Griffinguides blog, and huzzah! I’m calling it a successful couple of weeks.  I know i look angry above, but it’s actually just me shouting.  I’m quite sanguine actually   see?  now I’m smiling!

The stats?  Just shy of 40 posts, mainly back posts (sorry about the spam!), twenty something comments, many many emails from people, a bunch of helpful comments on CMON and PB, and well over 1000 views.  Excellent.  I’m not entirely sure what a ‘view’ is, but it turns out when i view something, the count doesn’t go up, so go figure.  Like everything else about WordPress, the software underlying it, it’s probably a clever system.

You don’t care about those numbers though, and why should you?  that’s for me to worry about.  Suffice to say that I’m most grateful for everyone who has helped me out with encouragement and enquiries, it’s good to know that this has been well recieved.

So far, I’ve presented:

1.  My forthcoming ‘Malice in Wonderland’ range – That’s been fun, and I’ve had some really great feedback on improvements to the work in progress posts by email and even to my suprise, in person! Thanks!

2.  The Ninja Goblin – A fun little project I’ve brought almost to completion over the last three months or so.  Great!  Nearly there, and then I’m going to smash a ’9′ on Coolminiornot.com, a miniature rating site (for those people primarily interested in my writing!)

3.  My work in progress novel ‘Dark Beyond the Veil‘.  i’ll be providing some larger excerpts as the weeks progress, never fear!  Just because Nanowrimo has stopped, isn’t any reason for me to slouch in my dedication to my wordcount and the stroppy, hormonal teenagers I’m writing about!

4.  My ‘Design me a Banner’ competition - This has been so well recieved, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed looking over all the entries I’ve been sent so far, and if you haven’t gotten around to it yet, remember that there could be a tenner in it for you if your design is chosen, so check out the details and throw something together!

5.  Finally, the announcement that a short story of mine is to be included in the winter edition of the SI magazine. Can’t wait for you guys to read it and tell me what you think!

…and that’s the last 2 weeks!  ok, so I shan’t be updating that regularly, but you can expect continuous progress as i keep plugging away.  ‘Well then’, I don’t hear you cry (well I am sitting in a Costa Coffee on the way home from work, and literally noone aside, I assume, from the thermal imaging camera sattelite operatives from GCHQ could know that i’m here), ‘What’s next’?

well dear valued reader, allow me to spell it out more clearly.  In the following couple of weeks up to the new year, you can expect…

1.  Updates on Malice – I’ve got one to go already (the QoH has hair, woo! and her henchman is wearing a wedding ring.  So will the white rabbit…yes, I’ve finally gotten around to beginning work on the flavour text for the minis!)

2.  Flavour text for Malice – What a suprise, i’ve started to write it, so I’ll blog about it too.  Go figure!  In the new year I’ll be consulting an expert (well I already have, but we’ll be doing so more, and for many hours at a time) and we’ll flesh out the currently skeletal gaming mechanisms for Malice…It’ll soon be time for the Denizens of Wonderland to break out…

3.  A spectacular series of focuses, one per week every wednesday, on some of my other completed painting projects.  Ninja Gobbo will be finished, sure, but I’ll also be showing my Golden Demon winning entries, my nearly winning ones (I’ve got over 20 finalist pins in the last few years, so there’s a few of them!) and some previously unshown stuff produced for another project of mine.  Now I think of it, this brings me nicely onto the other project of mine:

4.  A miniature painting guide.  With over 100 pages, and stuffed to the brim with colour pictures, I’ve got my painting guide written.  It’s also got some absolutely breathtaking sections from other artists, now i’m working on getting all the images edited and the typesetting done, and it’ll be ready to publish.  Wonderful!  As with all of these up and coming things, expect a blog post before too long with more information and in this case, some sneak peeks!  woo hah!

5.  The results of the banner competition…some stiff competition to be sure, but are you geek enough?

6.  A sculptalong.  If you  guys want it.   It’s something I’ve been asked about a good few times, and this seems like an entertaining way to help people out. and open up the not-as-difficult-as-it-seems world of sculpting for a wider audience, with on hand support from me and others if you’re having trouble.  That’ll be coming soon if enough people want it.  I’ll guage the reactions in the next couple of weeks and take it from there.  Watch this space.

7.  Socio.  It’s a little short story I wrote that’s currently not submitted anywhere, so I thought I’d share it with you.  I figured if I could get your thoughts before it gets put back in for resubmission, then that would be just grand.

Hopefully the coming weeks will be even more exciting than the first!  Thank you so much for following, I really appreciate all the support from everyone so far.

James

ps.  Just a reminder – I’m open to commissions, just drop me a line!  I need something to do after i’ve finished with Malice, and I hate twiddling my thumbs unless there’s putty between them…