Ryan Rimmel

Chapter 15 – My Adventures in Super Hell

“Badgelor lived through this,” I growled as we continued walking.  We were out of immediate danger.  Super immediate danger at least.  We were just off the beach following the edge of the inner sea towards Windfall.  It was going to take me at least a week to get that far.  I could have moved faster, but that seemed extremely suicidal.

I checked again and my mana recovery was greater than the cost ...

Chapter 14 – Preparations are Finished.

“Here’s what I think happened,” said Shart preparing for another discussion. “When Filly, he’s one of my best friends, realized he lost his hat he must have started looking for it and obviously we have a bond like Jim and Dalton.”

“Uh huh,” I replied as I checked the edge on a sword.

“So, he broke into Limbo, again, easy for him, and went through my secret dungeon and found it,” said Shart.

“B...

Healthscare updates

Sarah is doing better.  Quite a bit, but unfortunatly she was at an EXTREMELY low point so that doesn't mean she's doing well.  Without going into too much detail, she has an acute kidney injury which is stopping team kidney from working well enough to keep her alive.  Fortunatly, modern medicine can handle that, and they expect that injury to heal and for her to recover more or less fully.

When is anyone's guess.

In...

Chapter 13 – The invincible wall

Julia had never thought it could be that bad.  When she was a child she had awoken one day with the certainty that in her lifetime Grebthar would be reborn and the battles with the Dark Overlord would resume.  Little Julia had thought that she would be an epic princess, like the First, saving the world with the Mayor.

What she hadn’t considered was what the world would look like while that happened.  Every sma...

What's going on with me

So, fun week.  Wake up on Monday and my wife thinks she's dying so we go on a quick trip to the ER where they informed us that she was, in fact, dying.

Fortunatly, they could handle that with enough time in a hospital.  I don't want to get into the specifics, but she is recovering and will be out sometime this week.  That's not the end of it, but it is an ending.  Prognosis is good and all that, so phew.

Obvious...

Chapter 12 – Hallway at the edge of nowhere.

“This passage between worlds is different than the last one,” I commented.  There was an odd echo surrounding us.  It was like I was in a long concrete hallway rather than the mostly empty room I was standing in.

“The last one was a Demon Door transfer through the tower,” explained Shart.  “This is <admin> architecture.”

The <admins> were not very creative.  I’d have expected...

Chapter 11 – The Utmost Respect

“Keep moving,” yelled Shart. I didn’t need to be told twice. Honestly, I didn’t really need to be told the first time. I continued racing as fast as my badger-power assisted legs could carry me.  Along with our ability to share Stamina pools, I was able to channel our Stamina Regenerations. I was also using my Tireless Stamina pool to sprint at an insane rate of speed. Unlike a cheetah, I could maintain my speed over incredible di...

Chapter 10 – Fast Time at Trenton

I dropped back into Trenton the moment I was able.  The demon attendant glanced over at me as I started to awaken.  They were a totally genderless octopus-like ball of tentacles surrounded by eyes.

“Did you find your visit enjoyable,” they asked in a high pitched whine, which was odd because I couldn’t see a nose.

“It was great,” I said walking toward the door. “Tell Doug I’ll find my own way ther...

No chat this week but something to tide you over

I'm going to be at a labor day function tonight, so no chat but I have been working on a side project with an old writing buddy of mine.  We've gotten quite a few chapters done so I figured I'd mention it.  The tale of Sir Joe the bold.  Weekened at Bernies meets the greatest hero of all time and his loyal bard.  I'm doing the outline for this badboy, but she should be pretty fun. 

2023-09-03 15:55:22 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 9 – The Surrender

“Hold your arms up! It's better that way,” yelled Shart. The roller coaster suddenly banked sharply, and we twisted down a series of curves and bends.  Without me physically being there, the effect was greatly muted.  That, and I could fly now. After that, roller coasters just seemed kind of dull.

Shart was enjoying himself though, so I let him.  The train had dropped us off here at Limbo’s premier amuseme...

Chapter 8 Windfall Blues

Fenris was positive that whatever Jim was doing had to be far more important than what he himself was doing.  It just had to be.

“As acting mayor, I dedicate this statue to the Windfall town mascot,” called Fenris, cutting the ribbon.  There were hoots and cheers from the Falconians and questioning looks from the Windfallians.

The Dark Overlord had been reborn, war was coming, and the Falconians had to have...

Chapter 7 - In Limbo

They did, in fact, have a mortal rig. The inside of the shop looked like a cyberpunk nightmare right out of the Matrix.  Sometimes a human who couldn't summon demons would make his way down here to talk to their demon, usually to strike a contract or beg for forgivness.  Shart wasn't real helpful here, but sometimes a human did therefore, they had to have a method to reach that demon, since demons hated entering the mortal realm. &nb...

Chapter 6 - For Johnathan - The Hentai School

“Boys have a penis, and girls have a vagina,” I began, in my lesson in hentai school. It was a lesson I never thought I’d have to give.

“This should be fun,” said Shart with an utter lack of confidence.

I knew that in modern, progressive America, there was some debate on the issue of sex education, but this was not the time for that.  This was not a walk before you run situation. The demons were not even a...

Chapter 5 – Welcome to Trenton

(Short chapter this week, next week should be interesting through.)

“Welcome to Trenton,” said Ben as we entered the city proper.  There were nodes at the outskirts of the town where a small cluster of barns resided that looked like Chris’s workshop.  There had only been workshops there, so I had followed him with some interest into the demon’s largest city on Ordinal.

Today has been full of disappointments.

Chapter 4 – Journey to Newark

(Final stage pre editor)

“And that’s the soul cleanser,” said Ben as we walked by the main tower, surrounded by dozens of confused demons.

“So, all mortal souls get processed through there before being returned to Ordinal?” I asked as we walked past another extrusion of the large, unnatural machine.  Just looking at the machine caused parts of your brain to misfire, like you were looking at Schroeder’s Stairs.

Fifth Era Book 2 is out now!

Book 2 in the fifth era series.  Ever want to see what an actual game of DnD is like with me, this is it.  

Chapter 3 - Meat and Greet

(Another week, another chapter)  

I exhaled loudly, slamming my foot down on the massively armored demon’s detached head.  Removing that hadn’t killed him though, it turned out demons viewed their heads as more optional than one might expect. Still, if you did enough damage a demon would perish, in his case I suspected the gaping hole in his chest is what did him in.

“Are you going to help, Big Dog?” I growled. 2023-07-23 22:45:34 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 2 – A Banner’s Purpose

(Note, these are final revised chapters, they are still in the editing process but that takes more time, and I kind of promised chapter releases a while ago.  So here is this chapter, in all its glory, when it gets a final edit I'll repost)

Julia was a banner to her people, the height of nobility, an icon.  So why NONE of the idiots she was leading from BURNING Filly to SAFE Windfall understood that was beyond her. &nb...

Book 8: The War For Noobtown, Chapter 1

Chapter 1 - Jim Goes Down to Jersey, Looking for a Soul to Steal

“I expected this to be a bit more of a challenge,” I stated nonchalantly, stepping through the portal to Jersey.  Well, we were more like Jersey-adjacent.  I wasn’t quite sure where we were in the topology of Ordinal, but the whole place smelled terrible.  It looked even worse.

“At least he named it appropriately,” I offered, wrinkling my nose...

Slow going on the edits

So, I'm 1/3rd of the way through after both massive expanding and editing the first part of the book.  Good stuff.  Very neat story covering two sections of Ordinal that have not yet been seen.

The next act deals with stuff closer to home, and I'm trying to tighten up the character list so the whole section needs some substantial edits.  This is the slice of life noobtown that I don't get to write as often anymore and I mi...

Editing, or what was I thinking Part 1

So I'm slowly going through book 8, adding in bits and pieces I missed and filling out sections that were not detailed enough.  Good news, doing that adds a bunch of words.  Bad news is that it is slow going, but I expected that and no one ever seems to complain that I made the books longer.

So this is going to take some time, but in the mean time I'm getting everything lined up tight such that this is going to be a really good...

Noobtown 8: War for Noobtown's first draft is done

That's great, but this is just the first stage of getting a noobtown book completed.  I'll have to go through it at least 2 more times to actually get it up to a standard that is not a total embarrasment, then I have to let Sarah go through it once, then I'll do one final read through.  

Each of those attempts usually takes a week or two and editing it takes even longer because Sarah (my editor) wants to make sure everything is...

Finishing an arc

I am still working on 8, far longer than I initially expected but I keep running into quality issues that I feel are worth some rewrites.  At this point I'm to the final bit though, so once more into the breech and I think I'll have it all wrapped up in a week or two, hopefully.  

I hate big endings where I have to ensure that everything feels just right before the lead off into the next arc.  I switched from a broader for...

Connective Tissue

Book 8 is an ending and I find those harder to write than even a book in the middle of a series.  Actually writing out endings is something I do not enjoy because any errors you make are somewhat permenant so I dont' want to screw it up.  In the meantime, I've gotten to the final section and am finally connecting the middle of the book to the ending.  That gives me three crucial scenes that still need written, and that's what I'...

Noobtown 8 - Too much

So utlimatly Noobtown is the story of Jim, and I think one of the problems is that I like ensemble novels a bit too much.  My initial ending focused too much other other characters and that was costing me a bit in the personalization of Jim's story.

So while my revised story still has other characters in it, I'm tightening this down to fewer characters so that it is easier to follow and the story feels more personal.  I think t...

I blame my alphas

So I thought Book 8 hit a speedbump lot wise and sent it over to several of my alpha readers to determine if I had.  I did.

So I'm losing a week plus worth of work and revising it.  I might be able to recover some of what was written if I revise it.  Such is the nature of writing the eighth book in a series, too many moving parts and I got some caught up in the gears.  

I sort of view this like a x-com save, now...

Working on Noobtown again

So life is back to Noobtown and I'm going to try to have it wrapped up in the next week or two.  We'll see if my writing training to expand my bandwidth was at all useful.

The book is current at 120k words, and I'm shooting for 150-160k words.  I have 3 more critical scenes to include, so hopefully everything goes well.  I'm really aiming to wrap this one up epically.  

Then a pause while I get a few more books ...

First Drafts

So I just finished a first draft.  What happens now?  Well, first you go through and figure out what the book does well, what it does poorly, and what needs worked on.    Second you check out the themese presented, and then start hammering them so they look a lot shinier.  

Next you weave in things you realize you missed during the intial process.  For example, during the initial training montage I want...

Sword of Justice part 12 (and finished with teh first draft)

First draft done, I'll discuss what happens next in another post.  

Chapter 42: Which witch is which?

I returned to the dungeon and began searching around for another path back to the courtyard.  Clearly there had to be one and clearly I had to find it.  I brought up the map and checked.  The dungeon clearly stopped just underneath the keep, which in turn was built into mostly solid rock except for that sing...

Sword of Justice Part 11

So, in order to preserve my wrist I cut down to 5k words today.  I'm going to try 10k again tomorrow and see how it feels but I'm not confident.  Still, 5k a day is much better than my usual 2k so this is a vast improvement.  

Chapter 40: The Assault

I started down the street quickly as Justice started updating where all the guards were.  They were patrolling and occasionally one would look inside the wall b...