Goodbye to 2022 and Thank You!

Let’s leave 2022 behind and step with hope and a sense of wonder into 2023.
Thank you so much for taking this journey with me. I wish you all the very best for the months ahead.

A creative retrospective

The year started with retro tinkering and there will be more. I got back a bit into home computers, especially the C64 and the Amiga 500. They started out as research projects for my writing. It got expensive quite fast and it’s only a minor topic of this patreon, so I knew I had to shift focus.

What I want to share mostly are my creative projects and the year was full of those.

In January my sci-fi shortstory Ein Shoppingmall-Sonnenaufgang (A shoppingmall sunrise) was published in Nova #31 one of the leading magazines for speculative fiction in Germany.

For the first time since the pandemic I had a live event in February when I was on a fantasy panel with two fellow writers for the anthology Fantasy im Münsterland.
The title refers to a rural region in Germany that has a rich background of local legends. Writers coming from the area were invited to share their take on fantasy.
We read our stories, talked about what inspired them and what lead us to write in the genre. Due to Covid restrictions it was a recorded live event, but it was still a nice success. It was broadcasted on a local TV station and got featured as the recommendation of the week. It’s in German only, but if you want to take a look, you can find it on Youtube.

In June my wife and I did a Double Jam, we both created games as part fo the GameDev.TV Gamejam.

In only 10 days she created The Owlwakening. Her very first game and I’m really proud with what she came up with. A fun top-down scroller about a little owl exploring a forest. The graphics and music have a nice Gameboy inspired feel to them. The game tells a short story. There is cake at the end. What more could you ask for? You can check it out on Itch.io.

For my own game, I took a new approach. So far I had mostly focused on storytelling, but this time I started on a feeling I wanted to convey. I wanted something chill without the usual win and lose conditions I grew up with and a bit of a sandbox feel.
What I ended up with is a futuristic chill driving game.
There is a hint of a story, but it’s mostly about driving and causing mischief.
You can literally paint the city in synthwave colors as you drive your bike. There are mix stations to pick up new colors. It’s still just a prove of concept, but you can check out A Chill Intoxicating Drive on Itch.io.

In August the German audiobook of my supernatural steampunk mystery novel Die phantantischen Fälle des Robert Fuchs (the Fantastic Cases of Robert Fox) reached about 1200 listeners at a time on Spotify and was featured on Apple audiobooks.
You can find the english translation of the first case on Amazon or free for patrons.

In October I released a motivational tool for writers called Creative Companion, which turned out to be a bit of a game changer for some fellow writers and myself. It’s an ongoing development, so make sure you have the latest version to get the best out of it.

Over the course of this year I mostly worked on my new steampunk novel Lilar Canea including this year’s Nanowrimo. 

On a side note, I discovered Obsidian for my daily note taking, planning of stories and my morning pages. It’s a really handy Markdown-based tool that allows tagging and backlinking to create a mesh of linked information. Plus it’s free, so no reason not to check it out.

My reading year
Looking back on my reading year, I finished 13 books. That’s about 3900 pages, not counting 7 more books that I started reading. So the number for next year may be higher.
My personal book discovery this year were the books of Joe Hill.
For a start I read 20th Century Ghosts, a collection of 15 phantastic stories. Mostly horror, but not all of them. Each story managed to surprise me and grab hold of me in an unusual way. I didn’t want to stop reading. So I continued with the four novellas of Strange Weather. And then I read The Fireman.
To make it short: Great stories, novellas and novels.
Joe Hill is on top of my reading list.

I can recommend the Joe Hill E-Book Bundle for Kindle, which includes 20th Century Ghosts along with three novels.

Less social media time, more fun
For 2023 I will spend less time on social media, especially my mostly German writing social media presence.
I recently created a new Twitter account for this patreon (@StarcatDevocean) and the shared indie efforts of my wife and I. There I follow all kinds of people from the indie, creative and retro community.
There is sense-of-wonder like in the old days of the internet. I can’t scroll the page without discovering something fun and amazing. Thank you to everyone who is a part of this.

Looking ahead
One of the goals for 2023 is to do more with my writing newsletter and this patreon. English or bi-lingual posts can be found by the #english tag. Some posts will be updated and extended regularly, these have the #update tag.

Many great things are coming up. Gamedev, my novel.
There are new gamejams on the horizon. In fact my wife and I are already taking part in the LSDJam with the goal of creating dream-like experiences similar to the PSX classic japan-only released Lucid Dream Simulator (LSD). You can expect a more detailed post about this in early February.

We’re also planning to put more time into our Exodus terram point-and-click adventure game this year, so stay tuned for that.

I feel very thankful for your support this year and your help to create a sense of connectedness.

May the new year hold great things for you. Stay safe and awesome.