It is done.

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-hole-behind-midnight/14309511

… available for sale as a download from Paizo.com here:

http://paizo.com/store/downloads/seanKReynoldsGames/pathfinderRPG/v5748btpy8b7m

… or from RPGNow, here, where it spend most of the week as the #3 download:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=65407

… and where there’s a preview and a short-but-sweet 5-star review, as well!

Shoot me an email, and I’ll hook you up with my cell #!

http://www.ritepublishing.com/coliseummorpheuon.html

… and send me some questions!

My point stands: one weekend and we’re already at 32% of our goal for the Damnation Epoch.  I couldn’t be happier!

The fine people at Rite Publishing have decided to give me free reign to tell whatever story I want to tell – to use the new Pathfinder RPG rule-system to make my own game-world, complete with setting, history, villains, monsters, magic, daring-do and the unique blend of Lovecraftian horror & over-the-top-anime/kung-fu explosion-filled goodness that I love so very, very much.  In fact, I’ve already got the first part done.

The thing is, they want you to help with the rest.

http://www.ritepublishing.com/coliseummorpheuon.html

Head to the site linked directly above, sign up for a small fee that goes to pay the artists, keep me fed full of Mountain Dew & buys you a copy of the finished book, and you get to tell me what to do.  You get to be my patron – just like the artistic, noble patrons who directed the old Renaissance masters, including the guy who told DaVinci that he should totally do a portrait of this one girl named Lisa.

As in the Mona Lisa.

During this project, I’ll be answering to you.  And only to you, the patrons.  No corporate strategy, no branding, no concessions to the masses.  I’ll be looking out for my bottom line – and that will be YOU.

My writing, your adventure.

Pretty cool, huh?

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/kobold-ecologies-vol-1/6947927

Oh, and also some really, really great art by even BETTER-looking people.  Especially that sexy, sexy Hugo Solis.

Point is: the book, beyond physically being awesome, is also something of a dream come true: I’ve loved the Ecologies articles from Dragon Magazine since before I even remember playing D&D, back in that nebulous time-out-of-time when I was merely a fan-boy gushing over the fluff and marveling at the esoteric crunch, dizzy with the idea of actually playing with such an arcane thing – not even yet ready to roll a d20 with a cadre of like-minded nerd-lings.  Getting to actually sit down and crank out an Ecology or two, especially with a friend like Matt, and especially for a company as awesome as Wolfgang Baur’s Open Design, is amazing.

But this project represents something bigger still: since the surreal moment of coming to a point in my odd & meandering existence wherein people will actually pay me for my ramblings, which is still really weird to contemplate and even weirder to write down, the vast majority of my paid (or, in many cases, potentially-but-not-actually-paid) projects have been assigned.  Assigned by awesome and dorky people, obviously, since the faceless, monolithic bureaucrats who traditionally hand down shitty and boring busy-work to numb office drones probably don’t last long in a free-wheeling, grubby and heart-felt enterprise like the small-press, 3rd-party role-playing game industry (assuming that such terrible people would ever be attracted to such an endeavor in the first place), but assigned none the less.

This project represents the first time that I have completed the following process:

1. – Come up with a crazy-awesome idea.

2. – Sent a letter outlining that crazy-awesome idea to the head of a publishing company.

3. – Received a response from said publisher, explicitily telling me to go for it.

4. – Written exactly whatever the damn hell I felt like.

5. – Submitted the work, cashed a paycheck and subsequenty purchased a copy of the work in print.

… and people ask me if I’m addicted.  Yes.  Yes, I am.