Patrick Todoroff's Blog

One last post here at HSSJ before everything is rolled into the new Stalker7 site. All information about new books and games will be featured there from now on.

A heartfelt thanks to everyone who’s subscribed, commented, lurked, or did a drive-by.

See you on the other side.

Best,

patrick todoroff

These past few weeks, work has been going on in the wings to merge HSSJ with Stalker7 and create a single site for both fiction and games. Prune the excess, get it all under one roof, make it easier to tend.

I want to thank everyone who’s spent their valuable time to subscribe, read, or stop by in these past 13 years. Words cannot express my appreciation, let alone define the contribution your input, encouragement, and mere presence made in my work and person. It’s is good to create, to get recognition and even money for it; but even deeper is the comfort of knowing you’re not alone.

This may well be one of the last posts here, so I’ll post a portion of my latest WIP. Someone online commented that there was no ‘dungeon crawl’ fiction, so I started writing some. Here’s the prologue and first chapter of Shiver and Funk – Five Torches.

Enjoy. Have an excellent day.

And furthermore, it is hereby decreed that the act of opening, entering, exploring, or otherwise disturbing the grave, tomb, crypt, sepulcher, or any other final resting place – or its immediate environs – for the purpose of obtaining valuables, artifacts, or any items sacred or common interred with or near the departed, shall be punishable by summary execution, without appeal.   

CONFEDERATION HIGH COUNCIL – FIFTH MONTH. YEAR 879.  The Decree against the Desecration of Antiquities and Property, both Private and under Royal Custody. (Grave Robber’s Wrack)

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From this day henceforth, it is deemed permissible for property owners, their immediate family, heirs, relevant concerns or duly appointed representatives, to enlist the services of professional surveyors to determine the full and intimate extent of any tract of land under their purview, and for said surveyors to explore its topography, entering any enclosed spaces, caverns, tunnels, structures – man-made or otherwise, above ground or subterranean – in the course of the aforementioned survey, and to retrieve any items, assets, or commodities found therein at the discretion of their employers.

CONFEDERATION HIGH COUNCIL – NINTH MONTH, YEAR 879. Decree for the License of Salvors and Surveyors. (Grave Robber’s Writ)   

The dream.

Mikal is back in that cramped room under the manor: crumbling masonry, warped floor, bowed ceiling timbers draped with cobwebs. The smell of soil and ancient stone.

The five of them are gulping down the heavy air after a mad, blind sprint in the dark. They took a wrong turn into a short hallway that ended here. Corbin, his good arm dangling and dripping, wedges the door shut in its crooked frame, bars it with his boar spear. “It won’t hold them.” His eyes are wide and desperate.  

Mikal doesn’t know what to say. All he has left is his war pick and a ripped canvas sack that’s leaking gold.

Howling in the corridor.

The last torch flickers on the floor, glints on the spilled coins, reflects wetly in the blood spreading under Holm’s legs because a huge skode ripped his belly open in one swipe, and now the swordsman’s guts are looping over his thighs like coils of purple, slippery rope. Freda kneels beside him, cursing and crying, trying to put them back in.

More howls, nearer. Paws scrabbling on flagstone. 

Corbin gropes for a boot dagger with his off-hand. Stepan is pressing himself like a lover against the shuddering door because the pack has found them, snarling, heaving against the dry-rotted planks. Claws tear at the gap next to his face.

“Find an exit,” the archer shouts over his shoulder. “Hurry.”

An exit to anywhere but this death trap of a family crypt the contract said was small and empty, but instead was maze-huge and full of feral skode mothered by the largest pureblood bitch any of them had ever seen: all teeth and teats and bristled fur.   

The room is narrow and low, a wine cellar wrenched by a century of quakes and the manor’s granite weight. All the angles are skewed, the walls cracked and canted. It’s little more than a closet with nothing in it but rickety shelving and empty wine casks. There’s slime and mud, but no window, no grate, no door, save the one that’s splintering under a snarling frenzy.

Corbin is stabbing. Stepan is yelling for Mikal to hurry. Holm is muttering, “Tell Vera. Tell Vera- -.” Freda is on her feet, shrill. Her blood-slick hands glow with magic, twine in anguish. Energy roils between them like the mouth of a furnace.

All the sounds roar in Mikal’s ears. He is at the back wall, franticly smashing casks, begging any god who will listen. He rips down a shelf and spies a fissure where two walls should join; a floor-to-ceiling gap in a corner that might lead somewhere. Might be wide enough for a person if they strip off their gear, leave everything behind, and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze sideways one at a time.    

Mikal turns to tell them, looks back to see the door come apart. 

Skode boil in, dozens of them, dark furred and blood-mad. Corbin slashes at the tide with his dagger. Stepan’s shout is cut off. Holm is on the floor, staring into the next world. Freda stands above him, weeping, her molten hands raised.  

Mikal plunges in the crevice as she screams a word to make a sliver of sun explode.

Murderous heat punches the breath from his lungs. The inferno reaches for him with blistering tongues. He shoves himself deeper in the crevice like a terrified animal, thrusting his body through a vise of earth and stone, squirming away from those raging flames, that terrible room where everything has turned to cinder and ash.

He’s half-seared, half-crushed, but an arm’s length ahead the heavy black is cleft by a jagged slice of blue night. Mikal sees it but he can’t move. He opens his mouth to shout, but he can’t breathe. Darkness is edging in, bright spots flare in his vision like candle flies. The fire and earth, the rocks and new ghosts say, Here is where you die. With us.

But panic is a rabid dog and Mikal pours it all into one last push. He thrashes forward, bucking and straining inch by bloody inch until he bursts out of the crevice, out of the ground, out of the dream to find himself wrapped in sour sheets, staring at moonlit rafters in his bedroom.

Awake again.

Last week, I started the process to consolidate the fiction HSSJ blog with the hobby S7 site. That’s exciting and sobering, but I think it’s past time to put the stories and games under one roof.

I’m hoping the resulting hybrid STALKER7 – GAMES AND STORIES not only prunes the tangled undergrowth that’s accumulated over the years, but makes it easier for people to navigate and find clear information about both.

Current timeline for the merge is 6 weeks or so, but I want to take this moment to thank everyone who’s ever stopped by and taken the time to read a post or comment. I can’t properly express how much I appreciate peoples’ camaraderie, input, and patience as I’ve stumbled on the path to being a better Christian, a writer, a gamer, a friend, and neighbor.

Thank you.

Have an excellent day. More info soon.

PULLING AN OLD ONE OUT OF THE DRAWER.

Wargame projects complete for the moment, I’ve returned to my post-apocalyptic fantasy story, Shattered Worlds. I’ve spent the last two weeks editing the second portion and am reminded I’ve been chipping away at this one for a long, long time. So on top of feeling like a total slacker, there’s a dash of cringe as I review and correct the original draft from 5+ years ago. Honestly, it’s as daunting as writing a whole new book. In fact, I suspect that might be easier… which is part of the reason I’m also first-draft into a dungeon crawl adventure. (more on that later)

It’s all part of the process, though; that learning to do something poorly before you can learn to do it well thing. IIRC, it was Stephen King who said that every writer who continues gets to that place where they want to buy back every copy of their first book so no one ever reads it. This is one instance I can say ‘I’ve arrived’, and also confess I have NOT reread my first novel – Running Black – for that exact reason. (that and the fact I don’t have the $$$ to repay the few dozen gracious souls who plowed through it.)

RB was 2009/2010. Now here I am in 2023. I can’t judge accurately if my writing has ‘improved’ in the last 13+ years; I hope it’s better. It’s changed, that’s for sure. If I’m being totally honest, it wasn’t until the recent Soul Cache that I was confident enough for a Kirkus Review.

Thing is, the desire to write keeps scratching at the back of my mind. It’s important for my soul – my sanity – not just for those monthly royalties. Perhaps I’ll achieve a measure of commercial success someday. Perhaps not. Either way, I’m going to keep at it.

Regarding Shattered Worlds, I think even after all this time the story has good bones and that I’ve gotten to a place craft-wise to do them justice. I’m also confident the dungeon crawl piece will be decent, partially because I’ve learned from my many mistakes and cleared enough junk out of the way to make a half-decent show of it. God willing and if the creek don’t rise and the cattle don’t stampede, both will be available by the end of this year.

Now it’s back to work for me. Have a good day.

Quick post to say Gopnik Blues, the third short story set in the mysterious Exclusion Zone is now available at Amazon.

Thank you. Have an excellent day.

Savak Tull, smuggler, trader, and all-around shrewd businessman has a lead on a ‘Yellow Gypsy’; one of the top secret laboratories hidden though out the Exclusion Zone. If true, this is a once-in-a-lifetime shot at making some real money.

But life before the Zone taught Savak if something is too good to be true, it usually is. So the real question with that kind of money on the line is can he trust this lead? Or is his past going to catch up with him?

Gopnik Blues is a story for fans of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R and Metro 2033 post-apocalyptic worlds, or the tabletop war game, Zona Alfa.

A GAME

The manuscript for my latest tabletop war game, When Nightmares Come, is with the publisher now. *whew* Finally.

Seems Osprey Blue Books are shifting to a new format with a slightly longer page count. This is good for me because I pushed the envelope and wound up a thousand words over the line – and that was without any flavor bits or a Quick Reference Section. I’m trusting the editor to shoehorn everything in, along with the cool illustrations and a creepy, noir-ish reference map for linked missions/campaigns. “A game of occult investigation and supernatural warfare” is slated for release next March, so there’s plenty of time to get all the bits to fit. (probably involves a hammer)

Nightmares is designed for Solo/Cooperative gaming and it’s built on an established set of mechanics, so I’m confident it will run smooth. I think people who want a streamlined, modern monster hunt/narrative skirmish game will enjoy it. I’ll talk to my game group and see if we can’t get a few more games in the rotation.

A STORY

Sneaking through the Cordon for a third time, I’m coming to the end of another Exclusion Zone short story. This one’s about a sketchy Trader, (a smuggler) his schemes, and a hot tip on some artifacts. Proofreaders, a final round of editing, it should be at Amazon Kindle by the end of the month.

Someone in the Stalker7 Facebook group asked about a compilation. A fine idea but the first two stories are already in Fits and Orisons, so I’d need a Zone fourth story, exclusive to a new, focused collection, to give it value. I’m usually short on time, not ideas. But I guess I’ll add that to the ‘To Do’ list now…

ON THE RADAR

New mission packs for two of my games, dungeon crawl fiction, part 2 of Shattered Worlds, and another stand-alone war game. Busy, yes. But beats the opposite. The game will be Sci Fi, this time around. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll stick with Solo/Co-op or circle back to PvP. Either way, it’ll give folks an excuse to get their stray minis on the table and start forging cool stories and waging desperate battles against fearful odds. (for the ashes of their fathers and the temple of their gods…)

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading. Have an excellent day.

War Game stuff.

That’s where I’ve been the last 2+ years; playing with toy soldiers.

Four tabletop rule sets, six supplements, numerous one-shots. Add to that the current slate of WIP: another stand-alone game for Osprey Wargames, two new five-part adventures, and a full-length second edition/variation of an existing game.

I run both weekly and monthly war game/RPG sessions these days, and now have a hobby-related FB Group with roughly 1.8K people from a dozen or so countries.

I’ve even managed to hammer out a novella at some point: Soul Cache. Which is included in the print collection of short stories, Fits and Orisons. Currently on my office computer is third Exclusion Zone short story, the first draft of a dungeon crawl novella, as well as the mountain of notes, drafts, and research for the four-part post-apocalyptic fantasy series , Shattered Worlds. (link to part 1, Broken Moon) And let’s not talk about all the other, previous projects languishing in digital limbo.

So yeah, I’ve doing word stuff the last three years. Just not here. *

By this point however, it’s glaringly obvious my war game/RPG work draws several orders of magnitude more attention than my fiction ever did. (oh well…) Which brings me to the question of merging HSSJ with Stalker7. Seems to me what I need is a central hub, a single site that highlights both my games and my stories. I need to not only work smarter, but respect the support I’ve received over the years by offering consistent content and engagement to anyone interested in either facet.

That said, in the coming weeks I’ll investigate the procedure, time, and expense required to merge the sites without losing connections and content. For now though, both HSSJ and S7 will stay as is. Updates as the situation develops.

Thank you. Have an excellent day.

On Random. Coming from someone who spent nearly four decades in the trades, 25 years in custom glass work, and currently writes spec-fiction and indie war games.

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– Hasn’t technological innovation changed the face of labor and jobs for centuries in every field?

– Were there boycotts, social backlash, new laws introduced to curb the use of robotic assembly lines in automotive manufacturing in order to preserve the human workforce? (Answer: No – not in any meaningful way.)

– Why should artists and artisans be exempt? What about the countless thousands of other workers down throughout history in other fields whose jobs were changed or eliminated by machines?

– Do we shame/blame/restrict the one-man street busker using a Korg Volca Sample Playback Rhythm Machine for ‘denying revenue to fellow musicians’ ?

– At the risk of sounding rude – is much of the current push back really just Cultural Luddites whining now that the indifferent tide of progress has arrived at their door?

– Regarding cost: do artists and artisans have the right to demand, to enforce, the purchase of their products at higher prices when for many people, less expensive, machine-made goods suffice for their particular needs and are within their budget?

– Shouldn’t people be allowed to use, to purchase what they want? Doesn’t the final decision and ultimate responsibility rest in the hands of the consumer?

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Below are six examples of text-prompt, AI-generated art. I spent twenty bucks and a few hours of mucking around with the program.

When I did stained/leaded glass work, I occasionally had that potential client who would point out that they could purchase an entire leaded glass entryway at Home Depot for the same price as I was asking for custom panels. They were correct.

Of course it wasn’t an accurate comparison; mine was one-of-a-kind, custom design, colors, exact fit, etc. As opposed to an assembly line, limited selection, mass-produced product. But it was their home, their money, their budget, their decision.

These days, as a ‘Very Small Business’ i.e. a one-man outfit working out of a home office, I’m watching costs, trying to break even, and scrambling to pay bills like everyone else. I hire artists, editors, and graphic designers whenever and wherever I can. But also need time and money-saving tech.

When I already use GIMP, Canva, Shutterstock, and Word Editor to help my work, reduce costs, and make ends meet, why not use AI-art as well?

Is it unethical to do so? Am I somehow callous, disrespectful, sabotaging creatives, stealing income if I use the program for my work?

My sister-in-law died this past weekend.

About nine months ago she was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. Metastasized. Several parts of her body. No real shock after a long life of poor diet, hard partying, and Marlboro Lights. Decades in California, she came back to the East Coast at the end, and alternated living with her Dad/my father-in-law in NY, and my mother-in-law near us here on Cape. She had returned to a nursing home in NY with constant care and proximity to medical attention. My wife got the call Saturday morning.

Death is always sobering. It’s a Neglected Stranger in our culture too, I think. Gore-ified or sentimentalized on screen, it’s avoided in IRL conversation. Even the religious people I know don’t do death very well.

I’ve been told I’m moving into that stage of life when funerals become more common than weddings. Which may be true but is still a bit shit, TBH. This passing is even more off-key because of the long-standing distance in the relationship. It feels more like a hole of what should have been than a loss of what was.

It’s not that we didn’t get along; even after 40 years with her sister, I didn’t know her. Not really.

She wasn’t angry or wounded in any overt way – she came off as disinterested. As if she were too busy or didn’t want/care/need other people. Things were civil but sparse. It was nothing personal either; she had made a point to distance herself herself from everyone in her family. Separated from her husband, on the other side of the country, no real friends or community to speak of. Just work and beer and cigarettes and books.* Frankly, I’m not even sure she ‘battled’ her cancer; she seemed to just go along with it. There’s no funeral, no wake, no memorial, no will… just a phone call, a box of personal effects, and cremation arrangements.

I keep expecting grief at her passing, a celebration of her life. The stuff I’ve seen and done before. And that may be happening on some level – this is a daughter, a sister, a wife, a friend, a human being here.

To be fair too, I think there was more conversations in the last nine months than the previous nine years. So that’s light years beyond the earlier default setting. She spent time with her mom, her dad, my wife/her sister, an old friend these past few months.

But still I have the image in my head of turning off the light in a hotel room on my way out the door; I spent time there, it’s kinda familiar, but there’s no connection. And that feels weird. Wrong, somehow.

It makes me ask about my own life and death. About my connections. And if that’s even a thing anyone can really know.

Which is full circle back to the sobering effect of death. Not the Ice Bucket Challenge kind, but the long-term, deep and wide roots. The ‘live for your eulogy, not your resume’ kind.

Which is where I end, sitting here with no honest, definite answer. Just hoping and praying, and trying to keep moving forward.

Have a good day. Love someone.

*Yes, that may sound perfect to some people. But it’s not, not really.

Behind all life’s complexities stands the simplicity of God’s love.

I wish you and yours grace, courage, and peace as you close out 2022 and go into the new year.

Thank you.