Jess Hartley's Blog

Hi, gang. For those of you who are here following me as an author, I realized that I should update!

(tl;dr - Jess no write books anymore; Jess read many books now. You no like? Okay, bye, miss you!)

After losing my mother (and doing a lot of soul-searching) in 2022, I decided to change careers. The isolation of the pandemic had been the last chapter in my writing/editing career, and my mom's passing made me realize that I needed something else in my life, vocationally.

I started my second (third? fourth? who's counting, eh?) career shortly thereafter, becoming a pharmacy technician for a local retail chain pharmacy, and in March of 2023, I began working for an amazing clinic that serves multiple massively-underserved communities. It's a fantastic opportunity to make a difference - in totally different ways than my writing career did - and I honestly say "I love my job" on a daily basis.

It also means I'm back to reading copiously for my own education and edification, which is something that dwindled while I was writing/editing stuff professionally...

Which, in turn, means this blog/account is shifting away from a focus on being an author and onto a focus as an avid reader - so expect book reviews/discussions, but less/no talk about my own work. If you've added me as an author, please know that I won't be hurt if this change means you'll get more bang-for-your-buck following a current creator. But if you wanna hang around - that's great with me too! (And I'm always up for questions/discussions if any of my past experience is helpful to anyone.)

Anywho - back to reading! All my best to all of you! ~Jess

Oh, goodness! Hard to believe it's been SO long since I've made an author's blog post here, but... life gets busy, and there you go.
What's been new with me? SO much!
We just released my first independent anthology, Monsters I Have Known, Monsters I Have Known: A Collection of Short Stories through Mad Muse Studio. Response so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and I'm so grateful for all of the readers of my gaming-work who are checking out MIHK to get a peek at my non-gaming fiction.
In other news, my daughter is prepping to go off to college, I just bought a new car (cuz she's taking the one we've been sharing for the last two years with her), and there have been NO signs of reoccurance in my darling husband's throat cancer, so life is looking REALLY good in my world!
I hope yours is going great too! And I promise, it will not be so long *coughsevenyearscough* before I post again!

Voting has opened for the ENnie awards, which is arguably the most prestigious award system in the non-video gaming industry.

What are the ENnies?
Hosted by EN World, the awards are presented at Gen Con, in Indianapolis, in early August.
There is an amazing selection of fantastic nominations this year. One of the coolest things about working in this industry is that every year I have a little broader pool of people that I can call my friends and co-workers whose names I see represented in awards such as these.
I'm thrilled to say that projects I helped write have been nominated again this year - two products I worked on for White Wolf and one for 12 to Midnight. As well, this year for the first time I've been nominated for an independent project, which was a singular and unexpected honor.

How does the Voting Work?
The selection process for the ENnies can be a bit confusing, and I've had folks ask for information on how it works. Here's a quick run-down:

Creators submit their products to the ENnies for consideration. A panel of five judges work their way through all of the submissions, and pick their top five choices in each category (in the case of Product of the Year, ten choices). A month before Gen Con, these nominations are made public. A week later, voting opens to the public. Everyone can vote (one vote per person, regulated by IP address). After 9 days, the votes are tallied, and the winners (gold and silver in each category) are announced at the ENnies Award Ceremony at Gen Con.

When Can I Vote?
Now! Voting opens on July 16th and closes on July 25th. The winners (gold and silver in each category) are announced August 6th at the Award Ceremony at Gen Con Indy.

But how do I support you?
First of all, thanks! I really appreciate the support of my friends, family and those who have read and enjoyed my writing.

You can support my projects and me as a writer by voting - it's simple, it's free, and it will take less than a minute (assuming their servers hold up - so far they've been a bit iffy, so don't be surprised if you have to try a few times before getting into the site.)

To support my work in the ENnies this year, click . There's no complicated log-in required, you don't have to give any information.

Voting is simple; use the drop-down menu beside each item you'd like to vote for and give it a rank (1 for best, 2 for next, and so on.) You can vote for as many or few categories as you'd like and for as many or few items in that category as you'd prefer.

My work is represented directly in four categories this year, and tangentially in two others.

Best Blog - One Geek To Another, my geek etiquette and advice blog - this is my first independent product that's received an ENnie nomination, and I'm thrilled. Check out current and back episodes at www.jesshartley.com.

Best Setting - Goblin Markets is a Changeling: The Lost project that I worked on with Ethan Skemp and Alex Scokel for White Wolf. It's a .pdf only project, which makes it even more exciting to see in a non-electronic-only category.

Best Regalia - Regalia is an interesting category that includes all kinds of things that are game related but aren't actual games themselves. This year, a fiction anthology which I contributed to was nominated. Buried Tales of Pinebox, Texas contains my ghost story, Stigmatized Property, along with the works of a dozen other very talented writers.

Product of the Year - It's interesting to see a game get nominated for Product of the Year, even when it didn't get nominated in any specific category beyond that. Geist: The Sin-Eaters is a really cool all around game, and it was a pleasure to work on.

Best Website - Pen and Paper Games is not my website. I don't run it, nor am I officially a part of it. But, they (along with Ideology of Madness) were kind enough to syndicate my blog, One Geek to Another, which allowed it to be read by folks it might not have otherwise reached. Because of this, supporting Pen and Paper Games is tangentially supporting my work.

Fan's Choice Publisher - While the two publishers that I helped write ENnie-nominated products for are not on this list, another publisher that I have written for (and plan to do so again in the future is. Margaret Weiss Productions has treated me very well as a freelancer, and supporting a publisher helps support the writers who they hire to create products.

I hope that you'll take the time to explore all of the categories and products offered, and thank you again for your support. While I won't be at Gen Con this year, I encourage those of you who can attend to do so. It's an amazing adventure and any gamer should get the chance to do so at least once.

Thanks again
~jess

Wow, so many things going on, so little time!

I'll try to make this short, because the To-Do list is already looming over my shoulder, asking why I'm spending time on LJ when I should be doing... any number of the things below! But it will be a link-arific post, so you can fill yourself in more on what I'm talking about at your leisure.

Little Yoshida
[image error]First, just finished writing The Adventures of Little Yoshida , a series of episodic fiction stories for Mind Storm Labs, set in their Alpha Omega game setting. They are written from the perspective of one of the game's canon characters, Little Yoshida (Section 5.1.13 for those of you who have your Alpha Omega Corebook handy), and were an utter blast to write.
Here's what the site has to say about the stories:


Life outside the "civilized" arcologies is a deadly gamble, and those who want to travel the Wilds know to rely on savvy guides like Little Yoshida to get them where they need to go. But when a simple expedition turns out to be more than meets the eye, Yoshida is faced with a horrific decision.

Will she help the corporations she hates achieve goals she abhors, to save the companion she loves? Sacrifice or compromise? Solitude or self-loathing? Which path leads the the lesser hell?

Little Yoshida's story arc will be told over nine episodes with the first episode scheduled for release in April 2010 with a new episode every month. The purchase price includes all nine episodes. The storyline will include new NPC's, locations and full color illustrations.

I'm looking forward to hearing back from the MSL team, so that I can get permission to talk more about them!

I-Con
I just got back from I-Con in NY - This was my second year as a guest at I-Con, and it was even more fun than the first year. I-Con was back at their traditional site this year, on the Stony Brook University campus, and I met lots of great folks there: gamers, costumers, geeks, industry folks, writers and more (and a lot who overlapped between many of those categories!)

And, I got to not only meet and speak with the very talented Voltaire--I got to gift him with a piece of artwork my daughter drew for him.

Mom Points? Maxed Out!


Other Conventions
I've got at least two other conventions on my itinerary this year. I'll be back for a third year as a guest at Anime North in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May 28-30th. This is a great anime convention, and they're really making fantastic efforts at branching out into other forms of geekery - gaming (board/card and RPG), costuming, etc. It's well worth a visit, if you're up in that neck of the woods - I know a lot of folks who come up from Buffalo every year for it.

It looks like I'll also be out in Reno, NV in October for SnafuCon (another anime convention) - I've heard really good things about this one, and it's my first time out in the Reno area, so if you're around there, come on out!

One Geek To Another
Some of you may have noticed that my etiquette/advice blog, One Geek to Another was on a temporary (and unannounced) haiatus. We're back, although with a bi-weekly format, rather than weekly. Check out our latest article: "How to "Fail" Gracefully". And if you have missed earlier episodes, they're all archived on the site.

Website
ENnies
In other website-related news, I submitted both One Geek to Another and my Conventions for the Aspiring Game Professional to the ENnies for consideration. Nominations won't be announced until later this summer, but I feel a certain sense of accomplishment just for having submitted two independent projects this year. Along with Buried Tales of Pinebox, Texas, that makes at least three projects I worked on that will have been submitted. And that, in and of itself, feels like something to feel good about.

Family Games
Another project that I worked on has finally been released as well. Family Games: The 100 Best is a companion piece to the Origins and ENnie award winning, Hobby Games: The 100 Best, which released in 2008. But where HG:T100B focused on what I like to think of as "geek games" (ie: ones that non-gamers might never have heard of) Family Games features more mainstream entertainments, but still with a broad scope covering board games, card games, wargames, and even RPGs! The author list reads like a "Who's Who" of the game industry, and I just feel amazingly fortunate to have been included. My feature is the last in the book (which is arranged alphabetically) and showcases a family favorite: Zooloretto.

Oh, and if you're curious about the overlap between game-essayist and game-creator in Family Games, Matt Tarbit did a really interesting visual companion of exactly that. It's really fun to check out.

Radio/Podcast Shows
The great folks at Sci-Fi Saturday Night, a live radio show that's then archived as a podcast, have been kind enough to have me back on their show this Saturday (4/17/10). The show goes live at 8pm EST I'm looking forward to talking to them again, and you can listen in on Ustream when the time comes.

And we had a lot of fun on Pulp Gamer Out of Character earlier this month. I didn't get to go to the Caribbean Cruise, but once Don got back into the studio, Derek, Jason, Ron, Veronica and I made him pay for his free time by being extra-verbose. Look for a couple of very long episodes coming up in the near future.

The Bones
And, speaking of coming up in the near future! I've got an essay coming out in The Bones, a book about "Us and our Dice". Other contributors to The Bones are rumored to include Mike Selinker of Lone Shark Games, Kenneth Hite, Ray Fawkes(have you seen this guy's art? Seriously, go check it out... I'll wait!) James Lowder and Keith Baker, as well as geek icon Wil Wheaton. How awesome is that? I'll tell you - it's pretty flippin' awesome. Coincidentally, the cover art for The Bones was done by Chuck Wendig, the same awesome dude who gifted me with the current logo for The Shattered Glass Project.

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Nice segue, eh?

The Shattered Glass Project
So, we're 25 days into The Shattered Glass Project and I have to say - I'm blown away by the response.

Not only did we have to cut off the Personae Patronages (those that included being used as a character in the story) after the first 24 hours, but now, nearly a month into the project, Patronages are still continuing to come in at a rate I could have never anticipated. We've got more than 30 Patrons so far including folks from the United Kingdom and Spain, and the patronage period for Shattered Glass is still open for another 9 weeks. I'm just blown away! Those 30+ folks, and the others who may join them between now and June 20th, are the only folks in the world who have access to this story in its entirety, until at least the beginning of Spring 2011. I'm thrilled and humbled at those who believe that, and supporting the works of a writer directly, are worth investing in.

I am anxiously waiting for the last of the Personae Patronage Questionnaires, and while I'm waiting, I'm working on some other aspects of the Project: researching printing options, keeping in communication with patrons and beginning outlining the story. Hopefully next week I'll be able to let you in on what I'm currently working on (which resulted in a burned finger this morning!) But not quite yet... *wicked grin*

Again, my thanks go out, not only to those who have chosen to become Patrons of Shattered Glass, but also to those kind folks who have helped to spread the word about it. An experiment like this can only go as far as word of mouth will carry it, so every mention, every link, every question about the project is its own form of support - and I appreciate it greatly.

Conclusion
Well, for a short post, that ran on for quite a while. I guess there's just too much awesome going on for me to condense it down too far! Thanks for bearing with me as I keep y'all updated!