Book Review: Sand - Hugh Howey

Hugh Howey’s Sand is a slow burn through a post-apocalyptic wasteland.  It shows us that the author has many different visions of the future to share with us. It’s a story about family, loss and abandonment and how the different ways people handle adversity. Read it if you like Dune, Mad Max or Snow Crash.



I read the Kindle In Motion version of Wool three years ago, and haven't gone back to Hugh Howey until now. That mistake is on me. I found Sand at the Seattle Public Library and grabbed it to tide me over until some of my book holds came in.

What a great ride this was. What a unique vision of the future. Some authors engage in world building, giving greater importance to the world they are building than the characters that inhabit them. But Hugh Howey treats the world right and the authors with respect.  We experience the world through the eyes of the characters and the world slowly constructs itself around them as the bits of information assemble themselves.

★★★★☆ I highly recommend this book. You won't be disappointed.

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Sometimes You Just Skip a Year

As much as many of us would like to pretend 2017 just didn't happen, I always find it useful to reflect on the last bit of time and see what worked, what didn't and what I'd like to change.

• Games Played
• Worked: Played 40K, Age of Sigmar, Dungeons and Dragons and Iron Kingdoms RPG. I've got 3 healthy Dungeons and Dragons games I'm running and a couple regular game nights per week.
• Stumbled: I've got a lot of Warmachine armies that haven't seen the battlefield in a long time. Infinity also remains of interest to me.
• 2018: Keep it up with the games I've got going. Gaming groups require careful attention and grooming and I don't want to lose what I've got. I'd also like to occasionally play some of the games I've been neglecting the last few years. Company of Iron seems like a great way to get back into Warmachine/Hordes and I'd love to really figure out how to play Infinity
• Models Painted
• Worked: I painted about 40 models this year. My new place of employment has enough people at it that there's a group that runs a painting contest every month.  This has been a great motivator and I've even picked up a couple of free models to boot.
• Stumbled: Things got painted but what I painted was all over the place. I made a point to pick models from a different game system or faction each month.  It means every month's project was fresh for me, but it also means that I didn't get much closer to having a fully painted army.
• 2018: Focus the hobby aspect.  Get a faction's worth of models painted up. Play a game with all painted models that I painted myself.  Get some of my big models painted. I like the bingo board over at Rob Hawkins as a good tracker.
• Video Games
• Worked: Besides a few mobile games I did basically nothing related to video games in 2018.
• Stumbled: See above
• 2018: Get Constellar back on the App Store, publish another app or two. I need to make more time to play games, too, if for no other reason than to stay on top of current trends.
• Content Creation
• Worked: I'm running a few Dungeons & Dragons games, so I'm generating content, just not releasing it to the public at large. I started posting some to instagram and facebook, but let my twitter account(s) gather dust.
• Stumbled: Zero posts on the blog. With this one I at least beat last week's tally. No rules or battle reports reported, either.
• 2018: Get back on the social media train. At least post pictures of the models I finished for the painting contest at work.

Constellar 2.0 Released

ConStellar 2.0 is out!  You can grab it on the App Store by following this link.

This release has five new levels, but the most exciting part has been integrating the new art provided by Mark Barrett of Rescue Pups fame. Mark was kind enough to put together a set of replacement assets for my little game and I am ever so grateful.  The game looks 500% better and I'm super grateful to Mark for helping me out.

New Constellar Logo!

I'd be super grateful if you checked out ConStellar.  Also! If you want to check learn more about Rescue Pups you should check out Mark's Dev Log over at TIGForums.