Development Log

The Cleaning Process Begins

Please Read The Nocturneverse Statement of Scope And Purpose.

Okay, fuggit it, I am done for today.

For those of y’all that don’t know, The Nocturneverse is undergoing some scrubbing. RuneKnight3 got started on his and I began the process of finding out, specifically what I needed to remove from the text that belonged to nWoD in terms of trademarked and copyrighted IP because, we want to take this bad boy to print. In fact, my friend, Mira Romaine put that bad boy on her Kindle to read it.

Honestly, I’d like to see people be able to grab this series in PDF and slam it onto their phones and read it, assuming you’re not either reading from here or you’re reading from my ScribbleHub where I’m taking RK’s updates and doing the copypasta implementation on ScribbleHub.

Here’s the thing, the first thing’s first, we do reserve all rights to our characters and their likenesses. Places may be real but it is largely fictional so some places such as The Detroit Masonic Library might house the actual library of an order of intelligence-gathering wizards. Does it actually? Probably not but you get the picture.

My entire reason for doing this was I wanted to see vampires with bleeding edge and cool again, put that link back to rock n’ roll and let it sit there, bring the gothic element back into it, pay homage to Lovecraft, Poe, Robert E. Howard and folklore throughout the world. This is why characters like Thrasamund and Neferet-hotep have ancient origins. They’re not the oldest in this world of vampires but they are the ones that ground our creatures of the night. They explain without removing the mystery or copping out altogether, plus, this is a fun way to explore not only history, but culture, art, literature, historical figures and the respective regional folklore and superstitions as well as religious customs and beliefs throughout the world. While these lack the rock n’ roll element, they certainly do pull some of the weight of just how dark and brutal this world can be. These stories set the tone for the stories happening in the modern day. Who else is doing that now? No one. None that I’m aware of.

I made a decision. If no one’s gonna write it or produce it, then I’m gonna play it at the table. That table was supposed to be RK’s. What ended up happening was I wrote a character treatment and boom…sawmbitch…we dun got erselves a shar’d universe, there, boys an’ girls. Reckon won’t be dun in time fer supper.

Over time, with these censorship laws coming into place, we knew one thing; no one is going to pay or show ID to read these stories. Assuming the audience we lost was due to those laws, which is a pretty safe bet, were all adults (our target audience) that meant that someone, somewhere made a decision: You’re not allowed to read that without our permission.

Solution: Go to print and possibly eBook formats. This way, you have an option. Get the print and it’s yours. No censorship, no websites to tell us what we can’t show you, nothing. All our stuff in your hands as it should be. You don’t owe anyone an explanation. You don’t require their permission. No one asked them at all. If you’re really in the naive assumption that this is about protecting children, that is certainly a choice.

We will find the one place to host and sell the book that has fair pricing and is completely resistant to censorship and bans when what we write is lawful and protected under the First Amendment.

It is not smut.

It is not pornographic.

It is not gore porn.

Regarding sexual themes, violence and language…that’s why it’s made for adults. Mature audiences. If you find it “spiritually caustic” then don’t read it. Simple solution.

That being said, we can’t publish it as it is. We would be violating a whole hell of a litany of copyright laws, all of which would put us in the crosshairs of the financial equivalent of The Sixth Extinction.

What we have to do is simple. The game will still be played, however, as I’ve done my best to do (not to bore you with mechanics) I’ve tried to walk a fine balance between describing the end results with minimal “how did he do that?” I get you started and I let you mind fill in the blanks. When it comes to rituals and even the stage concerts, you’re there for the vibe of it, more or less. In the movie, The Wrestler, the central focus is on Randy “The Ram” and what’s going on in his life, not so much his life in the ring. The moments in the ring play second fiddle to the events in Randy’s life. For Draven, that’s flipped on it’s head, Draven lives for that stage but we see very little of it because that stage is sacred and moments on it should be treated as such. With Ronnie, I’ve tried to keep him more like a sword & sorcery character, preferring physical to metaphysical means. You see what I mean. That strong foundation in folklore, which has always fascinated me coupled with Thousand Year-Old Vampire was the spark that lit the fire. Vampire: The Requiem, Night Shift: Veterans of The Supernatural Wars, Mage: The Awakening, so on and so forth were like just hosing the fire down with gasoline. I won’t lie, initially, I didn’t think I had a lot to remove but then there were problems from the jump. More and more things popped up of a “questionable” nature. I finally scrubbed everything from band names to sports teams out of the thing. At one point, Draven does meet someone influential to him. I had to tear that scene completely out.

But here’s the deal. Whatever I have to take away from you, I will give you back and I will make it something better. By The Light of The Moon pt II is now up to six and a half thousand words. In short, it’s been expanded. Like I said, if I have to take something from you I won’t do it without giving you something better…especially if you’re gonna buy a copy later. But yeah, because I’m paranoid and I have a tendency to overcorrect, I’m removing anything I think may be in question. Yanno what? Who knows, if bands want a mention and a CD name dropped in there in a later edition and they’re willing to do some songs as Nocturnal Shadows, credited to the respective bands, of course or hell, even Lightning Bolt, give both of these bands a sound and a voice and boom…book’s got a rock n’ roll soundtrack too. I’m willing to negotiate.

We got the spine on this sucker and it’s ironclad. Now we just gotta rebuild it. We have the technology. We can make it better. Hope this sucker’s worth six mil or better booooyyyyy…

Oddly enough, for most of what I had to take away and replace was just some terminology and it made it better in my opinion because now they have different meanings too, all of which I’m gonna trust my readers because some of you are gonna wanna join The Nocturneverse and guess what? Cool…let’s flesh this dark beast out together, yeah? I’m down, let’s get it.

In short, Thousand Year Old Vampire: The Chronicle of Thrasamund was perfectly fine. No references to game or mechanics. I had to change two words in TYOV: The Chronicle of Neferet-hotep, that was it. No biggie.

Did a minor bit of work on Nothing Lasts Forever

Until The Night Takes Us is going to lose the Halestorm cover closer …this is one I really can’t promise you a better return on right now but I plan on stripping it our entirely and substituting it with something else and promising a monster performance rather than a melancholy one. If he’s gonna leave my home state, then dammit fire dat thang up like a crawfish boil, laissez bon temps roulet, non?

So don’t worry, that’s coming out soon to make room for something original to further flesh that out. We’re building worlds and look, I ain’t gonna lie, thank the gods for Angeline Trevena’s book on How to Build Dark Worlds because between that, Night Shift, nWoD, Kult, Wretched Darkness (one of my additional writing credits) and others, you got thangs that go bump in the night and people like Ronnie Dalton who bumps back and mutters “Shut tha hell up!” Seriously, check out Angeline’s work. Absolute bangers.

Also, thanks to Shay Morgendorffer who has provided some of the most unnerving content I’ve read. Do you know how much I’mma have to listen to Pulse of The Night (Eternal Night Mix) to stay settled? Jeezus Murphy. Who the hell needs sleep, right?

Last and certainly not least, Hawtorn V. Rabot whom has flooded my feed with the wildest shit I’ve ever read in my life. Like, seriously, follow everyone here that I mentioned, especially if you’re a gamer-turned-writer-purely-by-accident, because every one of these people are gonna give you that learning curve back all kinda flat. They can all teach you stuff about fear and atmosphere and the beauty that lies somewhere in that terrible vast expanse of liminal space. Your mileage may vary but I’m telling ya, you’ll thank me later.

Alright. I have been wracking my brain all day and if you’re on ScribbleHub then you’ll see the updates when you view those stories. I’m out. I’m gonna try to get some sleep. No promises on that one. I’ve got Nocturnal Shadows going in the headphones to try to lull me to sleep.

Weird hearing the character that only exists in your mind literally singing to you, like, that is some wild shit, no lie.

“Shadows call, shadows call

pulling me down where the lost ones fall

Shadows call, shadows call

hear it rise, in the dark between your eyes

Shadows call…

Answer me.”

-Nocturnal Shadows

Song: Shadows Call

Album: Blood of The Void (1989)