Lost Jorune

Sharing the picture of my little guy from the failed FOR SHOLARIS ONLY made me poke around on my hard disk. I have a PDF for a summary of things I was trying to do for Jorune when I was still in Colorado. I left Colorado in 2003.

The PDF was for one of the long line of people who said they would help, and then stopped communicating altogether. I'm the only thing all those people have in common with such a commitment, so I take that personally.

Salvaged from the PDF.

But I made the PDF, and for some reason, I put in a password. I have no idea why. But I had a lot of visual notes for things I wanted to do.

For example, the name RETURN TO JORUNE was supposed to be the title for a Jorune conversion to FUDGE/FATE system, for which I designed the character sheet now being used for ORFA: Jorune. I liked FATE a lot, but it never came together.

It was a nice collage of Teves Jorune art. Colorized. Long term Jorunis can probably name where every picture came from. But it came together nicely. For a failed project.

I still like the collage.

 And then I was looking at QUERRID QUARTERLY and did a couple of covers for that. This is of 2002-2003 vitage.Parts of my development for that become THE ANNALS OF THE TAN SOOR HISTORICAL SOCIETY. Which was not well received. From the covers, you will notice some thigns that are finally appearing.

For example, THE MES DIG is the opening scene of an adventure slated to appear in SHOLARI Volume 2, Number 2 as THE RED GATE. A Thriddle power play in a larger civil war, a hot air balloon, and a trip to the moon on gossamer wings... or something like that.

It is coming out is the point.

YOLANTA, THE ANGEL OF DRAIL is the SAK: THE ANGEL OF DRAIL, whole cloth. Her name is now Jolanta, which is still pronounced the same way, a personal not to a Polish toxicoligist with whom I used to work.

And THE CHILDREN OF BOMOVERS is still that, it just won't be in a copy of QQ. It will be a full blown campaign SAK with chapters in Thantier, Ponteer, and Kirlan. And a cast of dozens.

And then there was a series of covers. I was finding a lot of interesting graphic idea from the web, and I'm an absolut junkie for nice graphic ideas. Love 'em.

I may do something with THE LAST SAGE OF ZAHIL. It was a nice little idea. Very different idea on what do you do when the king goes mad.

THE TALMARON TRADE was a modeul from Alex Blair back in the 1990s, and it may still appear. The graphic was adapted from a 1950s children's book jacket design I found on some page somewhere. I still like it. I like the old embossed, hot pressed linen hardback effect, too.

There have been a lot of story ideas, but very few completed manuscripts. Alex actually finished what he wrote, so I would like to see it find a home. I'm thinking of an anthology with expanded nuggets from many writers. Not just me. I like what I write but just Joe-flavor gets boring.

We need some sprinkles and nuts and maybe a little whipped cream. And a cherry on top.

THE GIRE PRINCESS OF PONTEER has been rolled into ALLIDOTH CONFIDENTIAL and GOMO GUIDE: PONTEER. She is the wife (were they ever married?) of Mord Joran, who was seen in Slam Desti, Boy Yord (SHOLARI MAGAZINE v2n1) and Scars of Far Temauntro (which finally appeared in SHOLARI MAGAZINE v2n1).

Allidoth and Ponteer figure heavily in my personal history of cheap pulp publishing on Jorune, the trashy stories that go into them, and the trashy people believe what they read. She was part of that, and you'll finally get to read it.

Before there was a GOMO GUIDE: THONEPORT there was supposed to be a GOMO GUIDE TO THANTIS. But the whole capital city was just too damn big, so I focused on the one section where humans allowed non-humans to walk the streets with no more violence than your usual weekend bar fight. My original big map was cut down to what wound up on the back cover of the first Gomo Guide.

And this map is all that remains.

The original cover for Thoneport was different. Much more modern and "grunge". I don't have anything against "grunge" but I hated this treatment of the idea.

The stressed or distressed or grunge treatment of the lettering was becoming all the next trend