Support us on or buy me a Coffee:  https://ko-fi.com/cedorsett

Become a patron of the arts patreon.com/cedorsett

Find my world building at: https://www.worldanvil.com/author/cedorsett 

Read my stories on: https://reamstories.com/cedorsett

00:00 Introduction and New Direction

01:03 Meet the Author: Charlie's Sci-Fi Fantasy World

02:12 Project Updates: Published Works and Support

03:13 Deep Dive: Our Solemn Hour and Tabletop RPGs

04:51 Game Mechanics: Designing the Fates Hunter Game

16:31 World-Building and Future Plans

18:45 Bob and Superheroes

19:21 World Building Updates

19:46 New Short Stories

21:17 Publishing Plans and Platforms

23:04 World Anvil and Timelines

24:37 Mapping the Galaxy

27:52 Complex World Building

31:44 Podcasting and Future Projects

34:17 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Support us on or buy me a Coffee:  https://ko-fi.com/cedorsett

Become a patron of the arts patreon.com/cedorsett

Find my world building at: https://www.worldanvil.com/author/cedorsett 

Create your own world on World Anvil: (aff link) https://worldanvil.pxf.io/DVM9ay

Read my stories on: https://reamstories.com/cedorsett

Publish your stories on Ream (aff link) https://reamstories.com/create/ps

Plottr Pro (aff link) http://plottr.com/?ref=277

Check out my other podcasts at www.projectshadow.com

My Music Channel  @Project: Shadow   

My Mysticism Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkZaiZE7w5qERxiOehM_CdQ

Hello again. My name is Charlie, a non-binary sci-fi fantasy writer. It’s been a while since I’ve posted a video, and for those who have been following my YouTube channel, the format of this video might feel both new and old. It’s reminiscent of my old audio vlogs.

Where Have I Been and What Have I Been Up To?

If you’ve seen the title of this post, then you’ve got an inkling of what’s coming. Long story short, I surprisingly fell into a job. Not something I intended, but it happened, and it took up much of my time. The complexity of the job left me with little room for my creative endeavors. However, I’ve recently found more free time and I’m eager to reconnect with all of you and return to doing what I love.

In the background, my creativity never ceased. I continued world building, writing stories, and even though I couldn’t invest as much time as I desired, I never stopped. One significant project I started is my Ream account. Ream is a platform where you can support your favorite writers and get stories in return. Some of my older books are available there for free—well, technically free—you just need to follow me.

Mask of the Gods and My Tabletop Role-Playing Game Dream

For longtime followers, you might remember my Mask of the Gods series. I’ve been obsessively working on it and I'm excited to share more soon. Additionally, a dream of mine, dating back to 2000 at a comic con in Oakland, California, is coming to fruition—I’ve been creating a tabletop role-playing game set in one of my settings.

I was inspired after a chat with Ryan Dacey from Wizards of the Coast about the OGL license for D&D 3rd Edition. Though I was initially overwhelmed by the task of simultaneous world building and game mechanic creation, this dream never died. One of my earliest videos even talks about my wildest publishing dreams, which included developing games.

Introducing Fates Hunter: My New Solo RPG

Quietly (or not so quietly, if you’ve been watching the live streams), I’ve been working on a tabletop RPG called Fates Hunter. Developed using the Cypher system, this game allows players to experience the same world building joys that I do. It’s a solo RPG but can also be played with a group, providing flexibility depending on your preference.

Set in the same universe as the Mask of the Gods series, Fates Hunter lets players engage with fate and the goddesses of the world in fascinating ways. The game is almost ready for beta testers, and I can't wait to share it with you all. For more details, you can check out Monty Cook Games where the Cypher system is detailed.

Balancing Creativity and Livelihood

In addition to Fates Hunter, my journey has led me to battle the challenges of making a living as a creative. This includes my music project under Project Shadow, available on streaming platforms. The reality of streaming revenue requires a massive audience for substantial income, prompting me to explore multiple creative avenues.

I’m still writing stories, making music, producing videos, and doing podcasts. My goal is to bring joy amidst these dark times by sharing my creative works with you all. To support these endeavors, you can follow and interact with my projects on platforms such as Ream, Ko-fi, and my personal site, ProjectShadow.com.

Building a Community Together

I’m back and enthused about sharing upcoming releases—including both my book and my new game—with you. I aim to foster a relationship with my audience, sharing insights on writing, the creative process, and even the learning curves associated with these platforms.

If there’s any specific content you’d like to see from me, please let me know in the comments. Your input will help shape the kind of content I produce. This journey is not just about me, but about us.

So yes, I’m back and there’s much to look forward to. Magic is on the horizon, and we’re about to embark on our solemn hour together. If you’re eager to delve deeper, check out my World Anvil to explore the world building archives already available.

If it's not one thing, it's another. So, I finally decided to start podcasting again. I recorded the first episode of "The Nonbinary Writer," and YouTube has now made it easier for us to upload our podcasts on their platform. We can simply put in the RSS, and off it goes into the wild blue yonder.

There it goes. It automatically makes the video for me, which is great because I don't have the time or patience to do that. So, instead of writing this week, since I started recording podcast episodes again, I find myself creating thumbnails for popular episodes. It's something I had never intended to do but thought might actually help me in the algorithm, because, to my surprise, people are actually listening to the podcast on YouTube.

So, if you're new to listening to me and you're on YouTube, hi! How are you? And if you're listening to me through any other platforms, hi, hello. My name is Charlie, and I am a nonbinary writer. I really wanted to be writing this week, but one of the most important things that I think we have to understand as writers is that if we're not focusing on getting the word out, on building a platform, and finding a way for people to know that we exist, then the writing doesn't matter all that much.

While I love to believe that good writing wins out, that all you have to do is write something great and the entire world will go, "Wow, this is amazing!" – yeah, that's not really how any of this works. What we actually have to do is buckle down and get the word out, build a platform where we can tell people that we exist, build an audience, and constantly do things to make people realize that we exist.

Because that's the real work of being a writer. It's a double-edged sword, especially for LGBTQ writers like myself. The more I let people know that I exist, the more likely it is that people who don't like the fact that I exist are going to find me and tell me how much they don't like the fact that I exist.

Yeah, that's not happy-making. That's not really what I want to be doing, and it's not really a good place to be in. So, I find myself in this endless struggle between doing what I know I need to do for marketing and putting stories out and basic self-preservation. I don't like it when I get attacked simply for existing.

On the other hand, I really do like it when people read my work and get really excited about it. So, finding that middle ground, that place where I can tell people that my stuff exists, and they can go read it on Ream! Writing new material has to be balanced with this endless struggle to go out and tell people that, hey, by the way, I'm over here, I do things.

And it's been really interesting to see what stories catch on, especially with the podcast reaching this new audience. As far as this podcast goes, the episode that is doing the best on YouTube right now is the obligatory nonbinary rant. It was the first thing I actually recorded for the podcast, though it's not technically the first episode.

It's honest and from the heart, and it goes to show the one thing that I've always known about marketing: being angry and yelling and shouting is a good way to get attention, but it's not really the kind of attention that I want to get. It's not really the kind of work that I want to be doing. So, I don't do it that much.

I try really hard not to be that person. I think there's enough negativity out in the world.

I don't want to be a cause of more negativity. I don't want to just feed that pain that we feel. I want to make a change. I want it to be better. And that's the struggle that I find myself trapped behind. When weeks like this happen and here I am, just trying to play catch up. Getting all of my ducks in a row so that hopefully the podcast will do well on this new platform and I can build it up to monetization because, while it's gross and disgusting and I hate thinking about it, much less talking about it, if I don't make money off of what I'm doing, then I can't really afford to do it.

So, I have to think about those things. I have to ask myself, what's the best thing I can do for the business right now? What's the best thing that I can do to make this grow? And whether I was right or wrong, making thumbnails for the episodes felt like the right thing to do. And now, I'm sitting here wishing I was writing, wishing I had written a lot more this week.

And not having done any of that.

I want to tell these stories. I want to be doing World Ember. But I haven't really done anything for World Ember this year. I haven't really written much this month at all.

And that makes me sad. And I hate to just say it flat out like that; I should be more poetic about it, but I've been doing the business things. I've been setting up the Ream account, I've been working on a commissioned project that I'm doing that looks like I will be getting paid for, which, considering it started off as a volunteer project, kind of blows my mind.

And I've got the podcast to do again.

All the while, in the back of my mind, I see spaceships and wizards and magic and mysteries and stories that I want to be telling.

Many times in the past, I've buckled down and tried to work on getting a schedule. Which doesn't always work out. I have a lot of physical pains and, well, chronic pain to be more general and specific.

So, I don't always get to do the things that I want to do when I want to do them. But I think I really need to start setting aside morning time for writing. Get my pages in. I need to get my pages in. So hopefully next week I'll get to start with that, and I'll probably try to get back into the habit of going to the Dawdling Writer's write-ins on YouTube, and maybe even doing some of my own, because I miss hanging out with y'all while writing.

Yeah, getting the work done is important. Even when it's the boring, business-y work part. But if I'm not writing, I'm not writing. And so that's where I need to put my focus.

Hello and welcome to the Nonbinary Writer. This is a reintroduction of sorts because I've been in a dark place for a while, and I'm not really going to go into that a lot here. If you want to know more, you can check out my other podcast, Project: Shadow, where I did an episode titled, Reawakening to Joy. But now. I want to focus on this podcast and what I'm going to use it for. Because my initial ideas for the Nonbinary Writer was to have a place where I could discuss being queer as a writer, being non-binary as a writer, and how the kind of fusion fiction that I write is different from a lot of the other fiction that I see out there.

And I'm not alone in doing that. And I don't want anybody to think that I'm saying that I'm the only non-binary writer or the only writer who writes that kind of fiction. That's not what I'm saying at all. It's just that. I am often referred to as the non-binary writer or that non-binary writer, and I just thought I would claim it. Why not. I've been called worse things over the years, and it's a true descriptor of who and what I am and how my fiction works. That's what I want this episode to be about, and this podcast.

I'm embarking on a very different journey for me. I'm going to start working. Towards doing subscription writing. So what is subscription writing? I set up a page over on Ream stories, and there I am posting my old back catalog of books, as well as new books that I'm working on.

The first chapter is free. The next chapter for a lot of the back catalog is going to cost just a follow, which is also free. But the new stuff is going to be behind a paywall. For a little while, and that's where this gets really exciting.

You see what I'm going to be doing over there is posting drafts. Early, early drafts of my content, of the books that I'm working on, the stories that I'm writing that those who are interested in paying $5 a month will be able to comment on, then help shape and make better. We're just get early access to if they're really into the story or into the work that I'm doing. When those stories are done, they're going to be re-released to the public, and the cycle will continue.

And I'm really excited about this. The idea of being able to have this kind of a community is something that I've wanted for a really long time. But it's scary. It's really scary on a lot of different levels. One, sharing my drafts is kind of nightmare fuel. I do quite a bit of editing, and to let people see how things look as they pop out of my head is a bit terrifying. And furthermore to ask people to pay for that is also scary. And I don't know if this is a method that will work.

And that's what this podcast is turning into. Yeah, I'm going to be talking about my books and my fiction and the stories that I'm working on. But I'm also going to be talking about process and how things work. I'm going to be taking you through my ups and downs and all the lessons that I'm learning along the way. Because I don't think this is going to be a particular easy path. It's one that I'm excited for, but it has its pitfalls.

If a platform like Ream had been available 10 years ago, I can see an easy way to build this up. Social media, wasn't quite the nightmare. Hellscape that it is today, and building an audience wasn't as terribly hard. But now with all of the fracturing of society and everybody having to take sides on every issue. Whether or not, they actually have an opinion on that issue or not. It's a bit harder to do that. With the slow death of Twitter, now X, and the rise of competitors like Threads and Blue Sky, which he can find me on both of those I'm cedorsett on both, I'm hoping to find a new community. One that is interested in creativity, in writing, in sharing what we do together, in making something magical, together.

That's what I've always wanted. When I have done my podcasts in the past, like Myth Weaving, I wanted to teach what I had learned about writing, and I'm going to be doing some of that here, and who knows maybe even some of that over there. But more than anything, I want a place where we can just commiserate. About what we're doing. So this podcast is being hosted on sub stack. And you can find it@projectshadow.com.

There you'll be able to join into the comments and you'll be able to talk. And join in. With the discussion. And help us kind of shape. Where this future goes. Because I really do believe that we can. Get through the good place. If we all strive together to get there.

But this isn't a podcast just for other writers. I hope that if you are a writer, you'll get something out of it. And you'll learn from my triumphs and my mistakes. But this is a podcast for anyone who is interested in the journey of creativity, the ups, the downs, the pain, and the joy that make it all so worthwhile.

This is a podcast for everyone who has ever wanted to embrace their dreams, because writing has always been my dream.

The problem is I don't like writing novels. I know that sounds like a weird thing to say, but novels are so distant. I locked myself away and write, and write, and write, and then I put it out in the world . Yeah, I can see how many people buy it, but I don't really have that connection with those readers. Over the years, some of them have contacted me.

Some of them have come to conventions and we've talked about the work, but I've never really had that relationship with my audience that I would like to have. I'm writing the stories because I love these worlds. I love these genres. I love these characters. And I want to meet the people. Who also love these things like I do.

And so that's what I'm going to be doing here. I hope that you will join me on this path. I hope that you will be okay with all of the craziness of the writing project, and the process that leads to a completed work. It's not going to be pretty, but it's going to be an adventure, and after all, aren't we all looking for a little bit more adventure in our lives.

So, what am I going to be doing with this podcast? I'm going to say that it's a quasi daily. Podcast Monday through Friday. And I'm just going to share what I've been working on, what I've learned, what I'm doing. How different insights have changed the way that I'm looking at things.

That may seem like a lot, but, hopefully, it will be worth the adventure that we're going to go on together.

So what I mean, when I say semi-daily. I'm not committing to doing five episodes a week. I think that there's a good chance that will happen. I think there's a good chance that I might record multiple episodes in a day. Because I'll learn a little bit here, record something about it. I'll learn a little bit there and record something about it. And then schedule those on different days because sometimes putting too much information in one podcast episode is just overwhelming.

Sometimes there will be short. Sometimes there'll be longer. But they'll always be honest.

And that's my promise to you.

The word is the year this year is authenticity. And I find that so funny because the more I look around at the world, the more fake people I see.

Sure. There they're playing the role of authentic, but a lot of them really aren't. They know the right words to say they know the right way to get attention and, put things out.

They're living brands. And that's something I just can't be.

I'm neurodivergent and very queer, and so I don't quite see the world in the same way that they do. And so all of the things that seem to come naturally for them are things that I have to work for. Consistency and brand is not one of them. I have a lot of ideas, a lot of stories that I want to write. So I write space opera, epic fantasy, urban fantasy. I guess if it's a real genre of romantic fantasy or whatever, they're calling it is also something that I write.

But I want you. I to come along on this path with me. And I want to learn more about your interests and what you want me to be talking about on here. Because I don't want this just to be a self-serving journal of my experiences, and what I've been up to. There's going to be a lot of that and I make no apologies for it cause that's the reason and purpose for me making this podcast in the first place, somewhere where I can share all of the things that I'm learning, all of the things that I'm going through, and how they can change our lives and our careers. But I also want it to be useful for you. So if you have any questions, Please ask them.

Because I'm only going to talk about the things that I feel need to be talked about, and I published my first book in 2005. I've been doing online media for a really long time. So there are a lot of things that I might think are just common knowledge that aren't. If you have any questions. Just head over to project shadow.com. Ask them, and, I will answer them on the podcast.

Together, we can make this journey one of discovery and joy, because the one thing that we're lacking in this world, Is joy.

We are constantly bombarded by all of the terrible news that's going on around the world in a way that our ancestors couldn't have imagined. It's easy to feel that everything's hopeless when there's a financial benefit to keeping people terrified, afraid, and isolated from each other, so they just keep watching. In fact, the news, the 24 hour news network is the original doom scroll after all.

So this is going to be hopefully more of a respite from that. Not that I won't talk about the struggles or the hard times, but I don't want to get bogged down in the endless back and forth and back and forth that haunts our world today.

And who knows, there's a chance that I'll bring in some friends of mine and we'll have some group discussions about various topics along the way. Because I think that would be fun. And if you know anybody who'd like. It's a talk. Yeah, send them my way. Maybe we'll have them on. Because it can't always be my voice all of the time.

Yeah. That's my brief little introduction, or re-introduction to both me and my podcast. Hello, my name is Charlie. I write fiction under the name CE Dorsett you can find me over on Ream and here at projectshadow.com. You know, so find me on Blue Sky, Threads, and Instagram, @CEDorsett.

And I am here to write and tell my stories, and I hope that you're here to tell yours as well.

On the premiere episode, I am doing the Obligatory Nonbinary Rant, venting my frustration about the treatment of the community and sharing more information about me. I'll be honest, I wanted get a lot of this off my chest for a while, and needed a place to discuss this openly.

I don't name names, and I won't so don't ask me. If I use a name, know that it is a pseudonym that covers one or more people. It has been a rough year, and the last couple months it has gotten worse. Between the stresses of my personal life, professional life, and everything going on in the country, I thought I would vent these issues because I feel like a lot of this is relatable to others.

Hopefully, this is entertaining and cathartic, and in the end helpful in some way. I don't want the podcast to just be about anger. I want to talk about queerness in writing, in the books I read, the shows and movies I watch and how others are working to both represent our community and their experiences with in it.

Welcome to the Nonbinary Writer.

Learn more or comment on the episode at http://www.projectshadow.com