November Update
Conventions, press-ups, deep ones, brewing and baking!
Dragonmeet
I’ll be at Dragonmeet this Saturday, at the Novotel in Hammersmith, London. Chaosium are at Stand 28 in the Upper Trade Hall - look out for me and please say hi!
You’ll find more Chaosium goodness down in the Lower Trade Hall at stand 31, where Nick will be showing off the community content. For the first time at Dragonmeet, print copies of community content will be on sale—woo! That includes publications from the Miskatonic Repository (such as my own Full Fathom Five, My Little Sister Wants You to Suffer, and Dockside Dogs), along the Jonstown Compendium (Runequest community content).
Press-Ups vs Cancer
Throughout this month I’ve been doing 100 press-ups a day for charity. I’m pleased to be able to support Cancer Research in whatever way I can.
A friend of mine, Jef Lay, was diagnosed with with cancer earlier this year. I met Jef at the first meeting of the Milton Keynes RPG club, over 20 years ago. Sadly, we had his funeral this earlier this month. Gone in under a year. If you wish to donate in memory of Jef, there is a tribute page here.
Thoughts too for Dave, host of Frankenstein’s RPG podcast (best wishes with the treatment and hope to see you at cons again soon!)
Thank you to those who have already donated so generously. If you’d like to donate, please go to my page.
Grogmeet
I had a great time earlier this month in Manchester attending one of the finest RPG events there is — Grogmeet! Manchester’s answer to Gen Con! I played three games and ran one. All the games were great fun. The Call of Cthulhu scenario I ran will appear in The Blasphemous Tome issue 12 next summer (that’s the zine we do for Patreon’s of the Good Friends of Jackson Elias podcast). You can hear more about Grogmeet on Eldritch Extras here.
Innsmouth
We’re wrapping up our deep dive into Lovecraft’s story The Shadow Over Innsmouth over on The Good Friends of Jackson Elias podcast. It’s such a great story, certainly one of my favourites. The story brings up so much, and it’s all been swimming around my mindtank for the past couple of months, so it’s nice to draw a line under it and finally check out of the Gilman Hotel.
Keeping it Eldritch
Talking of podcasts,
is going well, with 10 short stories already posted, five by and five by me.This is a fun project for me, and different to what I usually do. Clearly there are crossovers — it combines writing and podcasting, and some of the story themes could well feature in Call of Cthulhu scenarios. But writing fiction is different to writing games.
There are two more stories to come, then Season One is complete!
If you’re not already a listener, you can findMason and Fricker's Eldritch Stories wherever you get your podcasts (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc), and also Patreon and YouTube, in fact, here’s our latest:
If you want to pledge support for the show (and tell us you want a second season), you can do so through the website, or through our Patreon.
Brewing and Baking
This month I’ve been working on a couple of projects with my son. The first one is cider making. Together we’ve pressed apples, brewed and bottled 27 litres of cider. The traditional technique seems the simplest when it comes to cider making. Simply pick the apples, give them a quick rinse. Making them into juice is the bit that takes the most effort. The apples have to go through a scratter to break them up, then we press them. It took us the best part of a day to fill a 30 litre (almost 8 US gallons) bucket. After that it’s all plain sailing. Fit an airlock on the lid and wait. After a few days it starts bubbling — “Glub-glub” it says! (sounds like deep one talk to me!)
After a couple of weeks it quietens down. Then it’s a case of syphoning off the amber nectar and putting it into swing-top bottles. The cider is still at this stage, so we put one teaspoon of sugar in every bottle. The secondary fermentation then adds sparkle.
I usually forget to test for alcohol content, but it came out at 8% already—and that’s before the secondary fermentation. Sounds good to me! It is ‘drinkable’ already, but experience tells me it’s best stored a few months
Also, bread! Started a fresh sourdough starter this month using rye flour. We’re using the recipes from Bread Every Day (Baking with Jack) book, and it seems to work really well.
Jack’s process is a lot easier than others I’ve tried. The whole process takes 3 days, but the time spent ‘kneading’ is really minimal. First day is a few minutes feeding the starter. Day two is mixing up the dough and giving it a few folds every couple of hours (each time that’s just a few minutes). Then on the third day you bake two loaves.
That’s all for now!