Episodes

  • Let's Talk about Our Solemn Hour

    Let's Talk about Our Solemn Hour
    Jul 22 2024

    In this episode, Charlie, a non-binary sci-fi fantasy writer, introduces a new focus on sharing detailed stories and ongoing projects. Joined by their husband Brian, they discuss their work on a tabletop RPG called 'Fate's Hunter,' which ties into a sci-fi fantasy book series, Mask of the Gods. The game offers both group play and solo experiences using the Cypher system. Charlie also talks about their involvement in Worldbuilding Summer Camp, upcoming short stories to be published on Substack, and the challenges and excitement of their creative process.

    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



    This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.projectshadow.com/subscribe
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    35 mins
  • Writing books, Building a world, and Making a game, Oh My!

    Writing books, Building a world, and Making a game, Oh My!
    Jun 18 2024

    Charlie Returns: New Projects and Adventures in Writing and Gaming

    Charlie, a non-binary sci-fi fantasy writer, updates viewers on their recent hiatus from creating videos. They discuss starting a new job, which consumed much of their time, but they now have free time again to reconnect with their audience. Charlie has continued worldbuilding and writing during their absence and has launched a Ream account where followers can access their older books for free. They are also excited about a new tabletop role-playing game called 'Fates Hunter' based on their 'Mask of the Gods' series. This game will be playable solo or in groups and is nearing its beta testing phase. Charlie emphasizes the importance of community support for creative projects and previews upcoming content for their channel.

    00:00 Introduction and Channel Update

    00:55 Where Have I Been?

    01:48 New Projects and Ream Account

    03:03 Tabletop Role-Playing Game Development

    07:41 Creative Struggles and Future Plans

    10:20 Community Engagement and Support

    12:25 Conclusion and Farewell



    This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.projectshadow.com/subscribe
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    14 mins
  • When the Business and the Creative Clash

    When the Business and the Creative Clash
    Dec 14 2023
    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 ...
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    8 mins
  • A New Introduction of sorts

    A New Introduction of sorts
    Dec 13 2023
    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 ...
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    12 mins
  • But what if no one cares...

    But what if no one cares...
    May 24 2023
    Do we share only to receive?Are our words just a gift?In the dead of night, we deceiveourselves into believing they are proof we lived.I know so many writers who dream of making a living off their words. I know even more who just want to gather up a crowd to listen to what they have come up with now. Disappointment fills their eyes and voices as they discuss the perceived failure of their work… but have they really failed?Having been on both sides of the aisle, I know what it feels like to sell thousands of copies of a book no one remembers and to sell only a handful of a book I will never forget. In their own way, both hurt, but given the realities of capitalism, one tends to hurt more than the other.I want to believe the propaganda that good stories will win out in the end, but the problem is, it isn’t the good stories or even the great stories that win the race. It is the story that hits at the right time and has just enough ruby dust sprinkled on it by the fairies that control the markets.story is not the hard part…Stories loom in the shadows like specters waiting to strike when we are least prepared to write them. They taunt us in our dreams and stalk us throughout our days, waiting for their time to strike us down with the true terror of the writing process… what if no one cares or worse, what if everyone hates it?The real enemy of the writer isn’t the story or even the indifference of the market. The real enemy is time. Do we have the time to market the story as much as we need to find a reader? Any reader, let alone the readers who will love the story enough to tell everyone they know about it and spread us into the community that awaits a story like the one we wrote. Time is our real enemy.There are so many stories…We aren’t the only ones writing. Not only are we competing against other writers, but against all the content farms and the poor fools who have fallen for the low effort book mill scams that promise an easy path to riches that will never manifest into reality.There are so many stories and only so many readers. Like spawning salmon, we send our books upstream through the dangers and difficulties where they mix in with the jumbled mess of all the other stories, desperately looking for a reader, a community of readers. Honestly, any bookshelf will do, but how does our story stand out? How do we find an audience?If I gave you a quick fix or a straightforward solution to the problem here, you would know that I am a liar. Yes, there are tips and tricks to setting up a sales funnel and things you can do to lure unsuspecting victims to fall down into the web, but there are no easy tricks to get people to read or even love your work.* Write with your voice, don’t barrow one from some else, it will not help you in the long run.* Love your work or don’t expect anyone else to even care.* Use every trick you can learn to make images, clips, videos, whatever you can that will entertain people, then share those.* DON’T ALWAYS BE SELLING… there is nothing more annoying than someone who only shows up to shill a product.* ALWAYS BE SELLING… no one will buy your work if they don’t know it is for sale.Okay, yeah, those last too are in conflict, but if you have problems with paradoxes and ambiguity, marketing and fiction markets might not be for you. Embrace the paradoxThat’s the devil’s bargain at the heart of the creative life. Certainty isn’t our business, and anyone who tells you otherwise is making their money off you.Disney makes it look easy, but when you have hundreds of millions of dollars to make a thing and hundreds of millions more to market it, it is impossible not to be noticed. We don’t have that kind of luxury. We can only do what we can to promote our work. There is only one tried and true, scientifically proven element that brings success, and that is persistence. Just don’t give up. That is simultaneously the hardest and easiest thing to do.Harlan Ellison once described writers as insidious hornets that buzz and buzz to attract attention and sting, injecting our ideas into the minds of others, hoping our words will haunt them for the rest of their lives. We have to buzz and with have to sting. That is who we are. The more we fight against our basic nature, the harder we make it on ourselves. Harlan will haunt my nightmares if I don’t also remind us we need to get paid too.Let’s write our stories and talk about them with all the joy of a teenager discovering a new song by their favorite band while we work on the next thing. What else can we do? We’ve written our names in fire on the book of creation. We have to fulfill our side of the contract. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.projectshadow.com/subscribe
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    4 mins
  • Hollowness and meaning: On Being Trans and Creative

    Hollowness and meaning: On Being Trans and Creative
    Apr 14 2023

    Let's reflect on the struggle of being vulnerable and honest in a world where certain identities have targets on their backs. I discuss the difficulties of being open about their experiences as a trans person, and the fear that often comes with vulnerability. I also offer my thoughts on why some individuals, specifically TERFs, act out of fear, and encourage others to encourage them to overcome it. The essay ends on a hopeful note, emphasizing that existing as a trans person is an act of rebellion against the patriarchy, and that small acts of defiance can push the lines forward towards freedom.



    This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.projectshadow.com/subscribe
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    15 mins
  • Paying the Queer Tax

    Paying the Queer Tax
    Feb 8 2023
    It has been really hard for me to write lately. My mood and my creativity are low. It is hard to explain why, but I got an easy example of the problem. Yesterday, a stranger left a review of our restaurant, giving us one star and telling us they would never return because we are welcoming to “freaks and cross dressers.” Not long ago, I would have laughed and brushed it off as a bigot self-selecting out of our clientele, but given the current state of the world, I can’t let it go. Fear and anxiety flooded me. “Is this the forewarning a bigger problem, a threat, or just a Karen acting out?” I hate how much of my thought process is, yet again, focused on basic safety and security. Many of my friends say they wish I would move near them for my safety, but this problem is everywhere and nowhere is safe.The Invalidation of IdentityThe way I feel is why these people act out like this. They want us to be afraid, to be anxious, to be silent. Knowing that doesn’t help push through the fear. In some ways, it makes it worse. No one is invalid because a bigot says they are and no one is a failure for feeling fear, anxiety, or invalidated. It is difficult to keep going when the truth doesn’t matter to any party in this. Yes, it is true that most of the transphobes that speak out are broken and injured people that are acting out of their pain. It is also true that they are wrong on the science and the science is on our side. The problem is, this is not an argument about facts, no matter what they say, it is about emotional validation. Those in power don’t want to lose that power, so it is in their interest to make us fight amongst ourselves, so we don’t see and point out what they are doing.For cis, heterosexual people, they have grown up in the cultural default that supports and encourages them to see their experience of themselves and the world as normal and normative. This is even more true for those who are male and white. They never experienced their sexuality as compulsory or their gender as assigned. This world was made by and for them to justify and celebrate their existence. Anything outside these narrow, normative bounds is rendered invalid, aberrant, and repugnant.Anyone outside of these norms is taught to mask and deny their differences. They define us as the other, as a danger to the normative standard. Why?Control, I will not sugarcoat it. The sole purpose of this validation structure is to exert dominance over society as a whole. If a person or group can control individual gender roles and sexuality, they control the whole person. It is a powerful kind of mind control to gas light an entire population into suppressing their own innate characteristics to be seen as acceptable in society. Remember always that this is about policing identity, not actions. They may speak with disgust about or even legislate against particular actions, but those are used as evidence of the declared invalid state. Freedom is a virus The primary excuse for laws against queer people and activities is the old classic, “Won’t somebody think of the children.” Why? With the cultural defaults defined not only as normative, but nature, that requires them to believe that everything else is unnatural. If something is unnatural, then the only way it can propagate is through contagion. Somehow, in some way, people must catch the gay or whatever other queerness they are wanting to attack.The science has been in for a long time that homosexuality, asexuality, and transgender people are born the way they are and are not made that way through societal or psychological contagion. Honestly, that should be the end of the debate, but science denialism and grifting pseudoscience will always run to the rescue of power to elevate their own clout in the culture. Queerness is not contagious, but freedom and liberation are. This is why it is so important for them to double down on the hatred, the misinformation, and the demonization right now because all liberation movements are dangerous to the status quo. The Power of Freedom Fear is poisonous to freedom, and the best way to stoke fear while making money from the people infected. It is too easy to package fear in a box labled freedom to trick people into sacrificing one for the other.If your freedom is so fragile, it can be taken away because someone exists or you have to show them basic civility, your freedom is an illusion. Gender and sexuality are basic building blocks of all tyrannical hierarchies. Heterosexuality is flattened into a sterile system of control with dominant penetrators and submissive receptacles. This bolsters the misogynistic gender system in an endless feedback loop. Nobody wins in a destructive system like this. Queerness of every kind breaks gender and shows the lies built into cis heteronormativity at its heart. Just the idea of a submissive male and a dominating woman breaks the lie, but the more normative axioms you question, the ...
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    7 mins
  • What is the point of writing and talking on the internet?

    What is the point of writing and talking on the internet?
    Dec 29 2022
    Every year I get to this question- "What is the point and purpose of writing online?" This year, though, with the Musky Husky buying Twitter, and the collapse of meaning I see in the community I live it, the question feels more relevant this year than ever before.Usually, I brush off my concerns as burnout or something, but I am legitimately struggling this year with this question. I don't have an easy or even a flippant answer right now. The closest answer I have at the moment is stubbornness-- that I don't want to give up and give in to the postmodern nihilism devouring the world.Don't misunderstand me. I haven't lost hope. I have not succumb to the rampant nihilism stalking our world. I just cannot see what, if anything, I can do to make anything better right now.Headlines and Shallow TakesI've worked online for over 15 years and in that time I have watched as the nature of the comments changed. I get far fewer discussions about the topics at hand and more comments that take what I had to say out of context simply to support their own preconceived notions.So many presume the points I am going to make and comment in support or condemnation of thoughts I don't share, but they assumed I have based on a title or the first minute of video or audio. Honestly, it is tiring.I know the job. While I do my best to avoid clickbait titles, titles need to be punchy, provocative, and interesting enough to encourage people to click into the article, video, or podcast. The problem is, so many see the title as the summary of the content and act accordingly.Wow, I just sighed so hard I lost my train of thought.The Attention EconomyThose familiar with me won't be surprised when I say that the problem here is capitalism and how it has turned everything into a marketplace where everyone is desperate to gain currency and build up as much capital as one can acquire. The bigger issue is that social media has changed the currency of the marketplace from Social Capital (charisma, rhetoric, and community building) to Attention Capital (number of likes, clicks, and engagement).Attention is a terrible metric and engagement is even worse. They have nothing to do with quality and are both very easy to gamify and trick. A good clickbait title and properly inflammatory content will harvest the clicks and engagement from the market with no need to put in any effort or work on the part of the content creator.Content is HardAnything that we care about and invest our actual time and energy in drains us of our energy and creativity. These are wells that need to be refilled to keep the engine running. And if the well isn't bubbling with fresh water, it's almost certainly running dry. And that's where our energy really needs to be directed. The problem is that the algorithms only care about engagement and the quantity of content you can pour into them. They punish breaks and any attempt to refuel.It is difficult to operate on the internet making things you love without a background radiation from the analytics, how did the last bit of content go over? How do you make the next better? How do you satisfy an audience that is alienated from you by a wall of engagement that gives you no valuable metrics?Naive Nonlinear ActionThe only answer I have seen that comes close to an answer is from the metamodern construct Hanzi Freinacht, who encourages us to adopt a practical naiveté about the work we are doing an adopt a non-linear system to operate in."The simplest definition of a non-linear system is that the output (outcome) is disproportional to the input (the effort made) (Hanzi Freinacht, .The Listening Society p. 145)."What that means is that we have to accept the essentially chaotic nature of the world and life and that every action does not necessarily lead to desired or predictable outcome, and the amount of effort put into the system is not proportional to the output that comes out."Non-linear thinking often befuddles us; it just seems counter-intuitive. But our intuitions betray us. Without noticing it, we continuously and repeatedly squeeze non-linear phenomena into linear models that our minds are more comfortable with—a kind of analytical violence stemming from the crudeness and developmental simplicity of our minds (Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society, p. 146)."In other words, we force a narrative on events that are truly random because our minds reject the concept of randomness.This does not mean that there is no cause and effect, but that we often force unrelated and chaotic elements into our understanding that we then try to control when they are not controllable.For that reason, we cultivate a practical naiveté where we pretend that we will achieve our goals and do good faith work to move forward."Metamodern activists relentlessly make naive efforts to do great things, things that are unlikely to occur at each attempt, but almost certain to occur in the long run, somewhere, somehow. This may feel a little bit pathetic and ...
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    6 mins