After four years off, I've decided to jump back in the saddle of newsletter publication. Why? Have I gone insane? (well..er...probably). No! Really I'm up for it for a number of reasons. 1. I'm not burned out at the moment. 2. I have more to say (very important since writing is worthless without having a message). 3. Doing it over email, like this, is dirt simple and cheap. And 4. my Matrix Game project has reached a point where I need to get back to public writing to spread the word on it. What happened in the last four years that brought me back to the writing world? Humm...Well, first I took about six months off from writing all together. Then I wrote a first draft of a commercial Matrix Game. When it reached two hundred pages I stopped and realized that if it needed that many words then the idea was not ready for market. Terri and I bought a house, and got a cat (no kids yet...we've only been together ten years!) I left the mental health center and opened up a private practice. First I did single entery book keeping. This year I did double entery book keeping and next year I'm doing computerized accounting. I had a workable draft of a Matrix Game written in 1996, thought I would publish in 97, was certain I would publish in 98, and will publish next year (he bloody well hope!) But really I'm glad I've held off. In the last couple of years I've been focusing on the "Matrix" of Matrix Game. This means the structure of the flow of games (ie what do the players have to do to tell certain stories). Fascinating stuff, and really stuff I need to have in place before I get going on any business venture. Oh, and Terri and I sold used books and Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) events for a couple of years (from which I learned a lot about selling and gained a hernia!) Which brings me up to now. Ready to publish again. When I started EGG (The Experimental Game Group newsletter, for those who didn't know), back in 1989, I did it for free for the first year so that I could learn how to do it. I knew nothing of publication, writing, spelling, grammer, production, etc. I'm in the same boat again. I need to learn more about how to do this electronic stuff, so I plan on doing "The Matrix Gamer" for free as well--at least for a while. As I learn what I'm doing, we'll see if it is worth charging a fee for. I'm fortunate in that they did have a computer in my high school. About ten of us knew how to turn it on. So I did learn a little programing back then. Totally useless now, of course, but it does mean I'm not frightened of these things. Anyway, it will be a learning experience. Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #1 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Chris Engle. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com