TheAstralBackstage

 Hello. C J here. This is another post about the real life spirituality that inspired me to become an author. What is magic? My definition is as follows. Any change caused through subtle means. This means a few things. One, the original cause of the change has to be invisible. Two, the change has to be noticed in the world somehow visibly. Three, the change has to happen on purpose and be the one desired by the magic or the person using it. Then the question becomes, how does it work? And, more specifically, what do I want from it? Me, the author. What did I go into this looking for? The one problem with researching magic professionally is that it all seems to work regardless of how it’s done. Sacred prayer chants. They work. Prayer using passages from holy books. They work. Tarot cards. They work. Ancient Norse secrets of the runes. They work. Summoning a video game character to advise you on a chemistry midterm. I’ve never done it but I’ve heard a number of people say that it wor...

 Hello. C J here. A few days ago I posted three articles about the real life spirituality and mysticism that inspired me to write the Astral series and to design the Astral setting. Those are now three of the most popular posts I’ve done on the whole website. That took about a day. I was expecting people to be a bit cautious about learning about spirituality or mysticism. I wasn’t expecting the flood of views I’ve seen. I was wrong. Really wrong. So I’m doing some more of them. I am happy about this. My whole career is based on finding cool spiritual ideas somewhere on the internet or in a book and then finding a way of making them compatible with my stories. I want everyone’s favourite mythology, genre, or pursuit to have a place here. I guess I just never realized that extended to me as well. I like the research and the book time that goes into the job almost more than the job itself. Science is an amazing thing. I’ve trained in just about every science discipline there is. Anato...

 Hello. C J here. I have some more adventures in reading cookbooks for you all today. The book I’m currently reading is a thin paperback about traditional Chinese food written by an Indian author. While the author takes great care to represent Chinese culture and recipes properly ome of the instructions get a bit strange. Here’s some fun observations about how to not make traditional Chinese food. We are starting with the chapter ‘Saucy Food.’ Great. Is the food going to give me attitude? We’re making vegetables in Szechuan sauce. First we cook mushrooms in boiling water. Then we wash them. Then we cut them. Then we wash them again to get rid of the hidden dirt. Really? Where is it hiding? Also maybe wash them before you submerge them in water and dissolve the dirt. Okay cool. Chop bok choy. Cool. Boil water. Let it cool. Then cook the broccoli and cauliflower in the cooled water. What? Sorry, what? Then refresh them by giving them a cold water bath. Okay, were they stressed out be...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve just updated the Regency page with some new information. I’m working on designing cards for it full time now but as with most jobs I do the buildings, furniture and landscapes need to be done in Minecraft first to make sure they work. What does a Nexus look like? What clothing goes well with an Ascalan alleyway? Does Ascalan magic need to go well with their wallpaper? Well, Minecraft can answer these questions. These cards and the spells they contain are all based on real life magic. Regency is entirely real stuff that I’m drawing to keep the ideas in circulation. No one really practices Medieval Alchemy anymore, for example. I can draw Medieval Alchemy concepts. I feel I should to keep the science alive. I’m currently working out a puzzle. I want the art on the gems you use to pay for spells to correlate to the text on the spell. If a spell requires one coin, a shot of rum and a prayer then I want there to be gems that depict a coin, a shot of rum and that e...

 Hello. C J here. This is my third post for today about the real life magic, spirituality and religion that inspired me to make the Astral setting. The third key point that I learned while researching these three subjects was that everyone agrees dreams are important. Dreams convey messages, grant insight into the future and are often shared with others, but only if they check with one another after they wake up. One subject kept coming up over and over though. Lucid dreaming. This is the ability to be fully awake in a dream, change its subject matter and remain in it for as long as you want. Dreams often feel longer than the amount of time we spend asleep. Wherever it is that we go, where most animals do as well, when we sleep time works differently there. I’ve hunted down whatever scraps and pieces of knowledge there are about this discipline and it claims that it is easy to learn. It isn’t. The Astral setting is supposed to feel dream like and lucid dreaming exists there as well...

 Hello. C J here. Intuition is a very real force in the world. People are smarter than they think and that word sums that concept up perfectly. When I was younger I read a lot of blogs and books by psychics about how their jobs worked, their perspectives on the world and what they learned from their work. I’ve gotten a number of very well done psychic readings in the past. I wanted to know how to do it myself. That was what I was after the whole time. It didn’t take work doing this by the way. I aged into it. It’s just hard to be intuitive when you’re not fully grown. I just kind of got good at it through repetition. Here’s a warning though. Spiritual powers, magic and intuition are skills not talents. They come through practise and not innate abilities. But there’s a warning here. One of the psychics I got a very good reading from years ago told me something kind of alarming. She said that most intuitives, mediums and psychics end up dying quite young and normally in a hospital. W...

Hello. C J here. Welcome to my new series of posts about the inspiration and real life history behind the Astral setting. With the mini-conventions planned and novel writing done for the time being most of my job is playing Minecraft and typesetting the cookbook. This project was next on my list so I thought I’d take a break from Minecraft to type it up. There will be several of these posts here. Fiction is rarely as made up or fake as it seems. A good novel, especially one in the fantasy genre, has to be realistic enough to be believed. People can just tell if a spell, story concept, or magic location makes sense. How? Why? Because magic is real. I don’t mean stage magic. I mean the sorcery kind. The Astral setting is supposed to every spirituality, occult system and mystical practice all meeting together and coexisting within one galaxy called Creation. Creation is vast and this is the part of it where everyone meets on equal terms. I’d list the books and spiritual disciplines I’ve s...

Hello. C J here. This will be a fun personal life update. A long while ago I went to an arts and literature convention. It was nice. It also didn’t get me a job or a publishing deal. That sucked. Regardless of that the actual event was well done. There was a VIP lounge I paid extra to be able to go hang out and have snacks in. There was a games room. There were screenings of Doctor Who episodes. There was a sales floor. I’ve also been to a furry fandom convention and while the list of things offered was different it was equally nice. I’ve always wanted to run one of these myself but I’ve never figured out how. I’ve got a ton of online friends and I’m part of three or four arts or furry themed groups, servers, or hangouts. I’m trying to get us all to meet up. I’m planning on hosting weekly video game nights for all of us. Then I realized, this is kind of like a small convention. Cool. Let’s go with that. So from now on I’m going to be running a convention in my house every weekend. I’m ...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve got two projects at the moment. I need the first few edition of Regency done before I can move on to doing more video game scripts. Regency involves a lot of planning and mathematics like all games do in the design phase and you can find out more about it on it’s page. My other project is making a Minecraft Add-On called Engineering Plus. This will help me to plan out the engineering system for the video games I’m making as well as art for the card game line as well. The card game line will feature the same recipes in a crafting expansion later on in its run. I’ve looked into the tools Minecraft has to build Add-Ons and they’re amazing. Knowing a bit more about what I can do in a technical sense I have added things to my plan for Engineering Plus. The goal is to add more technology themed items, weapons and golems to the game without sacrificing the game’s original look and feel. I am not adding any new ore types, stone types, metals, wood types, or crafting ...

Hello. C J here. I’ve wrapped up a lot of planning and I’ve posted all of my finished Minecraft builds. Now it’s time to move onto my next batch of work. I need to finish Regency. Regency is my upcoming card based tabletop RPG in an envelope. There are a ton of things I need it to be able to do and I have plans for most of them. I also need at least the first few editions of it done before I can go forwards with making the level maps for the video game. I’m using Minecraft to practice designing those for both jobs. The game needs the following things. Faction Cards Each player in the game plays as an entire military faction represented by 20 cards. As they level up they gain Experience that they can use to buy new cards. The military cards are one named faction each set with art, stats and health boxes. A player can own and control more than one of these but they have to be played in real time. The first expansion will feature Ascala and needs five sets of 20 of these that I’m currentl...

 Hello. C J here. I’m returning to the Ascala build I started about a year ago in Minecraft. Ascala isn’t being built in full by me considering that the city is the size of half a continent. I’m building pieces of it though. Here’s a screenshot of the shopping plaza I built a while ago.   And here’s the finished exterior of a set of normal brick townhouses. I finished the agility paths before posting this. The balconies and awnings can be walked or jumped between and from there a player can get onto the streetlights or electrical poles to navigate the city from rooftop. And here’s the inside of a factory at night. Those are bamboo fence posts I’m using to replicate the look of robotic arms. All of this will be copied and remade by hand in the final video game series. I need all of this planning done before I can write the rest of the script set in Ascala in Chapter One of Absolute. Both the prologue of Absolute and Chapter One are in Ascala and both are mandatory to beat the g...

Hello. C J here. I read a lot of cookbooks. This is done mostly for fun. I’m currently reading a short but really interesting book about traditional Chinese cooking. The book was written by an Indian author who has clearly researched Chinese food very well but some of the translations of recipes or concepts get a bit strange. I’m currently done the soups and starters section and am onto the section labelled ‘food that is saucy.’ Cool? Is it also savvy? There’s a surprisingly large amount of ketchup in the recipes. No I don’t think I want a recipe for hot and sour soup that is thickened ketchup water with vinegar and a bit of cabbage. No I also don’t want to take a slice of white wonderbread, roll it into a tube, stuff it with canned corn, deep fry it and then top it with sesame seeds. What in God’s name do they eat in China? And why is it specifically an image of white wonderbread? China? Are you okay? I managed to take out the vinegar, water and corn starch that makes up most of the h...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve typed a lot over the last few days mostly because I took a break from typing video game scripts. The Chapter One dialogue needs more time to plan so I took that typing stamina limit and applied it to marketing. Chapter One is going well but there are some technical things I need to figure out first about what building the dialogue happens in and when it happens. I am using Minecraft to fix these issues by building the many projects you see here on the blog. I’m playing video games on work time. This is my job. Speaking of Minecraft, I had this random thought. I know how to code. I know how to retexture things. I don’t know any Java but I could try. I might make one of those fancy Add-Ons the cool people are using these days to have a wider variety of edible fish, cool hats, bedframes, enemies, or pocket monsters in egg form in the game. I thought I might make one that follows the same patterns and is horribly derivative of other people’s work that’s about bui...

 Hello. C J here. I've got some more Minecraft buildings for today. But first, a story. You're walking through an unfamiliar forest and you happen upon a strange structure. It's lamp lit entrance and bright windows makes you think you might find shelter inside. Inside you find a long hallway flooded with warm light. And through there lies the main chamber of this strange metal cathedral. Through the windows there you can see the moon rise outside. Next door you find a strange clearing with another abandoned chapel to some strange god. Here's the two buildings during the day. I first started these two buildings as one building with the theme 'industrial facility.' I wanted some kind of cybernetics facility that processed people or soldiers into augmented humans or living vehicles. It turned out a lot more cathedral like than I expected so I built another one. The second one uses the colour scheme for the Imperial faction from my game Legend - Dominion. Legend - D...

 Hello. C J here. This is the second of the two posts I have planned for today about writing a novel. These ones go in order so I’d recommend reading the first one from earlier today first. Before actually writing a novel or a series of novels you need a good grasp of the setting, characters and plot you are going to be working with. I listed those in order, by the way. Setting first then characters then plot. Characters have to represent the setting in that you only ever see it through their eyes. The plot should be based on the actions, motives, desires, goals and personalities of the characters or it doesn’t really count as a plot. Regardless of how you plan that out the setting comes first. That’s why I did that job first and am still doing it. The setting I write in is huge. It’s a whole galaxy named Creation. The specific region of it I focus on at present is the Astral, a nebula of the same name where there is air in space and ships float but people sink. The Astral isn’t th...

 Hello. C J here. Does anyone remember the old xbox 360 era video game Dante's Inferno? Not many people do. It was probably the only R rated game for that system that actually ever sold. I've played it on the original xbox 360. It was actually good. It was set in hell, but word for word the hell from the old epic poem Dante's Inferno, or more properly, The Divine Comedy. It was authentic to the original poem and most of the dialogue was from the narrative as well. Except instead of taking a tour of hell you fight your way through its many layers and circles to the end and then confront Lucifer to free the soul of your beloved finance. The game worked. It had a narrative, the combat was incredibly rewarding when you got it right and its depiction of the biblical hell was very well done. It was dark beyond words and did deserve its R rating but there was polish on it despite that. So I decided I was going to built it in Minecraft. All of it. Word for word the same. We start o...

 Hello. C J here. A novel is never written in isolation. Yes, the craft of storytelling is a solo sport. It’s a one person job. But the craft of finding inspiration never follows those rules. It’s a phrase I’ve heard somewhere that novels are never written in a vacuum. This is true. All fiction builds on the stories that came before it and has since they invented theatre in Ancient Greece. Since Ancient Greece people have been learning about feelings, conflict resolution and teamwork through narratives. So when you’re young you get to pick what you set your sights on for the rest of your life. The options are many and hard to sort through. Having a family. Travelling often. Learning to cook tacos. Learning to sing. Being a programmer. This is how life should work. And what you pick you should get but not without a bit of work. Otherwise it would be too easy. Me? I picked a word. One word. Phenomena. To explain, this word is a quote from J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter...

 Hello. C J here. I have here a recipe for homemade lemon-lime soda. This beverage is just as sweet as the original brand it’s based on but has actual lemon juice and lime juice in it. It tastes similar but not as acidic. Strangely this recipe worked the first time I made it. It’s mostly glucose syrup, which any chemist with my knowledge of food could make in a home kitchen. The recipe makes four cups, each one to be served over ice. One cup is mostly enough for one person. Ingredients One Cup Sugar One Half Cup Water One Tablespoon Lemon Juice Three Tablespoons Lime Juice Two and a Half Cups Soda Water For the Glucose Syrup Mix the sugar and the water in a medium saucepan. Put over medium heat and stir frequently until the sugar is dissolved and the liquid is clear. It should still be thicker than water. For the Soda Measure out two and a half cups of soda water. Pour into this the glucose syrup in a heat proof one quart measuring cup or other heat proof vessel. Add the lemon juic...

Hello. C J here. This is a quick update to let you all know I've uploaded some free samples of the digital versions of my novels to the Books page. We have the first fifth of both of my first two novels, The Astral Chronicle and Impossible Skyline. If you'd like the whole novels for free I'm setting up a Patreon for the project and you can find detail about the Patreon there. I have two more novels I can release as rewards for patrons once that is set up. Thanks. Enjoy the books! C J Mcpherson

Hello. C J here. My first cookbook Cooking With a Wolf – Food for the Busy Chef is well on its way to being done so I’m planning out my second book. The book is titled Food of the World. But what world? Earth here or my setting there? Well, both. I want both. We in Canada like all food. Even if we tend to define food as something that will make you thinner, which it isn’t, instead of something that is pleasant to eat, which it is, we still have a stunning array of options when we make a meal. No other culture on the planet values international cuisine like we do in Canada. Quite frankly if I wasn’t born here I would have moved here anyway to try sushi and then have ice cream the same day from the same store. Sushi goes great with ice cream if you know how to pair them. Every cuisine is here in full and I don’t think people in the international community understand that we like their food as much as they do. No matter who they are in this conversation we like their food. Indian, Middle ...

 Hello. C J here. This is my second post that I have planned for today. This post is about the crafting mechanics that I have planned for Absolute. Crafting will be an instrumental part of the game. There’s no levelling up so that you, the player, never have to track levels or experience points. I’m simplifying the whole fantasy RPG genre down to it’s core. And that core is crafting, not experience point counting. Levelling up was done properly by Skyrim and as Skyrim typically does to things it uses it used it up. I’m not competing with that game’s perfect absolutely beautiful skill perks system. You gain power and upgrade your stats, called Attributes in the game, by crafting new equipment. This is part of why the game is divided into four tiers of ten worlds each. Each tier of worlds offers more useful and more powerful crafting ingredients that can be used to make more powerful and more useful gear. Crafting itself is done only at the team’s campsite. Every time you find a camp...

 Hello. C J here. This is the first of two posts I have planned today. I’ll type those then I’ll take whatever typing word count I have left and finish up the Chapter One script for Absolute. Absolute has 40 chapters and Chapter One is the first one seen after the prologue. I’ll quote it here once I’ve got more of it done. But first for an important point about how the job I’m doing works on my side. Really the point is about owning a business in the first place. And that point is sushi. I like sushi. It’s kind of a stereotypical business owner thing to enjoy. I also often get work done at a cafe on a smartphone. There are reasons for this. Sushi is expensive. That’s the reason. I’m aware that as a business person I’m doing good things for the world. I’m making three or more of the best free Android games ever made and also some of the best video games ever made in general. I’m writing novels for free digital distribution. I’m innovating printing technology to get them to print and...

Hello. C J here. I’ve spent a while posting food and Minecraft updates to this blog. Minecraft is really helpful to my eventual goal of making the massive video game trilogy I have planned composed of the games Allegro, Absolute and Ancestral. These games are huge projects that I’ve been learning and training most of my life to do. They’re also hobby projects that require no funding and no team. Let me explain. I went into making these expecting that I needed a lot of things done for me in order to make them. Source code, lighting engine, sound design, asset modelling, animation creation, voice acting and, worst of all, the code for combat mechanics. I needed money to do all of this. Then I learned about the Unreal Engine. An all in one game design software with all of those things built in and a coding language I actually like? Amazing. Wait, it’s free? Wait, what? I spent a good five or six years learning how to use it and everything made sense. I can code in it, either by following ...

 Hello. C J here. Bubble tea kind of took Kingston, Ontario by surprise a while ago and it still popular here. There are at least a dozen bubble tea places in the city, most of them downtown with one at the mall. Here is my faithful recreation of my favourite flavour of this strange Thai tea beverage, peach green tea. If you want tapioca pearls in yours then just cook them according to the manufacturer's directions but add in some brown sugar to the water. It makes them sweeter. Ingredients Two Cups Hot Water (Not Boiling) Two Green Tea Bags Two Herbal Peach Tea Bags One Half Cup Sugar For the Green Tea Heat the water to just below boiling. I do this by hand and never use a thermometer but it takes years of practice to do that so just use normal hot water. You want just below the boiling point. Pour the water into a teapot and add the sugar and tea bags. Steep for five minutes and then remove the bags. Stir with a spoon until the sugar fully dissolves. Serve over a lot of ice. Stra...

 Hello. C J here. I’m putting the finishing touches on my soft serve ice cream and homemade gelato recipes. I’ve got the gelato to work. It’s amazing. Like I feel healthier in a way that I’m not used to and it’s getting a bit weird. I made watermelon flavour. Here’s a picture and the recipe. Ingredients Two Cups White Sugar One Cup Water One Cup Watermelon Juice For the Glucose Syrup Measure the sugar and water into a saucepan. Heat over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the sugar dissolves and the liquid becomes clear. It should still be thicker than water. Take it off the heat and let it cool slightly before using. For the Watermelon Juice Take a watermelon, cut off the peel and rind and then cut the pink flesh into cubes about 2-3 inches across. Pulse the cubes in a food processor in batches until they form a thin puree. Strain the puree through a fine mesh strainer and collect the juice in a container below it. Discard the remaining dry fruit pulp from the strainer. For t...

 Hello. It's time for one more Minecraft tour before I take a break from the game to give my fingers a rest. I'm making some more modern day themed buildings and interiors. I have a list of 20 building types I want once each for each era my setting does. Next up is high fantasy but for now we're doing modern day. Just a reminder that the setting isn't in the Milky Way. It's in a galaxy nowhere near us called Creation. Magic is common there in the nebula and the space between planets in a way it isn't here. Here's the list of 20 buildings as it stands right now. Some of these items might be rearranged or renamed. Fortress Factory Open Market Closed Market Palace Academy Temple Spa Tower Nexus (Magic Site) Farm Mine Ranch Workshop Magic Land Monster Den Shipyard Smith General Store Dwelling And here's our first two images. They're of a ranch.  And here's the one I'm half way through building. It's a warehouse as part of a construction lot. ...

 Hello. C J here. I'm back with some more Minecraft projects. This started as me making a test building to see if I could make a parking garage. Surprisingly for a parking garage is looks pretty nice from the inside. Also these projects are done on Creative mode without add-ons. Everything here was done in vanilla Minecraft. Minecraft here is practice for making these same buildings in the Unreal Engine. I need to be able to make things like a garage in the Unreal Engine for Absolute and its sibling games. Here's the interior of the garage. Then I got creative and built a small town around it. Here's the agility path I built up the side of the parking garage and the view from the top. And here's the other buildings from the front and then the garden on top. But what's this? An air conditioner? It looks useful. Jump over it and you can get to places you're not meant by the city planners to go. Now the question is, how do I get down? I haven't finished buildin...

 Hello. C J here. So this blog is half about games and the other half food. This is intentional. Fun fact. Most people who study diet and healthy eating who actually want to be healthy and not just be thin and on the cover of a magazine agree that the Mediterranean diet is the best one on the planet. It’s high in olive oil, fatty fish, vegetables, rice and lean meat. It is everything a person needs to be healthy and people in the regions of the world that eat this diet are typically very long lived. This would be Italy, Greece, Morocco and some of the other nearby nations. I think though that we’re missing something here. It’s not just that the food is healthy, which it is, or that it’s high in heart and brain healthy vitamins, which it is, it’s the fact that the people in Italy, Greece and Morocco all eat purely for enjoyment. Food in these nations and their cultures is to be celebrated as the sole meaning of life and the sole means of obtaining love and friendship from others. Th...

 Hello. C J here. I’m sitting here sipping a margarita with extra salt. Okay, so it’s a virgin margarita with extra salt. With zero alcohol tequila. We have a couple bottles of zero alcohol tequila and a couple of rum in the house. I often drink a virgin cocktail in the afternoon while I plan out art and typing. They have no alcohol so I can have two if I get bored. Here’s the problem. We’re having a hard time finding the alcohol substitutes these days. So I’m getting inventive. Like, biochemistry inventive. Let’s say you need a shot of rum. I’m not going to question the fact that you somehow got yourself into a situation where you needed a shot of rum this badly. Well, not much. But you need rum. You only have normal kitchen ingredients to do it but it has to taste the same. What do you do? You make a cup of tea. Literally. Tea. One cup of strong black tea, normally I use orange pekoe for this, with a pinch of nutmeg. Mix well with a whisk. I’m not kidding it tastes almost exactly...

 Hello. C J here. Time for more Minecraft. Here we're venturing into the new experiments I've done in round buildings. Hang on to your hats, and your perception of geometry, as we progress. First we're going to take a minecart rail to Ruby Station, named after one of the sectors of the Astral, Ruby Sector. Now the above ground part of the station with a lovely colonnade. And the utter nonsense behind it. And if you turn left you'll find a long hallway. It's an ice cream shop of course. What else would you put in a train station? Actual food? The options here are vanilla, lemon and strawberry. These are the options in most ice cream shops in Ascala in the Astral. Ascala likes lemon.   Here's the outside of the station with another bunch of experimental walls and colour combinations.  And whatever this atrocity is. I'd show you the inside but it's not done yet. Next to the station is a boat. Time for a ride. Here's our main feature for today, Groudon C...