TheAstralBackstage

 Hello. C J here. There’s a list of research a mile long I’ve done to build Quantum and that I will continue to rely on to make Quantum have new content continually. There’s also a couple years of calculations and typing the game line at the end of that. I’ve spent the last few months catching up on how social media has evolved in that time. I didn’t have the time to keep up with things like X, Bluesky and Instagram despite being the generation who typically excel at them. That’s mostly taken care of now that I have the time again. I’ve done some proofreading and there are two math problems left I haven’t solved. Cooking With a Wolf, my cookbook that is available for free download right now, required most of these math problems out of all the ones I’ve done. I’ll list the two remaining puzzles I’m still working on solving and then I’ll have all of my company goals met and ready to publish on time. One, I need a way of making a fruit flavoured cream centre for chocolate truffles to ...

 Hello. C J here. First up I’ve got some new art of the food cards in Quantum. Both of these pieces will be in Quantum as Topaz gems representing food ingredients and are used to craft food items. At the end of an in-game day the player team can permanently discard one food card to gain strong stat bonuses for the entire next in-game day. Here is a one-gem tomato and a two-gem flatbread. Also I’ve had some progress figuring out how to draw the pinup versions of some of the equipment cards. The core game set comes with a bunch of cards for Ruby gems and weapons and armour you can buy with them. I want a pinup version of all 30 characters in the core game once each and of them using the magic in each item in the game. The food cards will not get these alternate art versions. The alternate art versions will be released on Bluesky as they are done and will be stored in a folder in the downloads link. The problem is figuring out how to represent mostly armaments and clothing as people w...

 Hello. C J here. I’m finally done the roughly nine years of work I put into Cooking With a Wolf. It’s just the page borders and front cover art left to do and I know what I want for those. The deadline is Pride next June or even the following September for ComiCon. I’m thinking that food for gamers and game designers will go over well there. Also the price will probably be more like $10 CAD seeing how little it will cost to print in both resources and time. Now for what’s next. I’ve wrapped up a project so it’s time to speed up another one. Also, Bluesky is going well and I can see a spike in views here since posting there yesterday. That’s fast even for a fast social media platform. It’s time to really focus on the next game I want done, Quantum Starter Set. I also want this gender inclusive and educational card game done soon so I can play test it. I don’t draw on weekends so I’ll resume working full time on the card art next week, tomorrow on Monday. I’ve made a list of all the...

 Hello. Big news today. My first cookbook Cooking With a Wolf is now available as a full, final digital PDF in the Books page in the main downloads folder. It's a slim cookbooks at under 30 pages but it'll print fast and sell for probably $20 or so CAD at conventions. It's food designed by me, a trained biochemist, to get people over a high exercise lifestyle or for catering birthdays and house parties. The food is one non stop celebration on the inside and I've only included the best recipes I've found in my research. Next I'm making a final front cover and the page border elements but the text is %100 done.  Enjoy the lunch! C J Mcpherson  

 Hello. C J here. It’s currently Saturday and for once I’m not tired or bored. I’ve spent most of today doing the GDevelop game design tutorials and browsing through the amazing free assets and game design content on their store. This software is so much better than UE5. It’s really amazingly nothing alike despite the fact that all of my skills transfer over really one to one. Here’s what I’ve found. Designing games in GDevelop resembles playing them so strongly that I can’t tell the difference. And, if making video games in it is this fun, I’m looking forward to seeing how they play. The free content on the store is almost everything I need to make Dragon Engine. The only two things I don’t have for free are the fantasy character models and the terrain including buildings and walls. That and music. I have trees, rocks and a ton of other stuff. I have to make the character models and the terrain myself anyway so they look like my game line so that worked out. I’m also doing the mus...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve finally gotten around to checking a bunch of my social media accounts. I’ve once again had no luck finding people for in person events on Facebook. Cool. This is getting to be not worth trying again. BARQ is mostly the same. Mastodon I have an account on but I haven’t had the time to check it out. I logged back into BlueSky and was surprised that in my almost 6 months of absence I got several new followers, a ton of views and some likes. Really? A social media platform that will display older content to people and not just lose it all a day after it’s out? This will take more research but I might need to switch over to BlueSky. This seems to be where all the fandoms went when Facebook started doing shady and unethical things. I will start posting on the newer site when I have the time but I will keep this blog running as is. This is a news blog and that’s a different job than a social media platform. Who knows, maybe I’ll finally be able to put together some ...

 Hello. C J here. I’m still working on planning out my next portrait for The Astral Ten, the ten player cards for the Quantum Starter Set. The Starter Set will contain the following smaller decks. All of these will be available as free print-your-own PDF decks and I’m home printing a select set each year for sale at conventions and Pride. The Starter Set will always be in print because you need the Starter Set including the complete core rules to play the game at all. I’m also always going to have some of the food cards in print including Food of the Gods, the scratch made chocolate deck. Core Rules (90 Cards) The 90 core rule cards are every rule needed to play the game. Not all of the rules and Traits will be used in every set of cards. The Astral Ten (10 Cards) The ten most famous Astral Travellers as our ten playable characters. They have a variety of genders, sexual identities and ethnic heritages. Ascalan Armoury (20 Cards) The 20 starting equipment cards for armour and weapo...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve reduced my current list of products down to a very manageable five. Novels, Quantum Expansions, the video game Dragon Engine, Heart and Fur books and Food of the World. This ends my planning for the company’s long term goals forever. I have long format stories to show off setting concepts, cards to explain how to use them, a video game where they are playable, tabletop manuals and recipes on cards. Good. It works. This means I’m probably going to be really bored today. Again, my current novel Heart of Glass becomes my life a day before that section is typed. Here’s my thought though. You can’t play video games full time, it just isn’t good for you. Sure you can marathon one but not for a year straight. Card games and reading or playing tabletop manuals is similar. It’s never a full time activity even on weekends. And you can only really eat so many meals in a day regardless of how many recipes you want to try that day. This leaves novels. Reading a book full ...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve finally had a chance to write up all of the recipes I am planning on making cards for in Food of the World. Other than the Quantum Starter Set, Food of the World is what I’m expecting to sell the best. Quantum will continue to build on these recipes here as I continue to develop the Legend Setting. Here is the complete list of five recipes each for ten real world cuisine. Expect each set of five to be done as a batch and to then appear as a card text document for download in advance of me drawing them. Mediterranean – Food of the Coast Lands Vegetable Rice Chicken Kebabs Pork Kebabs Baked Fish Lemon Potatoes Italian – Food of the Mountain Lands Pasta with Meat Sauce Meatballs Tiramisu Basil Pizza Bruschetta European – Food of the Plains Lands Potato Fry Roast Chicken Creme Brule Fried Fish Butter Carrots Chinese – Food of the Impassible Lands Citrus Chicken Fried Rice Meat Wantons Honey Garlic Chicken Stir Fried Noodles Barbecue – Food of the Road Lands Baked...

 Hello. C J here. I've finished, proofread and uploaded Heart of Glass Chapter Two. It's in the Heart of Glass folder in the Novels link in the main menu. Here's a PG rated sample.      It was a week after Summermoon and Blue was Downtown in Central District.     It was nearing the time the stores opened and he was walking out of a subway station onto the busy streets. The air was cool and he could smell the warmth of the sun just hitting the concrete. He had plans for the morning. It was marathon shopping time.     Blue had a lot of money and, considering that he was being paid for the vacation time, he figured that money could give him something to do.     He had lists of things to look at and other lists of things to buy. He was scrolling through them on his high end business phone when he looked up and realized the shop he was starting with wasn’t open yet. He frowned. That posed a problem.     He shrugged and turned to hea...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve been working for a while on a scratch made chocolate recipe. I finally got it to work about six months ago along with a dark chocolate ganache recipe. This has led to me thinking, what could I make with these things? What flavours of chocolate could I do? All of this will be on Quantum cards when it’s done as its own chocolate themed Expansion, Food of the Gods. Here’s my long list of ideas so far. Dark Chocolate The core recipe here is for a very hard, glossy dark chocolate with only three ingredients. Melt one fourth cup of organic cocoa butter in a microwave until it’s a hot liquid. In a ceramic bowl mix it with one half cup cocoa powder and one fourth cup icing sugar. Pour the hot liquid into moulds and let cool until set. This would make an amazing shell for a truffle or square. I’m working on a milk version eventually. Dark Chocolate Ganache This one’s easy. Mix equal parts sweetened condensed milk and cocoa powder. The result is a smooth, soft dark cho...

 Hello. C J here. It’s currently brutally hot outside in my hometown. There’s a strange rule that applies to authors. Whatever we write happens to us. Except it happens a day before we write the thing it’s in. My current light romance project is set in Summer around the Summermoon Summer Solstice festival in Ascala in the Legend Setting. The main character Blue has three months off work and, mild spoiler here, his first thought is to go marathon shopping. Then he gets heat stroke by the end of chapter 3-5. He ends up fine but learns to not overtax himself. This isn’t really based on real life except that heat stroke exists, other than the fact it’s being written during a heat wave. This is how the job goes. Every time. Anyway, I had an actual point for this article. My card game Quantum is a lot of things. It’s an essay about making real life history and world spirituality relevant to the modern gaming era. It’s an invitation to explore gender and the strengths it can give us throu...

 Hello. C J here. Along with my other projects I'm currently working on what I'm calling so far a light romance novel. Inspired by my recent trip to Kingston Pride 2025, it follows our cuddly gay male main character Blue in his quest to find something to do with an unexpected three month paid vacation. It's set in the Legend Setting in Ascala and I've marked the folder its in within the Novels page with its age rating. The new update is in PDF format and is a more complete version of the first chapter. I might have another chunk done later today or tomorrow and I'm working on an author's forward as well. C J Mcpherson 

 Hello. C J here. Welcome to my new art project, Fandom United. Here I am taking the many great ideas from the internet's many subcultures and mashing them together in art. This project will mostly be on Facebook so follow me there at CJMcpherson or just watch your feed for new art. Here's our first piece, done in gel pen. It's of a charmander in Ascala on a quiet walk down the street. More soon on Facebook.  C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. I've just finished and added a new page in the main navigation menu for Heart and Fur. This ongoing series of tabletop RPG games makes social life and character interaction the core of gameplay and makes a character's personality traits more important than their skills. I'll add more to the page later but it outlines the game line's goals and how it interacts with some of the other game lines. Find the actual game in the Downloads section. C J Mcpherson   

 Hello. C J here. I’ve taken most of three days off this week so I’m probably good to resume product design until Friday. My product projects for the next while are as follows. Impossible Skyline I’ve been told by a number of people at this year’s Kingston Pride that I need to finish editing and sell this book at next year’s Kingston Pride. The book is almost 200,000 words so that might take a while. I hope to have it proofread one more time by Winter and then I can start printing and hand binding them for sale next year. Starter Set The core cards that come bundled with my card game Quantum need to be finished. This includes the other eight main character images, the images of items including food and the borders and graphic design for the final cards. The Starter Set is set in South District Ascala and while I’m working on it I’m also going to do other content set in South District Ascala. Heart of Glass Chief among these Ascala projects is my current light romance novel Heart of...

 Hello. C J here. A few updates for today. I’m mostly taking the weekend off but I wanted these in print before I forgot. I’ve updated the Dragon Engine page and as usual with the Dragon Engine project I’ve amalgamated several ideas into one brand name. Imagine, Duskbringer and a few of my other game development projects make more sense being game modes in Dragon Engine. See the Dragon Engine page for more detail.  Also, the Google Play Store doesn’t regulate user generated content so long as there are safeguards and proper guidelines in place. The game has tools built in for user creativity and what players or users do with that is up to them. The first region I want to depict is South District Ascala and the characters who live there. I’ve added in some details about how quests are structured. There are separate types for social life and dating as well as scenes of romance. Check out the page for more. All of these can be user-generated with the existing maps and character m...

 Hello. C J here. I'm working on a new light romance novel called Heart of Glass. The chapters will be available for free as I finish them. I've added chapter one to the Novels Download link in its own folder named Heart of Glass. I'm off for the weekend after this post. I've got some recreational reading to catch up on, streaming TV to watch if I get around to it and the city I live in is throwing another street party on Saturday. I'll have more stuff here on Monday. Happy weekend! C J Mcpherson 

 Hello. C J here. I have a surprise for you all. I’ve been working with an idea for a while, an idea for a novel. I don’t like posting anything here that isn’t final draft but I have the first 500 words of it done and I think I can run with it. Impossible Skyline will take a while to edit and the sequel will take a year or two to plan so I wanted something I can do faster. I keep thinking I should write a romance sometime. I think I have one started as of now. Welcome to Heart of Glass, my new fantasy romance project. It stars some of the 20 hero characters I have for the Quantum Starter Set. Mostly my plan is to focus on Blue and his housemates. Oh, right, it will be a gay romance by the way. Blue is gay. I had a thought though about the plot that I really like. The conventional model for a romance novel is that a weaker more timid main character, often female, meets a powerful and wealthy character, normally male. I want to do the opposite. Blue is one of the most wealthy and pow...

 Hello. C J here. Ascala the city in the Legend Setting may look a lot like modern day Earth. It is, in many ways, but it’s a bit different as well. The Legend Setting was never Earth and the galaxy it’s in, Creation, is not the Milky Way. Where is Creation compared to the Milky Way? I don’t know. Make it up. It will never come up in the stories. Ascala is roughly 25 years in our past in terms of technology. Their version of the internet, called the Interspace, is different. It’s built on a coding language called Square, which is in turn designed to run on their magitech CPUs made of blue crystal. Red crystal also exists and is not used for this job. The Interspace looks like the internet 25 years ago. People have cell phones but smartphones are decades away. AI doesn’t really exist. Video games though are everyone’s favourite weekend activity and there are a ton of them. Square can also 3D print magic using a device called a spellwriter. These devices are common items and have man...

 Hello. C J here. I've made a new folder in the Downloads section for the gem cards that are played to pay for spells and other cards in Quantum. The folder is under the Quantum folder in the OneDrive link and is named Gem Cards. First I've added a list of all the food items the Astral setting has and how the Astral setting makes some of its processed foods. There will be more here over time including documents about how the setting makes its armour, clothing and tools. More soon. C J Mcpherson   

 Hello. C J here. I’ve just uploaded the first full deck of Food of the World cards for Lands of Creation to the OneDrive link in the Downloads page. These five recipes are the most essential recipes I could draw from Spanish and Mexican cuisine, as well as many other world cuisine that learned from those regions of the world. This is the first completed deck of Food of the World cards, an ongoing series of setting-themed recipe cards that will accompany all of the card game Expansions. This set of recipes is named Food of the Arid Lands. Lands of Creation is the first Expansion planned after the Starter Set and it aims to present generic fantasy cultures for each of the game’s ten biome types. It also has strong educational roots, depicting where our food comes from, what grows in what climate and, with the help of anthro characters for the fantasy cultures, what animals live in what climate. Quantum has strong educational goals and I really want to make Quantum an approachable wa...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve got a new free sample up today. It’s my first batch of final draft food cards and these real life recipes will be in the upcoming Quantum Expansion Five Million Strong, focusing on the culture and lives of the modern day setting region Ascala. Five Million Strong is a while away but I have the time to start working on it now, especially the food. Each Quantum Expansion will include food cards like these themed after the nation they depict. I have some story to go along with these. These are essence beverages, the Ascala version of a virgin mixed drink. Mages and other supernatural being in the city love them. These are all things I’ve made in real life and I tried to line up their game effects with the health benefits of the vitamins in them. They are food cards, so you can permanently discard one of them per in-game day to gain large stat bonuses for the entire next in-game day. All of my recipes that aren’t in Cooking With a Wolf will be presented as cards ...

 Hello. C J here. Finally my job here settled into a normal pattern. I have books. I write books. Sometimes I read books for ideas. Then I draw something when I have an idea for a picture. Patterns. Good. Also my Pride Story post has got a lot of views in the few days. This is good to see. I’m glad for the community and teamwork that the Pride event brings out in people. I have some updates about my current Heart and Fur projects. I’m also working slowly in the background on the Quantum Starter Set. The Quantum Starter Set needs art for all ten playable characters, all of the secondary characters and all of the item and food cards. The text for them all is mostly done. I might actually get the game ready to play test within half a year. My other priority is editing Impossible Skyline for sale at next year’s Pride. Impossible Skyline has a diverse cast and the two main characters are a study in new ways of depicting teamwork. Their lives collide and intersect in ways that neither of...

 Hello. C J here. Going to Kingston Pride has helped me decide what I’m working on next now that I can do product design and writing in any order. This required the core rules of all six game lines be done and out for play testing. Now for what’s to come in the next year or so. First up, I need a novel to sell at next Pride. This will be in print with my home printing and hand binding setup. Find more about that in the pages menu this blog has. I’m going to proofread Impossible Skyline, my fourth novel, for sale first. My first novel will be for sale later, at least several years. My other two novels are The Astral Chronicle One and Two. These two I might wait on until I write the other seven and sell them as a hardcover omnibus. All of these will be up for free PDF download as well when they’re done. So, priority one, Impossible Skyline. Now that I’m back to working with that genre, the strange industrial engineering project of a narrative that book is, I’m also going to start pla...

 Hello. C J here. I’m an introvert. I expected this last week of Pride setup and Pride attendance would burn me out. I planned a week off for it starting today. Nope. Not a bit. It turns out healthy community is rejuvenating even for someone who normally prefers a good book. Time for more non stop people time. The math and writing part of this job takes an hour or two a week these days and I’m not launching until next Pride anyway so I have time. I’ve completed step one, leave your home office. Now for step two, have coffee with a friend. This sounds like a reasonable skill progression tree to be following. And to any furries out there reading this, remember that the rest of the world considers us to be the cool people. I don’t think they know we forget that. We typically have a lot of money, support animal charities and have all the best art in our back pocket on a phone. Furries and the entirety of Pride are really exactly the same, just one has fur. So next steps. I’m going to s...

  Hello. C J here. I have a few notes about my next few company moves. I have a few 18+ graphic novels somewhere on the internet that I'm going to add to the Downloads page here. They're very consent driven and have actual stories. I may print some for next year Pride to go with my first novel release. The theme for my launch year is going be Hard Open. I'm also now planning and will start typing tomorrow or Monday the Heart and Fur Modern book and the ten climate manuals. My first idea so far for the Modern book is a dice roll plot and story generator for weekends and days off. Roll the weather, going shopping, finding a street fair, buying shoes, getting lunch, running into an old friend, or more. Then roll for what story or game play benefits this has by how many hours you do it for. For the climate books I was inspired today to make them about fictitious indigenous cultures cooperating and governing themselves. I want to show a world free of hate and full of empathy he...

 Hello. C J here. It's been a wild week of hanging out in Downtown Kingston, shopping and now finally today actual Kingston Pride. It's been an amazing week of mostly vacation. Here's the rundown with images as well. I started just trying to find something rainbow to wear. This led me to the Downtown business region near Market Square. Here I went into Martello On Brock, caught up with its owner and agreed to make and send them a digital portfolio of my soft pastel art. They were also so interested in my singing voice as well. Next up was the Princess Plaza region by the Metro. Here I got a cool down coffee at Ballzack's. It came with a collectible Canada metal mug. Finally my family tracked town a rainbow shirt ad Giant Tiger. Now, finally, for actual Pride. The day of I got down here early, before the crowed set in. I found the LUSH booth and grabbed some free bath bombs. I toured the massive information and sales sections and found a nice indigenous individual sellin...

 Hello. C J here. We’re wrapping up Pride Week here in Kingston and the Islands Ontario with the actual parade and arts market later today. This reminds me so much of a furry convention that I’m having to double check internally what city I’m in. This worked out well to get me the week off I needed from game design after finishing like everything enough to playtest. I’m looking for playtest teams starting this next few weeks and I’ll be relying on Facebook furry groups and their chats to do so. So next. Food of the World is still being researched and I’m still working on animating some of the recipes as videos. Those videos will be here and samples will be on Facebook. The Quantum Starter Set is being worked on and after that Quantum will move onto Lands of Creation. The Starter Set contains enough to play the game but Lands of Creation will vastly expand what it is capable of. Food of the World will be presented as recipes on cards and the first batch will be part of this Expansio...

 Hello. C J here. In the midst of Pride Week here in Kingston I’ve had some time to celebrate and also to think. Maybe I forget to explain my motives here. Actually, I think I’ve never done that. We Fandom as a whole like things. We are capable of articulating that liking of things together and to each other and anyone who does that long enough is going to know how to make more of those things. Video games, furry art, Minecraft Add Ons, these things we can all agree we like. This may sound so utterly redundant that you may wonder why I’m stating it here. Clearly, you all clicked on this post because you’re Fandom of something. The generations above mine often find themselves in the furry fandom or others like the Minecraft Forums. I’m 31 for reference. My generation and the ones near mine compose most of these communities. We play video games, enjoy art and understand that code and software design can make a good living. A lot of people don’t grasp these. So, what do they do with t...

 Hello. C J here. It’s time for video game design news again. I’m switching my video game development projects over to GDevelop and I’m making plans to finally get started on my first game. This will be happening after Pride week and after I recover from Pride week. My main project is still the epic open world fantasy RPG Dragon Engine. This will be years away because I need most of the Quantum cards for the regions and locations done for the entire setting to be done first. Dragon Engine is still actively being planned, the script is still being written and the crafting engine is still being designed in the background at all times. Quantum will speed up in terms of production speed once the core set is done. This leaves a number of other video game projects. Once I have some more understanding and design knowledge of the Hell setting region in the Legend Setting I’ll start on Duskbringer. Duskbringer is going to be remarkably pleasant despite being set in the Legend Setting Hell s...

 Hello. C J here. So, I’m an author. I write books in addition to games. My original goal of the Legend Setting was to have a setting for all of my novel and book ideas that needed a physical location and a list of characters. The whole thing kind of built more of itself than I expected and now I own one of the largest tabletop game settings in existence and certainly the most inclusive one. This all requires inspiration. Now most people sit back and wait for inspiration to come to them. This is all fine and whatever but really, there’s a better way. Anyone I meet who has a lack of inspiration or story ideas needs to get reading. How do I get ideas for stories or game narratives? I read books. Lots of books. Really I don’t care what the book is I care that it’s long and in text format. Authors steal. We steal everything we do. This is a well known fact of the profession. And we are good at it. Take an existing character, change their outfit by one colour and rename them and no one ...

 Hello. C J here. I've been doing some more concept art today and I took a break from the modern day themed region Ascala to do something totally different. Ascala is one of many settled landmasses in the Astral, a life bearing nebula around the middle of the galaxy Creation. The galaxy Creation is the whole of the Legend Setting. Other nebula bear life though, and several of them have united together into the vast and powerful empire Nebula. One of the citizens of Nebula, Bathaa Brightspark, is currently in the Astral and is one of the ten player characters in the Starter Set. Bathaa Brightspark is a long way from home but he's looking for something and the Astral has it. Nebula itself is composed of a variety of races and not everyone in those regions of the galaxy is fond of its rules. The galaxy is home to a lot of species and today I'm doing concept art of the Hive. The Hive isn't a race per se, and they have no genetic ancestry to any of the main playable races. I...