Another update; things have been stuck on "Ahead Full" for a few days now:

Lunch Thursday with bigfootcountry and Jeremy, talking about Savage Tide. I'll be cranking up the design very soon.

Finished the Steam & Brass adventure also Thursday, and shipped the PDF to the patrons. I need to figure out if it's worth sending out review copies, and who might be the logical reviewers for such a thing. The pay was very modest, but I enjoyed the project.
  All my initial fears of clashing with patrons, acrimonious drama-moments, and creative collapse were entirely overblown. I met some great people, and did some writing I'm rather proud of. Plus, it forced me to articulate a theory of design a litte more clearly. I'm rather at odds with the current theory over at WotC, but apparently I'm not the only one.
  Next Open Design project announcement tomorrow, most likely.

Read "Farthing" by Jo Walton; slow start, strong ending, clearly setting up the sequel. It is the "alternate history drawing-room murder mystery" I was promised, but it does some strange things with gender and keeps a lot of huge events offstage (a mistake, I think). Excellent period details, smashing use of Britishisms, but I was hoping for something else.

Running the fourth installment of the Egyptian "Blood of Pharoah" tonight. I'll have a writeup tomorrow.

Zero real progress on fiction for two weeks now. I'm deeply annoyed, but can't seem to carve out time from the work schedule (insane), the freelance schedule (ditto), and the house/parenting schedule (typical). Must make time to write minimum 500 words of fiction/day again.

Oh, and I found this neat guide how to draw steampunk machines (or just describe the engines properly), by someone who understands them. The fact that he's an artist helps as well. Steampunk short story, here I come.