Author: Jordan

So, this is a weird post. I never actually confirmed the fate of Odd & Ends, mostly because it was very hard to come to terms with. I fell out of love with a very difficult project I wrote for free, so I laid it to rest. And yet, I still think of Donovan, Karessa, and Nestor quite often, and have high hopes that it will one day return.

If you’re a new reader and find this post discouraging, I would still encourage you to read Odd & Ends if you’re interested. It was often more episodic than serialized, and I wrote a ton of stuff that I am proud of.

For now, I have a new project, and if you enjoy the strange humor and pleasant world of Solkin, I think there is a good chance you will like this, too.

Slice and Dice is a podcast where my friends and I play Dungeons and Dragons. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, think of it like this: it’s an interactive fiction podcast where my friends play the protagonists and I make up the world around them and occasionally try to kill them. It’s funny, it’s cute, and it’s about delivering pizza.

Much like how Odd & Ends is about the life of a hero after he’s done heroing, Slice and Dice is about a world of adventurers but we focus not on them, but on the two cats and a gnome who deliver them pizza while they’re off on quests.

If you’re interested, the website is here and you can find all the ways to listen here.

I hope you like it, and I hope we all go back to Skymoore someday. As always, thank you for reading, and for listening!

Most days, there was a lot of downtime in Odd & Ends, which meant there was a lot of time for Donovan Allman to worry about how much downtime there was in Odd & Ends. Like most cycles, it was unpleasant. Continue reading “The Soul of Skymoore, Part One” →

Anika Rosenthal LVIII came from a long line of journalists. The very first Anika Rosenthal was a Grandian reporter who covered the famed commune of the Good King Dundermoat. When Seamoore was founded in its place, Anika Rosenthal II became the founder of The Lighthouse, Seamoore’s first newspaper (which was later demolished in the transition from Seamoore to Skymoore, when city planners mistakenly tore down the newspaper instead of the actual lighthouse). And, save for a few rebellious Anika’s who have been ceremoniously excommunicated for becoming lawyers, soldiers, and musicians, every Anika Rosenthal thereafter has worked for some newspaper or another. Continue reading “The Fountain of Thought” →

“What about Ciara?” Peter asked, chucking a rock into the pond. It skipped all the way across, and even though it wasn’t a very large pond, we were still impressed. Teysha whooped. I clapped. “What about Ciara?” he asked again, after he’d soaked up all the praise.

Teysha snorted. “I like the fairer sex, but not that fair.” She took a particularly grotesque bite of her roasted duck, a sort of physical punctuation. Continue reading “Eulogy for a Hero” →

Okay, I know it’s a bad look when three of the last 5 posts on here are not chapters, but bear with me, new readers.

At least through March, Odd & Ends is going be biweekly. When I started doing this project in August 2016, I was unemployed and just generally didn’t have much going on. Now I’m working, I have a more active social life, and I have some other things going on that take time away from this free web series I write. Putting out approximately 2,000 words I’m proud of every week is a lot of work, and I just haven’t been able to make it happen recently.

So anyway, I promise this is not the coming of the end for this series or anything like that, I just need to readjust here, and hopefully I’ll get back on the weekly road soon enough.

Thanks for understanding!

On Nestor Pinkly’s list of the top two-hundred and eighty-six best things ever made, item number sixty-four read “change, good.” The second word was added in eight years after the list’s conception, when it occurred to him that some changes were ultimately unfavorable.

Counted among these unfavorable changes was the sudden absence of Nestor’s automaton creation and friend, Dovetail. They had vanished suddenly days prior, when they set out on a quest to obtain an opal for a customer at Odd & Ends. While he admired their dedication, he did miss them terribly. Continue reading “A Brief Update on the Location of Dovetail” →

“Due to budgetary restraints, all light sources and paper have been temporarily or permanently excised from meetings of the Skymoore PTA. If you are a creature who depends on light to see, we recommend providing your own illumination. Sorry for the inconvenience.” Continue reading “A Meeting of the Skymoore PTA” →