Sincerity

I blame Tiffani’s husband Nick for this. (In a roundabout way, this makes it my fault because I’ve known him since Ben Franklin and I destroyed Zombie Napoleon’s phylactery at midnight during the conjunction atop the pyramid at Giza, but that’s another story) He’s responsible for my take on sincerity.

Nick has always been a fan of Japanese culture, including the samurai and samurai ethics. Something he showed me once contained the samurai view on sincerity; meaning that one did not act unless one was perfectly sincere about the action, and that some samurai would not even speak of something they were ‘going to do’, only about what they had done.

I rather liked that. There are plenty of people out there who talk about what their intentions are, but I’ve always admired the ones that do, not just talk. So I’ve tried to adopt the same policy of not really talking about theoretical things until they have some measure of reality, and even then discussing them in a limited way until they are indeed real.

You’ll notice that influence in the Blacksteel Press schedule. We’re working on a lot of things that we’ll talk about - books, modules, you name it - but if something is on the public schedule, it means that work has started on that product. It’s not a theory, it’s not something we might do someday, it’s in progress and will arrive when completed.

There are LOTS of things that aren’t on that public schedule, because I don’t want to talk about what we’re going to do, but what we’re actually doing. We have a lot of ideas and projects that are coming together, but those will come to light when the time is right, and not before.

So, that’s my take on sincerity, and how it affects what we show on our upcoming project schedule.