Weekend Writer: Writing Update

Hey all, Sam here.

I have not had much to say around here when it comes to writing progress. I wish I had a better answer than saying that life keeps getting in the way. But sometimes that’s just what it is.

I wanted to participate in the Write Brave Challenge and try outlining up these two person RPG romances that David and I have been loosely discussing for a couple years now. But perhaps that was putting too much of a challenge on myself considering I haven’t been doing great with writing output anyway. I was adding the need to collaborate with my partner (when he has been either deeply focused on video games or deeply focused on 3d printing), as well as outlining when I’ve never really been much of an outline using writer before.

I know I still want to work on the RPG romances because it sounds like a fun project. I just have to wait until a time when my partner is less focused on other geeky hobbies, because I don’t want to take away that joy from him. And that’s fine. We’re both invested in so many geeky hobbies that sometimes it is difficult to squeeze everything in, so we have to rotate hobbies in and out for chunks of time.

But I guess that means if I want to get words on the page then I need to have something else to focus my time on.

Considering that I want to work on the novella/short novel currently titled “When Light Meets Dark” (I still need to figure out a name I like a little more) for PaWriCo 2025, I think that means I need to work on my contemporary romance/epic fantasy mash-up that is my TTRPG Romance novel inspired by my partner and I’s real-life love story. Here, I’ll include my silly not-official at all mock-up cover.

And….I actually have news on that.

For a handful of years now the idea that became this story was one that I titled “Roll for Romance.” I loved that title. It fit the story so well. But then there was a TTRPG podcast called Roll for Romance and a trad-pubbed book was titled Roll for Romance and another book series (and indie-pubbed one) was titled Roll for Romance….and I found myself thinking that I needed to figure out a new title.

Naming things can be difficult. I know this as a writer and I also know this as a TTRPG Game Master. When you write fantasy or design fantasy worlds for roleplay there is so much to name. Not just characters, but also towns and businesses and magic items…and you want them to sound cool and to make sense in the world. It’s a lot.

I wasn’t laser focused on thinking up a name, but the idea that I needed a new name kept circulating in the back of my mind.

I am extremely happy to say that on Friday night, the new title came to me, just popped into existence while I was scrolling through social media. I ran it past David, since this is based on the two of us, and he loved it too. So yay! Roll for Romance has a new title!

Now my debate here as I type this is….do I share the new title, or do I hold it back until I finish my drafting of the book?

At the very least I’ll do a little storytime now talking about how the new title was inspired into existence. I can blame the official Dungeons & Dragons social media account and the release of a new Taylor Swift album. Pretty much everyone is trying to do their own spin on the song titles or a spoof/parody of them. And Wizards of the Coast is no exception, it seems.

They had a bunch of art from various D&D adventures and products and they gave TTRPG spins to each of Taylor’s song titles. The one that ended up inspiring me was an image captioned with the song title spoof Actually Rollmantic (based on the song Actually Romantic).

Now, while Actually Rollmantic would have potentially been a fun title, it didn’t sing to me, but the idea of Rollmantic/Rollmance did…and so a few words sparked into my mind. And I nervously held onto those words for like a half-hour until David got off work and came up to the car.

Y’all, I was so nervous to tell him my idea. What if he didn’t like it? But when I cautiously said it to him, he got a look on his face like oooooh…..that’s good.

So my book has a new title (which I think I’ll announce after I at least finish the overall rough draft), and honestly I’m feeling a bit more excited to work on it again. There’s still so much more to draft. I’m taking this book in chunks right now. My focus at the moment is the in-game fantasy adventure, so I’m writing the entirety of the adventuring party’s quest to defeat evil and save the world (or at least their small part of it). And after I finish that, I still have to write the out-of-game contemporary romance part. I’m significantly more nervous about that because I have been pretty much a fantasy writer my whole life. Yes, I’ve dabbled in some more urban fantasy/contemporary fantasy, but contemporary romance has never really been on my radar for writing. I’ve read a decent number of them though.

Anyway, this has been a long rambly post of very minimal writing updates, but hopefully I will actually have more writing progress to talk about over the next few months.

And honestly, I think I want to try and bring back Weekend Writer in 2026. They were some of my favorite posts to write up, even if they take the most time of all of my posts. So hey, are there any writing craft books or accessories that you adore and think I should add to my resource toolbox? I have a lot of craft books and resources, but I’m always looking for more. Let me know in the comments!

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All right, well that is all from me for today. Thank you so much for stopping by today to check out my wordy meander through the writing process. I appreciate you, and I will be back soon with more geeky content.