Question Princesses of the Pizza Parlor

Yanno, I might as well just make a thread to promote this by itself. Anyhoo, this is my original fiction serial novel on Amazon Kindle, available by the episode or in paperback collection (vol. 2 coming soon!).

The basic premise is, what would I have done if my tween niece asked me to run a D&D game? The answer somehow involved princesses. Lots of princesses. Princesses all the way down, in fact. For an idiosyncratic meaning of the word, there's an average of 1.3 new princesses introduced or revealed in every episode, not including the original five party members.



"Princesses Don't Do Summer School"

"The game-master's favorite niece wants to try a fantasy role-playing game, but insists on a few things. First and foremost, everyone has to be a princess. Her friends want to be (in no particular order) a witch, Snow White, Sailor Moon, and anywhere but there. What's an uncle to do? So he gets together his dice, his maps, and his source books, and tries to show the girls his idea of a fun time. Too bad it doesn't necessarily jive with how they want to play."



"Princesses Are Never Lost (Everything Else Is Simply Misplaced)"

Having survived their first gaming experience, the Princesses are back for more! But when they end up lost in the woods, arguments both in and out of character threaten to throw the adventure into chaos. Can they get their act together and find a way out of trouble before they end up as plant food?



"Princesses Don't Play Nice"

They've had a couple of adventures now, and the princesses are feeling pretty confident. In real life, however, a classmate is butting into the next gaming session, and her own princess won't take no for an answer. It's up to everyone else to play nice, even if their princesses won't.

"Grandmothers and Other Fearsome Encounters"

So far, the princesses have survived angry ants, vampiric roses, and the misguided machinations of one of their own. But now a greater threat looms, casting its shadow over the entire game table. Can the girls and their princesses survive a visit from the scariest lady in the land?



"Boyfriends and Other Minor Annoyances"

It's been a busy adventure for the princesses and their players so far. Bugs slain, treasure found, ghosts exorcised; all in a day's work for these princesses. But can they handle the addition of a sixth kid around the table, much less a boy?

The game master's willing to give him a shot, and most of the girls are on-board with this, but all it takes is one unhappy girl for a game to fall to pieces...



"Banquets and Other Social Disasters"

The six kids around the gaming table have been having a grand old time for their last few adventures, and they thought the game couldn't get crazier after the mass riot in the last session. The uncle running the show decided to prove them wrong. Because there's more to the game than just battles...



"Princesses in the Darkest Depths"

In their seventh adventure, the ladies (and gentleman) around the table have tired of the social disasters and are clamoring for some excitement. Some adventure. Some dungeons to explore.

So the game master brings in a specialist in dungeons to help run things, but it's apparent from the start that the guy's a poor fit for the pizza parlor's gaming table. Who will learn the most from the experience, the kids playing the game, or the adults running it?



"Princesses on the Broken Sea"

After much toil, trial, and plot derailment, it looks like the princesses are finally on track to the next major plot point. They just have to catch a ride on a ship and sail the seas for a few weeks. What's the worst that could happen?

At the pizza table, the game master knows just what will happen. He also knows when to change it all up if the plan's not going as expected. Not that he'll ever tell the girls that. It would be too easy.

They get to found out the hard way.

And for completion's sake, here's the paperback collection, #1:



Yes, I re-used the first episode cover art, because the artist did a great job with it.

(Her name's Astrid Vujnovic, and she does wonderful commissions, BTW)

So check 'em out! If you've got Kindle Unlimited, they're on there, waiting for you. Let me know what you think, leave a review, tell your friends, etc.

And as a preemptive thank you, here's a baby picture.



(Help daddy tell more stories!)

Cuuute Babby!

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Book 8 is out. Gonna buy tonight! Cover's so different! Environment background!

Book 7 Katelyn looks real unenergetic. Weird, compared to other covers? Then again, she shy.

And yay! Public forum to talk about PPP! Whooo!

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Note these in site's Published section if not there already? *shrugs*

Well, read through Ep.7 again and consider just which scene is playing out on that cover...

Yeah, she would be a bit sad at that point. Massive understatement.

And Bianca's calmed down, instead of at the peak, so she isn't going full Witch for the picture.

*nods*

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Trying so hard not to drop spoilers since I dunno who else has read.

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Hmm... How long is the series now? In wordcount? Or maybe in Pages...

I don't think it's enough for me to get Doorstopper from this, but I dunno.

I guess I should just tally up the Collection's pages and average it out over the books.

292 x 2.6 = ~760 pages.

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Hmm... That title pattern... Does it cycle? Every 6 books, it loops back and becomes "Princesses [X] [Y] [Z]"?

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Link to the Collection? Or am I just not seeing it?

I do have a word count for the series, but it's likely to be a little off one way or another for the paperback collections, since I had to go through those and do strategic line editing to eliminate justified page-setting oddities and/or keep the scene break images from the bottoms of pages.

Listed numerically, with the side-quests showing as 'a' and 'b':

1: 19399
2: 20281
3: 20417
4: 23150
5: 24345
6: 22522
a: 11246
7: 30635
8: 22065
9: 24231
b: 11211

total: 229502


average (main stories): 23005

This isn't counting the current side project, which takes place alongside episode 10. That one's already up to maybe 40k on wordcount, but I won't be sure until I type the next section up. It will probably end up being as long as any three episodes together, at the least.


For extras, here are the various character classes that have shown up thus far in the stories (several of them multiple times and/or with widely different archetypes applied):

ranger
barbarian
druid
witch
cleric
psychic
wizard
sorceress
alchemist
paladin
cavalier
rogue
psion
bard
shifter
magus
mesmerist
sharpshooter
brawler
occultist
war priest
kineticist / warlock-ish
investigator

Also, re: titles, I liked the idea of keeping things in trios as a way of grouping them up for collections. First trio, things princesses (don't) do. Second, situations they find themselves in. Third, places they go. Fourth, NPCs they meet. Fifth... still trying to decide. I haven't finalized the titles for episodes 10-15 yet.

Well, I found my visual representation of Lady Dee-Dah from episode 4...