Game Nouveau

Deus Hex Machina

2011-04-23T10:27:00.000-07:00

In my last post I explained briefly what my Script Frenzy project is about, but I realized that just like my actual SF writing, the post got derailed. Therefore I figured it was appropriate to give a little more time to DHM.

Deus Hex Machina is set in a future Orange County where the old bones of what we know as landmarks in the OC are still visible underneath new construction. Irvine, I imagine, will remained a planned community for centuries to come, and exploring what that sort of regimented village system will look like in 200 years is kind of fascinating.

The project started with a URL, strangely enough. My husband loves collecting website names for future use. When he stumbled upon deushexmachina.com and realized it wasn't taken, he snatched it up and put it in his virtual back pocket for later use. Around that time I was trying to find my new Makhaira, that project that would sit by itself as a pure, whole story. I wanted something equally as moving, but there's something about lightning and bottles and the fallibility of corks. So I began thinking about what this story would be like, did some searches to see if anyone had written a story using that name, and realized that the sum of its parts really told what it was about.

Deus: God -- This tells me that this is a religious story, at least in some form.
Hex: Magic -- This immediately brings up interesting ideas about magic in our real world and its consequences.
Machina: Machines -- This was the part of the name that told me I was dealing with a futuristic story, and would be heading back to my Sci-Fi roots instead of staying in my Fantasy comfort zone.

Discussing this all with my husband (AKA Mr Sounding Board), he ended up writing a phrase up in the white board in our office: "God enchants the machine." While it wasn't the ultimate direction I was going to take with the project, it did give me a focus from which to start.

The first log line went something like this: What if a girl who worships technology finds evidence of magic in a future version of Orange County? It was a great jumping off point, and as MSB had suggested that I write Sci-Fi from a religious perspective since spirituality is so important to me, I started with the idea that magic was not only foreign to the protagonist, but heretical. If magic is heretical, the religion must be based on something that represents the opposite of magic, and makes sense that would be technology.

At this point I had a basic idea of who I was dealing with and the problem she was going to have to face. Around this time I also came up with the idea that the name would also represent the literal tropes in the story as well: There would be a god, there would be a Hex and there would be a Machina. I didn't want these concepts to be completely verbatim, but I did kind of like the idea of riffing off the name in this way. So I thought, what would be so heretical about magic to a technology-based religion? What does it mean to talk about God to someone who only worships the mechanical? And how would they interact with someone from outside their religion who is actively seeking the heretical?

The core of the themes were laid out from these lines of reasoning, and the story began to take shape. Take a girl who spends her life as a sanctioned Hexer (hacker on a fully immersive version of the Internet), send her out to investigate a magical occurance, add in a Machina (mech) rider who's out to make a name for himself and wrap it in the context of religion. Simple enough.

My hexer is Isidore RAM, who has spent her life in a monastery built under Aliso Viejo worshipping The Circuit and policing The Grid and keeping it free from contamination. She's going on a journey, and she's not sure where she'll end up, but along the way she's going to find the true meaning of spirituality, what it means to be human, and how precious life can be.

Script Frenzy has turned into fiction Frenzy

2011-04-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

I started this month out like I did last year, planning on writing a graphic novel script for Script Frenzy. The interesting thing is though, that while progress is being made on the current SF project -- a sci-fi exploration of futuristic orange county and technologies influence on religion -- I have also gotten the urge to work on other projects. And so I let myself.

Each day I spend some time on the couch with my laptop, usually watching some movie or other on Netflix. Depending on what I watch, I usually get inspired to start writing in one of five different projects. Yesterday, for instance, I planned out the missing chapter for Makhaira (last year's Script Frency project -- I know, it only took me 12 months to get around to it), and then inspired by the love affair between John Keats and Fanny Brawn after watched Bright Star, I wrote a romance scene (or half of one really) for Shadow of the Dragon. I'm still trying to find the core of SotD, since I don't feel that the protagonist has a voice of her own yet. Being tossed about as flotsam on the sea of circumstance was okay for Mylena's journey through Shadow of the Owl, but now we're both older women, women who no longer can stand to sit passively by while life happens to us. I know I wouldn't take it, and neither would she.

So I have to find her center, that reason that she needs to be in the Dark Plains. Every protagonist needs to be vitally important to the world they exist in, and although she was vitally important to Shadowhaven, now that she's transported into a new world, there seems little reason to have her there other than as a romantic interest for the Rogue Knight.

That's a big problem, and one I have to fix before I can consider continuing the story. Trouble is, as my husband points out, there's a lot of great stuff in the current incarnation of the manuscript, and to drastically change the story, to for instance, perhaps remove the current main PoV character so that Mylena can get into the spotlight, makes most of what has been written obsolete. But Mylena needs to be the star of her own story, she deserves that much for all that I've put her through.

I think the problem is that ultimately Mylena's story is my own. As a young girl she has very little say in how her life turns out, and now that she's older she needs to take charge of life although she doesn't know how. I recently went to a writer's conference here in Irvine, where a couple female authors talked about what true feminine strength is. That feminine strength comes from having a strong support system and relying on them to help you through the challenges you face. I've never had that support system myself, so I don't have a frame of reference for that particular brand of strength. I guess Mylena suffers from that too, in that I don't know how to give her healthy coping mechanisms. I can only give her what I know. Hopefully a flawed heroine who has to deal without a support system, who doesn't know how to go about getting one even, is interesting enough to read about. But I'm sure I will get flack from these writers for a solitary woman trying to work her way in the world without friends to rely on.

That's my current dilemma. I think I need to do more research, read some more female protagonists in fantasy settings, and think about what makes her vital to the Dark Plains. Until I know that, all I can do is write the love story -- although that's pretty fun on its own. I've been craving really well written romance stories of late, and those that I have found have hardly been satisfying. I realized then that what I needed to do was to build my own -- when you find a need in the market, fill it yourself. The romance between Mylena and Arturis will therefore be one of open communication, deep passion, and a (spoiler alert) happy ending. I know, it's so gauche of me to want an epic romance to end in something other than tragic death but it's my story, and these are the things that I have been craving for years now. So why not give them to Mylena?

I think it's time to curl up with the laptop and see which story gets some love. Sort of exciting really. I can't wait.

Planning for Athan's Song

2010-08-19T15:28:00.000-07:00

I'm trying my hand at a fan fiction contest, something I'm not entirely good at. Short fiction daunts me, perhaps because I never bothered to learn the ins and outs of a quality short story.

I figured it would be best to do some character studies, plan out who these people are, in hopes that that will inform how they react to the situations they are in.

Here's Athan Morse:

My father built the heard from stock stolen from bandits in Duskwood, long before the war when sunlight still shone upon that blighted land. He told me stories of waiting for them along the roadways and the coasts, catching them off guard as they prayed on the innocent. Justice he called it, with a smile that set his long angled face alight. Because the horses came from such wild lands though, his stock was always ran hot-blooded, and more than a little dangerous. Breaking in a yearling would take weeks instead of days, weeks filled with long hours and endless bruises and scrapes. I was always sure that they would break him instead, but every time it would be him riding them through the hills and not the other way around.

He was a quiet man, preferring to fill his days with silence. In some ways I could see why he preferred the company of the herd. A horse doesn’t talk back, a horse can’t argue, can’t disappoint you. She’s just four legs and a heart of fire. Seeing how he looked at the horses as they circled the paddock, I could see why Mother left. He had only one true love, and none would be able to claim his heart the way the herd had.

In a way, I imagine she was once as wild as the horses, but that was one filly he could never truly tame. She came into his life, loved him fiercely, and left when he showed her no love in return. I never knew her, only the scent that remained on her clothes in the attic. Cinnamon and exotic perfumes from across the sea clung to a shawl and a pair of leather gloves. They were all I had left of her, well that and my dark eyes.

From the time that I was small I knew that one day the herd would be mine. At first I was proud, like any son would be, knowing that their father intended for them to carry on the family tradition. But once I was older, I felt strangely disquieted about the whole thing. It was as if the herd were my father’s concubine, and I expected to take her in when he could no longer hold her close. No child should stand in his father’s shadow and feel such discomfort. Still, the horses were all I’d known. Every year we would drive down a section of the best stock for sale in Moonbrook, and I would marvel at how wide and flat and desolate the rest of Westfall really was. I’d chafe realizing there were no protective hills surrounding me, and would only again feel comfortable when were again up in the Dagger Hills heading home.

The herd was my father’s life, and they were also the death of him. I was sixteen when Van Cleef’s men arrived on our doorstep. Had they demanded anything else, money, food, even me, my father would have given it them without a whimper. But they asked for horses, specimens strong enough to haul wagons with Light knows what in them, and he refused. He refused and they beat him for it, beat him to death right there in the paddock, with his beloved horses whinnying in fear around him. They beat me too for trying to defend him, and cast my unconscious body into the nearby brook. Had I not been facing up I most definitely would have drowned. When I awoke, I found myself bruised and battered, with the right side of my face slashed. I buried my father there on the hillside, and when they came the next time, I allowed them to take any of the horses they wanted.

Three Hundred and Sixty Five

2010-07-08T13:05:00.000-07:00

White satin

Blue roses and forever I do

I forgot my veil

You forgot your frown

Under the gazebo

Before your family and friends

A kiss – and the journey began

Not love’s journey, exactly

That began long ago

But a partnership

A calling

A binding together

Permanence within the ephemeral

Calm within the storm

I close my eyes and I can hear

The whispering of the waterfall

The beating of your heart

The beginning of our family

The beginning of eternity

Calling me home

Lead and I will follow

Leap and I will soar

A year passed like a day

And safe within your arms

A day seems as a year

- for Arthur, I love you

Second draft complete

2010-07-06T12:43:00.000-07:00

I've finished the last missing scene in Shadow of the Owl, and am finishing up the formatting of the manuscript. Man, was I misguided when I formatted this thing back in 2007! No wonder the agents I sent it to sent me instant rejections.

At this point in the game, I'm starting the real edit. The first two edits I went through were far from thorough. Initially I polished up the first chapter or so in preparation for the radio broadcast, and then I went through it filling in actual missing pieces. Now I need to dig through the thing, come out the other side and know what needs to be improved.

No, it's not an easy task, but luckily I've collected around me a bevvy of helpful books. I've been reading with interest Line by Line, The First Five Pages, and How to Get a Literary Agent. It's amazing how little I knew about the publishing industry as a whole. Whether or not I'm successful at publishing my book, it's been wonderful to learn the ins and outs of this world I'm attempting to become a part of.

Format waits for no man(die), so I need to get back to it. Let's hope this time I can at least get a request for a full before I get rejected. One can only hope.

My new job

2010-06-25T12:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I spent the day scavenging the Interwebs for literary agents that specialize in Fantasy works. It turns out, to my delight, that there are a few out there. This is great news, since my husband has tasked me with finishing SotO in prep for publishing rather than finishing other projects that are not nearly as complete. I am one scene away from completing the first draft, which sounds impressive until you realize I wrote the manuscript in 2007. Yeah, not so impressive after all. But I'm getting there.

I started, per Husband's suggestion, by outlining the story in bullet points, scene by scene. This gave me a great roadmap to see the story as an overall piece. It also gave me the chance to skim through the whole story, which I haven't really done, and I found plenty of parts I fell in love with all over again. I also found two scenes I really felt needed to be in the script before I could call it finished. I wrote one of those scenes a couple of days ago, and time willing will write the other today.

Which leads me to yesterday. Yesterday I was talking with one of my bloggers (I run a blog to pay the bills, or at least to try and help pay the bills), and in that conversation he gave me the name of his agent. Thankfully I ran over to her site and read through her sales, her desired submissions, and her suggestions for writers looking to publish. I've done this sort of research before, but never have I been this close before to being ready. Yes, I know I still have two huge edits in front of me. But I also have a nearly completed manuscript that I thoroughly enjoy reading, and think others will too. And so I research. I found that my blogger's agent wouldn't be the right one for me, but the links on her page led me great places, and so I bookmarked her blog for future reference.

I realize now, that this needs to be my job. I need to make it a job to work on this book until it's on a bookshelf, hopefully the bookshelf of the Borders down the street. This won't be one of those jobs that actually pays, since I figure it will cost money to travel to conferences to flog my work. But it if I want to call myself a novelist I have to do two things: I have to write novels, plural, and I have to publish them.

So there it is, progress, and, interestingly enough, my new job. I hired myself, gave myself the statement of work, and am already on the way toward reaching my goal. It's a job that works on a project basis, so that means I have to continue to generate projects so that I can keep my job. Fortunately, once I manage to get the first novel published, the second will be easier. Right? Right?

The Loss (a cinquain)

2010-05-26T12:59:00.000-07:00

Writing came so easily
But now I stumble and I start
The spark is gone, and within me
a buzzing silence floats 'tween brain and heart
keeping them from speaking, keeping them apart

Blizzcon and the super secret project

2010-03-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Blizzard announced that they will again hold BlizzCon 2010 in October this year, and not in Las Vegas like so many people were reporting. Good news for me, since we moved down to Anaheim in September. What's more interesting is the timing if it all, since my sources are telling me we can expect the Cataclysm expansion sometime this summer. If that is the case, Blizzard will have a dirth of gaming news sufficient to fill a two-day convention. Or will they?

We could look back two years at the 2008 BlizzCon, where Wrath was already released, and point and say "but then, there wasn't much WoW news, and they still held the con." True, but there was news about StarCraft II, huge news in fact, and plenty of info about Diablo 3. Last year we had starting content for Cataclysm, which would make it eternally silly not to have the expansion before this year's Blizzcon, since we've already had our hands on it. But looking forward, Diablo 3 is chugging along, so is StarCraft II -- heck we've been playing the beta for weeks. That tells me that what news they have can't be too huge, after all we know they are coming, and soon. Blizzard doesn't do release date announcements. It's done when it's done, remember? So why then, are they having the convention?

Some might say they are obligated at this point, being the kings of MMO, to hold court. I say that bigger news is coming. I say this because I heard first hand from a Blizzard staffer that they were witness to a spectacular demo of the Next Gen MMO project Blizzard has been cooking in their secret gaming kitchens for years now. A demo that blows the staff out of their chairs in 2009 says to me at least an announcement in 2010. They most likely already have something playable by now, and most importantly, they just announced a convention where there will be hardly any significant news about their main three franchises for the first time in the history of BlizzCon.

Get ready to be introduced to the fourth franchise my friends. I hear she's really pretty and smells like roses and wads of cash.

A writing update

2010-03-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

November crushed me. I was less than 500 words shy of winning Nanowrimo 2009, but time ran out and I was left with a great start on a novel, but no big win. Since then I've started writing professionally, freelance and worked one getting SotO in shape for publishing. I'm still working on it, as it turns out, since it needs one more storyline to feel truly flushed out. After that it will be time to relearn how to query and how to write a proper synopsis, since I don't like the one I wrote before.

More exciting, however, are my plans for next month. I've decided to try my hand at Script Frenzy, and am working on a really powerful graphic novel with my husband. I've entitled the project Makaira, the name of not the main character, but rather his wife. While the details are still sketchy, this will be the most astonishing thing I've written. I can't wait to work on it. Hopefully my talent for brevity will work in my favor this time.

On a side note, where is my Blogowrimo?

Taking a break from writing to write (14k)

2009-11-05T21:23:00.001-08:00

I'm reaching that wonderful place in Shadow of the Dragon (tentative title) where I am excited to write so I can find out what happens to my characters. It's both thrilling and a great bummer, because it's not like I can curl up in bed and read -- I have to write the damn thing first. But I love where I am, I love that I am bringing to life not only my story, but my husband's. Every day when I hand him my new chapters, he gets more excited to see his world flushed out. And that gets me more excited to write it for him.

The trick of it is, I sit down to write, and my undisciplined mind automatically thinks of all the things I could be doing instead. It's horrible, because when I'm not writing, all I do is think of writing.

Example: I recently signed up for culinary school, while my husband signed up for classes in game design. I felt very conflicted, because while I am very interested in food as an artistic expression, I know the game industry so well, having been a part of it for almost three years. It feels safe to me. So I debated for a couple days as to whether or not I should really take the game design classes instead. I mentioned this dilemma to one of the admission's councilors at school and she said: "What do you do because no one tells you?" I lied and said "I cook," but it isn't true. When no one tells me what to do, I write. When I told my husband about this, he said: "Yes, but you already have a degree that proves you can write. Now you need one to prove you can cook." He's right -- my undergraduate degree is in Creative Writing, albeit poetry.

That's what NaNoWriMo is all about: doing what you love even when the circumstances, the new videos games you receive in the mail, and your school schedule tell you otherwise. I won't say that I'm not getting sidetracked -- otherwise I wouldn't be blogging, now would I? All these words and I can't count a single one toward the dreaded 50k. Only...I didn't mention this to anyone but my husband...my goal isn't 50k, it's 100k, and I'm crazier than ever.

Well, I suppose it's time to find out what Arturis discovers in that great hulking cathedral he's just found in the forest. I hope it's something good.

Whole wheat bread, or at least the makings thereof

2009-10-30T12:03:00.001-07:00

Whole wheat -- mixing process 5, originally uploaded by Mandifesto.

Here's proof that I'm actually in culinary classes. What you'll find down in that churning mass are the elements that make up whole wheat bread. From basic yeast, water, honey and flour you can create something of substance, of power, something that will help sustain you. That is the beauty of cooking.

And the planning begins...again

2009-10-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

Last night was a talk night. We have this every once in a while, my husband and I, where we get on an idea and are energized by it. The resulting electricity is something that fuels my writing, my projects, gets me into trouble and gets me out of it. It might be that I'm turning back into a night person, or just that I need someone to bounce ideas off -- or it might be that this is in some ways a collaborative project, and this buzz in my head is a result of finally getting to scratch the surface on a cohesive timeline.

The trick of it is, Art and I have been building our own personal stories since we were children. Now we are weaving those stories together, and it gets tricky. Seriously tricky. Like we have to change the laws of nature tricky. SotO takes place in my world, which I've named Terra. It's like Earth but not Earth, as the clever name indicates. His story takes place on another world entirely, so you can see how connecting the two may seem unlikely. But see, there's this Well in my story, and strange things happen with that Well.

Does this mean that I won't have an outline done by Sunday? I'm not sure. But it does mean that I'm starting to get a grasp on it, and if I had to sit down and start writing today I could. That's a good feeling, because before last night I was feeling a little lost, a little out of sorts mucking around with someone else's world. Today, hopefully the discussion continues. I will, at least, attempt to sketch out the first few scenes so that I know I have somewhere to go in the first 20k regardless of how much planning happens beyond. Nanowrimo will happen, busy as I am. I promise it.

The countdown to Nano 2009

2009-10-27T23:08:00.000-07:00

Yes it's been a while since I blogged here, but now that I am no longer blogging professionally, I thought it high time to return to good ol' Game Nouveau. I am currently working the skeleton of a sequel to my 2007 novel, tentatively entitled Shadow of the Rose. This will be the first of the novels in the series to be set in a completely new world, one created by my husband. It's a massive challenge, writing inside someone else's world, but I realized something yesterday: I can make it my own, and if he doesn't like what I make of it, then this will stay unofficial fan fiction instead of canon and lore.

Tonight I am sitting down doing some world building, even though the outline is far from finished. I figured that these sorts of gems will make it easier to write the outline, as I need a bit of action in what is largely a personality drama wrapped in a fantasy setting. I'm halfway through my list of curiosities, and so far they are interesting enough to build a couple scenes from, which is ultimately the point. If I am not invested in the world, I cannot expect my characters to want to spend time there.

So I'm going back to it. Despite so much happening in my life, despite the marriage and the move and the unemployment and culinary school, it's important to me that Nano go on. That means that I have three days to formulate a road map, a plan, and a semblance of a synopsis before October 31st. Can it be done? Certainly. Will it be done? That remains to be seen.

Five rejections and a realization

2009-06-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I sat down in a frenzy and wrote out a synopsis of SotO and a query and sent it off to a dozen agents. I got nothing but form rejections back, which makes me immediately wonder if the query is weak. With no way to verify its strength, I decided that I needed to look deeper into the manuscript and see if there was anything unusual about this book that makes it worth publishing.

In talking over the process with friend Will Davis, I learned that his novel, already accepted by a publisher and previously in editing stages, was put on hold since the industry is suffering now. This is not only disheartening, it's shocking, because a strong literary fiction piece deserves to be put on shelves and enjoyed by readers the world over. Trouble is, his agent told him, only one genre is selling now: Horror.

I've been mulling this news around in my head, and ever the jump-the-gun kid, wondered if I shouldn't put SotO on hold and shift to ...err Shift, a book that definitely blends horror and fantasy. From the research I've been doing, genre blends seem to be much more popular with publishers than straight fantasy novels. Teen fantasy, modern fantasy, fantasy mixed with medical drama, every agent seems to be looking for these on Twilight/Harry Potter things that don't fit solidly into one box or the other. Striding the fence is all well and good, but ultimately Shift is little more than a spin-off tale, and one that doesn't have a backbone of its own as of yet.

I admit it's hard to write horror when I don't read much of it, and I learned with Molly's Fault that stepping out of your genre completely leads to nothing short of disaster. I sit on the precipice therefore, mulling over which story should get the first big push.

SotO is my original story, that "I have a novel in me" book, the story I have been writing since my childhood. Shift was the "oh hey, I think I can write something NOT SotO for once" revelation piece, and it's still amorphous and globbular the way that all unformed thoughts begin. I haven't found where this story wants to go. But maybe I need to form this unsculpted mass into something presentable, seeing as how it's a blend story with horror elements and all those things spell saleability.

Also I have gotten back into reading fantasy again, living in the genre I want to write, and I've come across some great work. Excellent work, the sort of writing I want to weave into my story. So I have also been chewing on how much tweaking is needed to deepen my world. Yes, ironically enough, it's the world building I have a problem with -- I know, shocking for a fantasy writer. I think it's because I read as a young writer that world building kills perfectly good fantasy tales, so I reverted to the opposite extreme. The notes I've gotten back from others reading my work indicate that the reader is left to fill in the blanks, which is fine for a murder mystery, but not when you're describing the sieging of a city.

I've started building bones for the SotO world, but none of them are represented in the actual novel as of yet. Essentially I built my origin stories for the races on the world, and in that received some much needed perspective, but there is no skeletal structure in the novel. It is still at its core a novel written by a twelve year old, with none of the solid description that comes from building out your universe until it's so real anyone could see what you see when they pick up the book. My bones are different from other fantasy books in that this is a fantasy based on American history and geography, not British, but you would never know that from reading it. Damn, I have a lot of work to do.

My brain is full, but nothing's getting done

2009-06-24T12:45:00.001-07:00

A week from now I will be on a plane to New York, but today I sit here with a brain swimming with ideas and a body that has no direction with which to focus them. Even as I sit down to blog, I don't know which of the sixteen topics in my head I should write about. Should I talk about the rediscovery of good fantasy fiction and how I realized my work is missing the mark? Should I stew over the wedding? Should I lay out our lovely engagement pics for the world to see, even though I ressemble something that needs to jump hoops at Sea World? Do I discuss our troubles at home, and the brewing drama that has my stomach in knots?

Yes, I'm all over the place, and flooded with emotions and thoughts to the point that I don't know where to turn next. I guess I can only take things one post at a time.

The final countdown

2009-06-08T18:46:00.000-07:00

It's officially 30 days until the wedding -- a day I am celebrating as our -1 month preemptive anniversary. Today I sent out the last of our invitations and received our first response card. It's a good thing because I was really worried that the response cards were too difficult to find behind the directions card.

At this point, we're so behind we JUST settled on bridesmaids' dresses last night, and the worst part is, it's a wedding happening across the country. It's a strange situation for a control freak, knowing I can control nothing having no cash and being in California. Perhaps I can hand make something clever for favors, but there might be nothing at all.

But I still have a month to go. I've lost ten of the 20+ pounds I need to drop to feel less than planetoid at my own wedding, and am searching for a pair of shoes that will look nice, feel comfortable, and yet still not cost $100. The family keeps saying don't stress, but life is throwing flaming curve balls of late. Not only have I been out of work since October, but Art came down ill last month, so we've been dealing with some pretty heinous complications from Diabetes. It's odd how things end up on the extreme ends of the life continuum for us. It's great things or horrible things, but very little in between. That's the way it's always been, but no matter what the heartache, I still have a faux anniversary to celebrate.

The synopsis, the query, and the insomnia

2009-05-05T04:11:00.000-07:00

It all came together this evening. Something about the smell of the rain outside, I'm not sure, but round about midnight I pulled Art's laptop into bed with me and the synopsis came pouring out of me. This after five failed attempts over the course of several weeks. After that, I was so giddy I couldn't sleep, so got up, sat down at my computer, and out came the query letter. On a roll, I figured after re-reading them both five times a couple submissions couldn't hurt.

Question 1: Is the editing done?

Yes and no. I know, should prospective agents stumble on this I'll be crucified, but honestly, I am at the point where I think I need to hand the manuscript over to a higher power, a professional power. No, it's not perfect, and I can even see where some of the weak points are, I'm just not sure about how to fix them.

Question 2: Don't you think you should wait until you have a sleep-rested brain to work with?

Definitely not. I always used to write my best work in the small wee hours, and I really feel in my bones that what I created tonight represents my work as best I can.

So now it begins. I'm making a 100 query pledge. 100 rejections before I even consider giving up. Maybe it will take 1000, but more than likely once I get 100 rejections from agents I'll just move onto the publishers directly. Making a mental note here to go buy a rejection binder for my first ever foray into novel submissions. I feel so very grown up alluva sudden.

on Word Counts

2008-11-25T15:04:00.000-08:00

This month sucks. I can say that with all affection because so much has ended up happening in November. Not only is Nanowrimo happening, but also I have had to look for an apartment, start weeding through the garbage heap that holds my personal possessions. Add to that the new World of Warcraft expansion released on the 13th, and my word count has been doomed from the get go.

I'm not giving up, not by any stretch of the imagination. I still want to win, but I sit here blogging instead of writing, so I obviously have an issue with focus. This morning I posted on my other blog, cleaned out the refridgerator, answered emails, updated the wiki, started adding songs to my computer playlist...and did a SMALL bit of writing. What is it about novelling that gets me to do other things?

So yes, I have words down. I don't much like this novel, I have to say, but I have almost 29k of it down, and five days to go. Why am I not daunted? Because I know that if I stopped procrastinating I could technically have it done tonight. I write quickly, the words flow, but I have this problem with getting myself to let them flow. Not sure how to fix that.

I tried to make cupcakes with numbers to motivate me like I did last year. Trouble was, I ended up eating those without numbers and leaving the numbered ones to rot because I couldn't get myself to right.

Right now I work in 2oo word increments. At the moment I am working up the gumption to get to 29, and then to 30. After 30 comes the hard part. The hard part meaning 31-50.

Hell, I'm not even witty in my blog anymore. This month really has sucked.

Not Sure about Nano

2008-10-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

It's been months since I've blogged here...exactly five months I believe, but I have a good reason. I started blogging professionally (http://www.omgrpg.com/), and it wasn't until just recently that I started getting back to my personal writing. Now that so much time has passed, what have we learned?

Well, I finished SotO, and am almost done with the second draft. It's got good bones, as they say in genetics, but the words don't really flow like the poetry I wanted to make them. Still, it's a novel, and it's completed, with a beginning, a middle, and an end that jumps out of nowhere (with a purpose). I am happy with it, even if Chapter 4 is largely blank and there are whole scenes missing.

Shift on the other hand is a trial for me. I am still working around how to rewrite it, how to make straight, meandering fantasy into tight, brooding horror. It might end up as dark fantasy, but I really am not a ghoul and vampire kind of girl. Still, the story needs to be told, and as I see it, Shift will tie in a lot more with SotO, in content if not in style. I just need to figure out what that content is.

This year's book is much more of a puzzle. Even more of a puzzle is the idea that I might not get to Nano at all because as of October 25th I will be jobless. This means that I will be tasked with job hunting, which means I won't be allowed to write a novel. But if I manage to get work (anyone need a personal assistant/trainer/corporate writer/customer service rep who can work hard and start immediately?) I will still face the challenge of picking a topic. In the previous years it was a no brainer, write a new book based on a previous world then rewrite the previous world. Now I sit at a crossroads with four possible paths to take, and I can't really say I am sure about any of them.

Here are my possibilities:

1. Molly's Fault: This is a story wrapped around Molly Bates, a little character that popped into my head this year. Essentially, Molly is living in a Los Angeles being ripped apart by natural disasters, and her only desire is to pick her dog up from the kennel.

2. SotO Prequel #2: Yes, I am getting into a Star Wars thing, but honestly, I find it intriguing to start with the traditional fantasy tale and then tell how people got there. This Prequel tells a Pocohontas-esque story set in a fantasy world. (The Native Americans will tonight be played by the Elves). It's a good idea, and one that will get written, I'm just not sure it will get written now.

3. SotO Sequel #1: There is also a tougher story out there, one without form or inspiration. At the end of SotO a young boy is crowned king in the absence of his sister, and he vows that his people will return to their nomadic lifestyle. His dearest friend, the crazy Joppa, transforms out of her madness to become the High Priestess of a new religion. I'm eager to know what their stories are, and if they end up romantically connected. I don't see this as being stronger than SotO, but I could always be pleasantly surprised.

4. SotO Sequel #2: This is the story of the absent sister. She's stepped into a portal, leaving her world behind. This tale is actually better formed, but takes a completely different turn, with new characters and a very strange backstory relying on another author's world. I want to tell Mylena's story, show where she goes and what happens to her, I'm just not certain that this sequel should be written first.

So what do you think? Yes, four completely different stories, each with their own challenges. I intend should I have the time to plan all four of them and then pick, but October is incredibly busy for me. I get on a plane tomorrow bound for Southern California, and that will make planning....nonexistent while I'm away, let's be honest.

I've got to say I am so very very unhappy about the idea of NOT Nanoing this year. It's become a ritual, a rhythm, a goal and a focus for me. Knowing that there are 4 books out there waiting to be written (mainly so I can find out what happens) is a thrilling notion, but I also understand Boyfriend's concern. I get too focused on the writing, it's true. But isn't that the definition of an all-consuming passion?

[image courtesy of Nanowrimo.org]

Frostsabers, Zandalar Tigers, and Polar Bears, oh my!

2008-05-16T08:21:00.000-07:00

This morning I came across a post on the WoW forums that made me a happy Mandifesto. A while back we heard the dev team was going to phase out the Amani War Bear Mounts from Zul'Aman when Wrath is released this fall. Initially I was extremely disappointed, although I understand. Exactly how epic can the mount be if you go in and farm it at level 80?

So now Bornakk gives me hope. They are not dropping the bear mount entirely, they are simply replacing it. There will be a new Polar Bear mount attainable somewhere in the next expansion. Obviously we have no word on which instance will have the Great White Teddy, but I expect it will be another of the 10-man raid encounters. Maybe you didn't hear it here first, but you did hear it. Amani War Bear? So last expansion. The Dharma Polar Bear is for me! Complete with fish biscuits and a Hydra logo!

CONventional Speculation

2008-05-16T07:34:00.000-07:00

Mutfak has a silly name. I'm not exactly sure how he came up with that beauty, but it's almost dumb enough to fall into my Theory on Character Naming and Player Ability(tm). But Mutfak for all his nomenclature frivolity brought up an interesting point this morning: What will the BlizzCon 2008 announcement be?

BlizzCon is not an annual event, as Blizzard has already stated they will only have the convention when they feel they have meat enough to fill the plate, as it were. No reason to simply celebrate their nearly 11 million players. No, there has to be some big reveal. Mut believes Blizzard will announce a second Hero class, a healing class, since on his server there is a terrible shortage of healers. This isn't the case, obviously, since the Hero class is an experiment all on its own. I really don't expect a second class announcement at the convention. It could happen, true, but it's not likely.

But that still leaves the question of what announcement will be made. I have a theory, recently formed on only one cup of coffee, but it's a good one. Or, at least as good as one cup of coffee on a Friday morning will get you. I maintain that there will be only one Hero class put into the game in Wrath. The next expansion is all about Fordring versus Arthas, Paladin versus Death Knight. The themes of the expansion revolve around the Death Knight. The only other class featured in Wrath to such an extent is the mage class. I simply can't believe there will be an Archmage added to the game. While cool, it's too similar to the class currently in the game.

So my theory goes that yes we will have an announcement regarding the Warcraft universe at BlizzCon (not to be confused with my belief they will also announce another MMO project on October 10th), but it will be the announcement of the next expansion. Think of it. We were told that Blizzard intended to release a boxed expansion every year. In 2005 we learned about TBC. In 2007 we had the Waht-lu-kuh announcement. I expect 2008 to bring us the Maelstrom announcement. Why Maelstrom? Azshara and Malfurion are the last of the Warcraft Celebs not to make an appearance in WoW. While we have seen videos of people travelling through the Emerald Dream landscape already put in the game files, I don't see the story jumping that completely. Yes, I can expect ED to be an expansion of its own, but I don't think it's next. Remember my favorite map? The map of the Maelstrom that we saw on the behind the scenes DVD? It included amongst other things Kul-Tiras and Undermine. And everyone loves pirates. There have been two other MMOs to come out with pirate games.

I expect that Maelstrom will have with it two new races and most likely a Hero class. Finally we will see a faction of playable goblins, as well as naga. I am still pondering what the Hero class will be, but I expect to see one every expansion as we go forward. With the Maelstrom would also come the opening up of Zandalar, meaning that trolls would finally have a homeland. Anyway, the initial coffee-created burst of energy is gone. Now that I have had my say, I will slink back into the shadows and let my prophecies go forth and bring me unsung glory.

Help me oh Great Reader!

2008-05-15T07:26:00.000-07:00

Hitting the editing slump as I have been, I realized a couple of days ago that I am missing a key piece of information as a result of my city-girl upbringing. Chapter 4 in SotO features a harvest festival, a holiday built from the cultures of the people of Shadowhaven, a mixture of the religious and the magical. However, I don't have a frame of reference for a small town fair. I grew up in Los Angeles, where such a thing just doesn't exist.

So, in the interest of getting back on track, I am appealing you friends. Do you know of any movies or episodes of television shows out there that have a small town country festival or fair or some such celebration that I might be able to glean inspiration from? So far the only thing I can think of is the fair in Steel Magnolias but I'm sure there is better out there.

Also, I am still looking for sets of eyes to read the manuscript. Boyfriend is giving great feedback from his reading, but he's just one person, and a biased one at that. I figure that if you're interested enough to read the blog (even if it is for gaming articles) then you might also enjoy fantasy literature. Wow, did I just call this tripe "literature?"

Patch Day Today

2008-05-13T08:09:00.001-07:00

So in other news not so con-filled, Patch 2.4.2 is being released today. For those of us planning on heading into TK tonight, it's awesome news, since part of the patch also includes a fix to the Void Reaver fight. Additionally, there are sound fixes in 2.4.2, but more interesting are the class fixes:

Paladins can rejoice that Crusader Strike will actually be hurting things now instead of just tickling them a little.

Mages will cry a bit as they realize that you can no longer turtle someone on their ram mount and have a turtle riding a sheep. Knowing that NPC polymorph no longer heals targets make me sad, and very fearful for the Shade of Aran fight.

Hunters will now get a boost to MP5 with Aspect of the Viper. I'm still trying to figure out how a snake bite increases mana efficiency. 'Tis a puzzlement.

Cooldowns have been reduced on all profession crafting abilities, so I will now be able to make Primal Mights 4 hours earlier than normal. Silly me for not being all that excited about that one. But it is good to know that once I get to Void Shatter (5 points away currently) there won't be a cooldown on it. Once I am able to log in, remind me to check my Goblin Jumper cables, since they're not a trinket anymore, I assume they just take up a bag slot on my already overburdened hunter. Mail boxes are now trackable on your minimap, and although this isn't a faboo feature, it certainly will be useful.

I didn't see any reference to fixing of the chat filters. I would love that to be part of this patch's content, and if it is, please let me know. Obviously these are highlights from the patch notes as I see them. I find little interest in Mac fixes or exactly when Illidan despawns because frankly, those don't affect me. See the complete list of patch notes here.

ConMan(die)

2008-05-13T07:29:00.001-07:00

In 2005 I was living in Oregon, trying my darnedest to make a living where I simply wasn't wanted. I had a teaching degree, 2 years of experience in a Middle School classroom, and yet I wasn't allowed to substitute in Oregon school's because my credential didn't have Oregon written at the top. Instead I waitressed, ironically at the California Pizza Kitchen in Tigard, until it was very clear that I simply couldn't survive in such a hostile anti-Californian climate.

During a summer which topped the record books for Oregon heat waves, Boyfriend and I learned that there would be a convention held in Anaheim that August specifically centered around the celebration of Blizzard's games. Tickets sold out too quickly for me to grab a pair, and I had resigned myself to watching yet another once-in-a-lifetime opportunity from the sidelines. Along about July we were in dire straights: no jobs, running out of the savings I was living off of, unsure what would happen to us. It was then that we decided hell, if we're going down, we might as well have one last hurrah. So I bought a pair of tickets for more than I care to admit on eBay (one of my few purchases from the site), and we planned a trip down to Southern California for BlizzCon 2005.

The experience was unforgettable. I have rarely been someplace where the very air crackled with energy. Every street corner in Anaheim had WoW players on it. You could walk into the Red Robin down the street from the convention center and see the table's filled with group after group of convention attendees. The new blood elf race was announced, StarCraft Ghost was playable on the floor, as was Ahn'Qiraj and the new races' starting area. Only the truly devout were at the convention, and it was the truly devout that got to listen as the development team spilled juicy secrets into our waiting minds.

Two year's later, I was in San Francisco, having crossed the country twice in search of a place to call home. Once again living a life replete with turmoil, we heard the announcement that a second BlizzCon was going to be held that October. At the time, I was formally blogging about World of Warcraft, and offered to be one of the writers to cover the event. Once again I made the pilgrimage down to Anaheim, only this time to visit a con filled not with the devout, but with the apathetic. Suddenly the crowd was screaming Chuck Norris comments at Jay Mohr, and I realized the WoW player base had completely shifted in the 2 years since the last convention. It was still an awesome experience, particularly going as press, but it wasn't the same joyous celebration it was the first time. The developers were limited in what they were allowed to say to the faithful, and indeed the amount of time they sat in panels was greatly reduced.

Yesterday it was announced that there will be another BlizzCon in October of 2008, and the announcement makes me look back at my experiences and realize I've been in a very rare position over the years. Not many can say they were there when Metzen announced that the heroes of old were "alive and kickin' ass" beyond the Dark Portal. Not many squealed in embarrassing glee at the announcement of the new Blood Elf race, or raced back to their hotel room to upload photos of the community manager's Wrath of the Lich King t-shirt. I was there, and I will be there again, but in a different capacity. I will be there as a veteran.

The Editing Monster

2008-05-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

I have read through the first 4 chapters of SotO, making my notes in the margins, correcting spelling errors (surprisingly few considering who I am), and now it's gotten to the point where I have to input those edits. Starting is incredibly daunting to me, and I'm not exactly sure why. The largest piece missing from the novel is description. Saying that Warrek "loomed in the doorway" is nice, I suppose, but it doesn't give the full impression of a man so broad he has to shoulder his way into the room, of a man so imposing that his just standing there intimidates everyone around him. Much of the novel is seen from his point of view, so it's essential that we see how others are affected by him before we spend all that time seeing things from his eyes. But really, I have this hangup. I resist opening the document and adding that description.

I am going to force myself to do so this afternoon, once I get somethings out of the way. I need to get the ball rolling, or this novel will never see the light of day, and I get the sense that it's a good enough story that others should get the chance to experience it. But how to start the fixing?

Adventures in Inappropriate Orphan Mentoring, Part II

2008-05-11T12:47:00.000-07:00

I've been remembering my time with Dornaa of late. That precocious little Draenei really wormed her way into my heart. Flipping through the photo album I created of our Children's Week escapades, I came across a few more gems I thought you might like to enjoy.

After Dornaa's field trip to Caverns of Time and with her Dragon Toy tucked firmly under her arm, we set off to visit Medivh. He seemed to be entertaining all manner of guests, so I didn't think he would mind 2 more people stopping by.

And seeing as how I think all children should learn to respect their elders, we made sure to give our respects to Medivh's father before we left Karazhan.

Ah yes, I had almost forgotten this one. Dornaa seemed to very interested in the various cultures of Outland, and we had a little extra time before she had to get back to the orphanage, so I took her out to Hellfire Peninsula to witness the grandeur that is Magtheridon's Lair. She seemed completely awestruck.

When at last returned to Lower City, it was with eyes welling with tears that I handed off my charge to the Orphan Matron. Admittedly she did run rather quickly back into the orphanage, no doubt eager to tell her friends about all the marvelous experiences she had. Ah yes, good times.

A lover of lists

2008-05-06T14:11:00.000-07:00

So, I am currently taking a break from bashing my enfeebled brain against Adobe InDesign CS3, and decided to focus on something that isn't draining my life out of my fingertips. It's a challenge to find something that fits the bill really, even in WoW, since I had such a tremendously suck-filled night in ZA yesterday and spent a frustration-filled lunch attempting to race people on epic flying mounts for daily questing nodes and failing miserably. So frustration is now choking my arteries, and when that happens, it's hard to focus on the good things in life.

But before the day completely tanked I had planned to post about something that I do enjoy. So I figure, why the heck not? Maybe blogging will lighten the black mood I'm in. It's worth a try. So I have been raiding a bit ( a bit meaning just about every night of the week), which keeps me focused on eternally on what shiny new bauble I might acquire next. Now, here is where I confess to you, friendly reader, one of my darkest secrets: I love lists. I know, it's shameful, it's shocking, but it's the truth. I have a 3-subject notebook at home, the third actually, and in it I make lists, more specifically gear lists. I enjoy writing out the items I hope to get for each of my level 70 characters. But it takes time, and obviously takes paper.

So a couple weeks ago I decided to graduate my list mania to digital format and built myself a spreadsheet. It's snazzy, tabbed, and informative, and it saves trees. The high school kids can have their notebooks back. The advantages with a spreadsheet are many. I can use all the pretty fonts I love, I can add links to the WoWHead pages for each piece of loot, and I can list when I last saw the object drop. This is to presumably give me an idea of when I might next see the item drop, and hopefully into my own possession.

There are obvious deep-seated psychological issues at work here. Exactly how can someone with so little in the way of organizational skill be drawn to such an "account-esque" activity? Well I know I crave order and control of my life (David St. John said so, and I always believe what my poetry professors say). As you saw from the beginning of the post, I live in a sea of bitterness tossed on waves of frustration. A list is devoid of all the elements of chaos that tear at me so. A list is replete only with those items I fill it with, and I fill my list with happy things, like pretty robes and wands. What's not to like?

Adventures in Inappropriate Orphan Mentoring

2008-05-03T16:58:00.000-07:00

It's Children's Week, and any self-respecting citizen of Azeroth will no doubt tow around their own little orphan, showing them the sites of the realms. When I first met Dornaa, I was enchanted by her keen interest in the world around her and her overwhelming desire to summon random people into Auchindoun. I then thought to myself, why simply take her where she asks to go? Should the education be limited by one child's obviously stunted desires? Oh no! I shall show her the world of a raider, and open her eyes to what life will be like once she too levels to 70.

The first place we visited was The Eye, a beautiful example of Draenei architecture. What better place to experience the culture of her own people?

Dornaa seemed rather nonplussed by The Phoenix God A'lar, and so I thought it might be best to introduce her to someone a little more terrestrial, High Astromancer Solarian.

After researching governmental styles within the various peoples of Outland, it was time to illustrate the innovative industries we are known for. Void Reaver is a classic example of what Blood Elves can create when they put their minds to it. I thought Dornaa might be inspired to take up engineering when she got older. The little Draenei seemed less than overwhelmed.

Fine, I thought to myself, if she wanted to see something *alive* I guess I could humor her naiveté. Children always seem impressed when they meet someone of authority, so I thought it might be a treat to visit Mr. Sunstrider himself.

It was an eventful day, and one I am positive Dornaa is not likely to forget. However, now that I think on it, I didn't really give her any experiences in Azeroth itself. I wonder what places I might visit that she would enjoy. Karazhan perhaps?

Things that Cloud up my Game

2008-04-30T07:25:00.000-07:00

The more I play MMOs, the more I am convinced they are a microcosm of the larger mass of humanity. It's the sort of thing that keeps me from flipping out and going postal on people when I am playing, but also the sort of thing that saddens me. We play games to escape from the real world, but more and more real life is shaping my games. Okay, I may be ranting here, and even worse I have two rants on two related but different subjects.

First, some background. Last night was the first entry into Mt. Hyjal for L8Raid. Being new content, there were upwards of 45 people interested in running an instance that only allows 25 people. So yeah, lots of people were put on the wait list. I was one of them, and for the most part I was happy to be on the "WL" as they say. If you are going to be successful, you need to bring your best and brightest. So I sat around on the WL for a little bit, then some of those waiting thought we should run another instance while we waited rather than sitting outside the instance counting each other's toes (something I've done when raiding with Inner Focus, and that is less than fun).

So, in the spirit of my previous post, I formed a ZA raid with the 6 people that were interested...all DPS. That's not all that surprising, because blasting and ripping things is always more fun than standing there and getting your face pounded in or standing back and keeping everyone alive (not my opinion, but the general consensus). Now, I know that any 10 man raid will need a couple tanks and a couple healers, and as there were none of either of these, I let the group know that Zul'Aman wouldn't happen. They were fine with this, because really it was a group of people in gear that would be way too expensive to repair. So we went to Heroic Magister's Terrace.

Went being the appropriate word. We visited, pulled one group, and then the rest of the group got angry at me for insisting that we crowd control. Granted I yelled, but the phrase "Let me friggin' sheep," is not exactly the most offensive thing to say to a group. I ranted to Staulk who was in the group with me, but kept most of my insulting comments said allowed without hitting "Push to Talk." I was frustrated. These are people that are raiding 25-man instances, that are supposed to be mature enough to know how to reset a 5-man instance and how to mark pulls and crowd control them. Evidently there is a reason they were put on the wait list. Now once the affronted members of the group pushed me to leave the group (not something I do unless there is a good reason), I went to help Boyfriend with his crusade against the Ogres of Nagrand (AKA grinding Kurenai rep).

But while I was listening to the raid group on vent cheering as they downed two bosses and proceeded to the third, my "what is best for the group" rally cry faded. I suppose my original reason for raiding (the desire to experience everything in the game) has morphed into something different. I love raiding. I love playing the game with mature people who not only know how to play their classes and work as a cohesive unit, I love the feeling you get when that group had tackled something new. You can stand back and say "I was part of that, I helped." But I wasn't there last night, I was only listening in. Instead of was killing ogres in a dimly lit cave, hearing others as they rejoiced at that feeling of accomplishment.

That's when the bitterness started. I'm not proud, but at least I'm self-aware, and that ought to count for something. I hate being excluded, being left behind. It's the sort of situation I am more sensitive to as a result of my childhood, and something that I know I have a problem with, and I do my best to cope. It wasn't really until I started selfishly resenting the core raiders for their accomplishments that I realized I enjoy raiding for a whole new set of reasons that I explained above. Now, I was bitter, and started in a lovely spiral of negativity, but such a spiral brought up an interesting idea that I've considered before. I figured it was blog-worthy and thus enjoy rant #2:

In society today, it takes money to make money. The people who are rich can invest their wealth and generate more. The same is true within WoW. I can't raise as much gold as others because I don't have an epic flying mount. I've ranted about this before because I have learned to use my bitterness to fuel my writing. I realized last night that this also extends to raiding. Those with the best gear will be invited to raids, where they will get better gear and become more valuable to the raid. It's a cycle, and an unavoidable one even within an extremely inclusive raiding group like L8Raid. I feel fortunate that there are a couple ways to break this cycle, or at least step into the cycle yourself. The first way, obviously, is finding a group like L8Raid that does its best to include as many players as possible in their raids. Show up, try hard, get to raid more. The second way is the badge loot from Patch 2.4. Suddenly there is a way for a non-raider or a second-tier raider (like me) to get gear on par with Zul'Aman and beyond. Sure it's a lot of work, but it's 5-man heroic work, and not beyond anyone willing to run the instances a LOT. Now if you're lazy and hate grinding, then you only have one choice: bitter ranting.

The Problem with PUGs

2008-04-28T09:11:00.001-07:00

So, anyone who's followed my on-again-off-again love affair with raiding will understand my joy when I tell you I've found the perfect solution to my problem. My problem being a guild with no motivation to raid conflicting with my desire to see all the content in the game. I have attempted to join raiding guilds on Elune, only to find that my West Coast time zone and my need to work to earn a living previously came into direct conflict with the raiding schedule of most guilds (well those guilds that didn't implode upon my arrival that is).

I had heard about the L8Raid back in November when I was getting back into the normal workforce, but I didn't brave joining the channel until a few weeks ago. Well, in reality I did PM the raid leader/organizer several months ago, and was discouraged not to receive a reply. These sorts of things frighten me, stepping into new territories without guidance or (more importantly) an invitation. To explain the concept, L8Raid is a group of people that want to raid, but have West Coast schedules for some reason or another. Instead of leaving their guilds, they have allied together to raid, and as a result are progressing nicely through the content.

Enter Nitnoid. Noid was a WoW Insider reader who contacted me in game to harass me for not posting on the site anymore. I had the lovely opportunity of explaining that it wasn't by my choice, and lo and behold a friendship was born. I credit Noid with much. It was he that revitalized my love of blogging, that reminded me that I don't need a paycheck to write about the game I love. It was also Noid that suggested I hook into L8Raid, and now with the group being brought up twice, I wasn't one to ignore a sign. Therefore I typed /join l8raid and have been happier ever since.

The most interesting thing is I am raiding with an alt, the priest, and enjoying the challenge. I expected to have her rejected on account of her sad gear and +healing, but that wasn't the case. The first night I ran with them to Tempest Keep and had an epic boots pattern drop, and that was the beginning of the DKP guilt cycle. Within a week of that I had improved my gear exponentially with a combo of amazing luck in Karazhan and making my new boots. In essence, I went from having a character barely ready for Kara to a character almost ready for TK, and all with gear I received while with L8Raid.

But Mandifesto, you ask as a clever reader of titles, what the heck is the problem with PUGs? Where this concept of the organized pug breaks down is Sundays. The group runs ZA on Sundays. This in and of itself is not a bad thing, at least for the 10 core raiders. They have a set group and organize their group outside the L8Raid channel. What ends up happening is that the rest of us log in at the regular time waiting for the raid organizers to pull together ZA groups, we here nothing, and end up logging out in frustration as the core group happily runs their instance.

Last night I suggested that perhaps next week in the name of inclusiveness and the greater group that one large group be formed and then smaller raids be filled from those interested and available. What ended up happening is that they asked me to work on that, which I guess is fine, except that I am not one of the leaders of the group. Sure I can organize things, but it is not my intent to take over someone else's concept. I didn't join L8Raid to lead, but then again it seems, neither did anyone else.

And that is the problem with PUGs, and to a larger extent groups in general in WoW and in life. Sure there may be a shortage of tanks and healers, but there is a greater shortage of leaders. There are very few of us that are willing to step up and make something happen rather than simply waiting until someone does it for us. Personally, I can be one of those people, but the problem with leading PUGs is that I usually get told to sod off when I take charge. This has happened to me since grade school, and more recently with the last guild I tried to raid with. Therefore I am a little hesitant in stepping up lest I am asked to step out.

Fun with /console

2008-04-24T15:01:00.002-07:00

Tuesday night Boyfriend pointed me to a post on World of Raids regarding the command /console. For the less technical among us, this command allows a player to adjust the visual settings in their game, for instance controlling the amount of ambient vegetation generated by the game engine or glow effects on a player's weapons. There is a massive opportunity here with this command for allowing personalization of the visuals in the game. I also would love to see how our Machinima artists will use this sort of control to develop new film content. I am wondering if anyone out there has completed a comprehensive list of the /console options available. A druid in Tuesday night's TK run was my source for the /console options on player glow effects. If you hear of someone with a nice beefy list of /console commands, let me know and I will update my post here.

Here are some examples of /console commands given on WoR. This particular macro increases the draw distance and amount of vegetation generated by the game engine. When Boyfriend enabled this on his system Arathi Highlands alluva sudden was more lush than Stanglethorn Vale:

/console farclip 777
/console horizonfarclip 6226
/console groundeffectdensity 256
/console groundeffectdist 140
/console smallcull 0
/console skycloudlod 3
/console characterambient 0

And here's the macro to revert your settings:
/console groundEffectDensity 16
/console groundEffectDist 1
/console horizonfarclip 1305
/console farclip 177
/console characterAmbient 1
/console smallcull 1
/console skycloudlod 1
/console detailDoodadAlpha 1

Now I imagine you can play around with the values in the first macro, as long as you use the second to revert to the original settings. I do not have enough processing power to try this myself (my FPS is already sadly lacking), but I did see the results on Boyfriend's system, and they were impressive. It really makes the game resemble some of the beautiful rendering I saw in LotRO.

I do not, however have Mr. Druid's macro for reducing glow effects on players. I was too busy healing main tanks during the A'lar fight to write it down.

[World of Raids]

Politics, WoW Style

2008-04-23T07:35:00.000-07:00

I'm not what you call political, but I am fascinated with the circus that politics becomes in a presidential election year. Train-wreck, rubber-necking to see car accidents kind of fascinated. I just can't look away, despite how ludicrous things become, or perhaps because of exactly how ludicrous things are.

I am what you would call a gamer, and my current preferred game is World of Warcraft. So when I visited the Indecision 2008 website this morning and found an article about campaigning within WoW, I smiled on the inside. I might have smiled on the outside as well, but I'm frankly too tired from raiding Tempest Keep last night to notice much of anything beyond the flatscreen monitor before me and the cup of coffee inches away from my fingertips.

The article makes a couple of references to game mechanics that completely fail (interrupting Feral Combat spells? And the Death Knights aren't even in the game yet, my naive political satirists.), but all in all the satire is fairly sound. We look at things from a class perspective in game, and I still maintain that Boyfriend isn't simply playing a paladin he *is* one. I often consider things from a DPS perspective in real life, in attacking the weakest problems first, burning them down, then moving on to the next. Sure I can AoE several adds at once with my IRL version of Blizzard (manic multitasking) but that will wear me out faster, and will cause me running for the snack machine to regenerate mana and health several times a day.

I wonder though, are the candidates missing the boat by ignoring cyberspace? There are 10 million WoW players, 2 million in the US alone. Those are a lot of potential votes. Although, to be honest, with Clinton's anti-gaming stance the Internet itself might reject her login as viral and erase her virtual existence on contact. Still, I think the gamer as a demographic is growing, and soon it will be one that cannot be ignored when planning out a walk down the Yellow Brick Road we know as the campaign trail.

[Indecision 2008 Blog]

I wanna go

2008-03-21T07:17:00.000-07:00

With the Blizzard World Wide Invitational tickets now going on sale, I'm getting rather whiny. Why might you ask? Well, Paris is one of those cities that I would love nothing more than to live in, and so an excuse to connect my love of French culture with my love of WoW is one I doubt will come again. But it's a chance I will have to pass up. Yes, I still work in the gaming industry (albeit for "The Man," in gaming form) but I simply don't have a valid reason for going. I also don't have the cash.

It's sad because I know the city so well. I spent 6 months there during college, "studying" the language and the culture. If I were still working for WoW Insider, I might be able to justify a trip out to the City of Lights to cover the event, although I anticipate the higher-level bloggers will be sent to stay at a poshe little place on the Rive Gauche. If you do go, make sure you visit Marie Antoinette's fountain at Le Jardin de Louxembourg for me, and eat at least one Nutella and banana crepe purchased from a street vendor in the 6th. You'll thank me later.

If any of you are going to the Invitational and need some dining and not-so-touristy things to see while you're there, lemme know. I bet my favorite fondue place still serves their wine in baby bottles.

Renigging on the Sunwell

2008-03-20T08:23:00.000-07:00

It's a very good thing I am no longer working at WoW Insider, because I would most definitely have to answer to Mike Schramm for my complete botching of my guess at the release date of Patch 2.4. It wasn't until this week that Blizzard gave us the trailer for the last content patch coming to WoW before the next expansion. So when I said February or March, I guess I was wrong. There, I admitted it. Happy?

I have to revise my estimate now in face of the fact that the raid instance is not even available for players to test on the PTR. Until guilds like Death and Taxes and Nihilum get into the instance and provide that all-too-important balancing feedback to the devs, I can't reasonably tell you when I expect the patch to drop. Sad really, because I was on a streak this year, predicting the last 3 patches with a reasonable amount of accuracy. Oh well, we are all human, n'est-ce pas? I honestly think that this is a sign that we will not have that huge gap between patch and expansion that we experienced with TBC, as long as the expansion is released sometime during the early part of next year. I tend to think that the development process is speeding up (relatively of course) over there at Blizzard, and that they have learned that an 8th month gap between patch and expansion means losing beaucoup players, and a certain amount of interest in those players that hang on.

What does this mean for the timing of Patch 2.4? Nothing really, only that the longer it takes to push this up the shorter a time we will have with the new content and the expansion. Is this a good thing? Mebbe not. Perhaps Sunwell Plateau will become another Naxxramas, but I doubt it. I think this content will be meaningful for a while yet, and should take Nihilum at least a month to conquer it. At least we won't have to look at completely restructuring guilds with the coming expansion as we had to do in the past.

Blog corrupted

2008-02-26T08:22:00.000-08:00

So here's a WoW rant, but not a particularly long one as I start work in five minutes. I hear through the grapevine (i.e. Boyfriend is still a reader, god knows why) that WoW Insider has decided to start posting cheats and exploits on their site. Now, all opinions about my treatment aside, I find it very strange that a blog trying as hard as they are to get into Blizzard's good graces would consider such a risky move as to start posting videos on how to exploit the game. For those of you not in the know on this subject, I refer to this post in which Allison posted a video on how to get yourself a cloud of pets in Shattrath by de-sinking with the server. Now granted this is a small exploit, but it is one nonetheless, and I have to wonder about how Blizzard would feel about WoW Insider giving their readers instructions on how to cheat the game. What's next, the rogue's guide to stealthing the chests in Mechanar? Or perhaps a lovely guide on how to run under the map in Warsong Gulch? Really, I guess the site has decided to side with the gold farming ads on their site after all.

The gaily drind

2008-02-15T07:50:00.000-08:00

A lot has happened this week, and therefore I have been too busy to write it all down. I started work in an honest to goodness office on Monday, and between the commute and the job itself, I have only had a few hours after work to relax, eat dinner, and prepare for the next day. I think I am setting my routine now, so I expect to be a little better about blogging as time goes on.

It's a contract job; it's a customer service job; it's a video game industry job; it's a dream job. I didn't expect my experience at this huge company to be so very positive, but it is. I'll give you an example.

Yesterday I turned 30. Not much fan fare, it's not like we have much in the way of income in order to celebrate such a milestone. Yes, yes, Valentine's Baby and all that. For that you can blame (or thank) my mother. In any case, I let it slip to a coworker, and by the end of the day walked out the door with several hundred dollars in video games as a gift from the department. That's the kind of people I work with. So yes, I meant to blog about my week last night, but I didn't. I was too busy enjoying my presents. I LOVE Rock Band!

The book planning isn't on hold so much as waiting for me to find my stride. I am thinking I might have to work at lunch, which will be fine as far as I can tell. Boyfriend is currently reading through the first draft of SotO, bless him. He says he's actually enjoying it. I'm not exactly sure how honest that is, but I suppose I could just take him at his word, right? So the day is about to begin, and so I must conclude here.

Novelling seen from the outside

2008-02-08T07:57:00.000-08:00

So yesterday Boyfriend and I had what I like to call a disconnect in communication. Not exactly a fight, but one of those conversations where I would say something and he would not understand my meaning, and vice versa. After some pain we worked through to reconnection, but in the process he said some interesting things. Essentially what it boils down to is this: I woke up yesterday burning to plot out Shift, build it from the ground up in the genre that the tale best lends itself to: horror fantasy (I'm sure such a thing exists out there, right?). In any case, I am struggling to build a suspenseful story arc (not something I've ever done before), and in the course of our discussing the plot of the novel, Boyfriend said something along the lines of "you just finished a novel on Monday, why don't you take a break? How about NaFebNoWriMo."

Not write? Sure, I am setting aside SotO before I go back to editing, but take a break from writing? "Yeah," he said, "I thought this was going to be a one month thing, but now there's no end in sight." No end in sight. An interesting turn of phrase, don't you think? Laden with all those juicy negative connotations.

That's when it hit me. This disconnect wasn't about male mind not being able to understand female mind (which is usually the case.) It was about non-novelling mind not being able to understand novelling mind. From Boyfriend's perspective, I had put tons of work into SotO, I was finally finished, and so would naturally reward myself with a break from work. It is so strange to think of writing as work, it took us another half an hour to get back on the same page in the conversation script. This novelling thing that he supports me in entirely: he doesn't understand it, because it's never supposed to end, that's the point.

I myself am still excited, burning to rewrite Shift now that so much of the world has been solidified with SotO, and Boyfriend is right. This novelling thing that many people do for one month a year and that's it (Roommate is an excellent example of this), I have been trying to do my whole life. It's what I want to do with my time, with my energies and talents. Up until Monday I didn't think I would ever be able to finish a novel, ever be able to say "yeah, I wrote a book. Not published, but the manuscript is up in my trunk," (Remind me to buy a trunk.) There are two unfinished novels bouncing around my computer that are next on my list to finish. And then there is the prequel yet to Shift, and the two sequels to SotO. No, there's no end it sight. And I love it.

An Unbedtime Story courtesy of Yours Truly

2008-02-06T10:43:00.000-08:00

This morning I drove up to Foothill College and met the lovely and vibrant Ann Arbor for a segment on her KFJC 89.7 radio show Dancin' in the Fast Lane. It was a great time, and I only wish I could do it every week. What a great motivation for me to get my writing in shape! I'm posting a recording of the hour or so I spent at KFJC mostly for Mom, who I know wanted to listen in but isn't in the area.

I didn't biff as many times as I expected to, but there are definitely some places where I messed up entire sentences. Who knew I wouldn't be able to do my own writing justice? In any case, here is the radio interview and reading. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed doing it. A note on the session: As this is a radio show, my segment comes about 20 minutes in after some pretty groovy tunes (sing it Aretha!)

AR-on-KFJC.MP3 163 MB

Calling all critics

2008-02-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

As the first draft is complete on SotO, it's time to send a shout out to all those with a keen eye and the patience to read through unorganized drivel. It's not so bad really, there are at least three good scenes in the novel. Are you brave enough to wade through the mire of vague passive writing and clichés and help me tune this baby up?

First things first, I am more than willing to do a draft swap. In fact, this is what I would prefer, as I can imagine other writers are eager for a fresh pair of eyes rolling around on their writing too. If you are just such a writer with a draft of your own, then we have something to discuss.

Secondly, those of you interested in simply reading the novel, this isn't the time. I have only allowed one person to read the first chapter, and was saddened when I did not receive one lick of constructive criticism. This is a work in progress people, emphasis on progress. There is no way I can get this novel polished enough to submit to agents and publishers if all I here is "it's really descriptive; is there any more?"

There will be a time when you can read this story just to find out what happens.  I'll let you know
when I considered it submission worthy, and maybe then we'll talk.

I used to do a limited version of a writing workshop with my students. Groups of three students would sit down with their short stories and poetry and each asked to read their work aloud. As they read, the other students would write down on a post-it one thing they liked, and one thing that could be improved.  I'm going to ask that anyone
reading the SotO draft look for things they love and things that didn't make sense.  Yes, spelling
and grammar stink in this thing (I was doing my best not to edit myself along the way.) But those are small issues that can be fixed in time. What concerns me more are the plot elements, the characters, the stuff that just doesn't make sense.

Lastly, you have to be prepared to read a traditional high fantasy story (219 pages singled-spaced, so I expect it to be about double that once I format it for reading.) No, it's not Tolkein (which is both a good and bad thing really,) but it is the standard world with elves and dragons and knights and princesses.   Well, not completely standard, but you understand. If an evil wizard makes your skin crawl, this isn't the draft you want to read. If a world infused with magic turns your stomach, don't volunteer to help. I would rather the people reading the draft actually enjoy reading the genre. After all, those are the people that will be my audience. They my people, as it were.

So, if this sounds like your cup of tea (no pun intended ASG) then drop me a line. Just because I'm not touching the thing this month doesn't mean others can't :P

This blog is rated...

2008-02-05T07:38:00.000-08:00

Mike of A Strangely Worded Letter was kind enough to pass along this blog rating to me. It's an awesome thing, really, and one that I would like to pass along to EA Blevins, a fellow novelist and WoW lover. I'm not sure Elizabeth reads this blog, but I read hers, and enjoy every entry.

This morning I got up early, well early for me. It's all part of my new regime (no I'm not eating only grapefruit. That stuff is expensive!) No, I have to get my body into the proper rhythm because as of Monday February 11th I will be a working slob again. It's an awesome thing, knowing that after 4 months I will be working in an office again. Sure I was freelance writing, but as dream a gig as that was, I was the blogger they didn't want, and who really wants to stick around where people are against you? In any case, that blight on my record is behind me, because I will now step back into my Customer Service and back into the working world. What have I gotten myself into.

So I'm tired, as my body isn't adjusted to this schedule (granted I will have to get up even eariler tomorrow.) My plan for today is to edit 30-40 minutes' worth of writing -- I'm not really sure how long the radio segment will go, and to start replanning Shift. Boyfriend once told me that Stephen King suggests stepping way from a first draft for a month or two. Well, seeing as how I've been working on this thing for so VERY long, I don't think I could stand two months. But I will put SotO away until March. Something about perspective, or some tripe like that. Doesn't mean I'm not going to write. I decided I can spend my waiting time on Shift, as that's a draft that needs a complete overhaul now that I have rebuilt the world in SotO. The great trouble with that is, it's a manuscript I haven't even touched since 2006. Well, I have been meaning to get back into reading novels *grin,* I guess I might as well start with my own.

And the last word is...

2008-02-04T18:45:00.000-08:00

"El." The first draft of SotO is complete. 20k short of my goal, it sits on my word processor as 83, 141 words. I feel a bit tingly, a bit strange. This day has been 18 years in the making. I honestly never expected to actually finish the story. But the villain is defeated, the kingdom is saved, and the twist at the end has twisted itself entirely. Suddenly I'm flooded with fear. Fear, I guess, of the unknown. All my worrying before was always answered by Boyfriend thus "Just finish it first, and then we'll worry about that." I have finished it. So there. I sat down this morning to see how far I got, and wrote ten hours straight for almost ten thousands words. It's not nearly complete, and I have ideas already to shift (no pun intended) things around in editing. But I can say I have written the story from beginning to end. It's done. DONE!

Tomorrow I will edit 20 minute's worth of the first chapter for the KFJC reading on Wednesday morning. I spent some time today building a soundbed playlist from the Burning Crusade soundtrack. It seemed moody enough to work well with the text, although there are parts I wish wouldn't have any music behind them at all.

In a few hours I pick up Boyfriend from the airport. It will be an interesting welcome home gift. Shame I don't trust the business center printer enough to print me out a copy. Somehow I don't think their overused cartridge will last for 219 single-spaced pages.

How do I...?

2008-01-31T15:10:00.001-08:00

I'm pausing in the heat of battle (in mid-sentence in the middle of a war, to tell the truth) to ask some questions. I am making the push tonight to see how far I can get toward done. I suddenly feel like I want to write. Perhaps it was the really good job interview I went on today, perhaps it's the weird high clouds and the snow on the peaks in the distance. Whatever it is, I am suddenly interested in finishing this book where before I was scared of it.

So I have some questions. The first being: how do I choose what I am going to read? I am scheduled to read on the radio next Wednesday (part of my push to finish), but I have no idea how to choose what I will read. I heard from one person it's a 20 minute segment. I have no concept of how much air time translates to pages of manuscript. For those of you who have done this, what would you recommend?

I've also decided Molly Bates' fate: she will be the heroine in The Whisper and the Roar, my "I am destroying Los Angeles through a series of natural disasters" action romp. I started it a couple of years ago, and I think her perspective would turn it into a fabulous book. I mean, if the world is falling around her ears and all she wants to do is save her poodle, what better premise could their be? Here's the current logline for the novel:

A frumpy and overly-imaginative homebody must traverse a disaster-ridden Los Angeles in order to rescue the only thing that matters to her in the world – her toy poodle.

I also would love any suggestions on editing. I am looking toward the next steps, and don't know how to edit a novel. Any tips would be most helpful.

Infos for Web Searches

2008-01-28T12:23:00.000-08:00

Going through the web stats on the blog I saw some interesting search strings. Evidently
people are finding the blog through random Google searches, which is great if you are looking for a
writing/gaming blog, but not so good if you are looking for information. Here are the search strings, and what information I can provide to help anyone else that stumbled here using them.

Thunderforce Elune Website: I had one person arrive at my blog by searching google for the Thunderforce Elune website. I realize that when I wrote about our merger with Thunderforce, I didn't have that listed, but if you are looking to get to the site for TF the guild, that would be Wyrmsong.com. Not sure why the URL doesn't have the guild name in it, but for that you would have to ask Cymoril, the guild leader.

Molly Bates: For those searching for Molly Bates, it's a little tougher to help you out. I am sure there are many Mollys out there on the net, but mine is a character that recently popped into my head. She will probably end up being the protagonist in a future writing project. Here is what I wrote about her. I doubt this is what you are looking for, but I am ever interested in helping those looking for information:

Molly Bates was a beautiful woman, but that was 100 pounds ago. She had been fond of fine dining and the opera. These days she was fond of buffets and nights in front of the TV. Her high cheekbones had turned to mush, her perky breasts sagging into something that can only be described as an ample bosom. These days she prefers the elevator to the stairs, tennis shoes to high heels. She has the constitution of a 60 year old woman. She turns 30 next Tuesday.

FPQA means? For those searching for the meaning on FPQA: First Person Quality Assurance. The FPQA team is responsible for testing games that were made by the developer.
There is also something called Third Party Quality Assurance, and that team tests games that were made by other smaller developers that send their title to a larger developer to test. During my time at Sony (all 3 weeks of it) I worked on the FPQA side on a title that is soon to be released but since it is not released I can't actually say which title.

As for those searching for Prodigal game, and how to get furni slayer I'm sorry to tell you I can't help out here. Not really sure what you are looking for, but I certainly hope you find it.

Poetry, revisited

2008-01-28T12:00:00.000-08:00

And so I sat down to write out my battle scenes for the climax of the novel and suddenly realized I hadn't created a poem for the last section of the book. I had intended three sections, or at least decided there would be three sections when I needed word count and decided padding with poetry was the way to go. So here is the last poem of the novel. Sounds strange when I put it that way. Not sure if my brain will let me write more. Sestina is a nasty thing. Not sure why I put myself through the pain. Anyway, see what you think:

In the years gone by, I look back at the field of battle
I float above the soldiers aligned in rows and feel their sadness
See their spears and bows and swords as they stand facing the castle
Hear their commander rally them, with vibrant words stir their blood
In the quiet before the storm the most oblivious of mockingbirds begins to sing
And I watch myself amongst them, so young and foolish smiling in anticipation of success

It is no secret the tyrant must fall so that we may taste success
His hubris and villainy have led us to this battle
If I survive this day, of his evils I will no doubt sing
But for now I shiver in the throws of a communal sadness
Knowing the pain caused and how his hands drip innocent blood
And so I muster my courage and prepare to take back our castle

The armies collide, writhing in pain within the shadow of the castle
We clash with the mercenary army hired to ensure Sargon’s success
And leave their bodies behind, marching through pools of their blood
As we push ever on toward our goal, we fiercely battle
Against our enemy, and slice them down in revenge for our people’s sadness
Knowing that should we fail it will be our laments they will sing

Over the pulsing mass of bodies the elves raise their voices and sing
Their Spell Songs call to the earth and echo off the castle
Willing the elements to come to our aid and quell our sadness
The magic coursing across the battlefield leads us toward success
The power coursing in their veins is the greatest of our weapons, hidden in their blood

Wounded I stumble to the ground, my vision clouded by a stream of my own blood
I search for a sense of sanity, while nearby the clashing swords sing
Their terrible piercing dirge, gorged on the never ending battle
I raise my eyes and realize we are within striking distance of the castle
But my brothers in arms lay broken around me, our chance for success
Steadily seeps into the ground with our blood, and I choke on my sadness

The skies begin to weep as if sensing our sadness
And with the rain comes a new race with light in their blood
The pixie army arrives to smite Sargon’s demons and suddenly I feel sure of our success
As we enter the castle gates a raucous chorus we sing
Triumphantly we stand before our beloved castle
And watch our leader and theirs struggle in the culminating battle

In the barracks now my battle-weary brethren recount their tales of blood and glory
Overwhelmed with sadness I listen to a solitary mockingbird sing
While success wafts along the ocean breezes that caress Illuminata Castle.

-Battle Ballad of the Unknown Hero

70k and the birth of Molly Bates

2008-01-23T14:39:00.000-08:00

Monday I came up with someone new, and a new character is never a good thing with me. Molly Bates is her name, and she is, pretty much me at this point in my life, the way that Mylena was me back when I was fifteen. I am not sure where Molly will end up, but I thought that I would give a hand at interviewing her. We'll see. The trouble is, that means that a fourth project is surfacing, and I haven't finished the first three.

No, this isn't the MEME, and I'm sorry ASG. I'll get there when the noveling streak is over for today. I just thought I would take a break and to a little blogging. I am 400 words from 70k, which means I've earned myself four cookies today. It has been quite some time since I had a 4k day. I think this is because of where the story is at. We are building up to the war, and the prospect of battle always means the words flow. I am currently worried I will have to extend the book by a chapter, which if anyone knows my little secret gimmick, means I have some tweaking to do.

I am working towards the middle of chapter twelve, when I said I wanted to finish chapter eleven. Who knew that I would get on a streak like this? I am letting heartthrob Fionn exit stage left, and since he was in the way of my creative process, things are flowing nicely. Flowing like a sand river. Okay, so referencing my own writing that no one else has read is kinda tacky, but whatever. I'm sort of scared really, since it looks like I will actually finish this thing. What next? I have 30k to go to reach my goal although I'd prefer something longer than that. I'm more of a brevity girl, although you wouldn't know it from my blog. Editing is the answer I guess. Trouble is, I only know how to edit 8th grade essays. How do I edit a novel?

Also, I am thinking of looking into readings. The first one I am doing will be on the radio on Ann Arbor's Unbedtime Stories on KFJC on Feb 6th some time after 7am good god. I also think read alouds are a great idea to bolster the spirit. Not sure if I can find any, but I always enjoyed reading my poetry, and perhaps reading a book excerpt will help the spirit even more. If you know of any in the San Jose area, let me know. Of course, this is me planning way far ahead. First I have to finish the ungodly thing. So I am off to earn my fourth cookie.

What I like, or on the importance of Abihu

2008-01-23T09:15:00.001-08:00

I sit down this morning with the intention on finishing chapter 11. It's been several days since I have written, so I began to scan through the beginning of the book to remind myself of what this world is like. I found myself enjoying one thing in particular. Yes the characters have little personality. Yes the world is largely unformed and barely described. So what is it I like? The connections.

Several events spark other events, changes in one character spark internal shifts in another. A good example of this is Joppa's story. She's a minor character, and seemingly unimportant. Really, she's just a hanger on in the cast, barely able to feed herself let alone contribute to a band of soldiers trekking through the wilds. At the beginning of the story, we're talking the second scene of the book here, an unknown monk dies. It seems like a meaningless ploy to tug at the emotions of the reader. However, Abihu's death trigger's Joppa's madness, even so many miles away from each other. They're twins, you see, and once he dies, her psychically sensitive mind absorbs his consciousness into her own. Crazy and in pain, Joppa runs away from home to wander in the swamps lost in a haze of her own grief.

Another event is triggered by the death of Abihu. The remaining monks lead Warrek, one of the main characters and the captain of the Queen's Guard (remind me to change it from King's to Queen's, eh?) back to Joppa's home on the pretense that her father will have information about the
whereabouts of the missing King. When they arrive, it turns out that the monk only wanted to make peace with Joppa's father for the death of Abihu, and that he knew all along where to find the King.

Abihu then becomes a character in and of himself, through his sister. She makes decisions an unlearned girl never would have, she affects great change, and in the end becomes a leader herself. Although he only has about three paragraphs of actual screen time, Abihu is a pivotal character. His death sparks change, and that change later on, means that the mission of the main group of characters can succeed.

In the first draft of this tale Abihu had a larger role. I know him better than the reader will, unless I masterfully build his personality within his sister. In some ways, I miss him. When I wrote him the first time, I felt actual pain at his death. He was a character that I wanted to live, but who was stuck in an impossible situation. This second time around I don't think there will be that same emotional tug when he dies. The response will be felt by others
and it is through their reaction to the tragic loss of this young man that the reader will understand what a loss it really is. I suppose that will have to be enough.

Also, the formatting on blogger totally sucks.

The guild is dead, long live the guild

2008-01-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

Ever since I logged in the first time back on March 13, 2005, I have mostly been in a guild called The Rogue Knights. The mostly part I'll get to in a moment. Last week, however, Boyfriend and I got into a small guild called Thunderforce, thus guilding two characters who had been freelancers since we rerolled them as Draenei. And while in the guild I began to see more and more similarities to The Rogue Knights. Essentially the difference being this was a new guild that people were wanting to build into something great, while RK has been fighting the apathy of its members for years.

So I talked to Boyfriend, and he agreed that we just don't have the energy to try and build up the group again, to recruit and retune the website and try to get into the larger instances, which has been my goal for a long time now. I've gotten some raiding experience, but it took me leaving RK for a few months to do so. The members killed the guild, is what it comes down to, and it's harsh, but true. Too many people refused to put in any effort at all, no matter what we tried. We tried aligning the ranks to progression, we tried aligning the ranks to mentoring others, we tried guild runs and guild meetings and nothing worked. It was a group of people more interested in themselves than the group, and that doesn't make for a good guild.

So now we're moved to Thunderforce, well, at least the three people that were still active in RK at the end. Boyfriend has kept his character in RK for story reasons, and I am leveling a healer to prepare for Kara. So far they are moving fairly slowly towards the 10-man instance goal, but I am hoping that will pick up once real life steps out of the way and lets the game world continue on its way toward ultimate glory. RK is still there to fall back on if need be, but I have a good feeling about Thunderforce. I respect the guild leader more every time I encounter him, and the guild charter itself rings like a streamlined version of the RK charter. I only hope that the same issues that plagued RK don't also infect TF. Otherwise we're back to where we started. And I for one, don't have the energy for that.

A cookie is worth a thousand words

2008-01-04T11:00:00.001-08:00

Hear me out. I don't know if I can explain properly, but I have never been good with motivation. There's a reason I haven't been to the gym more than once since moving to San Jose, and it's in my friggin' apartment complex. But I have been craving cookies, and so made a deal with myself yesterday. I told myself that if I wrote 1000 words I could make chocolate chip cookies for myself. I hit the 1000 words around 11 am and set to baking my cookies. I made them large, so that they would be a worthy reward for my efforts, and set forth the rules. The rules are as follows:

Each cookie represents 1000 word increments in the word count, but not necessarily only 1000 words. Cookie number 63 (which Boyfriend helped me dispatch last night with the weird tasting milk) for instance took 1500 words to earn, since getting to 63k required a little more writing as I had started that day in mid-thousand as it were.
The cookie can only be consumed after the goal is achieved. No eating of the cookie before you reach the goal.
Only the cookie designated for that word count goal (see cookies 64 and 65 above, cookies 66 thru 70 not pictured) can serve as the reward.

This is surprisingly effective for me. Instead of following an arbitrary goal set by a website, I have a tangible reminder of what I need to do next, and when I reach it, I get another cookie on my plate. There's a great deal of pressure with this motivation system, as I realized I had baked 10k words yesterday and had a lot to live up to. I put the rest of the dough away lest I give myself a coronary. Now, if you excuse me, all this blogging about cookies is making me hungry.

I'm not sure what happened but once again the writing took over my writing

2008-01-03T10:04:00.001-08:00

So as the title of the blog would suggest, this was intended as a gaming blog, a place where I could continue my analysis of the video games I love to play and play to love. I imagined myself pulling all my readers from my previous site. But it really hasn't worked out that way. For one thing, they don't really notice I'm gone at WI, my column is being written by someone else, and my post count seems to have been taken over by other bloggers. Much like my fiction, my personal blogging has taken a completely different direction. I really never expected to spend my blogging time writing about writing of all things. I mean, should I just be writing? It turns out it's cathartic, this mental word play, writing out my thoughts without having to stick to the plot outline or figure out how the hell to get Chiave out of the Dragon Vale alive. I wonder if I will have the interest in writing on the original topic of the blog. Sure I have ideas, but when I sit down to blog it's the novel that ends up being the topic time and again.

The rain is coming to the Bay Area, and as I stare out at those beautifully ominous clouds I want to sip apple cider in a small mountain cafe and listen to the water beat on the roof. Rain is such a rarity in Southern California where I grew up, it's practically a holiday when it arrives. I suppose that's why living in the Bay Area suits me so well. I know that the weather could be harsher elsewhere, as it was in Oregon, but I am grateful for seasons, even mild ones. Perhaps it's time for a rainstorm in Shadowhaven.

IKEA the Gimmick Slayer

2008-01-02T12:13:00.000-08:00

Originally, the end of December was supposed round out with a novel getting finished and an apartment getting moved. I didn't have to write for a living anymore (unless you count review work, which trickled down to nothing last month), so I had plenty of time to finish SoTO, right? Sure. Well, I was about 400 words into the second half of my rough draft when I happened upon the NaNoFiMo website, and boy was I happy. So I chugged along, happy to be following another program to get my on track. And then there was the moving conversation. Our move was set for December 31st, the last day of the month, giving me enough time to finish my extra 30k for the FiMo challenge. Or at least I thought. Then Friday night we were talking, and as it turned out, Roomate had forgotten to ask for the 31st off to move. The new apartment had been ready since the middle of the month, and we were certainly ready, so I brought it up -- yes, it really is my fault to some extent -- the idea of moving over the weekend. I figured if I really pushed I could finish the 20k in two days. I had done it before. So which 2 days didn't really matter.

Therefore we moved on Saturday, 300 trips up the elevator to our new LOVELY townhome. It was a killer day, but we got it done for the most part on Saturday, and I still had Sunday and Monday ahead of me to finish my 20k. Right? Wrong.

Saturday night Roomate announced he wanted to pick up a few things from IKEA as he had next to no furniture and had a paycheck coming up he wanted to spend. This is where I found myself backed into a corner. How to do deny someone their first big chance to get furniture for their new apartment? It was only going to be a few things, so I figured we could go first thing in the morning and then I could write the rest of the day.

What happened was this: we got to IKEA nice and early, about 9:50 or so, before they even opened the showroom. We spent two hours in the showroom, where Roommates a few pieces turned into an entire bedroom set, and then another two hours retrieving the items from the werehouse. As we got in the car at 1:30, I kissed my NaNoFiMo goal goodbye with a sigh. There was just no way I could force 20k out of myself in one day.

The sad part didn't come that day, although I was certainly chagrined. It came on Monday, when I was messegging Roommate to let him know that the internet was on at our new place. He asked how my writing was going, and I let him know the FiMo thing was dead. The response? "I could see how that could happen." NOTHING! No acknowledgement that his furniture foray meant me sacrificing my project. And this from a NaNoWriMo participant. There aren't words for the frustration this fills me with. Yes, there is a NaNoJiMo, but it's for a completely new novel, and I haven't even finished my November project, so I can't possibly plan something for this month, this month where I will hopefully be granted gainful employment. Now I am faced with a deadline (Februrary 6th is when I read an excerpt on the radio) and no sure way of meeting it. I have lost my oomph, and I don't feel all that acknowledged for the sacrifice of that oomph.

You see my dilemma. Yes, I have the time to write now, but I had the time last month, and it wasn't until I had the FiMo group to pull from that I actually got the motivation to write. There is a reason why this book hasn't been finished in 18 years. I stand at an abyss, an abyss I have to fill, but I have to tool to fill it with. There's only me, and the empty room, and my foreboding about January.

The end of it all, and the beginning

2008-01-02T11:26:00.001-08:00

I've been told that a year can be represented by the age cycle of a man. The new year, bright and fresh, replete with possibilities, is seen as an infant. That infant grows up as the year progresses, until the evening of December 31st when he is slaughtered ritualistically in order to make room for a new helpless baby. It's grotesque, if you ask me, but in this case I hardily agree that 2007 needed to be put down, and I welcome the mewling 2008 with open arms and a burping cloth.

It's not that 2007 didn't have its moments. I got a chance to become a professional writer for a year, and work in the video game industry -- both great experiences. I moved out into the Bay Area in 2007, first to San Francisco and then to San Jose. I absolutely love it out here, and I can't wait to get a job and be able to afford to sit at Crema and finish my novel. There's also the novel itself. 2007 saw a NaNoWriMo win, which in retrospect isn't that big a deal. Thousands of people won this year, and 50k does not a novel make.
But beyond the word count goal, deeper than that, is the fact that I have been desperately trying to write that
novel in some form or another since I was eleven. That's right, it's been a long road, and so the real accomplishment isn't the writing (I had 80k on the last draft of this thing) it's the planning. I rebuilt the book in October from the ground up, keeping the important elements and scrapping the rest. What came out is actually a cohesive story. It certainly isn't as epic as it should be, and the cultures are all wrong at this point, not to mention I should be at 200k and I am only at 60k. But it's definitely better than the version I wrote as a teenager, and hopefully I will finish it this month.

2007 was also completely turbulent. I got hired and fired, from my dream job. I learned that I had it in me to write 10k words a day, to write from home, and still pull in a paycheck. I learned that teaching is not for me. Stepping back into a classroom for one day to substitute was a horrible experience that taught me I need to move on. There is too much emotional trauma in a classroom, too many personal attacks, too many manipulations and insults, and I really don't want to spend my life in anger and pain. So I decided to look elsewhere, and landed first at WoW Insider part-time and then at Reputation Defender until I decided PR was also not by bag. Or rather I remembered that PR was not by bag. I'm not sure where the career train will stop next, but I hope this year will be a bit more stable on the work front.

Which brings me to 2008. I plan on being a busy girl this year, and ironically this has a lot to do with writing. I've made several resolutions, and let's start by putting those down in writing:

I resolve to lose 50 pounds
I resolve to finish my novels (SoTO and Shift)
I resolve to win NaNo again in 2008
I resolve to keep a job for a year, to only have one W-2 to make taxes next year the opposite of the hell they will be this year.
I resolve to get rid of 50% of my debt

I have a secondary goal of getting at least one World of Warcraft character an epic flying mount in preparation for the next expansion, but as that's not life changing I didn't add that as a resolution. It's more of a desire to be ready for the new content.

I'm not sure how these resolutions will pan out, but hey, how can you reach goals if you don't set them? I'd love to also add getting a book published to that list, but that's such a slight chance I don't want to set myself up for disappointment. I will work toward that goal of course, but I can't be sure I can control whether or not that happens in 2008.

I look at this new year with trepidation and hope. I look at this new year wondering if all the crap will continue, or if this will finally be the year that it all evens out. I look at this new year and wonder if I just shouldn't toss this baby out on its ear before it grows into an unruly teenager.

60k and Counting

2007-12-28T15:50:00.000-08:00

And so I just finished chapter ten, and finally allowed myself to post about it. I haven't been letting myself blog because I have been so distracted this month and as a result I am hugely behind in finishing SOTO. Luckily I found the NaNoFiMo, and gimmick-lover that I am I have done my darnedest to keep going if only to get to 80k to finish this challenge. We'll see.

In WoW news Mandie the priest is progressing nicely,
thanks to a partnership with boyfriend's hunter. I am having a whole lot of fun leveling another
character, and even though the guild is gone and I don't have a blog paying me to play the game,
I still feel that I can justify spending my evenings in the game. After all, I have no other form of
entertainment. I don't watch TV, can't spend money on movies. So I game. I hope the priest will
end up being more useful than the other classes I've leveled. Afterall, exactly how much DPS does
one girl need?

NaNoFiMo? Sure, why not.

2007-12-17T15:10:00.000-08:00

So, I admit it, I am a gimmick junkie. There is just something about pulling external motivation from others that gets me going. Perhaps it's the complete lack of personal motivation. In any case, I came across the NaNoFiMo site today, and glomed on for all I am worth.

I have had a horrible time getting myself to write this month, and previous to today only had 400 words down beyond my NaNo count. Pathetic considering what others are accomplishing. So yeah, I'm trying it, and yeah I'm starting two weeks late.

I'm a dork, but at least I got myself to write today.  I have 2.3 of the 30k goal in the can, and am
hoping I'll be able to keep it up for the next two weeks. I am not trying for anything fancy, just hoping to finish the novel, or get damn close to finishing. My problem is, I don't really like the book I'm writing. I get the feeling that if I were reading this, if I had picked it up at Borders or some such, I would be pretty damn disappointed at having wasted seven bucks. But whatever. I promised myself I would finish this tripe, and finish I will. Maybe then I can go on to something productive, like knitting hats or some such.

Anyway, I am off to fax some paperwork, and to take some Advil for this migrain. Weee!

On the road again

2007-12-13T10:49:00.000-08:00

Suddenly this morning I made a breakthrough. I was trying to take my morning nap when the morning creditor calls began. Wee! Well, that got me up, that and my eternally stuffed nose (yes this is cold number three for those keeping track). While laying there with the dogs snuggled next to me, I thought about how I wanted to spend today working on my Nano novel. I've been saying that for 13 days now, and have barely gotten any planning done. Only I forgot one thing. I'm finally at the FUN part!

That's right folks, my favorite scene, the scene that sets this book apart from the others, the scene that made me want to write the book in the first place has finally arrived. I have no idea why I forgot it, why it slipped my mind, but I have finally arrived. Protagonist #2 (and in editing he might just become the main character, I'm not sure) does his best to convince his grandmother to help their plight. He asks her to revisit some of the events in the story to witness for herself what is going on outside her little nest. She does, and THAT my young friends, is the scene, or series of scenes to be more precise, that I have had in my head for 5 years now.

The story has finally broken open. I was able to plan the rest of the novel without any issue, and I even started writing Chapter Nine. I wanted to stop and record this moment, because I'm so very excited to know I can finally finish the book. I needed something to get me past the road block, and this is it.

Project Pineapple

2007-12-11T12:43:00.000-08:00

Boyfriend, Roomate, and I have many things in common. Roomate was a Nanowrimo participant this year, which is how we met. All three of us are interested in video games, although my expertise with gaming pales in comparison to theirs. In addition to interest, there are also extraneous factors (i.e. the burning desire to work doing something we love), and those factors have led to one conclusion: we're making a game.

It comes at a good time for us, as Boyfriend and I are no longer blogging professionally, and I am searching for work. (Yes, I realize I am blogging here, but that's only because I am feeding the addiction, and
I've cut back a bunch, really I have!) This time allows me to work on my pet projects, plan the rest of my novel (and hopefully write the rest as well once the creative juices start flowing). We three represent the core members of a game design team -- artist, programmer and writer -- which means we have everything we need to create a game in one little apartment.

The first project is codenamed Pineapple. No, it doesn't have anything to do with fruit, but it does have something to do with my Nano novel. We're going to use the world I built as the setting for the game, super easy since it's been on my mind for three months straight. I look at this as a great opportunity; not only will I be part of creating something (a huge goal in my life) but I will also get the chance to flush out characters who at this point have no names and very little personality.

Free Agent

2007-12-06T15:57:00.000-08:00

So Monday morning I got canned from my blogging job. There are all kinds of shady things going on with that situation, so I think it's all for the best. It also means I can look for an actual gaming industry position that will bring in a steady paycheck. It also also means that I am heading back to FPQA in all likelihood. What's interesting about the QA is that because it's so very menial, I have mental time to be able to work on my writing. No, I didn't write while I was testing games, but I did plan my writing, which takes just as much time and severely more effort.

Monday I was heartbroken. Tuesday I moped. Wednesday I interviewed for a door-to-door appliance demonstrator position and emailed my gaming industry recruiter with a happy heart. I realized that my fight for the perfect lifestyle, for writing about video games and getting paid for it, was a fight I was losing, largely in part because of the stress. Not the stress with the job (although at the end there was a massive amount of that too). No, my stress came in the financial form. I spent my days depressed and miserable because I couldn't go out to Jamba Juice or down to the coffee shop in my building due to lack of funds. I can't pay my bills, I can't eat anything close to healthy, I am trapped by poverty and it sucks. Only this isn't the sort of poverty that doesn't look like poverty because we live in a lovely apartment and Boyfriend has an amazing job that pays well, just not well enough.

I'm also itching to blog. I've been doing it for so very long, it's ingrained within me. So why not here? No I'm going to get paid for it, but I can still write about the games I love. And who knows. Perhaps I'll start getting link love from those that thought me unfit to write for their websites. We shall see.

A picture is worth 50,000 words

2007-11-28T17:46:00.001-08:00

I just crossed the line into 50k. It feels so weird, considering I still have so far to go until this book is done. But I did it. I can finally say I won something. So now what?

The Lady Sleeps

2007-11-07T11:56:00.000-08:00

The lady sleeps in darkness though the world it burns around her
It's best she does not wake because the flames still lick around her bower
The castle on the mountainside remembers how she glowed
How tears she cried for her doomed realm upon the flagstones flowed
The very stones to weep and mourn, each grain of sand wails on shore for forever
the lady sleeps

Oh how the halls did echo long with her warm peals of laughter
And every plant did bloom within her never ending summer
Now silence reigns and winter chills for in the ground on which it snowed
the lady sleeps

The ashes of her home are gone, in winds of time they scatter
And only mutes remain to sing of her unfettered power
Will no one rise to walk the path our Warrior Queen has strode?
Will no one come to save the realm whose lives will soon erode?
While yet we search for miracles down every lane and rode.
the lady sleeps

Day 6: 2.9k and the gimmick to get me to 20k

2007-11-07T11:46:00.000-08:00

Last night I failed to get my daily word count, largely due to the fact that we went out for caffeine and the caffeine didn't work hardly at all. I got close, mind you, 2.9 to be exact, so I could say I am ahead of the normal schedule. And I'm not far off. I had hoped to hit 20k last night, but it just didn't come. The climactic conversation I was eagerly waiting to write ended up not so pivotal, but mildly interesting nonetheless. If nothing else, what I have created is a series of very interesting scenes. It might make a better movie than a book.

This morning as I was desperately trying to get back to sleep my mind wandered back to my college days. My degree is in creative writing, to be more specific poetry, and I had an amazing pair of professors that truly believed in my writing. It has been so long since I sat down and wrote poetry, it really is a waste of all that time they spent trying to help me. So this morning I decided to add poetry to my novel. Yes, it's a fantasy novel and NO they are NOT going to be randomly breaking into three page epics or god forbid songs. No, I've decided to either place poems at the beginnings of chapters or section off the story into larger chunks and do it that way. Whichever way it works, the poetry will be the next gimmick I am using to keep myself interested in finishing this story.

Day 4 & 5 16.5k down, 85k to go

2007-11-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

I'm falling behind my cohorts, and the healthy competition thing I realize is a total fallacy. I can't keep up with the people at 20 or 30 or even 40 k. I am pacing myself, but the truth is, I can't get myself to write more thank 3.3k a day. I'm too brief, it's too hard a task for me. Getting to my goal each day is a struggle.

I suppose I will just have to let someone else get that patch.

Days 2 & 3: 9900 and back on track

2007-11-04T01:21:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I totally slacked, only writing 3k. But I will say that it was all in one scene, which is a big deal for me. I think accomplishing that opened me up for writing longer scenes the first time out (and this from the queen of brevity,) and so tonight I was able to write 3.6k in one scene to catch myself up and get back on the ol' schedule.

This particular scene is interesting, because I basically copied an entire movie to write it. As soon s I realized this scene was going into the book, I thought of the movie "Zulu" and how appropriate it would be to model it after that epic war flick. Oddly enough, that's my theme with this NaNo year, using things literally for the book that I originally only intended as a metaphor or analogy to illustrate a concept. The first example of this was my use of native americans as the basis for my elven society. Originally I just brought up the Pocohontas story to explain the idea of two cultures clashing and eventually connecting -- until I realized that this was exactly how the two societies worked, and melded together. Of course, I'm largely working off the Disney version of the tale, being the Disney fanatic that I am. Well, that and the original was gruesome and had way too much slavery in it.

To summarize: I am stealing, a LOT for this book. I would say I hope no one notices, but I've just blurted it all out to the whole one reader of my blog (you know who you are Anna.) So I will have to buy you off with something when the time comes to publish. What's your poison? Sweets? Salties? Race Cars? Let's hope it's the first two, because I doubt the third will be in my budget any time soon.

3.3 k down, 97k to go

2007-11-01T20:12:00.000-07:00

I hit my word count today, and am refusing to allow myself to go beyond it, despite being in the middle of a scene. How else will I be able to motivate myself to write another 3k words tomorrow?

Day 1: Denny's and a cold

2007-11-01T20:00:00.001-07:00

It's the first day of Nano, and yes, I'm getting sick. It's not really suprising, I felt it coming on the day after the Kick-Off party, it's just finally hitting me now. I expect to get good and sick before this month is out, and I wasn't able to do much more than my Nano words and a LOT of sleeping today. We'll see how my posting suffers.

Last night boyfriend and I went to the first minute write in, and man, was that a bad idea. I had the worst coffee in a long time, and had to pay for it, and had people chatting behind me the whole time so I couldn't focus on my writing. By the time the laptop battery pooped out I only had 1000 words down, and all of it was junk. Luckily I got home and cleaned a little up, and was able to salvage something from the evening, but I don't know that the write-ins are a good idea for me. It seems I get a lot more writing done here at my desk in the quiet apartment. The distractions might not be worth the camaraderie.

Teleport achieved

2007-10-30T22:00:00.000-07:00

Last night I spent getting my little scrapper Fela Desplazadora (don't ask) to 14 so that I could finally get my travel form, Teleport. It now means that I don't have to run every place I have to go, which is pretty damn handy considering the random locations of missions in this game. In spending all that time leveling, I got a chance to visit a new instance, inhabited by the Circle of Thorns. This was by far the most beautiful instance I've visited in the game, a far cry from the abandoned warehouses and caves I've spent my time in up until now. I was actually enjoying myself as I wandered the winding passageways. Maybe I have been judging this game too harshly. Perhaps it's really better designed than I thought.

Rockin' and rollin'

2007-10-30T21:42:00.000-07:00

About an hour and a half ago my apartment shook, shook more than I remember shaking since the Northridge Earthquake in 1991, where streets collapsed and homes burst into flames. Turns out there was an earthquake, about ten miles from where I live, and now I officially feel like I am back in California.

Tomorrow night at midnight I will start my Nanowrimo novel, sitting in a seedy Denny's in Santa Clara trying not to get distracted by those around me. I'm not ready, not nearly close to ready, but I have a general idea of where the novel is going, and so I'm going to try. I know I can at least get 50,000 words out of what I have planned, and that's enough to win the challenge. It's not enough to finish the book, but they said nothing about finishing the book.

Tomorrow also marks my last day of work in October. I didn't get nearly as much posting done as I wanted, but I might be able to pay all the bills I set out pay. I guess that means I'm making a living as a writer. Weird.

T-Minus 5 Days and Counting

2007-10-28T16:41:00.001-07:00

In five short days, less than that if you want to count the hours from this moment, Nanowrimo will begin. The wait for November to roll around has been difficult, even more difficult when I started planning my novel, getting great ideas that I knew I couldn't yet put to paper.

Now all these questions arise, slipping up my spine and oiling themselves around my throat.

Have I don't enough planning? Well that answer is no, I'm not even done yet. But I'm mostly done, I know where the story is going, I just don't have the last few chapters planned out.

Will I be able to finish? I have no answer to this one. I didn't finish last year, only got to 32,000 words, but I am in a different place now, physically and artistically. I am writing a story I know well, despite having updated most of it. I think I can finish, and I guess thinking will have to be enough.

What happens if I hit a block? The answer to this is the Dare Thread. I've already picked up two of these to use, and that was the first day of sifting through it. If I end up hitting a roadblock, I will just bounce back into there and get some more inspiration. I will only tell you one dare I am using, because the other might not work out: I will put a Great Horned Owl into my book. This is appropriate because the book is entitled Shadow of the Owl, but currently has no owl in it.

SoBaNaNo and Olive

2007-10-28T16:17:00.000-07:00

I so want to create a logo for these guys. Basically, this year's foray into the novel writing will happen with some support. Not that boyfriend wasn't supportive, he is and was and will always be there to push me to write. It's just nice to go through this crazy experience with others. And so I joined the South Bay Nanos group, full of inspiring people much more creative than I. Last night my new friend Zach drove boyfriend and I up to San Fran to the Pan Bay Nanowrimo Kick-off Party. It was exhilarating to spend the evening talking about our novels, about our motivations for writing, about our plans, not for November, but for what happens after. I love these people, they understand my insanity, what drives me to write, and even what keeps me from writing.

We couldn't afford to actually buy anything to eat at Olive, but it looks like a great place. Intimate but chic, in just the right proportions. It made me want to drink martinis and stand around in my beret. But I don't like martinis, and my beret is packed up in Florida with the rest of my life's detritus.

Seeing Chris Baty and the rest of the Nano team for the first time was a bit like meeting a celebrity for the first time. I knew what he looked like from the site, but it was actually kind of exhilarating to be there to talk to him in person. I felt like a groupie. His speech was very inspiring, and I believed him when he said he believed in all of us, that we could accomplish the amazing goal of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. If only *I* believed as he does.

Prodigal

2007-10-28T15:29:00.000-07:00

I'm coming back to the personal blog-o-sphere after spending a year away. I created this blog in October last year, and used it for a few different purposes before finally letting it slip under the current of everyday life. But I've been blogging for a couple websites for quite a while now, and I think it's time to spend some blog time on myself.

My first bit of fluff will explain a bit on who I am, what I am going to write about, and where I hope to go. I called this blog Game Nuveau to give me a bit of focus, but who's to say I will always be writing about video games. I highly doubt it to be honest. I guess what it comes down to is freedom, freedom from edits, freedom from censors, freedom from the riotously harsh commenters on my day-job blog. I love the work, I love getting paid to write about the games I love, I hate that people have so little respect for what I do.

Games I say? I do say. Of late I have been playing three games, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes/City of Villains, and RF Online. Admittedly, I have spent the most time playing WoW, and am fairly new to the others, but I am having a wonderful time exploring worlds that I haven't traversed a hundred times before.

Writing, wha? Yes, this month was my first as a full-time writer. I have been blogging for about 6 months, but it wasn't until October 2007 that I had the guts to try it full time. In addition, this will be my second year participating in National Novel Writing Month, or Nanowrimo. If you haven't heard and this fabulous and crazy group of people, then you should check it out.

Life, what is that? They say life is what happens while you are waiting for something better to come along. I am sad to say of late that has been true. We've -- and by we I mean the boyfriend and I -- have been living hand to mouth for two years now, and I for one am certainly tired of it. I look forward to having more autonomy when it comes to my paycheck, my stability, my quality of "life."

So there you have it. This is me, writing to you, about the things I find important to me. I end here, without hopes you will enjoy my writing, because for once, it isn't about pleasing the readers, it's about exploring what I enjoy. Screw the readers.