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I'm not old, dammit! And get off my lawn. May. 10th, 2008 @ 10:11 pm
Today I heard an N64 referred to as an "original Nintendo."

Orgy of game design geekery May. 5th, 2008 @ 04:08 am
I spent approximately 30 hours working on Android, this weekend. Revisions are coming along nicely, especially because Allen apparently had quite a bit of time to spare, too. There were about 4 hours over the course of the weekend where we were responding back and forth to each other's comments/edits. It was pretty cool.

Now, however, I need to go to bed. Normal hours tomorrow, but I have to get up 2-3 hours early on both Tuesday and Wednesday, which is going to make it impossible to get anything done for at least the next couple days.
Current Mood: accomplished

This shit I just had to share Apr. 20th, 2008 @ 01:55 am
Bitter-gate, indeed. What makes me most bitter is that this shit gets non-stop coverage and discussion, but McCain admitting that "the economy isn't his strong suit" when it is widely believed we are either entering or already in a recession gets a two line blip on the media radar. *sigh*



I'm becoming very concerned with the way these two candidates' campaigns have at once electrified and divided the Democratic Party. There are (lies and damned) statistics out there that indicate that Clinton supporters are more likely to vote for McCain than Obama and that many Obama supporters might throw up their hands in disgust if offered a choice between McCain and Clinton.

Is Obama really that much of an alien in this political landscape? I want to believe, but it seems like a lot of other political folks just want to dissect him and find out why he's different from them.
Current Mood: bitter

I'm in London, still Apr. 12th, 2008 @ 01:23 pm
Today I woke up missing England. The content of the dream was nothing extraordinary. My wife and I had taken a trip to England to see the sights I've waxed poetic about countless times since my trip there in 2000. When we arrived by rental car in Oxford, feeling a little lost the way I always do when I'm in a strange new city, we were greeted warmly by name by the people at whose apartment we were apparently staying while we were in Oxford. It was when we got to the apartment that I began to realize what kind of dream this would be. No one there was actually British.

Everyone there was an old acquaintance or friend of mine - people I haven't seen or thought about since college. The faces hadn't been immediately familiar because they were changed by age and style as mine has been. For example, there was Peter (whose last name I can't remember) who I only knew for about a semester before my romantic relationship devoured the time I was willing to devote to choir. I think L might know who I'm talking about. He had grown his hair out and bleached it - styled it to match that of my Freshman year roommate, Ben. I had no idea that his was still in my library of familiar faces.

After some friendly chatting and implied catching up on old times, it was mentioned that we were planning to head to London, next. The last I heard from Louise, she was married and living in London, so I pulled out my laptop to let her know that I was in the neighborhood, if she wanted to meet my wife and introduce her husband (and, seven years after our last email, her kids?). The email address in my window was devildoll666@gmail.com - the last email address I had for her.

As I was composing the email, I decided to take a lonely little tour of Oxford, which suddenly had the layout of Manchester College. I saw the emblematic ivory towers, spent a little time lost and looking for my way back to the apartment, and ultimately settled down next to my sleeping wife to finish my email to Louise.

It was then that I remembered that it had been a hotmail address.

It had been seven years since last I had any correspondence with her, and the only email address of mine that she had was the hotmail address I haven't used in at least five years. I checked it so infrequently at the end that it was purged from the system at least four years ago. I had no way of emailing Louise. And with a name like Carter, it wasn't likely I would ever be able to find her in the haystack of Carters in London - and that is assuming that she didn't change her name when she married.

I woke with a profound sense of loss. My dream reasoning was correct. The only person who shares any part of my first experience abroad - who showed me her home, introduced me to her friends and family, and escorted me around England for more than a week so I never felt lost for a moment - is gone from me forever. My internet fingerprint is distinct enough that she could find me, but I have lost the power to determine whether or not our paths ever cross again.

I think of all the people I once knew but can't reach anymore - those people whom time, space, and adulthood have stolen from me. I remember J.R., who didn't go by that name even in high school, but he was my friend before he was James. He was my best friend from 5th grade until some nebulous point in high school when Matt overtook that title. But when he joined the army after high school - in the days before everyone, even the ones not in college, had an email address - the distance pinched off our relationship forever. Or MaryCarol, whom I never wished ill and I hope is happier in her married life than she could have ended up being if she had spent years more trying to sustain a relationship with Matt that he didn't really want to work. I could get in contact with her easily enough, but she still hates me for my role in that unfortunate situation. Even the internet doesn't promise eternal friendships. I could name names, but I won't, because exploring this list of names can only lead to more pain and regret.

If you don't maintain your relationships, they will fade away. My annual New Year's party is 1 part fun and 9 parts trying to maintain some relationship with the many people who have profoundly affected my life. And I hope it helps some of those friends maintain their relationships with each other.

Even if you do your best to maintain friendships, some of them will still fade away, because you can't force someone to maintain his or her relationship with you. Time, space, and adulthood sometimes seem to conspire to scatter and separate us. Maintenance isn't enough. If you're not making new friends, you're losing friends. Life wages a slow war of attrition upon your social circles, and if you're not meeting new people and forming bonds with them, you'll eventually lose that war.

In pursuit of that, give me the name of someone on your Friends list that I don't have on mine but that you think I should get to know, and I'll respond with someone on my Friends list that you don't have on yours but whom I think you might like to meet.
Current Mood: pensive

It's good to be back Feb. 6th, 2008 @ 04:02 am
Playtest of Android continues, but getting sessions to coincide with everyone's schedules is not always easy. Frankly, I had reached a point where I was resigned to sitting around and doing nothing except maybe poking a flavor section or two of Android until I was completely done with the current playtest scenario. However, I am completely incapable of sitting still for that long, and the forced inaction was making me miserable.

So I gave up on being bored and started writing Cerante, again. All I really had done before was the prologue and lots of notes on the setting, characters, and plot, so it really has that new project smell to it. Raw composition - 1,260 words last night and 1,500 words tonight. The first chapter is done. I already know this book is going to take a lot of work. I'm writing it chronologically, but there's a framework story and a couple other gimmicks involved, so even when I've finished writing the story, the rough draft of the book won't be done. Due to the complexity of the plot and detail of the setting, it is also likely to be longer than the other books Matt and I have written. A fairly conservative estimate places it at 160,000 words, and that's based on a very preliminary outline. We don't usually write enormous, 800-page tomes, but if any story we intend to tell will require us to exceed our typical length of 100,000-130,000 words, this is it.

Let's see if I can average 5,000 words (about 10 single spaced pages) a week. 7,000 words a week would be totally awesome, but I know from experience that keeping up with that pace involves cutting out some of my social life, and I can only live on half-rations of human contact for so long before I start feeling a bit isolated. It works for a one month push to complete a project, but I can't imagine writing an entire novel like that - at least not so long as I have a day job, at least.

Now that I've made my blood sacrifice to the Muse, however, I should get some sleep. That's a bit more difficult after 3 cups of coffee, but I'm sure I'll manage it. Oh coffee naps - how I have missed your seductive wiles! So, I'm only sleeping 7 1/2 hours consecutively, but I'm taking an hour nap while my food digests and the coffee kicks in, so I'm almost coming out ahead, in this equation.
Current Mood: accomplished
Other entries
» Dear Minnesota. I hate you, sometimes
Yesterday, it was 44 degrees when I walked to work. Now, I knew this was unseasonably warm for January, but did you *really* have to drop 48 degrees in 24 hours? Seriously. It was -4 when I scrambled onto the bus, this morning. And it's supposed to be -13 tomorrow, with a high of 0. This means you've dropped 57 degrees in 48 hours. What? Are you taking your cues from the stock market, now? Knock it off.

-Eric

I hope my stored value bus pass shows up before I run out of loose change. A 35 minute walk in 10 degree weather with moderate winds I can deal with. There is no reason why I should feel compelled to walk 2 miles in subzero temperatures. Screw that.
Jan. 29th, 2008 @ 11:08 pm
» Transcendence
I am utterly content. I'm currently actively managing my emotional state by means of carefully chosen musical selections - "Lucky," "Maahi Ve," "Voices," "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," "Little Fugue," Beethoven's 5th - 3rd movement, Moonlight Sonata - 1st movement, and "Simple Songs." And I'm sure there will be more. Eventually, I will write, but for now, I am basking in simple comforts, marinating in pleasant memories, and feeling very close to God.

There is a time to labor, to be outraged by injustice and willful blindness, to be out in the world *doing* something - but it is not now. This is a time for peace, for hope, for gratitude - not because it is Christmas Eve, but because the spirit has chosen to move me into this state now. To fight it would be blasphemous.

Here I am. Shining with all that I am and all I have been given. And I am forever grateful for this gift of life.
Dec. 24th, 2007 @ 06:46 pm
» Quote of the day
"Lingaj would kill these guys for a Klondike bar."

That is all.
Nov. 20th, 2007 @ 02:54 am
» Shpinning!
This was pretty interesting. Stolen from roniliquidity, who stole it from crm17, who got it from HERE, I give you the spinning dancer:



THE Right Brain vs Left Brain test ... do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality based
forms strategies
practical
safe

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling
"big picture" oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can "get it" (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking

======

I find that I can change directions by blinking rapidly until I see the direction switch, though I began to despair of ever getting it to go counterclockwise before I hit upon this. Others have noted that performing tasks associated with a particular hemisphere (reading, doing math problems, singing, reciting poetry, etc...) can also accomplish this.
Oct. 23rd, 2007 @ 12:18 am
» Too awake to sleep, too sleepy to work
The latest draft of Android is coming along nicely. I'm hoping (against hope) that it will be ready for another playtest by the end of this month, though I *might* want to write a new sample mission so my poor local playtesters don't have to run through the same scenario three times. I've expanded the controller role a lot - enough to make a "fixer" (i.e. a controller with no android to control) a viable character in a game with an odd number of players. Controllers almost tragic heroes. Okay, so they're more like end boss puppet master villains who are doomed to be destroyed by their fatal flaws.

If this draft survives the new playtest, I'm going to have to hand it over to another GM and roleplaying group to test. It's all well and good for the designer to run the game. I *know* how I intend it to be run, after all. It's another thing entirely for a (non-designer) GM to run it for a group of players that doesn't include the designer. The latter is as much an act of mercy as of faith. Even though I understand as well as anyone that GMs customize games (because I've never run a game without adding house rules) and therefore fully expect another GM to run my games differently than I would, I understand that it must be kind of weird to run a game when the designer is sitting at your gaming table. Intellectually, no one expects me to stand up and point accusingly at the GM as I lament "You're doing it wrong!" But this isn't the sort of weirdness that intellectual understanding can alleviate.

It kind of makes me sad that I'll probably never be able to play any game that I design unless I'm running it.

It reminds me of my authorial lament. I will never be able to read one of my books like a first-time reader can - to see the plot and characters develop in surprising ways and in a polished form. Even with a co-author, I usually get either lots of surprises written in first draft quality or very few surprises written in final draft quality. You can't bake yourself a surprise birthday cake. Either you bake the cake and sacrifice the surprise, or you get the surprise but don't bake the cake. Of course, it's only a tiny lament, and I can never quite put my heart into it. I need to bake the cake a lot more than I need to be surprised by it, and there is a lot more satisfaction to be had in seeing other people enjoy the cake than there is in merely being surprised by it.

Besides, there are always details I miss or forget. There are a lot of times when Matt and I look at a passage or snippet of text that is totally awesome and are completely unable to tell who wrote it. For all we can tell, the Gnomes of Fantasy Fiction are responsible for them, but we're usually able to at least take collective credit for them. Those poor, under-appreciated Gnomes of Fantasy Fiction never get a byline, do they?
Oct. 14th, 2007 @ 02:16 am
» Now, I sleep
I finished the huge, race-against-time-because-my-co-author-writes-like-the-wind-and-I-have-to-stay-ahead-of-him project (a.k.a. Kingmaker) on Saturday. I finished the small tucking-in-the-octopus project (a.k.a. Lesson of the Fuel) tonight. Soon I return to the back-burner-project-that's-taken-three-years-to-write (a.k.a. Android). Okay. That's kind of a lie. I've already put a little work in on that one because there was a delay in Matt sending me the version of Lesson that had the line edits we did while I was in Hawai'i. Some lame excuse about house-sitting and not living at home for two weeks, or something. But I swear I only put in 8 to 10 hours of work on it, tops, during that 2-day delay, and in my defense, it *was* a weekend.

But now? Now, I sleep, because I haven't been getting enough sleep, lately. Something about the aforementioned race-against-time project has been making it very difficult for me to rationalize a full night's sleep. I'm glad that nonsense is over...

...at least until the next project absorbs me.

Mere boredom is like drowning. Prolonged inaction is death. But I'm not bored tonight. Tonight, I'm sleepy.
Sep. 27th, 2007 @ 02:08 am
» Just throw those ideas in the closet. I'll sort them out later, but it might still look like chaos.
This morning, I had a dream that I was (or was the steady cam operator following) Ripley in an Alien movie, and she/I/we were placed in charge of destroying something that was either a Xenomorph cyborg or a Terminator designed by an A.I. created by the Xenomorphs to enslave and destroy all Xenomorphs. In any case, despite the target being completely immobile, our high explosive, high caliber, high velocity, armor piercing rounds weren't even putting a dent in this thing. I mean hell, if it is as invulnerable to the molecular acid blood of the Xenomorphs as the Terminator was immune to human punches and kicks, I guess it makes sense that it'd be tougher than anything humans could throw its way. The dream ended with Ripley throwing down the anime-esque personal artillery weapon in frustration and saying in an exasperated voice, "Screw this! This is just fucking cheating!" Then I/she/we walked away from the whole thing.

This was a pretty good hint that my brain was done with sleep and that further failure to regain consciousness would be met with even more bizarre combinations of random idea.

One of the strange things about my dreams is I can dream in third person. More often than not, I'm an observer of my dreams rather than a part of them. Usually I find myself in the POV/body of one or more of the characters, at some point. I don't feel like I'm playing a character until my POV abruptly zooms away from the character I was just playing and shows them from the outside, but they keep acting exactly the same as they did before I zoomed out. It's like being Emerson's "invisible eyeball."

I'm not sure if this happens because I've been roleplaying for 20 years, because I've been writing fiction for 16, or because of some other influence, but does anyone else have this experience?

Still, none of this is as weird as the night I died in my sleep and dreamed a profound metaphor that captured everything I had lost, everything I was, and everything I was becoming. Compared to dreaming in literary fiction, dreaming in third person isn't even disorienting.

Awake or asleep, my brain is like a big box of jumbled up Legos, and it constantly recombines the parts at random and spits out the ones that actually look like something that was made deliberately - often badly, but not obviously accidentally. It's no surprise that I enjoy magnetic poetry. I'm not really a poet, but I see links between things that can make patterns - words that are like bits of cloud that make a dragon when you put them together in the right order. But once I see that I have a dragon, I want to make a landscape around it, and once I have that picture in my head, I have to know the story behind it.

This is the creative process to me. A single, random sample thought falls out of the box of Legos, and I have to build a world around it and set that world in motion. It's so easy, at first. I'm completely free, when I start, and the possibilities are infinite. It's hard to know when the story is done, to *admit* that the story is done. It's also hard to keep changing the pieces that make up the Lego castle until it's perfect (or at least done) when you know that another turn of the kaleidescope, another shake of the Lego box, another motion of wind and moisture, another look at the words on the refrigerator can take you back to that place where you're free to imagine anything, again.

I don't have much of Kingmaker left to work on - maybe 3 pages (single-spaced) and another editorial pass to smooth out the wrinkles in the last 5 pages - but every day is getting harder. I worry that I'm afraid of finishing the project because I don't want to let it go, but I also worry that my desire to have it done is born more of my urge to start a new project than my belief that I'm finished with this one.

Nevertheless, it will be done in the next few days.

I just wish I could say the same for Android.

First, Kingmaker. Second, a glance at the first 50 (double-spaced) pages of Lesson to make sure there are no further contradictions or throwbacks. We found one small throwback (that is, something that refers to a concept we cut from the current draft) when we were getting ready for the writers conference - nothing anyone but the authors would've been likely to notice, but it was in the first 30 (double-spaced) pages, so I'm a bit more paranoid than usual. Then I can polish Android and hopefully get it to market.

I feel terrible about how long that project has taken, but I want it to be ready when I tell people it is, and that has meant playtesting, which takes my time plus 4-6 friends whose schedules actually allow them to meet for several hours. To make it even worse, Legendary is a tiny turn of the kaleidescope away from that project, as both inhabit the same part of my brain - the obsessed GM who must make the rules serve him the way he wishes them to.

A lack of ideas isn't my problem. Monolocationality (the inability to be in more than one place at the same time) is my problem. I'd like to believe the ideas I choose to pursue and develop are more compelling and worthy of my time than Alien vs. Terminator.
Sep. 16th, 2007 @ 01:46 am
» Hipster Olympics

Sep. 5th, 2007 @ 02:22 pm
» Mission Accomplished
It's funny because the political implication fits. We've been asked to send a full copy of Kingmaker to one agent and the first 50 pages of Lesson of the Fuel (which we're considering renaming Bringer of Fire, as we've had several people tell us Lesson of the Fuel sounds like a book about either cars or global warming) to another agent. However, we have a few more weeks of work left to do on the final draft of Kingmaker, and having an agent read your manuscript is a long way from having your novel published.

Still, even small steps in the right direction are encouraging. In all, this conference didn't feel as OMG-awesome as the last one, but it was satisfying. Part of is was that Terry Brooks and Steven Barnes were not present, and they were one of the highlights of the last conference. Getting shot down in the street in my first consultation by an editor who does YA but not YA fantasy and didn't even have a name to give us of someone in her house that might be interested was not the way I wanted to start out the conference.

There were some great things, though. For starters, our hotel room was awesome - complete with a private porch that affords an unobstructed view of the ocean sunset. We went to the Open Mike event on Friday night, and I now know why it's so hard to get published. Each participant read a three minute piece of his/her (presumably unpublished) work, and they were, almost without exception, completely awesome. After hearing many of those 3 minute snippets, I would've bought the book on the spot, if it had been available. What also surprised me was the diversity of the authors - a children's book that had us all laughing (it screamed out to be a big screen cartoon), several nonfiction books concerned with subjects I never knew could be made so interesting, literary fiction by writers who betrayed no pretension, a humorous sci-fi book, poetry, and (of course) our YA fantasy novel.

We have one more session to attend before we head back to Honolulu, so I need to cut this short. I'll have more stories to tell when I get home.
Sep. 3rd, 2007 @ 08:16 am
» I'm still capable of being nervous
Matt and I got our top 4 choices for consultations - basically 10 minute pitch sessions to agents and editors. My first one is tomorrow afternoon, and I'm pitching Kingmaker (as the editor does YA books for Harper Collins). I am both elated and nervous.

Now I should try to sleep so I'm at the top of my game for it. Wish me luck.
Aug. 30th, 2007 @ 10:33 pm
» My side! Your side! Your side! My side!
Okay. Fair enough. Stark from Farscape is definitely the sort of character I play in RPGs - creepy and quirky, yet wise, and tormented by his backstory. I'm not quite sure what that says about me.
Aug. 24th, 2007 @ 04:01 am
» The human robot gives you Results
Long-time readers of my LJ will recall that most of what goes here is the daily report of how much of a given writing project I've gotten done, so far. Taken as a single act, writing a book and getting it to a final draft is a huge task, but no one can write a publishable novel in a day. I have to break the project into drafts, chapters, scenes, etc... Right-brained though I might be, I have a certain fondness for numbers, so even though the story is what matters most, I focus on the milestones - how many pages or words I write over a particular period of time, and whether that is more or less than I've managed in the past. After all, those numbers are tangible proof that I've gotten *something* done. I'm not going to show off 5 pages of a rough draft, so you just get the numbers.

Now, however, we've posted sample chapters of both Lesson of the Fuel and Kingmaker - about 30 double-spaced pages of each. If you want to see what these numbers add up to, feel free to have a look. One caveat - the chapters might be finished, but the website (especially the portal page and the Kingmaker section) most definitely isn't. In fact, the site is still kind of ugly, though we plan to clean it up during these last weeks leading up to MWC. Line-editing is also on the agenda for next week, so comments and criticism are certainly welcome.
Aug. 20th, 2007 @ 11:27 pm
» I'm okay. You're okay
A bridge less than a mile from my house collapsed, this evening. My immediate group and I are fine. I likely won't know for sure about some of my co-workers until tomorrow, but we heard from one of the managers and our boss's boss, so the chain of command is intact, at least.

It's been a surreal night...
Aug. 1st, 2007 @ 10:53 pm
» Done!
The last chapter is terribly written, and the last three or four chapters are obviously of first draft quality, but the project I've been working on since the end of October is finally done. Matt's been reading it, and he seems to think the first third is of near-final-draft quality, with the second third being of second draft quality. He hasn't read the last third, but I'd say it's of roughly first draft quality, so it balances out that the second draft, on the whole, is of second draft quality. As this is a 2nd draft, that's perfectly acceptable to me. Now, it's my task to work on website + synopses while he concentrates on churning out a third draft in a month - no small task, but we think he can do it, as he writes about twice as fast as I do.
Jul. 31st, 2007 @ 03:56 am
» Spoiler-proof
I just finished Deathly Hallows. If Robert Jordan had been able to wrap things up so neatly in his 7th book as Rowling has done, I might not still hold a grudge against the Wheel of Time. I'd post something more detailed behind a spoiler cut, but I have to buy groceries, do dishes, and write some of Kingmaker, tonight. Only two and a half chapters left to go. Frankly, it was nice to read the climax of a good fantasy novel in an adjacent sub-genre while working on my own. The end of Deathly Hallows has more in common with the end of Lesson than with the end of Kingmaker, but I'll dodge the potential spoiler by not explaining why.

Yes, I realize that of all the people on my flist who'd be angered by spoilers, maybe 2 didn't finish reading it before me, so the point is probably moot. But as one of them is still begging us not to spoil the end of Book 6, I should probably restrain myself.
Jul. 24th, 2007 @ 01:17 am
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