For those not privy to my initial locked post, my last day at Big Fish Games was this last Friday. While the jump is kind of scary, it was for all the right reasons, and I have a couple of decent leads already that will hopefully pan out. While the first few months I was there I was pretty happy, the tail end of the experience stands as one of the toughest in my professional career - which is saying something. In the end, I believe that I did pretty good work for them, and rolled with the punches as best I could. But in the end, stepping out was the right thing to do, and I'm having very few regrets so far.

So, for the time being, with my final paycheck coming in a few days, having a batch of spare time has been very refreshing over the last few days. On top of everything else that kistha and I have been hammering out (including a bit of late night socializing, a bit of D&D 3.5, doing a bunch of long overdue shopping runs and starting a long list of real world chores) I've also been attacking the yard for an hour here or there over the last couple of days, to the point that I may actually post pictures of my woodland paradise here sometime soon. (You won't go blind! Or catch mange! Really!)

( More yard and pet stuff )

- Submitted my patented card game to a potential business partner, fingers crossed
- I'm setting up contacts so I can start pitching my YA novel this summer
- Working out the list of screenplays that we're going to pitch this year.
- Hoping to meet with Allits in July, praying that vet issues will be solved by then

- Spent the weekend entertaining a 'spiffy novelist' in Downtown Seattle.
- Saw Iron Man (*wow*) and Wall-e (*good/sad*), impressed by both.
- Got to experience a non air-conditioned hotel hotbox for three days. Oy!
- Got to experience 98 degree heat and 101 heat index in Bothell on Sunday. Oy! Oy!

- Work is crazy, as the month of July is looking like "the month of lists"
- Home, 'Jurassic Park' is coming down section by section, hope to have a yard soon.
- After last month's garage raid, hoping to get a day to deal with old moving boxes.
- The library/pool room is now finished, save for one cat-cage and two lampshades...
- ...and we got taught how how to properly hang art & pictures by our farm friend.

- After a year of sporadic play sessions, reached 8th level in a 3.5 campaign. Woot!
- Did some one-shot gaming this weekend, with perky goth and ballerina characters.
- All MMO gaming is largely on hold, due to time constraints & overheat issues...
- ...but I've been dinking with 15 minute Halo3 Legendary sessions, very fun.

Anybody else notice that the 70's are back, in colors you won't find in any Crayola box?

-Scott

The Challenge:

Post 3 things you've done in your lifetime that you don't think anybody else on your friends list has done. See if anybody else responds with "I've done that." If they have, you need to add another!(2.b., 2.c., etc...) Have your friends cut & paste this into their journal to see what unique things they've done in their life.

1) Gave an hour-long lecture in college about the American pioneers - all while wearing roller skates. ("Now, over here, west of the Mississippi...") :)

2) Wrote up an adventure for the 'Men in Black' RPG regarding the dangers of sentient kitty gravel (!!) and would have seen it in print if it weren't for one of those pesky bankruptcies.

3) Saw Apocalypse Now in the theater with my upstanding Presbyterian grandparents when I was about ten years old. We stayed about halfway through, before my grandfather managed to recover enough to shoo us out of the theater. When he decided that the family should go see a movie, he thought that AN was going to be a nice religious film, and hadn't realized it was a war epic until we were right bloody in the middle of it.

You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:

1. one weapon.
2. one song blasting on the speakers.
3. one famous person to fight alongside you.

* Weapon can be real or fictional; you may assume endless ammo if applicable. Person can be real or fictional.

1. Semi-automatic shotgun, is the weapon of choice.
2. "Coast to Coast" by the Scorpions, Big City Nights, circa 1985, at volume ELEVENTEEN.
3. Dude. Ash, from Army of Darkness. The ONLY choice. ("This, is my Boomstick!")

Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. You got that?

Memorial Day = three straight days of fun in the yard and the garage for the wife and I. But in the end, after hand-clearing Jurassic Park, establishing a five-foot "no-thorn-zone" against the wicked Blackberry Monster that was threatening to eat the back fence, sorting and packing two crammed carloads of goods for charity, facing off against spiders that were mega-icky, turning our yard from the neighborhood eyesore into a unkempt wilderness, and finally transporting the entire load of stuff to its new charity home, we're feeling tired, accomplished, and I'm ready for a beer.

The fun bit, involves the faucet spigot on the water heater generating a hairline crack, and we're now emptying drip buckets and hoping the five-year old beast will make it until the repair guys come on Wednesday. Of course, the water heater threatens to go boom over Memorial Day weekend; it wouldn't be right without that. But I figure if the drip gets much faster, I might turn the whole thing off and we'll be down to cold water until the repair guys arrive. I hope that isn't the case, but, hey, better that than having to do with a chilly shower than have to do that silly part-the-waters thing with my hands again.

Short good bits - got some strong responses back on the novel, and picked up the services of a lovely editor to help me with the grammatical aspects.. Our sick cat, now entering month six, is still having some issues, but the weight gain and positive attitude is heartening. With any luck, we'll lose the twice a day shots by the end of this week, and drop down to once a day, and then will start weaning him off of the Prednisone in the hopes of getting him drug free. (Our cat, poster child for the "just say no" campaign.) And most importantly, there is SPACE in the garage now, and a random mis-step is no longer lethal, or expensive... (woo-hoo!)

And, most importantly, to the soldiers out there serving the line, and to those that have already done their time - thank you, to you and your families.

-Scott

I feel inspired this morning; this morning reminds me of some of the brighter mornings I've had in my life - the morning I got married, the day I graduated from college, the day I got on a plane to fly to my first GenCon, all that kind of thing. I don't know why this day is different from any other, but I just feel like I can take on the world today.

At this point, my YA novel project, my game patent, and even my music are starting to get some serious momentum towards open doorways of possibility. While both kistha and I have taken a lot of collateral damage over the last few months (hell, over the last few years) at this point our cat is largely on the mend, my stepdad's appetite is back up again, and kistha is investigating the path of practicing a massage once again. With the coming three day weekend, we are going to do some serious damage to the house, and start making some steps to get us out of this stasis that we've been stuck in. (See: garage, closet, cleaning, yard) . While life is by no means tea and roses, I'm hoping the coming weeks will be a pivot point towards things start to move forward again, in whatever direction it takes us.

Recent themes: barb-wire stringing; stump-hauling; goblin-editing; number-crunching; budget balancing; flash researching; Jed Clampett witnessing; linkedin-expanding; step-dad voting; packard-planning; cat-sticking; Arabian Nights-reading; hound-playing; hill-climbing; economic-researching; piano-playing; monster-slaying; life-reminiscing; desk-clearing; print-investigating; YA agent-searching; moonlight-gazing mayhem.

And, for those of you that appreciate quiet genius from time to time...

http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/

-Scott

My newest YA novel is now past the half-way mark, and I think it's going to work. I was worried about this project over the last few weeks, because I'm shooting to write a book that is half the length of what I'm used to. But now, after this weekend's successes, I'm starting to see it all come together, and am quite relieved that the experiment is going to be a success.

There is a point in a lot of my novels where the story kicks into overdrive, usually at a 'gotcha' point where I severely mess with the reader's comfortable assumptions. My wife, who has been one of my 'first-readers' for a while now, is pretty hard to 'gotcha', as she knows a lot of my tricks now for how I set up my novels (and my protagonists) for the big switch.

But this weekend, I was able to hammer out another 7k on Sat & Sun morning, and got the newest chapters off to my test readers. When my wife sat down to read it, I hovered over her shoulder like usual, noting the typical small grammatical things that needed to be tweaked. But when she got to the 'gotcha' point, I was quite pleased to find that I _really_ got her with it, especially when she verbally burbled through the ramifications of one character's awesome little realization. So, now I can continue on with this, and I'm really looking forward to sending this off to my larger beta group as soon as I have a solid draft.

Writing Goblin Girl, "a mean-spirited fairy tale set in a fairy tale world where nothing is fair, or nice" has been a wonderful change of pace. While the hard-boiled urban fantasy series is fun to write, having the chance to include hundreds of grim little details designed to shock and disgust the reader has been a blast. While I've learned my lesson on one front (when you're sick with a headcold for a month, don't try and write blank books full of notes and assumptions that are bloody impossible to decipher when you're _not_ sick) I will say that the experiment of hammering this book out is starting to pay off nicely. I'm hoping at this rate, I'll be able to finish the manuscript up in the space of a few weeks of bus rides and transcription sessions, and then I'll start the query process to my favorite editors and agents like usual.

As always, drop me a line privately if you want in on the beta for this one.

-Scott

Big Life:

1. My wife's dad had an emergency quadruple bypass surgery, which he came through with flying colors.
2. My stepdad is doing ok in the nursing home, though he's fighting a chest bug which is reallly stomping him.
3. Our sick cat is being stepped off his meds, and is being given kitten food to "fatten his ass up".
4. Downtown Seattle work is going decently well, though I'm starting to jones to do board/card game design again.
5. The newest YA novel project is grinding along, but my beta readers seem to be fond of the dark little tale.
6. I'm starting to hook up with people I haven't seen in years, am trying to schedule them in the cracks.
7. I now have connections to 750,000 people through LinkedIn; humanity is all the rage these days.
8. We're starting to work on the house again, piece by piece, trying to figure out what we can afford this year.
9. The hound is finally spayed, and she's enjoying the sunlit backyard today with her favorite toy.
10. This year's wrangle with government agencies to help my stepdad out seems to have completed, successfully.

Small Life

11. Got my ship and my gear in EVE to do some serious archaeology work, when the time is right.
12. Ran a six-ball run last night when playing pool at a friend's house, and still got my ass handed to me. Huh?
13. Almost got to go to Radcon this year, but the quad bypass stuff knocked it back. Next year for sure.
14. Need to work on getting my patented game up and running, but just have to find the right connections.
15. Bioshock, an hour or two at a time, is a damn good game, and one of the best I've played in recent years.
16. Between Illusionist and the Prestige, but I think the Prestige is the winner in the end. Bowie = teh awesome.
17. Tilda Swinton got an academy award; about damn time. "You can kill me now, John!"
18. Listening to Pandora radio, loudly, and enjoying the hell out of the KMFDM / Manson mix I have running
19. My cat, after having his knees shaved, looks like an anemic poodle with stripes.
20. My wife is one hell of a costumer, and I wonder what she is going to be creating next.

Ten things you may not have known about me:

1. I have a lava lamp on my desk that was a gift from one of my groomsmen.
2. I seem to look good in collarless shirts, but I can't find a good pair of shoes I like.
3. I can write ten thousand words of first draft text, reliably, in a day.
4. I play improv piano like a madman, never quite the same thing twice. Hoping to do recording in 2008.
5. I don't drive, and this late in life, I'm not sure if I ever will.
6. Gary Gygax and Ray Bradbury are my two childhood heroes, and are the two men who most influenced who I am today.
7. I was a foam-sword wielding maniac in my younger life, right down to the rose-tinted ski goggles for eye protection.
8. My father has traveled all over the world, and sawed himself out of a tree when he was younger. Go figure.
9. I have traveled around the United States a bunch, but have yet to really see the world.
10. If I had the chance, I would time travel backwards in time and fix a bunch of stuff, damn the consequences.

Best to all,
-Scott

For all the folks out there who are heading to RadCon - a medical emergency arose in my wife's family yesterday, and we're going to have to cancel our convention plans. Both of us were really looking forward to doing the panels, playing games, and seeing people we haven't seen in eons, but the medical thing easily takes precedence.

My thanks again to Doug and Joy and everyone at RadCon for the invitation to do the Gaming GoH thing, and I hope very much to come across the mountains next year. To the rest of you, have a great time at the con, and we hope to see you later on in the year!

-Scott