Thursday, January 7, 2010

Posting Fever!

I got that fever, that writing-blog-posts-from-school-when-I-should-be-calling-the-parents-of-my-horrible-children fever! Wooooh!

Anyway, I wanted to give you all a quick update, since I haven't posted in forever. We're going to resort to bullet points, because I really do need to get back to calling the parents of those naughty children.

In writing:

  • I am, against all odds, still writing. I just finished a short story called The Dead of Tetra Manna, which can be summarized as (I love this part): "a transhuman communist psychic spy versus his capitalist vampire doppleganger." The story still needs a round of edits, but then I'm going to start sending it out. I think it's a keeper.
  • I am not, however, keeping up very well in my project to earn 50 rejection letters in a year. I just don't think it's plausible, given my schedule. That doesn't mean that I'm going to give up on getting 50 rejection letters as fast as I can, however. Maybe I'll just throw myself a party at the end or something.
  • On the other hand, speaking of beating the odds, I won NaNo! I'm sure I'll put the web badge up sooner or later. What Sacred Games Part One: Heaven and Earth ended up weighing in at about 54k. What's this "Part One" business, you ask? Well, no one was more surprised than me when it ended up taking about 50k to get through the first third of what I had planned. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing will have to wait for edits, which will happen as soon as I can look at the thing without feeling ill. Probably later this month. Part Two and Three will be called Shadow on the Sun and Trickster's God.

On the internet front:

  • New podcasts I'm listening to include: The Guild of the Cowry Catchers and Metamor City, both of which are awesome, both of which deserve a longer review, and both of which will have to wait until I'm not writing a lightning-fast pseudo-post in-between phone-calls to-the parents-of naughty-children (help-I'm stuck-on dashes-and can't-stop!).
  • New blogs I'm reading include: A Character for Every Game I Own, CSI Games, Destination Unknown, The Other Side, and The Subterranean Design Blog, some or all of which may eventually find their way to my blogroll. You can also expect to read more in-depth reviews of these presently.
  • Podcasts and blogs I'm listening to and reading also no longer include several you may see at right, which may find themselves removed, with or without comment.

In books:

  • The Abigail discovered and hooked me on Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy series. Awesome. Review pending. 'Nuff said.
  • Uh... I'm not reading a lot right now. Mostly I only have time for podcasts (see above), which can comfortably be combined with driving. Reading... not so much.

And in games:

  • The Abigail and I continue our disgustingly adorable practice of running games of all kinds for each other, despite our absurd schedules. Life, while rough, is still good.
  • With my good friend Jon here for the winter, I've gotten a little fresh imaginative blood in my veins and got to run a little Scion, the next chapter in Jon's, the Abigail's, and my braided Storytelling Mage: the Ascension chronicle Out of the Cradle (about which more might one day be written), and played the first sessions of what will hopefully be a neat alternate-setting Mage game.
  • I just ordered Greg Stolze's Reign and Jason Blair's Little Fears: Nightmare Edition, both of which I await eagerly. Eagerly, I tell you! Feel free to link to free internet resources for either games - I may include them in any eventual posts I write on the subject.

That's about the shape of it. In my other lives I'm still teaching and planning a wedding and working out regularly. The sun still turns. Life goes on. See you soon.

1 comment:

Guy Shalev said...

Hey Mark, tell me what you thought of my blog and blog-posts, either by commenting, or you can just send me a private message on facebook :)

No, not very active, but I actually have a small post or two I decided to write just yesterday.