Month: April 2013

On the Road

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An essay worth reading by Vanessa Vaselka. [Edited to add: Read this piece too. I think I love this woman.] I remember when I was twenty-one, and working as a graphic artists for a newspaper in Los Angeles, two of my female co-workers left for a year to travel around the world together. It was not a good time for American women to be traveling around the world, but then again, I suppose one can argue it has rarely ever been. There’s always some reason it’s safer to stay at home. I was jealous of their bravery and their financial means (although they were not traveling in anything like style — this was $5 a day hitchhiking stuff they would be undertaking.) I was astounded that they could want to do this. Weren’t they scared? What if something should happen? Were they really going to hike through India? China? The same imagination which is so beneficial to me as a writer also would have tied me up in anxious knots about such a journey. A …

©2013 SnowSkadi

You See a Gazebo

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It’s one of the most famous stories in tabletop gaming history. I was well into my gaming career when I first heard it, as well as a little amazed that I hadn’t heard it prior because I had, for a brief time, gamed with one of the Cal Tech RPG groups, and you’d think that’s just the sort of thing that they would have gleefully shared with anyone and everyone. But heh, I was was also that rarest of creatures (at the time,) a female gamer, so maybe they didn’t think think it was the right way to impress me. Follow the link above for the full and complete tale, but to paraphrase: once upon a time a group of terrifically smart people got together for an evening of make-believe and during the session, the DM explained that there was a gazebo. It was white, it was large, it was just sitting there. What followed was worthy of an Abbott & Costello routine, because it never occurred to the DM  that his player might have no clue …

Concentration and Focus

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I’ve used a lot of tricks to keep myself focused on writing (not always successfully.) Some of my books have whole musical playlists, a kind of unofficial official sound track that I can sometime use to put me in the right frame of mind. Sometimes though, it seems as much a distraction as a help. Lately I’ve been playing with increasingly popular idea of using sounds that suppress the limbic system, thus allowing me to concentrate. I’ve grown quite fond of a combination of methods, namely the site above, Focus@Will,  which has both free and subscription services. They are a small start-up and thus very worthy of love, but I’m also fond of their customer service: when users complained that a popular beta feature had been removed, it took less than 24 hours for them to have to feature returned. Now that’s responsive. The second web site I find myself using a great deal is Coffitivity, a free beta service which does nothing more or less than sound like a coffee shop. Combined with Focus@Will, I can …

©2013 Kalen Chock

To Conlang or not to Conlang?

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I am a fan of world-building, as anyone who knows me can attest. This stems largely from my first novel (still in the process of being re-written,) called Game of Empire, which was based (as so many fantasy novels of my generation are) on our weekly D&D games. Now, said games were undeniably epic, and the primary DM (my ex-husband, as it happens) was truly a genius at crafting suspense, pacing and riveting, edge of seat excitement. He could reduce grown adults to tears. We thanked him for it. A campaign world for a D&D game doesn’t need need to be fresh and original. In fact, I think you could make the argument that it’s better if it’s not. If a player can hit the ground running with an elevator treatment like ‘My character is an elf from the forests who has left her home to find the magical artifact stolen by a band of orcs in the raid that killed her parents‘ it’s really all to the better. Thanks to Peter Jackson, everyone knows what that …

Brand New Day

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New day, new blog. I don’t plan to make a habit of it, but as I approach a new milestone (i.e. actually finishing the first draft on a book) it seemed like a good idea to start blogging under the name that will be on the cover of said book and create a site that’s a little more dedicated to writing. The blogging under the right name is pretty darn important. Someone pointed out to me that all the internet presence in the world is meaningless if nobody connects it with your product — in my case, my ‘product’ are the books I’m writing. So there you have it. I have a bad track record about blogging consistently, and one can argue that it’s time I should instead be spending on finishing books. I’m going to try to work on both. We’ll see how it goes.