Every six months or so, my co-worker and compatriot Jay runs a gaming mini-convention out of his home he humbly dubbed “JayCon”. The latest edition of the get-together just wrapped up yesterday, and good times were had by all. It’s a great opportunity to introduce (and be introduced to) new games, as well as playing old favorites. So, without further ado, here’s a rundown on everything I played over the weekend, as far as I can remember.
(With apologies to William Shakespeare)
To bus, or not to bus. That is the question —
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous tedium,
Or to take arms against a sea of terrible games,
And, by opposing, end them? To quit, to sleep—
No more — and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand spattered bugs
That game is heir to — ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished! To quit, to sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream — ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of quitting what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this Sega CD,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long a marathon.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ highway’s length, the wheel’s necess’ry justments,
The pangs of despised hours, the end’s delay,
The insolence of comments, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ others take,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a pulled plug? Who would travels bear,
To grunt and sweat with a sweaty gamepad,
But that the dread of never helping children,
The undispensed charity from whose bosom
No comfort issues, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those roads we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus the Moonbase does make donors of us all,
And thus the loading bars of livestreams
Give way unto the pale cast of the room,
And an enterprise of great pith and moment
With this regard makes ready our captive eyes,
As once again, we run to Vegas.
Or, you know, back to Tuscon. Depending on what hour it is.
Loading Ready Run‘s Desert Bus begins tomorrow.
As we recover from the recent stress of moving, the dayjob workload ramps up, and everything else competes for what attention I have left, it can be difficult to keep in mind that writing can and should be the foremost area of my interests. I don’t attend university for 4 years to design advertisements, after all. I did it, at first, to teach others about stories, and then decided I’d be happier telling stories myself. And some of the stories I’ve told since then have gone over pretty well.
Sales of Cold Iron have been very slow. I feel I need to do more promotional work, as nobody else is going to do it for me, and that means getting more people to review it, sending out more tweets, talking it up in person to people, and so on. I guess my reluctance to do so comes from the fact that I hate annoying people. I know how it feels to me when I get annoyed by someone talking at length about something of interest to them to the exclusion of all other subjects, and the last thing I want to do is inflict that on others. But I guess I need to suck it up and deal with it if I want to move copies of the book.
Progress on Cold Streets is, unfortunately, also slow. I’ve tried to unstick myself a couple of times in the last few weeks with moderate success. I’m not writing in the huge chunks I need to meet my end-of-year deadline, at least not yet. Time is running out for me and I really want to get another novella out there. I can’t get this thing to pick up if I don’t write, dammit!
Between some historical insights and inspiration from the likes of Martin and Kay, ideas keep rolling around in the back of my mind for attention regarding Godslayer. As much as good chunks of the plot are unlikely to change in their basic structure, so much of Acradea will be different in this new story that these ideas (which tend to crop up after I go to bed and the lights are out) will need to be laid out and sorted so I don’t get tripped up when I start writing the damn thing in earnest next year. Maybe it’s time to buy Scrivener and start cork-boarding things? The jury is out on that one.
More on this as things develop. And if you get annoyed when I start tweeting every day about Cold Iron and its sequels, I apologize.
I really wanted to be done with these little filler post. Honest and true.
But today turned out to be a very long one. Since I couldn’t raise UPS before they delivered our new bedframe, I had to drive all the way out to the old place to get it. Then, upon returning, I picked up my wife from the transportation center and we ended up driving around for most of the evening. Suffice it to say that in the end, the bedframe did get assembled, my new desk is halfway done, my main PC is still bricked until that desk is completed, and I am completely, totally, and utterly exhausted.
I have an idea in mind for this week’s Flash Fiction challenge, I want to get more work done on Cold Streets, and sooner or later I’m going to need to start writing down all the ideas for the Acradea rewrite. But in addition to the non-work items on today’s daunting-in-retrospect to-done list, I was reminded yet again that Q4 is happening, and I need to put in as many hours as I can as much as I can so we don’t end up getting smacked around by deadlines, clients, and each other.
I can’t even muster up the literary wherewithal to lay out a reference to V in honor of yesterday’s Guy Fawkes day or put together a rundown of all the reasons why, if you live in the United States and are of age, you should carve a bloody chunk out of your time today to go and vote. That is, in fact, the first thing I’m doing in the morning, and why I’m taking the time to write up this entry the night before.
That said, it’s time for me to go pass out. Get out there, vote if you can, and as John Green would say, don’t forget to be awesome.
The weekend was a lot more complicated than even I thought it would be.
Despite the promise of free beer and pizza, only one of my friends arrived on Saturday morning to help us move all of our possessions from the old place into the truck. Ancient bibliophile that I am, I have an inordinate amount of books – I donated around 120 to the Lansdale library – in addition to the heavy sectional couch and loveseat set and ungainly things like bookshelves. My friend, bless him, busted his behind along with me to get things onto the truck as promptly as possible. Even so, it was evening by the time we arrived at our new place. Another friend of mine was able to come by towards the end of the evening, but as she has severe arthritis in both knees, I felt terrible asking too much of her. So the rented truck and about a third of our remaining possessions sat in the lot overnight.
Sunday morning was an extra-credit trip for my wife to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and after seeing some exhibits and taking on the famous stairs both of us were exhausted. So it was at this point that I broke down and called a service. Two strapping young men arrived and not only emptied the truck but helped us get the more fiddly bits of furniture assembled. So while the apartment is in serious disarray, we have finally officially moved.
I’ve learned two things over the course of the weekend. The first is that hiring professional movers is the way to go. The guys that helped us were courteous, prompt, skilled, and willing to help with just about anything. I’m sure my friends would be as well, but with so many of them being in so many different places, it’s silly of me to expect they can simply arrive when summoned.
The other is that I’m past the point I should be buying furniture from Ikea. At least, if I expect to be moving it.
There are still things to do – our new bedframe was delivered to the old address – and items to pick up – we need new desk chairs and waste bins. But the hard part is over. And my commute to and from work, ideally, will now be much shorter.
© 2024 Blue Ink Alchemy
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
