I should have known it wouldn't last when our D&D characters had no chemistry. I speak of my very first boyfriend, whose paladin once quipped "But all priests are good" to my suspicious, cynical elf bard. The character my elf did have chemistry with? An equally cynical elf fighter with a mysterious past, the player of which I married seven years after our characters flirted across the game table. Geek love, baby.
"La Belle Dam Sans Merci," by Frank Dicksee
Over the past week, I've been thinking about what I prefer in fiction and interactive fiction -- I'm a characterphile (rather than a plot hound), and I like stories that revolve around inner turmoil and decisions rather than events driving the characters forward. What's interesting to me is those inner stories, and sometimes those involve romance. Or avoidance of romance. Or both. And I express that in games as well -- I'll replay a BioWare game just to see if I can achieve all the relationship unlocks with the NPCs. I have trouble thinking of more than a handful of my D&D character who weren't romantically involved with an NPC/PC in the story. (Heck, even the NPCs in games I DM often have a love interest at the table, known to the PC or not.)
So you'd think that when I'm writing games, the romantic interests would come easily for me. My first attempt in Choice of Kung Fu had two actual romance stories, then some extra NPCs thrown in just to be spouses, without having much character of their own. For Showdown at Willow Creek, I made all the romantic interests recurring NPCs, and I think it's better done -- although one of my playtesters showed that the coding didn't allow for quite as much snogging as she attempted. (There's still time to fix those bugs before it launches next month, so hopefully, you'll all have a seamless play experience!) I'm starting work on my next Choice game, Choice of Pirate, and I'm thinking about how the romances might work even more smoothly.
But along with accommodating for a number of romance options, it's also important to me to have an option to not get involved with romance at all. Several of the players I've DMed for over the years have run away from romantic hooks like the plague. (And sometimes the hooks were actually plague-bearing monsters of some kind or another, so they weren't wrong in that play style...) So, without losing out on any fun, the option to skip romantic entanglements should be there, too.
I started thinking about this last night after my second Black Gateblog post, which actually had nothing to do with romance, but a lot to do with interactive fiction.
How do you like romance in your games? If you write games, how do you create compelling romance stories?
There are few things that sap my motivation as much as having a cold, and my house got hit last week with a whopper. Threestripe and I are both on the mend, but it's been a quiet, sleepy time around the house as we've made our best efforts toward recovery. Thankfully, the Kickstarter was in its two-week quiet period after the funding was raised but during which any kinks got worked out. Luckily, we had very few kinks, and all should be progressing forward very soon. Shawn Merwin already has Into the Reach in his hands to edit, so I expect the momentum to start gaining on that project very soon.
In the meantime, I've been following a couple of other Kickstarters, including Fireside Magazine, which got funded and now has its submissions guidelines posted for flash fiction. I'm thinking of taking a look at my 3000 word short story draft of "Retirement" and seeing if I can cut it down. It needed work anyway, and maybe reducing its size would work out some of the problems that substrater Max Gladstone helped me identify when I first wrote it. (Speaking of Max, he has a guest post on Romance of the Three Kingdoms up over at A Dribble of Ink. Check it out!)
I've also begun work on my next Choice of Game, a Western currently titled Kidnapping at Willow Creek. As that's just starting, it's fun to see Choice of Kung Fu still getting some Internet love. Club Floyd, a group that plays interactive fiction together, played through Choice of Kung Fu awhile ago, and the full link to their experience of the game is available up at All Things JACQ. If you haven't played it, this is full of spoilers -- it takes you through all of Club Floyd's decisions on how to play the game through. There are multiple endings, of course, and multiple ways to get there, so if you're interested in seeing how other people played it, this might be a fun read. (Their commentary was certainly fun for me to see!)
In addition to writing, I'm reading longlist books for the Mythopoeic Society Fantasy Awards, review books for PW and Kirkus, and I'm one of the readers for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards this year. It's the first time I'm reading for ABNA in the romance category -- I've done the YA section before -- and I'm having a great time. The two titles I've read so far were really enjoyable, and I have high hopes for at least one of those titles to make it into the final rounds. It'd be nice if the rest of my titles were as fun as the first two!
Since I can't talk about most the books I'm reading -- what are you reading now, and what would you recommend to other readers?
Over the next two weeks, interviews about the Regaining Home Kickstarter should be popping up with me around the net, which is great, since we're getting into the final half of the campaign. Things are, thus far, going quite well -- as of this writing, we're at 58% funded with 14 days to go. But the extra press will definitely help toward reaching (and exceeding???) that goal. The podcast interviews were also a great chance for me to chat with some very cool podcasters. Brian LeTendre of course is an old friend of the blog -- he and I go way back to the very first days of Into the Reach being released, and Brian was a regular in my Mythic Greece game back when those heroes were still out changing mythology. Chris Sniezak of Misdirected Mark is a friend of Shawn Merwin's (Shawn is, apparently, a regular guest on the podcast), and also a great interviewer. I had a tremendous time chatting with both of them, and I highly recommend both Secret Identity Podcast and Misdirected Mark (which I started listening to and got totally involved in after finishing my interview with Chris).
Chris also made me aware that I hadn't updated my website since Choice of Kung Fu came out, so clearly that needed to be fixed. So instead of working on obituaries tonight, I've been updating my page, playing Marvel Avengers Alliance on facebook and Fallen London in another tab, listening to podcasts, and watching cute videos of baby elephants. All in a day's work!
So, the world didn't end in December. That's just the start of the good things on my list as we're entering 2013.
Yesterday, first day of the year, I got a (small) royalty check from the sales of Into the Reach and Departure, which is a great way to start a new year off right! I checked my sales report today, and the 99 cent sale definitely encouraged people to buy the books. So hurrah for that! I'm leaving the sale open through this weekend, and after that will be putting the books up at $2.99, which is the price point that I, as a reader, will impulse buy. At any rate, I'm thrilled with the uptick in sales and am glad that people are out there reading the novels!
Beyond reviews, my buddy Brian LeTendre wrote up a really nice piece about me and my work at his blog See Brian Write. I've really been enjoying Brian's web comic MoStache, and I've just (belatedly) purchased his novel Courting the King in Yellow, which promises to be full of Lovecraftian goodness. Knowing Brian as a gamer as well as a reviewer and podcaster, I know he tells a great story in person, so I'm looking forward to reading his prose!
In other news, 2012 was not an entire success: I did not make my reading goals for last year. Although I did read one non-work related nonfiction book (John "jaQ" Andrews's Quicklet on Castle Season 3, a novel by an autobio writer (The Silver Bowl by Diane Stanley, plus several David Weber novels), three rereads, several new graphic novels that weren't review books, and four kids books that weren't for MythSoc, I only read one novel outside my genres (The Orchid House by Lucinda Riley), and only drew down my physical TBR pile by two books instead of twelve.
This year, I'm setting that TBR goal higher, and repeating most of the other goals. Interestingly, out of 141 books I read (sometimes grouping together kids books and graphic novels), around 80 of those were for review for the various publications I write for. Which explains to me why maybe I missed a few of those goals I'd set for myself. To good reading in 2013!
Well, it's not technically a "book," but "game" birthday sounded weird. Quibble aside, Choice of Kung Fu is now available! If you haven't done a game or interactive novel like this before, you can play through the demo at the main Choice of Kung Fu page. Or you can look at your purchase options at the Choice of Games main site.
Kindle users, Choice of Kung Fu will be out for you in the future. I'll post when it happens!
Art work below is by the excellent Sandy Jacobs-Tolle. (Check out her portfolio at that link!)
It's almost here! I've heard from editor Adam Strong-Morse that the release for Choice of Kung Fu is set for tomorrow. You can check at Choice of Games for purchase options for your device; if you want to play the browser version, I get my CoG games straight from the Chrome Store.
And now, a cute demonstration of feline martial arts.
It's holiday sale time over at DriveThruRPG, and the Drunken Goblin has a whole stocking full of great stuff to offer -- including the first two books of the Redemption Trilogy. Right now, you can get the books for 99 cents each! You can go straight to my books here, or see what else is on sale on the Drunken Goblin page.
Part of this sale is prepping for a Kickstarter. I've talked with editor Shawn Merwin and artist Lindsay Archer, and they're both on board for getting Regaining Home back out of the ether and into complete digital form. Keep an eye out here for further news about how you can help make book 3 a reality! (If you have any words of wisdom or advice about Kickstarter, I'd love to hear them!)
In other good news, Choice of Kung Fu has been submitted to online app sellers, and it should be appearing on the market just in time for Christmas. Despite the awesome Adam Morse sending me e-mails to keep me up to date on the launch date, I find myself semi-compulsively visiting the Choice of Games home page, so I can be among the first to see the public announcement when it hits. In the meantime, there are a few new games I haven't finished playing through, and I want to try them out before I start on my next game pitch!
Two projects have been keeping me busy enough to take up blog time, but both are coming to a head. The first is my Choice of Games kung fu project, which is coming to the concluding chapters and is planned for a before-Christmas release. Which means you all will be able to see what it is I've been working on! I'm very grateful to my playtesters, who have been helpful not only in finding errors and typos and parts of the game that freeze up, but also because their enthusiasm makes me want to keep going.
The last chapter I wrote necessitated rewatching some kung fu favorites -- mostly just scenes of battles where the hero is fighting a rival. Three-stripe and I chose some battles from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,Hero, and Ip Man 2 as starters, but it was really Jet Li's Fearless that helped the most. Early in that film, Jet Li's character meets a challenger atop a tall tower where the two battle it out, and I used that setting as the basis for a fight between the player character of the game and a challenger character.
I had wanted to do a bamboo forest fight, like in Crouching Tiger or House of Flying Daggers, but it didn't work out for this chapter. There's always the next one!
Meanwhile, I'm preparing for my own black belt test, which is happening this Sunday, and I've been spending a lot more time at the gym in preparation for it. I've never been a heavy gym user, but our local Y has been great for me, not only in keeping up with physical therapy for injuries I've had to my knee and shoulder that I've finally been dealing with, but also for providing a great place to take Bug swimming. At any rate, I am repeating my "Noodles, don't noodles" mantra and trying to be serene about the coming challenge on Sunday. It is working in some moments better than others, but I suppose that is why we take things one moment at a time!
While I'm not keeping up with blogs, I do keep up with the articles on Tor.com from time to time. Today I read a great one by Liz Bourke about why saying "it's the past, it was just like that" isn't a good excuse to make all of your female characters simpering, or all of your characters heteronormative. It's well worth reading, and some contributors in the comments section had other interesting historical tidbits that defy the "it's history, it was like that" argument on non-gender issue topics.
In completely different news, I've been having a little anxiety about my black belt test coming up in less that two months. I've also been meaning to rewatch Kung Fu Panda as inspiration for my Choice of Games kung fu project (among other live action films -- although a kung fu practitioner friend of mine claims Kung Fu Panda is the best kung fu film ever made as far as films that reflect actual kung fu philosophy -- take that as you will). The result: not only am I even more excited to get in the zone on Choice of Kung Fu (tentative title), but I encountered a quote that drained my anxiety:
Quit, don't quit? Noodles, don't noodles? You are too concerned about what was and what will be.
So: stop worrying. Live in the moment. "Noodles, don't noodles," will now be my mantra.
Seems to me that there was a time, not so long ago, that I used to keep up with dozens of bloggers, who I liked and felt a kinship with. That also used to be the time when I updated my own blog with some regularity. Clearly, that time has passed.
It was a very busy, and fantastic, summer here in Connecticut (and surroundings -- this summer marked my first ever trip to the Bronx Zoo!).
There has not been a whole lot to report writing-wise. I am currently at work on a project for Choice of Games, featuring a kung fu theme. Considering I am also preparing for my black belt test in kempo (to take place in November), I have a lot of martial arts on the brain. I've been meaning to write about the process of creating a text-based interactive novel game, but I have been spending more time writing than writing-about-writing. (And also learning how to balance my work-from-home time as Bug is deciding that naps are no longer a guaranteed part of the day.)
Here is the news in a nutshell: Writing My newest article for Dragon magazine, "Songs of Sorcery," is out in the current issue. As usual, it's myth based, but it's also got a lot of silly lyrics that I wrote to common tunes. Quite a lot of it ended up being cut from my original draft, and some additional fun lyrics got added by the designers (I suspect developer Tanis O'Connor should be credited with some of the new work!), which makes it feel (to me) like a fun collaborative effort. I'm quite pleased with the final result (though I am a little sad that the hero theme song to the tune of "Funiculì, Funiculà" didn't make the cut).
Reading This summer has included several book birthdays of those blogging writers I used to keep up with. I'm pleased to be entirely caught up on three current urban-fantasy series (instead of the most recent installments sitting on my TBR pile): Ilona Andrews's Kate Daniels series, which had Gunmetal Magic come out in July; Devon Monk's "Age of Steam" series (July's release was second installment Tin Swift; and Kalayna Price's Alex Craft series, which also had a July release (Grave Memory).
I'm also really excited about the launch of three new series:
And fellow Substrater Max Gladstone'sThree Parts Dead, which is the first book in a phenomenal setting (that may or may not be considered a series).
Since I am at the moment one step ahead of my paid-review pile (I do have several books for unpaid lounging around the office), I'm trying to catch up on both review books and books I just really want to read. I'm currently at 116 books read in 2012 -- three short of last year's total -- but in order to make my specific reading goals I posted on January 1, I've got sixteen non-review titles to choose and read before the end of the year. Four moths to do it in? No problem.
If anyone has a recommendation for a non-SFFH, non-romance, adult fiction book they read this year and would endorse without hesitation, I'm all ears. I made it a goal to read two books outside my genres this year, and while I've picked one, I'm still undecided about the other.
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