Myth, the Universe, and Everything

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!

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:

• Jim Hines's "Magic Ex Libris" series, which launched with Libriomancer, which I reviewed at Black Gate.
  
• Anton Strout's "Spellmason Chronicles," the first book of which, Alchemystic, launches today. (Happy book birthday, antonstrout!)
  
• And fellow Substrater Max Gladstone's Three 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.

Way back in March, awesome urban fantasy writer Laura Bickle very kindly gave me a Stylish Blogger Award. Since I know I don't have any idea about style, unless it's style guidelines from a publishing house, I'm taking that to mean she thinks what we do here at Myth, the Universe, and Everything is pretty nifty. I certainly try for niftiness! And I'm always delighted to be able to enhance my niftiness with guest bloggers, and Laura (as her pseudonym Alayna Williams) counts among the folks who have made the blog better by being here. (You can also find Laura a lbickle here on livejournal.)

The Award comes with a few requirements: one being thanking the giver (thanks, Laura!). The second is that I must divulge seven things you probably don't know about me. So… here goes!

1) I'm a brown belt in kempo karate. This is a pretty darn recent development (I just received my belt on April 29th), so I figure it's newsworthy! We're getting ready for a kempo demonstration in early June, and for this year's performance, we're actually learning new material (rather than rehearsing stuff we've already mastered). This is a challenge, but I think we're all up to it.

2) The first movie I saw in movie theaters was Disney's Cinderella in its 1981 rerelease. The story goes that, as Bruno the dog is Cinderella's last hope of getting to her prince, little two-year-old me yelled out in the theater: "Go Bruno!" I hope this enhanced everyone's viewing experience.

3) Speaking of movies and rereleases, I was one of a group of college students who, on a school-organized venture, drove through a blizzard to see Star Wars: A New Hope when it hit the theaters. I did my hair in Leia buns, and a friend of mine wore a Stormtrooper mask – so, as we entered the theater, he led me around the side as though I were his prisoner until we found our seats. Years later, while working at a movie theater, I dressed up in my Amidala gear (in company with my sister in a Jedi uniform) for the final showing of The Phantom Menace. My coworkers didn't even recognize me at first, but let me in anyway, because hey, they weren't going to stop someone so clearly into the films as the two of us in costume (or so they said).

4) When I first started working at the same movie theater, a coworker introduced me to another coworker as a princess from Bahrain. We kept the story up for fifteen or twenty minutes, with me elaborating about having fallen in love with an American serviceman, and him explaining that I'd had to flee Bahrain to avoid an arranged marriage. I have no idea how my coworker bought this lie, as we made it more and more outrageous with each detail, but when she finally called us on it, we gave it up right away. My coworker, however, called me Princess for the rest of the time we worked together.

5) Another silly nickname came from a childhood encounter with a ferret at the Mall of America in Minneapolis. We attended a live animal show, complete with snakes and birds, and I was the volunteer to go up and touch the snake. As the hosts often do at these shows, they asked my name. When I said "Alana," a ferret ran across the stage. As it turned out, the keepers tried to give their animals very uncommon names, then used those names as the cue words in their training, so this ferret, whose name was also "Alana," had come out on her normal cue. The nickname didn't stick, but I've had a fondness for ferrets ever since.

6) I have an undeservedly bad reputation as a navigator in my family, in part because I get disoriented in parking lots (yeah, really), and in part because a hike that my sister and I went on when we were on the Isle of Man ended up with us having the ocean on the wrong side. I maintain that it was the footpath that diverged from the map, rather than the map diverging from me, but this argument doesn't get me anywhere with my sister.

7) In other adventures abroad, I once got thrown out of a bookstore. For chatting. No, really.

The final requirement of the Stylish Blogger Award is to pass on the award to other awesome bloggers. I read a lot of great blogs, most of which I'm woefully behind on, but I thought I'd pick two that regularly enhance my experience of the internet:

Max Gladstone, who I've mentioned here numerous times, updates periodically over at Myths for Hire,. Along with posts about language, film, and books, he also talk about what's going on with Three Parts Dead, which is represented by Weronica Janczuk.

Here on livejournal, asakiyume always has something wonderful on her blog, whether it's gorgeous images or bits of stories about otherworldly denizens. Her insights into everything from fiction that she reads to the magic in the world that surrounds her often make me sit back and say, "Yes. That's the way things are. Or should be."

jimhines talks a lot about martial arts and writing on his blog. An experience at kempo tonight lent itself to this kind of comparison as well, so I thought I'd try an analogy over here.

I'm allergic to citrus-scented cleaning solutions. While this gets me out of certain housework tasks (Twostripe is incredibly accommodating about mopping the kitchen floor while I'm out of the house), it also comes with the inconvenience of not being able to breathe around that artificial smell. So tonight at the dojo, when trying to clear out the smell in the waiting room, one of our instructors sprayed some air freshener containing whatever ingredient it is that makes me choke. When he came back into the dojo, I could feel my lungs tighten.

There's a saying: "Can't see, can't fight. Can't walk, can't fight. Can't breathe, can't fight." It's meant to list targets on an opponent that will end fights fast (which is one of the things kempo is about). I suppose it's also a list of the targets you need to carefully defend: eyes, knees, and throat. Suddenly not able to fully breathe, I bowed out and hung out in the parking lot for a few minutes before my sensei came out to find out what happened. I explained; he apologized profusely; I accepted and said I'd just wait ten minutes or so to see if I could come back in. It didn't end up clearing up, but one of the other instructors came out to work with me on the lawn in front of the dojo, so maybe we were good street-side advertising as a bonus.

Breathing is really important -- and not just when you can't do it. You can't forget to breathe when you're working out, or you'll drop. You can't forget to breathe while you're, say, in labor, either. That's the literal. But, metaphorically, if you can't breathe -- if you can't just take a bit of time to live, to enjoy life, to just *be* -- you can't write. For me, the more anxiety and stress I cause myself by worrying about whether or not I'm writing enough sometimes keeps me from remembering to breathe.

I finally turned in some chapters of Blood and Tumult to lyster last night, and I wrote a review this morning. There's other work to be done, but for most of today, I just took a little time to breathe. And I feel recharged.

...particularly when, while doing dive rolls, you fall on your head. Twice. And then you don't realize until the next day that you must have knocked yourself pretty hard, since the world is spinny and walking in a straight line is far too much a challenge.

After two hours in urgent care yesterday, several x-rays, and a visit to my chiropractor today, I am happy to report that I am not concussed, and not even terribly sore any more. I am, however, quite dizzy, and imagine that since walking is something of a trial, I probably will not be doing spinning crescent kicks next week.

The most disappointing part about all of this, since as long as I'm sitting or laying down I seem to be fine, is that I had to miss Common Shiner's New York City stop on their East Coast tour. They started their set about eight minutes ago. I am utterly bummed.

You'd think that this sort of thing would help me catch up on my freelance work, but no. I read comics, took a nap, and have gotten a chunk of the way into Armed and Magical by Lisa Shearin, and basically done nothing at all productive. There is still hope for the last few hours of my day, but I'm not going to hold my breath.