I’ve got a post percolating about stories, games, and plot vs. character, but I’ll save that for tomorrow and instead point out that I wrote a guest blog over at ktliterary.com today: On Being Rexroth: Living with a Literary Agent.
Enjoy.
kate
Equivalent to a 3000 word post. 3000+, even.
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/doycetesterman/4405069829/” title=”Diaspora personal combat by DoyceT, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4014/4405069829_cb6b239f1e.jpg” width=”500″ height=”375″ alt=”Diaspora personal combat” /></a>
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/doycetesterman/4441261668/” title=”Green Day by DoyceT, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4055/4441261668_c1593ba70a.jpg” width=”375″ height=”500″ alt=”Green Day” /></a>
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/doycetesterman/4440510417/” title=”Scruff 001 by DoyceT, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4068/4440510417_4eb147a4dc.jpg” width=”500″ height=”375″ alt=”Scruff 001″ /></a>I
I find myself with not enough time to do the things I need to do today… all that Farscape to watch and those video games to play.
Oh yeah, and work. That. I’m actually more jealously proprietary about my work time now than I was when I was in an office.
Anyway, some quick things on my mind. This is no Painting With Shotguns, but it’s all I’ve got.
How many spaces can I move, again?
This is a phonecam shot of last week’s Diaspora game. It was our second session, and since we’d done a “social combat” the session before, I aimed to introduce the personal combat mini-game this time. It was both awesome and kind of weird. I overdid it on the map — too many zones, meaning that it took too much time and effort to get around the damned base. Still, lots of interesting stuff happened as part of the fight.
It was a weirdly ‘classic game night’ for me, because (due to the crazy map), the fight took up pretty much the whole session. Echoes of DnD, that. Ahh well.
Tonight, we play again. Lasers. In. Spaaaaaace…
Green Day
My blue-eyed, red-haired daughter has decided that St. Patrick’s Day ranks somewhere just below Christmas and Halloween as her favorite holiday. It might or might not beat out Easter — there’s no candy, but there is themed clothing.
I got those crocs for her, by the way, when she was… 2 and a half (bought them a little big, since they have an elastic heel strap), and they remain the only pair of children’s shoes I can justify spending 30 bucks on. I’ve considered retiring them a couple times, but they fall quite firmly within Kaylee’s “from my cold, dead feet” category.
I feel I should also add: I’m a really lucky dad.
Scruff
Let’s not dignify this with the title ‘beard’. It barely qualifies, and is hardly anything remotely Wendigian in its grandeur, but hey, it’s been all of a week.
Tim calls this “vacation face”. I call it “freelancer face”. Kate, of all people, loves it, and in fact requested it as soon as she realized (with some audible glee) that I was under no current obligation to shave.
I don’t understand girls.
“Loving Father. Devoted Husband. Never really understood girls.”
A fitting epitaph.
What else?
In the past month, I’ve played through Mass Effect 1 once, and Mass Effect 2… four times. Normal paragon mode. Hardcore renegade and middle-of-the-road. Insanity paragon. Everyone lives, though not everyone remains loyal to me. I’m probably going to play it one more time, concurrent with Kate’s play-through.
Kate finished Mass Effect 1 last night, and spent the last two hours of play shouting “whoa!” and “wow!” and “Holy. Crap. Mind. Blown.” and “I’m so AWESOME.” and “This is the best. Game. Ever.”
Afterward, she bought the super-deluxe-digital-download version of ME2 (so she could watch the behind the scenes videos), investigated the purchase of Mass Effect-related novels, and (I daresay) will no longer mock my purchase of an N7 t-shirt. I’m very much looking forward to discussing the possibility of a Quarian/Geth peace accord with her, next month. It’s good to share obsessions. We’re watching Season Four of Farscape together during lunch breaks.
Currently, I’m playing Dragon Age, just because I don’t want to admit to running through ME2 again, then I’m going to do the original BioShock (never finished it before my old machine crashed), finish Braid, and redo Mirror’s Edge and Portal, just because all my save games were lost when my old machine died. (And because I like them.)
But not today. Today I have a training script to write and a game to prep.
Happy Anniversary, My Love
You are the best part of me.
Year one is the paper anniversary (also, apparently, clocks). I tossed around a number of ideas, but getting books for one another is more of a year-round thing in this household (and she steals my watch all the time anyway), so I decided to make something.
Kinda.
The individual post-its read:
There are some people who begin the Zoo at the beginning, and walk quickly as they can past every cage until they get to the way out, but the nicest people go straight to the animal they love the most, and stay there.
Winnie the Pooh is wise.
A shut in weekend != a lazy weekend
So, while the weather has been, if not as blizzard-swathed and snowbound as originally predicted, not exactly outdoor-activity-friendly, which fact was used to justify a weekend spent (almost) entirely at home, rather than biking around the area or doing HOA penance on the yard.
I think I'll stay inside, thanks.
Unfortunately, being stuck inside didn’t really mean any time off from laborious efforts – if I were totally honest, I’d say I’ve worked more solid hours in the last two days than I have in any given week since February. Most of that work had to do with moving kt literary from Movable Type over to WordPress and coming up with a swanky new design. I fully expect the other literary agents out there will be green with envy. (They certainly won’t be purple, as I’m fairly certain we used up all of that color currently available on the free market.)
Kate's usual contract company couldn't be reached, which left only me to pick up the slack.
I really like the design, and so far the feedback from Kate’s readership has been very very positive, which indicates we went the right direction as far as her target audience in concerned. Kate did a great job on her portions of the redesign (which involved providing almost all of the text copy for the site, a truly gargantuan effort of layout on her Clients page, and retagging every single one of her (daily!) posts for almost a year, since MT to WP migrations don’t capture tags), but I think my favorite bit is the header image, which Kate shot herself, using only a chest in the living room and copies of her clients books.
And I completely redid the layout on this site, when I wasn’t doing anything else. (This was me. Also, it rocks.)
We are DIY cowboys. *flex*
On top of all that, we even got caught up on Bones and Castle and Dollhouse when our fingers became too heavy to type.
But that’s not all! I’m doing an interview with Joanna from The Creative Penn this afternoon. We’re doing the whole thing over Skype, with something like a nine-hour time difference (she’s in Brisbane), and I’ll be talking about Adrift, writing stuff in weird mediums in general, books, video games, roleplaying games, books based on games, games based on books, social networking, blogging tools for the technically unsure… and… I dunno, maybe I’ll explain how wikis work, just for fun.
As you know, I do ramble on a bit.
Once that’s done, I believe I might indulge in a bit of ‘it’s the weekend, dammit’, have a couple corndogs (the most American of foods), and play a little Lord of the Rings.
I'd like a refill and a slice of pie...
How’d YOUR weekend go?
