Various and Sundry

I’ve been very busy at work the past few days. I’m thinking of giving up Warcraft altogether. I just don’t have time for it as I thought I would. It’s a fun game, but I can’t understand some of the fascination; every time I bring it up with acquaintances I hear stories of people losing their jobs or getting divorced because of the game. It’s kind of put a stigma on the whole experience for me. I generally don’t get so caught up in things as that, but at the same time I don’t want to. I found out yesterday that WoW has gone over ten million subscribers. At fifteen bucks a pop per month, that’s $150 million per month. Holy crap. I might keep it if not for the subscription fee, but I’m not ready to pay monthly for something I’m only playing a little bit, so.

I have found a chance to do a little writing in the past week. I’ve been working on the second rewrite of a story tentatively titled “The Adventures of Trader Gahn and Redbeard.” As you can imagine by the title, a bit of an adventure. Modern-day pirates with a dose of fantasy thrown in to keep me honest and in genre. And because that’s who I am, and what I write. The previous title was Relics, based on a number of magical items someone’s stockpiling, but I’ve whittled some of the excess storyline out (from 60k words down to about 40 so far, and am fleshing out the characters, changing a little here and a little there). I’m not one of those writers who’ll try to get a 100k word book written, I’ll just write until I feel it’s done and let it be. So. It’s a fun thing to write.

I’ve also been working a bit on the first book I ever wrote… more of a novella, now that I look at it again, but when I wrote it and finished it it felt like I’d finished a magnum opus. Now that I go back, it really wasn’t so good at all. The story is good, I think, it’s just that I didn’t tell it very well. It’s a children’s story, tentatively titled “Way of the Wolf” with talking animals (think Lion King, but with wolves). Anyway, I hope to flesh out its characters some more now, too, especially now that I’ve got children growing up. I’d like to give them a copy of it when they can read it for themselves.

Lots of writing to do, not enough hands or heads to do it all. It’s a good problem to have, as someone who likes to write. At least I’ve never suffered writer’s block… at this rate I never will.

G’night.