Galavant, Games and Gaining Ground

The word of the week is neoteric.

Dec 29 – Changing Media

Is blogging a dying art?

One has to wonder, in the age of Facebook, Twitter and so many other social media feeds, if the blog still has a place. I know that my weekly entries for B.C. Beginnings, hosted here on Blogspot, are an incredibly valuable source of stability for me as well as an informational resource for everyone who wants to check in once in a while on what I'm up to.

Yet it seems that blogs are on the decline, after nearly 2 decades of popularity.

Peaking in 2004, before Facebook really took off and Twitter was just a gleam in someone's eye, blogs are a way of updating an audience regularly - who that audience is nowadays however, has been changing and diversifying. There’s some good advice over at John.do, both for blog novices and those who perhaps have lapsed in their blogging recently; definitely check it out.

One of the longest running blogs out there, Kottke.org, wrote an article a year ago about this very topic and it's an interesting read. Audiences are diversifying, medias are being mixed and in general people are picking and choosing where they get their content from.

As for me, I'll still be blogging for the next few years, as far as I can tell. There's no better match of medium to message then what I'm doing right now, especially as I don't run this blog to make any income.

It simply here for my friends and family, which is all I really wanted it to be.

Dec 30 – Last Dark Horse

Out with the old and in with the new is the order of the week.

I actually placed an order this week, for some old things before the new came in. In case you wonder what I'm talking about, I'm referring to the Star Wars comic series that Dark Horse Comics has been publishing for the last decade or so that are now discontinued.

It seems that Disney has declined to allow Dark Horse to continue to publish licensed Star Wars stories as of January 1, 2015 and so in keeping with Disney's new vision of the Star Wars universe, all of the old stories that Dark Horse has published will no longer be considered canon.

Meaning that they can't be sold commercially any more. A true pity.

I found out about that little gem last week and today I finished going through Dark Horse’s catalog to see what series, if any I wanted to pick up for myself. If I had wanted to go whole hog, I could have purchased an electronic version of every Star Wars comic they had put out for a trifling $300.00 USD, but to be honest I haven't followed most of their storylines with all that much interest. I did pick up a few short miniseries of unusual stories, like Star Wars Tales, that place the characters in( then )non-canon situations, as well as a few other concepts that I find intriguing.

It will also be interesting to see what Disney does with the license in the future, to find out how much of a departure from the last 30+ years of where the Star Wars franchise has gone.

It’s a new era for the stories told in a galaxy far, far away…

Dec 31 – New Year's Games

The last day of 2014 went rather well, I think.

When I arrived home after leaving work early( again, yes! )I found this waiting for me:

I’d written a letter to the Jim Henson Co a month ago, thanking them for hosting the Dark Crystal Fan Fest( as well as their Workshop Tour )and putting a lot of what I felt about the trip into the letter. To my delight, the Christmas card contained a response to my letter from both Cheryl Henson and Z. Briggs, the hosts for the NYC trip this past October. What a treasure to receive! 

By dinnertime, I was at a friend’s parent’s place, the same one in Saanich which has hosted our Pathfinder games this past year. A huge spread of food was available, all part of birthday celebrations for our friend Deb… who unfortunately made herself stay home due to possible sickness so as not to spread it. The rest of us toasted her regardless and set to the feast with vigour, settling down afterwards to while away the hours until midnight playing games like Bang! and Anomia. I was decent at the former and terrible at the latter, as my mind tends to mull over answers rather than blast them out quick as thought, which is what you need to do to win at Anomia. Fun all the same though.

Midnight came and went and I was soon home thereafter, perhaps the most low-key New Year's I've had in a long time. However, I spent this one with friends and that made all the difference.

Me I have many more New Year's Eves like that in the future.

Jan 1^st 2015 – Family and Finance

Today was a different sort of day, all in good ways.

Instead of spending it at home, as I have the day off work, I instead went to my parents and had a delicious turkey lunch with them. Everything they prepared was perfect and I can't recall the last time that I so thoroughly enjoyed every single bite; it was like I hadn't eaten anything all year!

Spending the afternoon with them today was a relaxed treat, as I haven't done much visiting in the last six months or so due to my new job and all the other busyness I've been involved in. Making the time to be with family is very important to me and will be a priority this coming year.

Today was also good financially, as we spoke as a family about our roles for the next while, both long-term and short-term. They seconded that I should finally leave Staples in the next month or so, as the negligible extra monies I bring in art worth the time and energy I'm expending that could instead be going into completing my novels. Indeed, they were adamant that we begin work again immediately on my books, as they want to see them all in the hands of publishers as soon as they can possibly be in submittable shape

As I'm in agreement with her on that, we’ll begin work next week again on Book 2. I've had enough time to digest the feedback setback I received this past autumn and move forward; indeed, I'm eager to pick up again from where I left off to hit the ground running with the story.

That determination, along with other financial things we discussed today, means that 2015 should see me far more focused. I'll work steadily at my day job, leaving any stress from it behind when I clock out and plug solidly away at my novels in the evening. There should still be a decent amount of time to socialize and perhaps explore other avenues of my life while still keeping the focus on my writing, with the goals of finishing the first draft of Book 2 as well as the fourth draft of Book 1.

That's rather ambitious, but completely within the realm of possibility based on my past accomplishments. Seeing as I want to get better at writing, I need to put my nose to the grindstone this year and make it happen - nothing I haven't done before, setting deadlines for myself.

Jan 2 – Farewell To Cookies

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions; instead, I look ahead to the future and plan accordingly.

That said, this is as good a time of the year as any to plan, as well as look back. 2014 was very good to me, in many ways: I completed a draft of Book 1, I landed a permanent well-paying job, some new wonderful people came into my life, I went to NYC… and many more things I’m thankful for.

Some things went out of my life as well: a large amount of stress, for starters. A few people I thought I knew decided I wasn’t their sort and stopped hanging out with me, which is their choice - it just leaves more room for other folks who may want to partake of my company.

Poor Cookie Monster... he just can't quit.

Sugar was another thing that vanished from my life, taking with it many delicious things but also leave me the better for its absence. I admit that I'm still not eating perfectly healthy meals 100% of the time, but I'm almost there and cutting out sugar has done a lot to move me towards that goal. Sadly, it means that my love of cookies has to be curbed and cut back to almost nothing; I'm at the point now where even one sugar-heavy cookie might send me into a small sugar overload. I want to avoid any possibility of diabetes in my future, so that means that sugar and I have to part ways.

I think I may have made the cookie monster sad saying that.

Jan 3 – Afternoon Tea And Me

My major activity today was reading – my own work, if you must know.

By the afternoon, I was ensconced at a table at Murchie’s Tea, with a copy of all that I’ve written for Book 2 and a green pen in hand. Truth be told, it was a copy I had already marked up: I was mainly reading it to re-familiarize myself with the story and to catch any additional errors.

It's funny how much advice there is out there for writers, from other writers as well as just those generally any advice to anyone who'll listen. One of the bits of advice I often hear is to let work sit for a while before you go back to it, which makes sense in that you get a little distance from your writing so as to better see its flaws and strengths.

The hours I spent today reading my work were fruitful. I’ve sorted out where I think I'll be going from here with the book and will be working on further outlines for the rest of this month, along with a few scenes each week until I get back into the rhythm of writing one or two chapters a week. At that output speed, I should have the first draft done by the time Spring arrives, or thereabouts.

Hopefully my outlines will outpace my output of scenes, which is all I can ask for.

Jan 4 – Transformed

It was a bit of a wash today, not just because it was raining.

I'm not complaining: most of the rest of the country is knee-deep in snow, so what's a little rain to deal with? Not much, really.

No, today slipped away by degrees, as I fought off headache and generally puttered about the place getting small things done. I ended up watching too much of a Transformers marathon on TV, including most of the third film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which I hadn't actually seen when it came out. Turns out I didn't miss much: the special effects were the best part and I won't even go into all the plot holes… sometimes, I wish I could just turn off my brain. Sometimes. Great music though.

I did catch the pilot of the new show Galavant, which is a medieval musical comedy reminiscent of The Princess Bride. I did see a preview of it last week and tonight's episode grew on me despite my normal aversion to musicals: it's unpretentious, easily written and has a good cast, all of which are good indicators for better things to come. Not that I need more television to watch, but fare like Galavant is different from the mainstream and checks enough of my interest-boxes to warrant giving it a chance.

Oh, one more thing: this blog should reach 30,000 hits this week – another milestone. Little things like that make me happy… and while other blogs are bigger or more well-known or what have you, I’m just pleased that so many people have stopped by over the last 7+ years.

That means you, dear reader – see you again soon, I hope!

One thing about having a regular day job is that my body's quickly acclimated itself to a routine: I've had to start writing the blog earlier and earlier these last few months, as I can't make it past midnight most days without feeling exceptionally groggy the next day - not worth it. A friend of mine calls it 'Chronos Pumpkinitis' and I have to say, it's taking a bit of getting used to...