Hopefully, this should make my babbling about word counts a little more accessible.  So, what am I writing these days, anyway?

Section One: Novels: WHY ARE THERE MULTIPLE ENTRIES HERE, DAMMIT?

Many of you know that I've got one fully written but unpublished novel up under lock and filter already: Running In Her Veins, which is a classic gothic horror story (please do not confuse classic gothic and goth) about a kidnapped girl whose kidnappers claim to be protecting her from her biological father -- the head of an order of immortal demon-bound assassins.
( A Stain Upon His Hands )

I'm really bad at summaries, and that one doesn't sound half as interesting to me as the work itself does, but at the moment I can't find better words.  There's blood magic, unresolved sexual tension, and morally ambiguous immortals having shirtless swordfights, okay?  One chapter is up and posted under lock and filter, viewable by request.  (All of these are viewable by request unless I note otherwise -- let me know if you're interested, and I'll add you to the filter and show you where to find it.

( The Hellion Prince )

Then there's the newest project:  ( The Knight of the Star )

Short Stories

( Mutilation of the Hermai )

( Tumulus )

Projects on the Back Burner

Too numerous to get into.  I'll get into it anyway, but not in this post.

ETA:  Gotten into here and here.

My subconscious, that is.  Yesterday I had quite a pleasant time with hamburgers and board games, but my dreams were where the action was at. 

Well, one of them.  My first dream consisted of being stuck for hours in a mazelike parking garage where I could not get a clean cell phone signal nor find the ride that should have been waiting for me.  There was more to it than that, but the details are lost. 

The second dream... at first, in the second dream, I thought I was in college again, in a dormitory hall, with a weird selection of people.  Then I realized they were weird because they did not all belong to the same time -- one of them was fiddling with an old-fashioned radio set, and everyone was afraid.  Except me.

We were dead, and awaiting judgement in the underworld, and news had already gotten out that our judge was a sadistic renegade who had been given freedom to travel anywhere in heaven and hell and do as he pleased to deserving souls, a power that evidently could not now be denied him as he skipped through the afterlife rending and torturing in gruesome, poetically appropriate ways.

When we saw him, he was dressed as a clown.

And I... still wasn't afraid.  He taunted us, I taunted him back.  He assaulted my roommate, I interposed and shoved him away.  Everyone kind of stopped and stared, clown included.

Then I told him that he might have been sent here to judge us.... but I was sent here to judge him.  And I raised my hand to commence an almighty smackdown, fueled by righteous fury.

And I noticed he was smiling.

No.  Okay, I was wrong.  That wasn't hit.  He and I stepped aside, both confused, to try to work it out.  He knew, at least, why he couldn't touch me -- I had died not totally sinless, but close enough that there was no karmically appropriate punishment for me... unless I incurred it opposing him.  Trying to kick the shit out of him would count in a way that trying to pull him off his victims didn't, and he freely admitted that he'd really like to see me slip.  He didn't know what my purpose was, either, but there was one and it freaked him out.  

Then I realized.  I wasn't his judge... I was tasked with finding his judge among his victims.  Only when found would the judge be empowered, and when I picked (rightly or wrongly), I would lose my protection.  So, we chased one another through time, emerging at various points of history among the dead or the soon-to-be-dead (lots of groups with heatedly arguing politicians or soldiers mustering for battle -- lots of defendants at trials), him trying to dodge me and have a little fun, me trying to determine which of the people he wanted to butcher was in fact the fate-or-God-appointed, karmically appropriate being to understand his crimes and levy out his punishment.

It was like being thrust into a nightmare... and then given power over it.

I woke up before there was any resolution to the matter.

This entry was originally posted at http://matt-doyle.dreamwidth.org/796210.html. Comment wherever you feel most comfortable commenting.

Also, not a famous musician, but whatever.

So as of 5:14 PM today, I'll be 28 years old and allegedly at the physical peak of my existence!  I should exercise more.

Dreamed I was Robin last night.  I had a cape that let me glide for extremely long distances, and I used it to cross a freezing-cold strait, headed for a secret research station.  Not sure why.  I did it twice, too, only I got lost the second time... and in between those times, dreamed I was living in a massive ramshackle house with a bunch of teenaged girls who kept looking up porn on my computer.  Dunno what that was about.

Goals for today:  write 3500+ words and finish the next chapter of The Hellion Prince.  Eat hamburgers.  

Birthday party is on Wednesday -- sushi and sake at my favorite sushi joint, followed by board games and other drinks at my apartment.  If you're in the Fargo-Moorhead area and want to attend (and I don't hate you), let me know!

This entry was originally posted at http://matt-doyle.dreamwidth.org/796062.html. Comment wherever you feel most comfortable commenting.

So I haven't finished playing the game myself.  In fact, I have only just begun.  However, I have already seen a lot of things about the game I found deserving of commentary, rebroadcast, discussion, and archival.  Here we go.  This covers the ending, a theory about teh ending, response to the response to the ending, and wacky hijinks.



1) A summary of many reactions to the ending.

2) A textual discussion of the problems with the ending.

3) A video explanation of the problems with the ending -- articulate, critical, on point.


4) A controversial theory that may make the ending make more sense.  But it probably isn't true or intended.


5) The Co-Founder of Bioware responds.

6) Mass Effect 3 to receive extended DLC, free.

7) Why the DLC won't fix the problems.

In-universe humor:  Concerned Batarians explain that medigel works fine on their species.

Wacky Humor:  the Mass Effect Cartoon.

This entry was originally posted at http://matt-doyle.dreamwidth.org/795770.html. Comment wherever you feel most comfortable commenting.

Dreamed about the Avengers last night.  That dream I remember none of.

Then I was a female draenei warlock in World of Warcraft -- only the world around me consisted of levels from Super Mario Brothers Wii.  Anyway, I kept abandoning my team (which was not the Avengers anymore, but still included Hawkeye) to explore a haunted brothel which had another draenei warlock trapped in it somewhere.

It was a very strange dream.

This entry was originally posted at http://matt-doyle.dreamwidth.org/795642.html. Comment wherever you feel most comfortable commenting.

So, Chapter Twenty-Six of The Hellion Prince is up on Dreamwidth.  But it is, apparently, too large for LJ.  Not the number of characters; the file size.  Never mind that it's not at all the largest chapter.  And it's too large by a huge margin.  And doesn't lend itself well to being chopped in half and posted in two parts.

Anyone have any ideas on how to shrink the file size?

Until then, guess I'll see if posting it html rather than rich text helps?

It didn't help.

Guess I should suck it up and find a place to chop it in half.  But it's still one chapter in two parts, not two chapters.

ETA: Problem Grumpily Solved

This entry was originally posted at http://matt-doyle.dreamwidth.org/795307.html. Comment wherever you feel most comfortable commenting.

... and some things had been on that list for nearly a month.  It was six things or so this morning, expanded to eight or nine as I thought of more.

And I did every last damn one of them, plus one thing that was scheduled for Monday.

One of those things was finally finishing Chapter Twenty-Six.  It should be beta-ed, revised, and posted by Monday.

Slowly coping better and better with my weird bursts of morbidity and existential terror.  They still bother me, but I don't know if I want to think about them (and thus entertain them) for long enough to construct a full post.  If the problem is fixing itself, good, though its sudden onslaught still puzzles me.  Is this a facet of getting older?

If so, then color me Peter Pan.  I want none of it.

Anyway, if anyone is interested I'd still be up for discussing it.  I just don't want to spend an hour reflecting on it alone while I compose an essay.  Three weeks ago just mentioning it in a post would have given me the screaming mimis and fifteen minutes of anguish.  Now?  Meh.

I *do* want to make a different post though, summing up the ongoing adventures of my D & D party.  They're just hitting the end of the first major plot arc I have planned, and the drama is playing out nicely in a way that lends itself very well to a narrative and dramatic summary and explanation of the psychological hell they are about to endure.

Being a DM puts one in a very weird headspace at times, when it comes to sadistic enjoyment of things...

This entry was originally posted at http://matt-doyle.dreamwidth.org/794841.html. Comment wherever you feel most comfortable commenting.

 

May the Fourth Be With You.

 

I owe more to Star Wars than I can describe. One of the oldest dreams I remember having is hanging from the antenna under Cloud City, watching the self-destructing Enterprise over the Genesis Planet. When I was three years old and had an ear infection, my father told me to endure like Luke Skywalker did when he had his hand cut off.

 

When I say that Star Wars was a formative experience for me, that's what I mean.

 

My first actual memory of seeing the movies is sometime around kindergarten, and after that me and my best friend at the time immersed ourselves in it. We bought the toys. We built lego versions of everything. We re-enacted scenes (Jamie did a BRILLIANT Darth Vader voice for a six year old).

 

As soon as there were tie-in novels being published, I read them all (first the Glove of Darth Vader series, then the Lando Calrissian novels from the 80s, then later Timothy Zahn's new and exciting tie-ins). The Last Command was the first book I ever spent my own money to buy. And it may have been the best six bucks I ever spent.

 

I have a bookshelf full of Star Wars novels. No, not one row on a bookshelf. A bookshelf. I own... eighty-five Star Wars novels, six books about the Star Wars universe, and twelve gaming supplement, including The Death Star Technical Companion.

 

I have been writing Star Wars fanfiction since I was eight years old. My friends and I played out the saga of Prince Tiress of Iger and Tyclo, the rogue Jedi from Cantara since that point. The first online role-playing game I ever joined was a post-apocalyptic Star Wars sequel (and man could there be a post series talking about how online RP has shaped my life).

 

My imagination is drenched in Star Wars. It always has been. I dedicated myself to being the King of Star Wars geeks, and when it comes to miscellaneous knowledge about the universe, I've only ever met one person who can match me. This is one of my proudest achievements.

 

I didn't like the prequels (though I did enjoy them). I don't like where the book series has gone (though I enjoyed that, too, for far longer than most of my friends. This is not a boast, it's an admission of guilt). But I think about Star Wars every day. I don't have anything to profound to say beyond that, except... rec me your favorite fics! Talk to me about your favorite and least favorite books, characters, moments! Geek out with me!

 

Some people wanted to run away to Narnia or Middle-Earth as kids. But for me, my otherworldly home will always be the Millenium Falcon.

 

This entry was originally posted at http://matt-doyle.dreamwidth.org/794587.html. Comment wherever you feel most comfortable commenting.

MADCAP ARCHAEOLOGY SOUNDTRACK, PART II

 

 

( Nineteen songs about setting, story, and romance. )

As ever, I'd love to hear thoughts and reactions, either on the soundtrack or just the songs.

This entry was originally posted at http://matt-doyle.dreamwidth.org/794361.html. Comment wherever you feel most comfortable commenting.

Today I go to do battle with the manuscript of The Hellion Prince, Chapter Twenty-Six; especially the dreaded scene where father and son get to have a private chat.

It may be a two day process, but by tomorrow, I will have a completed rough draft for Megan to beta, and I will get the chapter posted before next week (if she has time to review it by then). 

Speaking of things I will be doing, I will finish Part II in rough draft this month. This means two more chapters (maybe three) which are now mostly unwritten will be put down by May 31st.  This should be easier than it sounds, because they are the climax of this third of the novel, and I am good at writing important bits in a hurry.

Now for coffee (with buttershots) and writing.

As before, this battle will take place on gdocs and an audience will be welcome.

This entry was originally posted at http://matt-doyle.dreamwidth.org/793997.html. Comment wherever you feel most comfortable commenting.