Category Archives: Personal life

January 17, 2018 · 11:11 am

Current Projects

I’ve been a bit distracted from writing tasks lately. I bought into the second Kingdom Death: Monster Kickstarter and received my copy of the core game a while back. It’s really quite a fun game, and given how high-quality the miniatures are I kind of wanted to paint them up nicely after I assembled them. I was pretty happy with the results of my first couple, so then I decided I wanted to give them fancy bases, instead of just flat black ones.

 

 

My KD:M miniatures are still a work in progress, but by then I’d accumulated a fair few bits and pieces and I’d seen online that some people had crafted proper versions of the game terrain that gets set up on the board. I thought that looked really cool, and kind of really wanted to enhance my own game with some. There are even some really cool 3D printed pieces. So I started expanding a bit in preparation for that.

Of course, getting into the KD:M terrain meant that I saw a lot of other miniature terrain. I’m an avid tabletop gamer and I’ve always thought miniature terrain and stuff like dungeon tiles are really cool, but I’d been away from games that would use them for so long that I’ve always thought it was a waste of time for me to do anything with it.

However, I’ve recently also gotten back into Dungeons & Dragons, and am currently running a 5th Edition game that I’m really enjoying. I have some more game ideas I’d like to get into in the future, too, so I ended up spending way too much money on tools and bits and now I’m working on buy and crafting pieces of terrain for future D&Ding.

 

 

So, yeah. I’ve been busy, just not with the sort of thing I really should be busy with.

…

ANYWAY!

…

I’m pretty happy with how Blackened Hearts turned out, and given the surprising amount of success and feedback it’s gotten I’ve been thinking that I might want to follow it up with another LARP scenario. I’ve got a mess of notes now for potential scenarios I could write, but I’m not completely sure what I want to actually commit the time to working on just yet. While I have a bunch of different ideas, at the moment I think I’m narrowing in on two in particular:

 

Ghost Hunterz

A kitschy, low-budget cable TV show crew go on-location to a building where a series of horrific murders were committed years ago. The place is rumoured to be extremely haunted, so the crew, including a supposedly psychic medium, is hoping to communicate with the spirits and film some supernatural phenomena. After little success early on, once the clock strikes midnight the doors of the building lock and the world outside the windows is enveloped in darkness, trapping them inside. The producer assumes that their ‘psychic’ is running some smoke and mirrors deal, but is all for it if it gets them some good footage. Of course, the ghosts are all-too real… and one of them is a killer.

 

 

This one has what I think is a pretty interesting central mechanic/conceit—half of the cast are unable to interact with or perceive the other half directly (because they’re ghosts). Communication between the two distinct groups is done indirectly through the use of ghostly powers. The ghost characters can wander around, interact with each other, and eavesdrop on the living freely, while living characters strictly instructed to completely ignore the ghost players’ presence, unless ghostly powers are used. An Ouija board is the primary medium, but there is also interference with recording equipment, poltergeist activity, and even possession. I’m also considering a mechanic for the ghost killer to be able to start murdering the living people (and for them to subsequently become ghost characters) but I’m not quite sure how to pace it out yet.

 

Glory to the Crown

A bored, low-tier noble of a magical steampunk empire has come to a mining facility, along with representatives from the powerful Church and Academy, to tour it and make a decision on whether it will be shut down now that its richest veins have all been exhausted. The tour is interrupted when workers suddenly break into an ancient sealed chamber, filled with amazing discoveries. Dangerous readings cause the resident radiologist send the whole facility into a quarantine lockdown, trapping everyone inside until help arrives.

 

 

The central mechanic/conceit of this one is that there are a number of potentially very valuable, very important objects that have been discovered, but no one has complete direct access to study them until after the quarantine is lifted. Each object has a number of properties, and each property affects the value of the item differently. The idea is that the academy and church players will try to find out what information they can, and make deals with the noble to try to obtain what they think are the most valuable items, without over-committing their resources.

The facilities’ workers have a bit more access to the discoveries, but have their own motivations and desires and may try to strike deals of their own with the church/academy. There are also secondary major plots involving an undercover agent of the rebellion who can turn the whole thing on its head if they get enough other characters to support them, and the pending decision on whether or not the facility will be closed (threatening the workers’ livelihoods).

 

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February 21, 2017 · 12:30 am

Unity and Cults (of Witches)

I’ve had a rough couple of days, writing-wise.

Lately I’ve been super excited that one of my friends will soon be launching a Kickstarter campaign for a video game project (The Witch Cult) he’s been working on for quite some time. Michael has done what I’m trying to do this year — taken time off full-time employment to try to make a living pursuing his own creative endeavours.

I’ve wanted to play around with video game creation myself for quite some time. I’ve got a few pages worth of notes for several game ideas that honestly haven’t really progressed past the ‘ideas’ phase. It’s been my intention to use some of my ‘other project’ time to start learning some more C# coding and play around with game engines, just to explore the possibility, but as you can imagine seeing the impending hopeful success of a friend has sparked my interest. On Friday, I downloaded the latest version of Unity and loaded up some tutorial courses I’d bought at a steep discount last year. I have done very little else since then, only taking a little time out to hug my partner and attend a regular roleplaying session on Sunday.

First, I was surprised just how much I remembered about C# programming, given I’d only half-done a course on it several years ago. I just needed some reminders here and there, and I got back into it pretty easily. Mostly everything makes sense, and I found myself getting pretty impatient during quite a few of the tutorial videos as they were just teaching me stuff I either already knew or could have worked out with a few minutes experimenting/Googling rather than sitting through a half-hour video of having it slowly explained.

Second, holy cow Unity is really, really easy to get into. I mean, obviously the hard work when making a game is building assets from scratch, more complex coding stuff, and the degree of polish that you want to put in, but I was really amazed at how easy and fast it is just to, you know… throw something together and have it work. I have a much better understanding of why hundreds upon hundreds of uselessly bad shovelware games exist now — they exist because it literally just takes a couple of hours for one person to make one. It exists for the same reason as the metric tons of terrible fanfic exists.

So yeah, the last few days have been terrible for writing, but good for learning Unity and C#. I figure that isn’t a bad thing — my goals and schedule allow for time where the equivalent of basically nothing gets done, so I’m still well inside my parameters, and while I’ve got the inspiration and drive to learn it seems like it’d almost be wasteful not to explore it. Still, I gets guilt and anxiety over it because I get guilt and anxiety over basically everything that I do, ever.

I’m currently working on a little sort of play around thing to test out all the bits I’m learning. It’s basically junk, but I might upload it at some point just to say ‘lookit this thing I done’.

Just need to be careful not to drop too much cash in the asset store. There’s just so much shiny in there…

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February 6, 2017 · 12:23 am

Leaving the Clockyard

Today is the first day of my do-as-much-writing-as-possible-in-ten-months thing. Here I am, ready to leave the clockyard. It’s a bit exciting and a bit concerning all at once. I don’t think I should stress about it, because at the very least I have ten months off to just write and do whatever else I want, which is awesome. On the other hand, my brain being the way it is–what, with all the depression and anxiety and such–sometimes it’s hard to convince myself that it doesn’t actually really matter if I don’t manage to wrangle an actual liveable income from writing. I’ve got a huge pile of savings as a safety net and a secure job to go back to at the end of things. Intellectually, I know I should relax and just do what I can. Emotionally, it’s a hard thing to do.

Sitting here, it occurs to me that I really should clean up my computer desk. It’s a bit of an absolute mess. Maybe I’ll shuffle some of it off this afternoon when I have some spare time.

 

 

I took last week off so I had some time to relax after the stress of my regular job, but even then I still wrote and submitted an entry to the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge 2017. Forget it Liu, it’s Lung Town is now available on here for free (check the Freebies section), if you missed me posting it last week. It’s one of my first attempts at writing any sort of comedy–I’m mostly happy with it, but I can see definite room for improvement. I learnt quite a bit while writing it.

Even though I’d been firmly determined to do the absolute minimum when it came to being productive during my week off, I still ended up doing a heap of work on Blackened Hearts (the pirate LARP I’m working on) and I even wrote the first draft of another short story. It’s been to my editor who tore it apart, so when I get some time I’ll go back over it. Once it’s finished, it’ll be uploaded onto here for free as well. Its working title is Morning Routine.

Speaking of routines, I’ve mentioned before that I tend to work far more efficiently if I tightly regiment my time. In the lead-up to today, I worked out a daily schedule that I’m going to stick to as much as possible during the next ten months. I’ve put a copy of it below, for those of you that are interested.

Yeah, I wasn’t joking when I said tightly regimented–the only thing that’s not on there are scheduled bathroom breaks. I’ve got a series of alarms set up on my phone to ping each segment as it begins, to keep me on track, and as you can guess, it’s just past 10am this morning so I am currently in the middle of my morning social media bit.

There are only four hours worth of solid writing in the schedule. This is because I’ve got a lot of other stuff to take care of (planning/outlining, editing, social media/marketing, etc, etc) and I’ve planned my weekly goals accordingly. I’ve tried to be as conservative and realistic in my goals as I can:

I can generally easily write between 500 and 1,000 good-quality words in an hour’s session, so in four hours, provided I know what I’m writing when I’m going in, I should be able to write at least 2,000 words a day without any severe difficulty. This translates to (with Wednesday working on other projects) about 8,000 a week. One of my novella-length stories is generally somewhere in the vicinity of 45,000 to 55,000 words. So I should easily be able to finish a draft of a story in less than eight weeks. Even if I literally get nothing else done, this means (with my 42 weeks off) that I should be able to fully draft up five novellas.

Still, my actual goal is only four. Considering that it took me three and a half years to put out two while also working full time, I think four in ten months is pretty damn good.

My initial half-hour writing session went well this morning–I wrote a hair under 800 words, so well over what I needed to. At the end of the day, I should easily have the 2,000 words I need to stick to my goals, and I should have plenty planned out so that tomorrow I can do the same. Wish me luck.

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January 20, 2017 · 9:55 pm

The Clockyard

I’ve made a big, scary decision about my future as a writer. Up until now, I’ve been writing in my spare time in fits and starts (a fact that is readily apparent from my irregular blog posting). I’ve managed to complete and publish two books in that time, but I’m never going to build a proper audience or get my volume up if I continue to go on as I am. So I’d like to make a real attempt at getting out of my comfort zone and into writing as a full-time thing. Even if I don’t get things off the ground, I can at least be satisfied with knowing that I took it seriously and made a proper effort.

I’m taking most of 2017 off from my full-time employment. Hooray for the Queensland public service — a nice perk of working for the State Government is that I can take up to twelve months of unpaid leave and still have a job to come back to (I’m not taking a full twelve months, though). I’ve got seven weeks of rec leave I’m taking at half pay (so 14 weeks) and then I’ll take 28 weeks of unpaid leave. It’s coming up fast — my last day is 24 January. I won’t be returning to my normal employment until 4 December.

There’s a song by Abney Park that I’ve always really liked called The Clockyard. I think the lyrics are broadly applicable to my current situation.

It’s pretty scary, but it’s also exciting. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’m going to manage myself.

  • I’ve found in the past that I work best when sticking to a strict schedule, assigning myself a task for each hour or half-hour block of time, so I’m working on putting together a good schedule. I’ll post it up at some point once I’ve gotten into it properly.
  • Another thing I’m going to be doing, apart from writing, is trying to make more of an effort to promote myself. That means, at a bare minimum, more blog posts and more of a social media presence. I’m going to do some research on marketing and get more involved with writers’ organisations (local and otherwise).
  • At work half the time I’d just have fast food for lunch — I’m going to try to avoid that while working from home, so I’ve started working up weekly meal plans with shopping lists. I’m hoping that, by pre-planning my meals, I’ll cook more often and eat healthier.
  • I’m even thinking that I might reward myself with a trip overseas sometime during my time off, if I am on still on track then. I’m setting myself some very achievable goals for the ten months, and it’d be nice to have something to reward myself with.
  • Money is the one thing I’m not worried about at all. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and have saved up a decently padded safety net that should see me through no matter what happens.

So yeah. I’m going to make a proper go of it as a full-time writer. Wish me luck.

The man woke up and said, “I must leave…”

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January 16, 2017 · 7:50 am

Blackened Hearts: A Pirate LARP

I’m not a huge LARPer, but I do enjoy the occasional parlour-style game. One of my friends, the inestimable Steve D, designed an excellent Warhammer LARP a number of years ago called Sunset Claws (download here), which I really loved. I played it twice, in fact — once as part of a playtest, and I ran the final version for my birthday back in 2011.

Afterwards, I tinkered with the basic format of Sunset Claws to create a similar LARP for my own gaming group. It was basically a live-action session of Baker Street, the tabletop game I was running at the time (in 2012). Nathan, my editor and a regular gaming attendee who’d only played a handful of LARPs, then wrote and hosted one of his one in 2014 based on the same format, a steampunk murder mystery set aboard an airship. Nathan has been polishing this up a bit for eventual publication (if you’re reading — hurry up! 😀 ).

I’ve played in and ran a couple of other LARPs over the years as well, but I keep coming back to the simple rules and format of Sunset Claws as pretty much my ideal style of LARP.

This year, I’ve decided to write and run a new Sunset Claws-style LARP I’ve titled Blackened Hearts. My intention is to run it around June this year, polish it up, and package it up as a freebie/pay-what-you-want download. I’ve been working hard on the basics, and while I’ve still got quite a bit of work to do on it I have a blurb and a more-or-less final draft of the character list. I thought I’d share:

It be a fine day for larceny upon the high seas indeed! The Devil hisself must have blest the crew of the Black Kraken with his own luck—how else could it be that you would happen upon the fat Spanish treasure galleon the Urca de Lima, separated from her escort and crippled by one of the worst storms that ever scoured the ocean? Then again, even in these most favourable circumstances, the Spaniards fought long and hard before you finally took her. The Urca de Lima now trails behind you, a small prize crew doing what they can to keep her limping along just long enough to get to the port of Tortuga.

It’s been clear sailing all week all the way back to port—almost suspiciously easy-going and peaceful, in fact—and without much to do the crew’s been going stir-crazy thinking about how they’ll spend their ill-gotten rewards. In fact, the Captain’s arranged for an early share of the loot to be divided amongst the crew. Those who aren’t needed to sail the ship are able to enjoy the rest of the evening with a little bit of early gambling and drinking, so everyone is in high spirits. All that’s left now is to enjoy the rest of the evening as you coast into Tortuga, and maybe swindle some of your fellows out of their share. Wait, what’s this about a curse?

Link: List of characters

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June 9, 2016 · 11:59 am

Thursday Night Dinner

I have a tradition with a couple of close friends — every Thursday evening, one of us hosts the others for dinner. As well as meaning you only have to cook one out of every four Thursdays, it’s a great chance to catch up with people who I don’t necessarily get to see that often. There is only one rule: You cannot cook something you have cooked before. Given that we’ve been doing this for nigh on five years now, it means you need to get creative with what you’re doing and go outside your comfort zone. For someone like me, who loves to cook, it’s a great chance to try doing something I’ve never done before. Sometimes, it doesn’t turn out great (e.g. Green Apple Curry). Other times, you make something truly excellent and get a real sense of accomplishment — tonight was one of those nights.

Recently, we’ve started ‘theming’ rounds, so that each of us do one meal using a common unifying thing. The current theme is something simple: ‘Italian’. Behold, my contribution:

20160609_190057

To start, a delicious selection of antipasto — roasted marinated red peppers; grissini wrapped in prosciutto; sliced pepperoncini; fresh basil; sicilian olives marinated in lemon and garlic; green olives marinated in garlic and chili; and bocconcini in olive oil, salt and pepper.

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Main is a sweet potato and feta gnocchi (hand made) in a creamy sundried tomato and spinach sauce.

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And finally, for dessert, malteser tiramisu.

I am a culinary god. Worship me!

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June 4, 2016 · 11:10 pm

More Radio Plays

I’ve got a few more radio play recommendations for you — the two programmes below specialise in horror and suspense stories. Again, these are all freely available on the Archive.org thanks to the Old Time Radio Researchers Group.

QUIET_PLEASE

Quiet, Please (1947 – 1949)

The Thing on the Fourble Board: This is legit the creepiest radio play I’ve listened to, and is widely regarded as not only one of the best horror radio plays around, but one of the best radio plays ever.  The title is a bit of oil worker argot: the “fourble board” of an oil derrick is a narrow catwalk that is as high up as four lengths of drilling pipe (two lengths are a “double”, three a “thribble” and four a “fourble”, much to my housemate’s consternation).

Whence Came You: About an archaeologist who, on the way to a dig, meets a strange woman in the lobby of Shepherd’s Hotel in Cairo. The excavation finds a hidden city beneath the one they were already working on, and once they descend into a tomb that had been sealed off by an enormous block of sandstone, they find… something.

lights-out-title

Lights Out (1934 – 1947)

Death Robbery: Boris Karloff stars in this one 🙂 it’s about a scientist who’s been working on a way to bring the death back to life. His wife dies and, well… you get where this is going. This radio play succeeds well in being both incredibly cheesy at times (“We’re going to rob Old Man Death himself!”) but also legitimately creepy.

Murder Castle: This one is based on the real-life case of H. H. Holmes, a notorious serial killer who opened a hotel which he had designed and built for himself specifically with murder in mind. I encourage you to read his wikipedia page if you’re at all morbidly interested in serial killers.

Valse Triste: Another one starring Boris Karloff, about a mad, violin-playing hermit who imprisons a pair of women, threatening to murder one and marry the other. This one sticks out in my mind as one of the few radio plays I’ve heard so far that has a predominantly female main cast.

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· 12:37 am

Radio Plays

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a big fan of radio plays/dramas. If you’re interested in checking some out, the Old Time Radio Researchers Group’s material on Archive.org is a pretty great source. I’ll make a couple of recommendations…

Escape

Escape! (1947 – 1954)

Three Skeleton Key: Written by George Toudouze, adapted by James Poe. This one is super popular, and for good reason. It aired several times, and my version of choice is the one narrated by Vincent Price. It’s about a trio of men stuck at a lighthouse when a ship carrying something terrible comes out of a storm and crashes on the rocks.

The Abominable Snowman: Written by Antony Ellis. A hunting expedition to prove the existence of the titular monster. It does not go well.

Pollack and the Porroh Man: Written by H.G. Wells. This one shows its age a bit with regards to its treatment of race, but aside from that (still rather glaring) flaw, it’s a pretty good story about a terrible person afflicted by a terrible curse.

XMinus

X-Minus One (1955-1958)

A Gun for a Dinosaur: Written by L. Sprague de Camp, adapted by Ernest Kinoy. Time-travelling big game hunters going after dinosaurs for sport. I’m not generally a fan of hunting as a ‘thing’, but the story on this one is good enough that I’m willing to ignore that. A little disappointed it’s not a story about arming dinosaurs.

Time and Time Again: Written by H. Beam Piper, adapted by Ernest Kinoy. An excellent time travel story about a soldier’s mind being accidentally transported back in time to inhabit his younger self. The ending on this one is great and seems like an excellent set-up for a sequel or follow up.

To The Future: Written by Ray Bradbury, adapted by Ernest Kinoy. About a pair of tourist time-travellers who are trying to stay in the past, being hounded by an agent that has been charged with returning them to their proper time period.

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June 3, 2016 · 9:05 am

My First Dungeons & Dragons Game

I’ve been an avid roleplayer since I was first joined the hobby fourteen years ago.

I’ll never forget my first game. Three of us had decided that we were kind of interested in this whole Dungeons & Dragons thing, but didn’t want to fork out the money for the books just yet (we were 15 and not from especially affluent families, so the $50 rulebooks were daunting purchases). Instead, we had learned that there was such a thing as the Systems Reference Document, which listed a lot of the rules and was freely available. In addition, there was a crude piece of character creation software for PC called Redblade. A quick Google tells me it’s still around, last updated in 2006.

Elmore1

So, we made up some characters and tottered off with a woefully incomplete understanding of the rules. I was DM. One player rolled up a gnome sorcerer with an 8 Constitution and 2 hp. I don’t remember what the other used. We had some sort of short lead up to the adventure proper, including a bit where they had to climb a cliff and the gnome had to be carried up over the other character’s shoulder because his Strength was terrible as well.

Then, we had our first combat encounter. A group of three orcs (CR 1/2, according to the SRD — a nice little challenge, to my completely inexperienced eye). They sighted the party and the party sighted them and, with a clatter of dice, battle began. Sort of. Initiative was rolled, and an orc went first. It unshouldered a javelin and took aim, hurling it at a randomly chosen hero.

This was our very first game of D&D. It was the very first combat. It was the very first action of the very first round. The gnome sorcerer took a javelin to the face and immediately went down. The game didn’t last much longer.

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June 2, 2016 · 11:25 am

Little Shop of Horrors

This afternoon I went to a matinee session of Little Shop of Horrors at the QPAC Playhouse. It was excellent and I’d really recommend it.

I love Little Shop, it’s one of my all-time favourite musicals.

My introduction to it was when I was quite young, my parents had the theatrical cut of the 1986 film on VHS. I watched it several times, ’til I could sing all the songs by heart. It wasn’t until many years later that I finally saw a stage production of it and fell in love all over again. I remember it well; I was surprised and delighted at the ‘new’ (read: original) ending, which I liked much better than the ending in the theatrical cut of the film.

Today I also got to introduce another to the stage version, a lovely lady who is a big fan of the film version like I had been but who had never seen it on stage before.

After the show, when we came home, I put on the director’s cut of the film — which I had obtained recently but not ever actually watched — and we watched it all again. I was really struck by how much of the dialog in the film is lifted directly from the stage script with little to no changes. It indicates the quality of the writing, I guess.

Screenshot from the 1986 film. All rights belong to their owners.

I mentioned that I had never actually seen the director’s cut ending of the film until tonight. It was excellent — we watched the theatrical cut ending on Youtube separately afterwards to compare, and the theatrical ending just doesn’t compare. I can understand why the original ending wasn’t used for the theatrical release… ‘everyone dies and then the world ends’ was an ending that wasn’t saleable to the general public in the 80s, but today we’re much more accepting of that sort of thing.

There are some scenes and songs that I think work better in the film than on stage. The Dentist song works much better in the film than the times I’ve seen it done on stage, due to the different set and the customers. The scene with Seymour coming to kill Orin works better in the film, too. And of course, you get the lovely ending with building-sized plant monsters tearing the city apart. Still, with musicals I find live performances are just better for some reason.

Little Shop of Horrors is just one of those musicals that I can see myself going to see again and again, whenever I get the chance to. It is and will remain one of my favourites.

—

No writing progress at all today, first time I’ve missed my 500 words. I’ve resolved to catch back up by Sunday.

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