Something Like Normalcy
Jun. 26th, 2005 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aIt slowly feels like things are returning to normalcy, albeit in a different configuration.
I've done barely any writing since late in April. Life has been just too confusing, busy, or traumatic to do so. I've gotten out something less than a review a week and eked out just 2 or 3 TT&T's in that time, and that's been the extent of my writing.
In the last week or two things have changed. I still haven't been able to write, but I've at least been feeling the desire.
Part of this has probably been the release of the first issue of the Castle Marrach comic. I keep plotting out the first 2 or 3 pages of the next issue in my head, different each time. In one variant I start with Victor and Nadira in dreams, to better explain her appearance toward the end of the first issue. In another I start out with Victor waking, and then showing the mundaneness he's settling into. In another I start with Boreas, dreaming, to better focus on him and better introduce the Winter Watch. They could all be the start, and for now I've just enjoyed turning them around in my head.
However, I've also really been wanting to get back to my elf book for Glorantha. It'd been planned for completion at the end of April, and then I decided I needed one more month, and then things stopped. I've at least been in touch with Greg, told him where things are, and also sent him the draft of the book thus far. There's a lot done, so I'm sure he's feeling good having seen that.
I think that I may be getting back into one or both of these things this week. For now I'm planning to start my next review once I finish this journal entry, and that's a good thing, because I can't remember the last time I got a review started earlier than Monday or Tuesday.
Work has been very, very busy, for about the last month now. Most lately that's been the release of the Castle Marrach comic and my getting as much PR and advertising as I can find for Lovecraft Country.
I've also been helping Chris out on a few other endeavors he's working on. That's kind of nice, the change of pace, and knowing that games aren't the whole world.
I've been feeling really rundown this weekend. I think I may be fighting off a cold, as Kimberly says I snored like a lumberjack on Friday night, I was all achey when I woke up today, and I've been napping pretty constantly this weekend.
Hopefully this will pass. I'd like my energy back, please.
Yesterday was gaming, but at least due in part to the aforementioned lack of energy I didn't feel like running, though it should have been Stormbringer #7. I even had all my notes, but when everyone arrived pretty promptly after 1pm, I just looked around the room in despair, and couldn't imagine keeping the group running for 5 hours.
I did, however, also bring my copy of Shadows Over Camelot with me, and I was pretty sure the gaming group would take well to it, because it's an Arthurian pseudo-RPG board game.
I had a lot of fun, the most fun I've had at gaming in weeks. We played Camelot twice. I was the traitor the first time, and deceptively pulled my fellow knights into the depths of despair, while never being revealed. (End result 8 black swords to 5 white, or something similar.) Donald was the traitor the second time, and we figured him out relatively quickly, but we still couldn't hold back the shadows, and he triumphed. We probably would have managed it if we could have drawn a 3-combat, but none of us could, and thus we couldn't complete a war quickly enough to get a Heroic pair of white swords before the failure of the grail quest flooded us with black swords.
We're going to be doing my actual review game of Shadows this Thursday, but I've now played it in every configuration I wanted to, by luck (once with no traitor, once with me the traitor, once with someone else the traitor), so mostly I'll just be making sure I have all my notes down.
In any case, great game.
Kimberly & I have started watching Carnivale (season 1). I'd heard somewhat mixed reviews of it, but it's been mostly great. The pacing is really slow, both within episodes, and on the arc plots, and I could see that turning people off, and also making it a better TV show to watch on DVD.
I've also been rereading The Dreaming a 60-issue followup series to Gaiman's Sandman. I started it a couple of days ago and just finished #32 or so. It's generally good, especially in the latter part of the series where they had a single author (though some of the standalone stories are pretty good if you don't mind the lack of continuity). I'd originally grown interested in rereading it when I mentioned it in my comic-book editorial. Since I've realized that it'll probably help me get back into the right head-space for writing the next issue of the comic, because the style is pretty Gaimanesque (not purposefully, but I recognized it when I reread the script a year or two after I wrote it).
10pm. TIme to at least get started in a review, then maybe play some games before bed.
I've done barely any writing since late in April. Life has been just too confusing, busy, or traumatic to do so. I've gotten out something less than a review a week and eked out just 2 or 3 TT&T's in that time, and that's been the extent of my writing.
In the last week or two things have changed. I still haven't been able to write, but I've at least been feeling the desire.
Part of this has probably been the release of the first issue of the Castle Marrach comic. I keep plotting out the first 2 or 3 pages of the next issue in my head, different each time. In one variant I start with Victor and Nadira in dreams, to better explain her appearance toward the end of the first issue. In another I start out with Victor waking, and then showing the mundaneness he's settling into. In another I start with Boreas, dreaming, to better focus on him and better introduce the Winter Watch. They could all be the start, and for now I've just enjoyed turning them around in my head.
However, I've also really been wanting to get back to my elf book for Glorantha. It'd been planned for completion at the end of April, and then I decided I needed one more month, and then things stopped. I've at least been in touch with Greg, told him where things are, and also sent him the draft of the book thus far. There's a lot done, so I'm sure he's feeling good having seen that.
I think that I may be getting back into one or both of these things this week. For now I'm planning to start my next review once I finish this journal entry, and that's a good thing, because I can't remember the last time I got a review started earlier than Monday or Tuesday.
Work has been very, very busy, for about the last month now. Most lately that's been the release of the Castle Marrach comic and my getting as much PR and advertising as I can find for Lovecraft Country.
I've also been helping Chris out on a few other endeavors he's working on. That's kind of nice, the change of pace, and knowing that games aren't the whole world.
I've been feeling really rundown this weekend. I think I may be fighting off a cold, as Kimberly says I snored like a lumberjack on Friday night, I was all achey when I woke up today, and I've been napping pretty constantly this weekend.
Hopefully this will pass. I'd like my energy back, please.
Yesterday was gaming, but at least due in part to the aforementioned lack of energy I didn't feel like running, though it should have been Stormbringer #7. I even had all my notes, but when everyone arrived pretty promptly after 1pm, I just looked around the room in despair, and couldn't imagine keeping the group running for 5 hours.
I did, however, also bring my copy of Shadows Over Camelot with me, and I was pretty sure the gaming group would take well to it, because it's an Arthurian pseudo-RPG board game.
I had a lot of fun, the most fun I've had at gaming in weeks. We played Camelot twice. I was the traitor the first time, and deceptively pulled my fellow knights into the depths of despair, while never being revealed. (End result 8 black swords to 5 white, or something similar.) Donald was the traitor the second time, and we figured him out relatively quickly, but we still couldn't hold back the shadows, and he triumphed. We probably would have managed it if we could have drawn a 3-combat, but none of us could, and thus we couldn't complete a war quickly enough to get a Heroic pair of white swords before the failure of the grail quest flooded us with black swords.
We're going to be doing my actual review game of Shadows this Thursday, but I've now played it in every configuration I wanted to, by luck (once with no traitor, once with me the traitor, once with someone else the traitor), so mostly I'll just be making sure I have all my notes down.
In any case, great game.
Kimberly & I have started watching Carnivale (season 1). I'd heard somewhat mixed reviews of it, but it's been mostly great. The pacing is really slow, both within episodes, and on the arc plots, and I could see that turning people off, and also making it a better TV show to watch on DVD.
I've also been rereading The Dreaming a 60-issue followup series to Gaiman's Sandman. I started it a couple of days ago and just finished #32 or so. It's generally good, especially in the latter part of the series where they had a single author (though some of the standalone stories are pretty good if you don't mind the lack of continuity). I'd originally grown interested in rereading it when I mentioned it in my comic-book editorial. Since I've realized that it'll probably help me get back into the right head-space for writing the next issue of the comic, because the style is pretty Gaimanesque (not purposefully, but I recognized it when I reread the script a year or two after I wrote it).
10pm. TIme to at least get started in a review, then maybe play some games before bed.