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November – A Productive Month!
Added 35 000 words to the novel this month! Ten thousand of those words were done this week and now there’s only three chapters left. Overall I’m pleased with progress. My only real concern is the novel is running a little longer than I had intended… there will be much cutting in the next draft. This has been an interesting experience, writing from an outline. Hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing but I’ve learned how to build a more usable outline (and I have done so — the next novel is already plotted out, in a much more sensible and useful manner). Anyways, that’s it. Off to do some research.
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The Twitter Index
Today Empire Avenue rolled out the Twitter Index. Previously users could only buy shares in other Empire Avenue users. But now any Twitter person can be bought and sold… and it has spurred activity on Empire Avenue! I’ve talked in the past about how much I like the buy-and-sell gameplay system of Empire Avenue and am delighted to see it extended to users outside of the Avenue. Basically an emphasis has been put on making Empire Avenue’s strongest feature (the buy and sell) even stronger by removing some artificial roadblocks to network growth and expanding the user base. With the Twitter Index, users can expect even more growth, and hopefully…
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Hard Decisions
Realized it has been a very long time since the last Lazy Designer post! So here’s a new one: Overview As a lead in a game development studio a significant portion of your time will be spent making decisions. Often these decisions will come naturally from discussions with your team, the logical result of debate. Sometimes though, as the person responsible for final design decisions, you will need to make an unpopular decision. Here are some tips, based on my own experiences with being in this kind of situation. None of these will make the hard decision any easier but hopefully they minimize some of the potential ‘aftershocks’. Realizing a…
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Read this week
Warrior Wisewoman #3 Edited by Roby James This is an annual anthology of stories featuring women protagonists. This is the first volume of the series I’ve read but after reading it I’m going to pick up the others. A range of stories… most of them I liked, some of them quite a bit. My favorites? Sustain Nothing by Paul Abbamondi was really good, a bizarre story where a woman is a guide, with access to all the information that exists in the world and people ask her questions, directions and such. One day she figures out how to turn her connection off and much chaos ensues. I also really enjoyed…
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Chapter 24
That’s where I am now in the current novel. I realize I’m not updating the blog a lot; there’s a boatload I want to talk about but one of two remaining goals for me this year was to write two novels… and I’m almost done that. When not working on the novel I’m cleaning up (or retiring) any stories that have been sent back to me. I’ve done a couple editor requested rewrites too, so waiting for a response on those. If I do start posting more regularly you can be certain that I’m either finished with the novel or slacking off :) I’m also becoming busier with Empire Avenue…
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Yet Another iPad Post
Finding myself using the iPad more and more… I’d say about a quarter of my ‘computer time’ is now on the iPad instead of the main computer. This style of device is what I’ve been waiting for, for years. It sucks for content creation but is perfect for keeping up with social networking stuff (which I’m trying to avoid on the work computer, you know, to help focus on work). And I’m reading a lot on it — mostly going through old DRM-free eBooks I bought years ago. I’m still undecided about which format for eBooks I’m going to adopt… I really hate DRM (long story short I have a…
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Empire Avenue – Community Discussion
For those Empire Avenue users out there who started using communities for topic-specific discussion but stopped there’s some good news. At the top of the community page there is now a summary of which communities have new topics in them. This will definitely help me (I’m in a boatload of communities) easily figure out which ones to check in to. Hoping this will start encouraging more conversation in the communities.
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Now an Empire Avenue Consultant
As some readers may have noticed I have joined the Empire Avenue team as a consultant. After I left BioWare I decided that I would only spend my time working on projects that I thought were interesting and fulfilling… which primarily meant my writing career but I remained open to the idea of contributing to worthwhile endeavors that I felt have relevance. Why Empire Avenue? I was writing my first novel last winter when I joined the family and friends beta for Empire Avenue. I figured I’d take a look at it and provide some feedback — I like to help out former colleagues when possible. But I got hooked.…
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Progress
It has been silent around here because I’ve been focused on the novel. I have just passed the 70 000 word mark. That means that there is about 25 000 words remaining; looks like I should finish up in December if all goes well. Outlining for the third novel is about 30% done too and I’ve been managing to keep all my stories circulating — so I’ve definitely been busy writer guy. I do have a series of new blog posts in various stages of completeness, mostly new articles for the Lazy Designer. I’ll try and start posting at least one thing of interest every week… if there are any…