Books, Writing and RPG!

It has been a busy weekend and a very busy beginning of the week for me. Sorry about the post being a day late :D.

Well, the past week was weird one: too much work and too much stress. I was looking forward a quiet weekend at home, and then on Sunday to visit some good friends and draft my fantasy football team. It all went down as planned, but I am still feeling tired.

This week I did not finish any new books, I am reading three, almost done with two, still working on the third.

Books

William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition has been a lot of work. The first few chapters have not been kind to me and I am finding the book to be very interesting but very difficult as well. While Cayce is a very interesting character and her job is one I would like to have for real, the pace and tone of the book, the terminology and the fact that many of the references are from our time, from this world, are a bit unnerving, yet this is what I have liked the most of the book so far.

Hit List is the last Anita Blake novel written so far, and I am not enjoying it as much as I thought I would. The reason? Well, it is more of the same. I posted last week that some of the male authority figures in the series are just mean, racist, misogynist pigs. At first, you get the idea of the world Anita Blake lives in, but seriously, the mold of these types of characters are just too much for me. Also, the stories used to be good, there used to be a plot that was a part of Anita’s line of work, the investigations, the jobs of raising the dead, the many adventures with Death. However, those plot lines are weak and diluted, they are not as important as the sexual encounters. Anyway, I hope the book’s last 20% is better than what I have read so far.

Shadow’s Linger is the second book of the Books of the North trilogy, written by Glenn Cook. So far so good. I really like this book, especially because I am enjoying the characters. The idea of an honor bound mercenary band has always been appealing to me, especially in a fantasy setting, and that is what the Company is. If you mix these supernatural beings, the Ten Who Where Taken and the Lady, and the unique type of magic they possess, with a fast paced and interesting story, then you have a winner in my books!

Writing

For the past couple of week I have been writing more articles than the novel, or the short story I am working on. That will stop this week. I do enjoy making top ten lists and other types of articles, but I waste too much of my time doing just that. I wrote a Travel Guide, and two book lists, as well as an introductory piece on fantasy, a poem and a flash fiction story. The lists are fun, the travel guide was not. The poem and the flash fiction story were pretty good exercises on reminding me that I can I write other stuff. I also posted the Prologue and Chapter 1 in their new homes. So, I don’t think this is working for me. Why? Well, I do not have time to write an article a day, or a week for that matter, and use what little time I have to write my novel and short stories. I am not good at that either, so I won’t continue. The top ten guides and lists are fun and will continue to write them when and if time permits. Also, I like sharing my work on other sites, like HubPages, where I can create unique pages for each chapter of the book. The problem that I have encountered though is that I get too caught up on page views and not enough on the content. I have not edited these first drafts, and I guess I need to. I like being read, but I like writing more, so I will focus on that this week.

The Druids’ Grove is still stalled on Chapter 13 of the Elven story.

Now, X’s game is done, but I will rewrite it today and probably tomorrow as well. It was just too long and not fast enough, at least in my mind. It will be ready to be sent this week.

The freelance writing thing, well, I am not sure I am cut out to write hundreds of articles on topics I do not know much of, or are not that interested to begin with, so I will focus more on the creative aspect of freelance writing, submitting poems, stories and such to online magazines. Hope this goes better.

RPG Thursday

Last week, we played a survival type RPG, where zombies will nom, nom your brains out. It was great! The setting was the ZM’s (Zombie Master) house, so even though I have been inside the house many times, I had not noticed that the house SUCKS for a zombie apocalypse. Ynoz will get us killed, I have no doubts on that, Emo Dorne will get himself killed, and JP, the Spider and I will survive against all odds, even if the ZM is intent on killing us. (Note to the ZM….chill out my friend! This is not a game of us against you, it is more of a game about us against you! LOL).

Updates

I used to update the site on Thursdays with my work, I will still be able to do so, although I have no clue as to what type of content it will include.

Have a great week!