Hobbit rant

A new beginning and a Hobbit rant!

I am now preparing for my first day at work. I am thankful that I was able to find work as quickly as I did. I am grateful of the opportunity and of the chance to learn new aspects of my profession. However, I am even more grateful for being able to provide for my family and for being a productive member of society.

Change is inevitable in life, I know that, but I think that the new routine, the new hours and the new workplace will be a difficult challenge to get used to. Before, I was accustomed of setting my own timelines, of being able to take a vacation whenever I wanted, or to take a day off when I felt like it. I won't be able to do that anymore, and I am looking forward to facing these and many other challenges. Although I have to admit that I am excited, feeling like I did when I changed schools from grade school to high school. I did not know anybody there, but I wanted to be there. Destiny gave me long life friends and a kick-ass education, so everything turned out to be ok.

So, I raise my glass towards the sky and toast life with a defiant: Challenge accepted!

Hobbit Rant

Well, I do not know where to begin. I am an avid Tolkien fan; his books shaped my burgeoning teen-age years. I was 12 when I read the Hobbit for the very first time, and it was my introduction to fantasy. I have not looked back, having read hundreds of fantasy books over the years. Still, the Hobbit has that special place in my heart. When Peter Jackson made the Lord of the Rings, I was really excited at the prospect of seeing my favorite characters on screen (especially Gandalf and Strider). However, even though the movies are stunning, beautifully shot, with great music and great acting, I was disappointed at all the changes made to the original story. I mean, the non-inclusion of Tom Bombadil is not a big deal per se, but the way the wanted to play the love story of Arwen and Aragorn, the scenes where Galadriel simply looses it with Frodo, how Frodo is loosing it in the presence of the ring, Gandalf's staff is broken by a Nazgul, etc...all of this made up elements are not necessary. Galadriel's casting, along with all the Elves is also highly questionable, but I understand that Cate Blanchett is an Oscar winning actor that will generate buzz and money (but why did they have to show her GINORMOUS FEET? WHY?).

Again, I want to stress the fact that I liked the movies, the movies are gorgeous and well made, but I did not like the artistic licenses and the story deviations. And this brings us back to Peter Jackson and the Hobbit.

He announced that it will be made into a trilogy.

A TRILOGY!

The shortest book of Middle Earth will be made into a trilogy.

Why?

This move reeks of senseless greed to me. There is no other way of putting it. Jackson says he is going to incorporate things from never before seen material Tolkien had written, and of some of the other books that deal with Middle Earth as well, and of using the appendices found in the Return of the King. Again I ask, why?

The story is a classic because it is a simple tale about a simple hobbit thrust into the precarious task of reclaiming the Dwarves' ancestral home, aided by a good friend and Wizard, Gandalf. That is it. Along the way he will meet the Dwarves that will become his companions and he will meet Elrond and Galadriel and Gollum. The story will then take care of itself. There is no reason to drag the simple story into three movies and I, for one, will not be flocking to the cinema to see it, even though I do want to see the movie.

Many of my friends believe that I am being overly dramatic, and they are probably right. But what good is a story written if it is changed completely in the movie? I am not a fan of the Game of Thrones series because of the changes made to the story (and yes, Martin is the one guiding these changes). I am not going to lie, the presentation of the series is beautiful, the acting is superb and the setting hits the nail in the head. The creators of the series have more time to develop and impose any changes made because they have the time to do so, thus the series is much more cohesive than the Lord of the Rings movies.

I understand that sometimes things need to be changed, and when you make a good movie like Jackson did; these changes do not alter the story as a whole.

Bur three movies out of the Hobbit is ridiculous. I will not support them.

What do you think?

Book

I am in the last stretch of writing the novel. Editing has gone well, and it is flowing. This week I want to advance it as much as I can because my new job means a lot less time to write.

It will be a great challenge to juggle the job, family life and writing in the upcoming months, but I am still aiming to publish it in December.

See you all later!

P.D. I used to write the blog weekly, but time constraints and life issues have made this timetable impossible. I will update it once a month, hopefully more.

Past the halfway point!

OMG! Has it been that long already without an update?

Sadly, yes it has been that long.

There is not much to report on terms of the job hunt, I might a have a couple of viable offers coming my way so I have my fingers crossed. I am still sending resumes and talking and emailing to any headhunter registered in Mexico City. I am less anxious to be honest, and I am starting to enjoy the time I have been given to spend with my kids and with my wife.

On the novel front, progress has been steady. I am now way beyond the halfway point. I am now sitting on 90k words, so now only 60k words are left. I am really enjoying this part of the writing experience, seeing the story advance, seeing my characters evolve before my eyes is a feeling that I cannot describe.

On the last post, I wrote about going the Independent route in terms of publishing, and I still feel strongly that my novel will be published that way. Traditional publishing might not be dead yet, but I am willing to take my chances with my story using the social platform I have been carefully building for the past year.

However, I am starting to think that I will need an editor. And those don't come cheap. In addition, some small publishing groups will help you convert your document into an e-book, and give a professional cover art as well as some sort of marketing for your book, for a small percentage. The conundrum is wisely choosing what I want to do with my book once it is finished. I know I am going to have to edit it myself in order for the second draft to be ready, rewriting what needs to be changed, etc. But I feel that I will need an expert's take on the book before committing to any publishing ideas. Editing means I am going to have to invest some serious money on the book, about 1500 dollars. This is a good problem to have, because it means that I am one step closer of finishing the novel!

I have been reading a lot, going this way and that...flip flopping between Fantasy and Sci-Fi and some Anne Rice.

I finally read the Wolf Gift by Anne Rice, her return to the supernatural world. I am one of her biggest fans, but I have to admit that the last Vampire Chronicles books were not my cup of tea, to say the least. I don't want spoil the Chronicles to anyone who have not read them, but the last two books were a big disappointment to me. This book is...strange. Not in theme but in structure. The main character did not feel real to me, the circumstances surrounding the story were not there for me either. The story was engaging once I got past my dislike of the protagonist. Again, I won't spoil the book and give away the whole plot. But in my opinion, Ann Rice followed the same pattern from her last Chronicles books and from her Seraphim series, which is to ramble around the story.

I also read Empire, an Orson Scott Card novel. I love his books, the Ender series, Pastwatch, I even read his horror book. This one though, is very different. It is fast paced, it is complicated, it is a notch above anything I have read from him in terms of vocabulary and difficulty. It is a very good interpretation of what might happen in the U.S. or in any country in the world where the views between the left and right are so radically different and noxious. A good back drop to my country's own electoral disputes. A good read overall.

And I also read I, Robot. I love this book. The way Asimov intertwines his stories, the way he portrays his characters, the hard and critical view of how things turned out by Dr. Susan Calvin just transports me into the future Asimov envisioned.

I am halfway through Robert Jordan's New Spring, the prequel to the Wheel of time of series. I am preparing for the marathon of re-reading the WOT series again before the last book launches, and I am also still reading The Second Generation, The Hero of Ages and have just started Warbreaker.

Hope you all have a great week end, hopefully I will see you next week!

Saying goodbye and hello!

Hello all! I have not been able to update the blog because I have been very busy. Closing down the operations on the plant has been demanding, more emotionally than physically, but still, there are many things that need to be taken care of. I only know that my time in there is coming to an end, and I need some closure. I have always been one to close the lid on a period of my life and never look back, for better or for worse. I intend to do the same thing. What was done or not done, the 'ifs' surrounding this decision have no place in my life now. It is time to move on, time to part ways and time to embark on whatever life has stored up for me. But again, I need to close the door of 15 years worth of experiences and memories. Just today, we contacted someone to help us sell the hundreds of books my dad had accumulated, many of these I read, many of these were the first glimpse of the wonderful world of literature. I could not keep them because I have no place to put them, I have been busy buying my own books for the past 20 years. However, the memories of spending summer vacations down there, the bike rides in the park near the office, the feel and the smell of the place, those things, and those memories will be with me forever.

So, I have been spending my time between the office and my home, looking for work, and let me tell you, besides from the irrational anxiety that has taken a hold of my already shaky mental health, it is a boring exercise of futility. The fact that I have to input my resume into each and every company's database is exhausting. A good friend of mine has given me some of his contacts in the headhunting business, and I am now going to go that route. I am still sending out resumes to my own contacts, still looking for interviews, still pestering the good and bad souls that reside inside Human Resources offices, and my urgency to find a job is still there, believe me, but I can't spend all day glued to the computer looking for jobs in portals like Monster or OCC.

So my alternative has been a rather easy one. I write. I am writing like I have never written before, fluidly, not effortlessly, but I am hitting my word count goals in days instead of weeks. And so, I am pleased to announce that my first book, The Druid's Grove, will be available sometime by the end of this year. But this decision, triggered by the mighty surge of writing, has given me also reasons to think about the route I want to take with publication.

So I have decided that this series will be an Indie effort.

Why? Well, I am a planner, I plan everything, and I make outlines of outlines just to make sure the plan is still there. I have envisioned a path I wanted to take with my writing a long time ago, but seriously, two years ago I decided it was time to write the damn book and to get on the program. The outline cannot and will not wait!

I have four stories far enough in their development that I could have chosen from, but in the end I went with these story, an epic fantasy series, to make my debut as and Indie author. The remaining three stories are still waiting in the wings, and at least one of them is going to go through the tortuous and highly archaic route of traditional publishing. That story has been with for more than half my life now, and I vowed that I would send that one to publishing companies.

However, I believe that the Indie route is the most efficient way to carve a path into a consistent fan base and to connect to via social media to those that are willing to pay to read one of my books.

I would also like to expand more on the Indie topic, and will gladly do so next week.

So, that is what I have been up to, reading a lot, writing a lot, looking for work...a lot, and just trying to enjoy the time I have free to spend with my family and friends.

No book reviews or game reviews this time...although I did get a 30-day trial on both of my WOW accounts and I did give them a look. I have found farming and fishing soothing and relaxing, but not so much the grind of dailies. I will write about my tentative return to WOW next week.

Have a great week!

Games and books

Hullo! Hope you all had a great week end!

I had a rough week, but that is what the forecast predicts right? I mean, looking for a job in a depressed market is not an easy task, finding a job seems to be an urban fantasy rather than a common practice of our society. Regardless of my fruitless search for employment, this little time off has given me time to reflect on my life and the changes that might, or might not come. You see, I am now having time to write, to really write. To hop down the stairs after having breakfast and write. To write after lunch. To write after the kids are asleep and to edit until my eyes are red and sore. And I am loving it, not only in terms of advancement (In two weeks I am past the midway of the novel) but because it simply feels right. So I have made a decision that a month ago I would not have even dreamed of: I will use this time to become a full fledged writer. No more timid incursion, no more half-hearted attempts. No more excuses. I have the time, and hopefully, I will have the means to dedicate myself to write (while looking for a job, don’t worry, I am not that crazy) and finish what I started. I want to publish, and publish I will. The Indie route is jut fine with me, at least for now. The bottom line for any product placed in any market is that if it is good, if it is a quality product, people will buy it. That premise has ruled markets for most of our sentient time in this planet, and the formula holds true for eBooks as well. So, I am churning down pages, and I am getting closer to my word count goal. Suffice to say; amidst being in utter terror of the uncertain future, I am also excited of the prospect of the unknown. Crazy yes, but oh so good!

The process of finding a job might be a long and tedious journey, one that I hope will end soon, one that I am actively working on, but the time in between will be spent with me dreaming up stories and painting the blank canvasses with my words. There is nothing better than that.

Now onwards to what I have been doing so far this year.

Games

In terms of games, I began playing SWTOR on December, and quickly developed an addiction to the game. The storylines are gorgeous, the voice acting is superb, the setting are awsome and leveling a toon is one of the most enjoyable leveling experiences I have ever had (I am not an uber veteran of MMO’s, WOW and Guild Wars are my only true experiences in the genre, with a brief, demented dabble in DC Universe). Me and my friends created a guild even before the game deployed and that turned out to be a very good idea, because guild that were exported from the web page into live servers were placed in servers with lively and active populations. The downer there was that a couple of our members did not enjoy the game as much as the rest of us did, added to the fact that we were an Empire guild and another friend decided to roll Republic, so we never really had the quorum to explore end game content as a group, and finding a good group to do that, via random strangers was not in my plans. So, through a friend, the only active member of the guild other than myself, I was led into the shark infested waters of PVP. Now, it is very important to underline that I had never before attempted any PVP at all. In WOW, I think in all the years I played I amassed about 1k honor points, which is nothing. The surprise in all of this was that I really liked SWTOR’s PVP games and maps, and I got fairly good at it. I really enjoyed it. But there was something missing, and eventually those things that I missed outweighed the things that I liked. The economy was rubbish and even though I had amassed a pretty nice chunk of credits and materials, there was no challenge there. I had two level 50 toons, doing PVP dailies and nothing more. I craved for dungeons and instances, maybe not raids, but some sort of progression that I never got. And, being honest, I never could have gotten it. I was in the midst of trying to save the company so I had no time to spare. Eventually I left the game about two months ago, and to this day, I have not wanted to return and don’t plan to.

The game has some flaws that need to be addressed. The engine is crap. It will nor run well in the best rigs and will run great in middle of the mill rigs. It does not utilize all of your CPU resources and will tax your graphic card to the max. (I had to change my card in order to play the game properly). It is clunky and awkward in certain situations, like being on the fleet in prime time and getting very low FPS and lag. PVP zones were a nightmare as well with these types of problems. It has no cross-server queue, not yet anyways, and even though server transfers are free and in place now (which in truth are server mergers) fighting against the same people, over and over again can be somewhat boring. The same could be said for finding dungeon groups. Patch 1.3 comes out today with a group finder, rated BG’s and other goodies. For those that stayed I hope it is a good one!

So I bought Diablo III and Skyrim to fill in the void, but, in all honesty, with all that is going on, I have not played them much, or at all. I have only gotten out of the first map part in Skyrim and in Diablo I am in Act II in normal. Both games look stunning and I am sure they are a lot of fun, but I just have not given them any time. Maybe next month.

I received and invite from Blizzard to return to WOW for a 30-day trial, on both of my accounts, and so far I have enjoyed being back. To me, WOW is my MMO home and it will be as long s it is running. Don’t know if I will subscribe though, have just been doing dailies and farming mats and that sort of stuff.

Reading

I am reading like a mad man, and have been thoroughly enjoying my time back in Krynn.

Now, this week I will review the first book of the Lost Chronicles Series, Dragons of Dwarven Depths.

I will not spoil the story at all, if you have already read the Chronicles series, there is nothing to spoil (If you haven’t, don’t worry, there is nothing to spoil either). The book centers around the time when the Heroes of the Lance are forced to march towards Thorbardin, the ancient home of the Dwarves, nestled deep inside the Kharolis Mountains. In the Chronicles Trilogy, authors Weis and Hickman told the tale of the Hammer of Kharas when the search and discovery of it had already taken place. This is the actual story of how it was found and by whom. The story allows us to know one of the main characters of the whole series, Flint Fireforge, a Neidar (Hill Dwarf) whose ancestors had been locked out of Thorbardin. We can see the turmoil surrounding his return to their ancestral home as well as the ideological troubles that fester in Krynn.

This is a beautiful story, which will fill in the blanks for to all of the fans of the series. It is a book crafted with special care in maintaining the details of the original story, but focusing the narrative through the eyes of the grumpy dwarf.

It is also a very well constructed story, using the fact that the outcome of the story is already known, so they shift the focus to the characters and the setting.

I highly recommend this book.

Next week I will review the second book of the Trilogy.

However, I am also reading more books (like I usually do) but will touch more on that next week as well.

Have a great week!!!

Musings

It has been a long week for me, filled with family events, looking for work and reading, lots of reading.

Throughout my life I have always had an emotional bond to certain books and certain games. For instance, I began reading Dragonlance books when I was in my late teens, early twenties and have found them to be a soothing balm to my soul, much like Asimov's Foundation series, Drizzt, the Deathgate Cycle and recently, the Wheel of Time series. In terms of games, I find myself playing over and over again Final Fantasy VII, Dragon Age and WOW (World of Warcraft).  Now, this time around, I feel that I am not on the brink of a momentous epiphany, no. I am on the cusp of a life-changing moment, yes, but it is not dread I feel but anticipation. I want things to change, and in my mind they can only change for the better. Don't get me wrong, I am nervous about my future, but not in a pessimistic way, because I am prepared to face whatever destiny throws my way.

So, instead of wallowing in self-pity, I have not reactivated my two WOW accounts. To be honest, WOW is a dangerous game to play if your self-esteem and self-worth are a bit low. Why? Because you could be a successful player inside the virtual world, a good healer tank or DPS, a good merchant, a good grinder. WOW gives you so many achievements and so many empty satisfactions that one could easily mistake them as an actual achievement. In so many ways, games like Warcraft mirror our deficiencies and our weaknesses into a terrible symbiosis of dependency. I have played WOW now too many times to fall into the trap, but I am not sure I want to begin a new chapter with the game, not now.

Final Fantasy on the other hand, is food for my soul, it has always been and will always be. It has everything a game needs, romance, action, tension, loss...the music is beautiful, the message is still relevant and the characters have been a part of my life since I bought the game back in 1998. But I have not started it yet.

No, I have turned my focus into my first true love: reading.

For the last two years, I have not read as much as I would have liked. Work got in the way most of the time, but also illness, games, movies, etc...There was never a good time to read, except maybe on vacations. But, alas, history tends to repeat itself once again and I find myself enjoying books as much as I ever had.

When I was 17 years old, I really had no clue as to what I wanted to do with my life, in terms of EVERYTHING! I will not say I was a lost soul, but I had wandered around the dark alleys of my mind and of life alone and with no life line. It was around that time that I began to read Interview with a Vampire, and the saga of the brat prince simply captured what I was feeling at the time; the despair of not knowing what to do, the awkwardness of leaving the carefree teen years and entering adulthood (although I am not certain I fully committed into the whole adulthood scenario, to be honest) and Lestat's uncanny knack of getting himself into trouble seemed to rub off on me as well. A few years later I came across the Legend of Huma, and consequently with the Dragonlance saga. And with two of my dearest friends: Tanis and Raistlin. Both of these characters tend to walk between the fine line of darkness and light, both are conflicted by their own weaknesses and strengths, by their ambitions and by their love. While Tanis fought between his Elven and Human side, Raistlin wrestled with the temptations of Takhisis and the true taste of power from Finstandantilus, the evil wizard. My struggles are more mundane of course, and I cant say that their decisions mirror my own but I have always felt a kinship to this characters that goes far beyond the story of the books. I feel that I will always have to struggle against those dark inhabitants of my soul and mind, but whereas Tanis had Laureana I have my wife and kids, Raistlin had his magic, I have my writing.

So it was with great joy that I began to read the original six, the holy grail of the Dragonlance series, the Chronicles series, comprised of Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night and Dragons of Spring Dawning. And the Legends Series, Time of the Twins, War of the Twins and Test of the Twins.

Next came the new trilogy of the series, the Lost Chronicles trilogy and this is the one we are going to be reviewing in the upcoming weeks.

Next week I will review the first book of the trilogy, Dragons of Dwarven Depths.

I hope you all have a great week!!!

I am back! Really, I am!

I think I am back…to blogging. I have missed it to be honest, even though my life is changing in ways I never expected, the simple joy of writing a blog post was, and still is, important for me.

To summarize my friends, these past five months have been nothing short of brutal. For the past 15 years I have worked on the family business, one that had been going strong for almost 34 years. Suffice to say, because I don’t want to get into details about this, we have decided to close the company once and for all. This is a huge blow to me and my family. I still remember spending part of my summer vacations inside the manufacturing plant that in so many ways has become a very important part of my life, and I am not even talking about it in terms of money. This company has been with me forever, I have heard my parents talk about work all of my life and been a part of it has been a great privilege and an honor. The last couple of years have been tough for me and for my parents, but I will forever be grateful for what they were able to achieve, for giving me and sisters the means to obtain an excellent education and to have been able to spend so much time with my parents. I will treasure the 15 years I spent in the manufacturing plant forever.

With that said, it is time to move on. I am not very good at lingering over decisions. I either make them or not. I don’t want look back now, and even though the prospect of working anywhere else is daunting, to say the least, it is also a very good opportunity to start over. Not many people get that in life.

So, I am now officially on the market and looking for work!

So besides surfing the web, entering my CV into databases has been a very tedious and LONG process, I have also been busy working in my other projects, which include a translation business and, of course, my writing.

My writing has evolved into something that has a face now, a form, it is tangible enough for me to see it transforming into a novel.

The Druids grove is clearly broken into 4 stories, at least at this stage. I have finished one already, the longest one, and I am half way through the second part now. The third part is already outlined and some of it is written and the fourth is outlined only.

X is done and the whole novel idea is outlined. Children of the Sea is not outlined but I have something like 100k words worth of drafts and chapters that need some editing and love. Telluride is outlined, and only a short story is written from it, and my newest project, The Knight of Storms and the Vampire Witch is just a work in progress.

My main goal is to publish my e-book independently by the end of the year, a feat that seems to come closer and closer as I type these words. I am now writing between 5 and 10k words a day, and I will continue to do so until I get a new job or die trying (not literally :D)

The blog will be updated each Monday again!

There are a LOT of books, games and other reviews pending!

See you soon!

Grinding

Middle of the week and I have this irresistible craving of writing all day long. But I can’t write all day, I can’t read all day and I can’t play games all day. I have work and a beautiful family to take care of, so the alternative suits me just fine.

Now, the Novel is advancing at an accelerated pace. The three stories that will meld into one, eventually, are well under way. The whole structure of the world is finished; the nuances of clothing, architecture, vegetation, etc…are in place and no longer require more of my limited time. Now I am only writing and editing, writing and editing. This first book of a five part series will be available, if all goes well, around December of this year. Book two is already outlined. So I am pretty excited about this!

My short story, X, will be ready soon as well, I just need to get my reading group together and iron out the details it still has. Draft two was fairly different from draft one, but I liked the second better, its structure is much better and the pace is better as well.

Hopefully, I can send the story in May, and work on a second story shortly.

The other two projects that are still dancing in my head will have to wait for a bit. This is not bad really, because I am still making notes about characters or ideas about the story of these two projects, and I know that, at some point, they will get written.

As I grow older I begin to realize that certain things in life tend to be easier than initially thought, perception changes, yes, but drowning in a puddle is no longer an option, when real life-changing problems knock on our doors. I understand that writing, in any of its forms is an outlet I NEED in order to function right, regardless of my dreams and passion of becoming an author. This is good!

See you all later!

Back!

After a long hiatus, I am back doing what I love to do: write.

I have been immersed in my writing, in my work and also, doing some translations, that have kept me away from the blog, and I do miss it.

So let's get down to it shall we?

Again, I am going to make some changes. Anything related to the game, SWTOR, will now be addressed in a different blog. The game has been much more that I expected, and we are near, as a guild, of beginning to experience end game content.

Books I am reading, or have read, will be reviewed in yet another blog (I love this!)

In this blog, I will only talk about my writing.

This week's topic is literary influences.

When I began the wonderful journey of reading a book, I was immersed into wonderful worlds, created by authors like Tolkien, Stoker, Christie, Orwell, Poe and Hemingway. (My school's English Lit class was, and still is, one of the best in the country, if not the best). I fell in love with fantasy, but with literature in general, and began to devour books. One of the first series I remember fondly, and that I have read multiple times since, is Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. His work would get me interested in Sci-Fi and later into authors like Orson Scott Card.

However, nudged in between fantasy and sci-fi, the late father of one of my best friends introduced ne to the world written by Anne Rice.

I don't think there is an author that has had more influence on me than Rice, not only in terms of style, bur more importantly, in terms of ambience. Through her pen I was able to walk through the streets of Rome, Athens, Paris and her beloved New Orleans. I was able to live through the eyes of her fantastic characters (I mean, Lestat is THE vampire) and her fantastic stories. She was the first author I dissected, that I bothered to take notes from her books, that I tried to learn how she constructed her sentences. She was the first author that urged me, through her writing, to become an author.

My literary life has been influenced by many authors since, heck, we all are. I have my own style now, I have my own cadence and quirks, and crutches and such...but I have been influenced by many other authors.

Patricia Highsmith and her anti-hero, Thomas Ripley. How she makes us root for the bad guy is still a mystery to me, but her books are filled with tension and intrigue that one can only take so much.

Robert Jordan, to me, redefined the fantasy genre (and I am a BIG Tolkien fan, and Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms reader :D) He simply elevated the benchmark of what fantasy literature was about, mixing a superb, complex an endearing story, giving us richly detailed characters, and cities, and customs, and wardrobe, and architecture, and turning it into a wonderful whole.

What are your influences?

See you all next week.

Renewal

Oh boy, it has been a while since my last update, two months have gone by, and to say that nothing has happened would be untrue, yet it feels like that to me.

Many things have passed me by, the holiday season, the ungrateful return to labor, the persistent writing block that attacks me every January and the blossoming of my characters in SWTOR. Also, I have not found a book to read, so I am reading 8 or nine books at the same time...a bit chaotic, the same way my head feels right now.

I will elaborate.

My wife and I love the holiday season, we love buying the Christmas tree and setting up the whole house to look like Santa's workshop. Our two kids love it also. So it was at this time, that the Beta weekends of SWTOR finally arrived, and with it a void had filled in my life but at the same time, the need to play an MMO had matured into a candid desire to just unwind from the inevitable horrors from work. The holiday season and SWTOR, who could ask for more?

December was not a good month at work, we did not have the amount work we needed to have, but it was a great month in terms of new beginnings, new clients, new and renewed hope. The last six months took a toll on me; I am tired of being tired, of being worried. But with the burden of potential doom, clarity came along, a frantic oasis of stillness that mitigated the overpowering sensation of loss. I could now breathe easier, I could sleep and rest and I could play and write and read.

Not so fast.

The playing part has been great. I have not felt the urge to play at all hours, at all times. The addiction is under control, so far. I am enjoying the game and I am taking my time to enjoy it...I will expand more on the game later. However, the writing and reading part is not going well. It seems that when I make a New Year's resolution, my real aim is to disregard anything associated with it. Thus, the elusive muse is still hiding, somewhere, inside my head and I can't seem to lure her out to the pages, where she belongs. The short story is coming along nicely, but slowly, the two novels want to burst out of me now, but when I work on them they retreat to their shadowy hiding place. I will finish the story soon, but I am afraid to set a due date, procrastination is an art form and I can perform it flawlessly. Such is life.

The writing conundrum has wrought havoc to my reading habits, and I have been unable to choose which book to read next, so I have been jumping from book to book to no avail. I am a creature of habit, I need uniformity, and I have not been able to get it so far this year, although February should be better.

The game is very good; it is a mesh of everything that is good from every MMO that came out before it, mixed with the brilliant Bioware story weaving and the immortal Star Wars series. I initially wanted to level up an Imperial Agent Sniper, and I am doing just so, but at a slower pace. The Agent is level 33, the Bounty Hunter is level 48, ready to hit 50 this week. Our guild, Soul Harvesters, has only one 50 so far, but that will change in the upcoming weeks.

So, I will try to write more, try to eat less (yes, the diet was one of many of my resolutions, along with not smoking, that so far, I have been able to maintain), try to sleep more, try to read a single book, or no more that three at a time, and be a better dad, husband, son, brother, writer, Guild Master and last, but not least, a better person.

See you all next week.

Apologies

Sorry I have not updated the blog, work has been really intense this past couple of weeks, and the joy of writing this blog suddenly became a chore I did not want to undertake. This week should be a bit different, and I will begin my usual ramblings once more. The ETA of the post should be on Wed. Still looking for the perfect day to write it, so I am going with Wed. for now.

See you soon!

On to 2012

Happy New Year folks! I hope everyone had a good, relaxing and peaceful holiday. I spent most of my time with my family and friends, and although it was a bit tiring, it was a much needed break.

This year, I am going to get published, one way or another. I have two novels that I want to finish and a short story that I want to send to a contest. So I better get to work.

Novels:

The Druid's Grove is the one I have advanced the most. I am almost past the midway point, but the overview and overall plot is already done, it is just a matter of churning out some chapters and then doing a very good editing job. I feel that this project might be perfect for publishing it independently. Two months have passed since I stopped writing it and it is ripe for a strong and quick finish. I still need to pass a few things into Scrivener before continuing.

Children of the Sea is not so advanced, but I do have a very clear and definite idea of where I am going with this. It might take a bit longer, but I will get this novel written this year. Most of the research and Encyclopedia is already in Scrivener, only characters and settings need to be passed into the program. Excited about getting this one done!

I am also going to spend this week getting both novels into Scrivener. I love this program and I think it will really help me out in the long run. I am a plotter, and I need to have things under control before venturing out and writing about it.

I will let you know how I am doing in next week's post.

Books:

I read a quite a bit this past month.

I read Brent Weeks' Night Angel Trilogy and just loved it. The characters are full of life and the way their lives intertwine will keep you on your toes.

I am reading Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy, and so far I have really liked the first book.

Going to finish Sanderson's Mistborn Trilogy this month as well, and begin The Malazan Book of the Fallen series.

Games:

SW:TOR is finally here, as it has been for the past three weeks. After World of Warcraft, I had not found an MMO that could replace WOW, until now.

The graphics and setting are stunning, the classes seem to be well balanced and fun ( I am playing the Empire and so far have a 18 Bounty Hunter, 17 Imperial Agent and a 10 Warrior) but the details are what make this game special. The fact that every single one of the quest givers has a line of dialog only you can hear and see is pretty special to me, considering that in WOW I grabbed as many quests as I could without bothering of finding out what I needed to do. Class quests and story arches are, so far, epic. Flashpoints and group quests are challenging and rewarding.

I will write more about hits next week!

See you soon!