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!