Sorry there’s been no updates or anything lately. Maybe after things blow over I’ll write some stuff again.

Finally, a non-zombie game related post!

On April 1, the love of my life and I are going to get married.  The holiday from that point forward will officially be called “April Fools in Love Day” (I’m writing my congressman and everything).

We sent out an evite for the party on 4/4, if you didn’t get it, it’s probably because we don’t like you.  Just kidding. It’s probably because we didn’t have your email address.  Drop me a line on FB/email/twitter/whatever if you’d like to come.

I created a page to track my goals for this year:

Goals for 2009

I haven’t done great on the goals I posted late last year, but I did make some progress.  I did publish 4 pieces of Tiny Fiction, which is better than none. I also spend some time working on WGTA, but decided to just start over because I wanted to change a lot of stuff under the hood.  I also started yet another game, SYWTBK. Sometimes, my ADD can be really annoying.

Ah well, I’ll do better in 2009!

This is more of a note to myself, on what I’m trying to accomplish with my experiments with Tiny Fiction, and may likely be very disjointed.  The creative process for these things often starts with the first line of the story, and proceeds from there.  Often, I’ll have no idea where the story is going to end up.  Sometimes, I’ll have an idea of the tone I want to set (in Spies Like Us, for example, I wanted the tone to be bleak, and show how tired and worn Dmitri was by the process of being a spy).  Also, in each of these little nuggets, I want the reader to hunger for more.  I try to do this by including little interesting bits of detail, things I might reference in passing and never explore.  I’m sure I’m breaking all kinds of rules, and if I had bothered to take any writing classes in college, I might learn the “right” way to do this stuff, but I’ve read a lot of books and short stories, and I know what I like and don’t like.

I also want to use these small pieces of fiction to explore character development, and dialog.  I haven’t really had much dialog in either of them, but I’m going to work on that. Dialog is hard to do in only 500 words or so (my self-imposed limit to these stories), but I think that makes it more challenging — each word has to mean *just* the right thing.

This whole process has been interesting so far — now, all the time, I’m thinking up new ideas for Tiny Fiction. As I type this, I’m looking at 6 drafts that I’ve started, all in various states of completion.  One of them only has a title “The Short and Tragic Life of Archibald Turner”.  I have no idea what that story is going to be about, I just liked the title so I started a draft to capture the idea.  I guess that’s one of the exciting parts for me, having a place to capture all of these ideas, and actually bring some of them to fruition.

I’m not doing so great on my goal of writing a “short story” once a month (i.e., something more substantial than Tiny Fiction).  I have two ideas that I’m toying with for my first short story, and maybe I’ll just start throwing stuff out there for both and see what sticks.  Both are perfect for serial fiction — they’re ripe with ideas and characters begging to get into a series of adventures and mishaps. Hopefully after next week things for me in my personal life will begin to “settle down” (ha!) a bit more into a pattern and I can figure out how to fit these activities into my life.

Ah well, enough blathering on. I’ll maybe work on a story now.

A few people wanted some more details of the big night.

Jane and I have been talking for a while that this would be the big night, and I knew she was going to say yes (since we we already planning our Vegas wedding), so I figured I had to make some kind of surprise for the evening.

Before our big date, I took the ring up to Dave & Busters and talked to the manager, and we got John, the shift leader at the game counter to help us.  He held on to the ring for me until the appointed time.  Jane and I had a lovely dinner at On the Border (cheese enchiladas FTW!), and went to D&B, and proceeded to play lots of lame games.  We won a bunch of tickets and finally went up to see John. I think I bungled it a bit, because it was clear Jane suspected something.  I gave the tickets and said something lame like “What can I get for these tickets???”, and John said, “I think we have something really nice”, and BAM he pulls out the ring.  In the plans in my head, I had planned on taking the ring, and going to the traditional one-kneed pose, but in reality, I took the ring, looked into Jane’s eyes and stammered something lame, followed by “will you marry me?”. She said yes, and put the ring on. Yay! First part of the “surprise” was now complete.  On to phase two…

Rachel had helped me get some folks together for a surprise engagement party.  So, Jane and I were getting a drink at the bar, and in walks this big group of our friends, and all she can see is Dave.  And she was all “Did you tell Dave and Rachel to come??”, not yet realizing the full extent of the surprise.  When everyone finally gathered around, she turned a bit red and was a little overwhelmed (momentarily).  Then, the hugs started (well, no one hugged Nik, but I think he was okay with that).  Drinks were consumed, games were played, Pumpkin Bread was gifted, a good time was had by all.  Except Rachel, who in spite of being on her deathbed, still came out for the joyous occasion.  Thank you so much Rachel with your help in pulling this off, and coming even though you felt like crap.  And thanks to everyone else!!!

And they lived happily every after.

The day has finally arrived. One year ago today I met the woman who was destined to become the love of my life.  We had a great time on our first date and stayed until Humperdinks closed (on a Thursday night!).  Our 2nd date was Dave & Busters, where we really connected, and tonight we celebrated our 1 year anniversary and I asked the big question.  Thankfully, she said yes, and a big party ensued. Thanks to all of you that came out.  Our anniversary day is now officially over, and our first day as an engaged couple has just started.

Yay us!

Sadly, I have only one cup of coffee left from the Obama wealth transfer fund.  It makes me sad.

If you don’t know the story, about a year ago, I bet a guy at work that Obama would win the election. He was so confident, he put up $50.00. And then I threw him into some glassware (but that’s another story).

Anyway, flash-forward to November, and just before the election, knowing he’d lost, he paid me a $20 installment.  Then, the day after the election, he dropped off the rest in change, just to spite me.  This has fueled my coffee consumption for the last month!  So, not only did I get a personal wealth transfer, I’ve been fueling the economy with my lavish spending.

Thanks Brent!

It’s a little early to start making New Years Resolutions, but I’m going to start setting some goals for myself.  Here are some of them, in no particular order:

• Write short fiction, one story per month, for the next 6 months, starting in December. That means by December 31, I’ll have my first story done. Of course, I’ll post it here.  I’m going to focus on short fiction for a while as practice for finally working on a novel, which I’m planning to start on next summer.
• Finish at least a preliminary, multi-player version of WGTA (a video game).  Nik and I have been kicking the idea around forever, and I have a good, working base, I just need to finish it.
• Focus on getting myself out of debt.  I just paid off one of my smaller bills (yay!) and I need to make sure every available dime goes to my debt.  Which mean (really!!!) cutting out on non-essentials.
• Paint more of my Battlelore minis.  I really enjoyed painting them, and I’d like to get back to it.  I’ll make this goal more specific when I look at my minis and see how many are left to be painted.

That’s all for now, and I think it’s enough — these are reasonable things to accomplish, and I need to just set my mind to it.

But I’m going to try to do better.

Lots of stuff going on in my life, but I’m trying to get it all arranged and get my priorities in order. For the last month or so I’ve been just skipping along, not really doing some things that needed to be done. Part of this is due to some emotional distress and denial, and part is sheer laziness.

That’s over now.  I’m going to start doing some things that needed to be done.  Start doing things I have wanted to do.

If I wasn’t an atheist, I might take the fact that I’m with Jane as proof that there is a God. She is an amazing, beautiful woman who I don’t tell often enough how amazing and beautiful she is.