March 20, 2001
Status Report
Well, it's the first day of spring, and there's still snow on the ground here in Michigan. Situation normal.It's only Tuesday, and I'm exhausted and ready for a weekend. Situation normal.
Actually, the exhaustion is my own fault. (Surprise!) After a period of time where most of my "online" friends seemed to have vanished, we seem to be hanging around a lot again, and even roleplaying again. While this is marvelous fun, it also means (damn the California contingent!) that I'm staying up until 2 and 3 in the morning. I have a couple new characters, and dusted off a couple of old ones, and I'm back to puzzling out what the hell these fictional creations of mine are up to. This is the fun part, figuring out character dynamics between different characters, and trying to figure out who these people are. Remember Samantha ? I'm finally getting to play her somewhere. (Note to self: update the MUSH page...)
School is going remarkably well. I can't believe there's only a month left in the semester. I've only gotten one grade back (Government midterm), but I'm waiting to hear about my Government paper, my Literature midterm, and my Literature journal. I'm not horribly worried. At the risk of jinxing myself, I may ( may! , she says to the fickle finger of Fate) manage a 4.0 this semester. If so, it'll be the first ever for me. I'll be registering for spring and summer and fall classes in the next couple of weeks.
And... writing. Wow. I realized I never really wrote much here about finally getting my copies of Harvest of Thorns , aside from a short blurb in the blog . I got them two weeks ago, actually, during spring break. I came home from work and saw the package in the driveway. I scooped it up and ran into the house to my room and tore into the package before I could even sit down. There they were, thirteen copies of a book I wrote . My hands started to shake as I read the note the editor had put in the package, congratulating me and apologizing for the typo on the spine (it says "Harvest of Torns"). I pulled the first copy of the book and just looked at the cover -- and realized I couldn't open it.
I grabbed the phone and called Brand and said, "Guess what I'm holding?" Well okay, that question was a no-brainer. So, with my co-author listening in, I finally opened the book up, and there on the inside were our names. Spelled right and everything! It should be no surprise to anyone that I nearly cried when I turned the page and saw the words of Brand's opening chapter (he wrote chapters 1, 6 and 7, then part of 5) there in print. I've been looking at it on my computer screen for so long! Then we got to chapter two, and there were my words. Mine . I started to babble then -- well okay, that's not when I started, but I did get more incoherent. We went through the entire book page by page, with me telling him about the layout and describing the artwork to him. I later took digital pictures of all of the artwork to show to him.
It was amazing. It gave me such a creative boost that I've been writing like a fiend since then. I finished and submitted a story for a local magazine contest, and on Sunday finished all of my "in character" sections for the Tribe 8 book that Brand, Josh, Mo and I are writing (lord, I need to update my people section too). In terms of the game line itself, this book is a biggie. Harvest was a small one, the equivalent of a D&D adventure module. The book we're working on now is a sourcebook for the entire spiritual world -- and spirituality is a huge aspect of T8. Like most T8 books, the first half to two-thirds is in character narrative, and the rest is more technical game explanations and rules and such. We've finished the in character stuff -- and damn. Considering that four people were all writing different points of view of a story independently of one another, it's very coherent. And it's a damn good story. (I can say that without bragging -- I didn't plot the story. Hee.)
And... plans are in the works for a second book similar to Harvest . I can't remember if I've mentioned that or not. This one will be just me. At least, that's the plan. I've reached the point where I can no longer imagine me without some sort of writing project to work on, whether I work on it every day or not.
Finally (last but not least), a
baby
update. Dawn's due date is vacillating between April 7th and April 15th. She
and baby Justin (yup, it's a Justin!) are both doing well, but because of some
problems with sudden high blood pressure, Dawn's on bedrest until she has the
baby. While she feels fine, it's tough, because they've had one house
catastrophe after another recently, and things aren't ready for Justin yet. Her
doctors are still considering inducing labor -- which means I'm on alert. I've
started carrying my cell phone around, and I'm wondering if I'm going to get
the call in the middle of the night or during class or during work or... hee.
This is all very exciting.
Posted by Lisa at March 20, 2001 10:06 AM
