There has been a lot of stuff happening lately.
Perhaps the most important thing is that I have an editor looking at the serialized Loss of Innocence. They want the complete novel (150,000 words) by December first. I think I will use this to correspond with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and see what I can do to get it done in that time frame. I’m working my arse off to try and finish this thing, so the updates may be few and far between.
Electronic Arts, the makers of BF2142, have announced their intent to have in-game advertising. I think it underhanded that this was announced after they raked in the cash from all the pre-orders, most of which were non-refundable. After the initial community panic that these in-game advertisements would serve banners and billboards from the darkest secrets of our internet history and cookies, the excitement waned a bit when EA clarified their position that no personal data would be collected. You can take that with a grain of salt, I suppose, when you have no way of breaking down the packets that are being sent back to EA master servers. If you see a split billboard advertising Furry videos and Crate and Barrel, don’t say I didn’t warn you. And as an aside, since the elite sales people at Best Buy wouldn’t refund my pre-order money, I can firmly tell you that BF2142 still remains an incomprehensible pile of steaming turds.
I have high hopes for Neverwinter Nights 2, which is coming next week. Surely it will be better than BF2142. I also pre-ordered this title (I know, I know, I’m such a sucker). The preorder allowed me to get their toolset early. I had a great deal of fun making custom modules for the original Neverwinter Nights, but this toolset is an order of magnitude more complicated. Even though all of the structures and graphics are pre-fabricated, the sheer variety of them (and the amount of skull sweat to use the C-analogue scripting language to do truly unique things) is daunting. Constructing modules fills the same creative urge that writing does for me, so I must decline to initiate myself into its cunningly tempting fold until the Rak’Lan are safely defeated.
A Meeting at Corvallis by S.M. Stirling was all that I had hoped it might be. He has a penchant for devious endings (misunderstood as cheating by some readers), and this book is no exception. It is deeply detailed with rich characters that are not easily definable as black or white. Personally, I cannot wait for his next series that is due to be released in November. It would be difficult to review the novel without providing spoilers, so let me just say that if you like alternate history novels, this entire trilogy is worth your while.
Battlestar Galactica: Right back where we started from? Grrr…
That’s awesome news about the editor, Peter! I hope you work extremely hard to meet that deadline! This could be it for you, and if you need someone whipping your butt into shape, I’m the woman for the job!
“No gun game! Write, write, write!!!!”
“Sir, yes sir!”
As far as BF2142, I’m really disappointed. The beta actually seemed kinda fun for the 20 minutes I ended up playing. You’d figure if you were already paying for a game, you wouldn’t have to put up with advertisements. It’s like that crap they are pulling at movie theatres. Pay your 9.00 for a movie and sit through 15 minutes of ADs. (not previews, I LOVE upcoming movies) Let’s see what the fat-ass-popcorn-munching-soda-slirping-twizzler-eating american will put up with ontop of their admission prices.
As for Battlestar Galactica. There was those moments of: “Noooooo!” Then, “Hell yeah! That was f’in awesome!” Then, “WTF, why on earth would they do that?”
It’s complicated. Just like you, Peter!
