Now I’m all for people having fun with names, but honestly? There’s a little something called truth in advertizing too….

I learned this interesting fact because I’m going to a convention down there this weekend (Memorial Day weekend.) I’m Guest of Honor at ConQuest.

And just so Kansas won’t feel sad, I’m going to be doing a reading/signing there too. It’s the Thursday before the convention (the 23rd) at Mysteryscape in Overland Park.

So, you have been warned. Grab me when I’m in the area, because I don’t know when I’ll be back again….

(Note: Please don’t actually grab me.)

Edit: Just to make it clear, I’m also doing readings and signings at the convention itself all weekend. Plus at the convention I’m going to be on a bunch of panels about writing, worldbuilding, humor, etc etc.

The main reason I’m in town is because of the convention, and if you want to see a lot of me, that’s the place to go.

(Note: “By see a lot of me” what I really mean is “See me a lot.”)

I’m doing the bookstore event for people who don’t like conventions, can’t afford them, or who are busy over the weekend.

Just to clear that up.

*     *     *

In other news, I did something horrible in Florida.

Or rather, I tried to do something nice in Florida and I screwed it up.

Earlier this month when I did a signing in Bradenton, we ran out of books. I felt bad about that, as some folks had driven for hours and weren’t going to be able to buy books and get them signed.

So I told people that if they wrote their names and e-mail addresses down, we’d contact them and arrange to sell them some signed books for what they’d have been able to buy them for at the store.

I passed around the notebook, about 30 people wrote down their names….

…and now I can’t find the list.

I’ve looked everywhere. It’s not in my luggage. It’s not in the store. It’s not where we were staying in Florida, or in the car we drove around in….

It’s just gone.

I feel really bad about this, and I want to make it right, so here’s what we’re going to do…

We sell a bunch of stuff in The Tinker’s Packs, T-shirts, jewelry, posters, and signed copies of my books.

Because all the money from The Tinker’s Packs goes to charity, we normally charge more than the cover price of the books. But for the folks who were in Florida, we’re going to charge the cover price and eat the shipping cost ourselves.

(I’d love to give you even more of a deal, but the books actually cost us money….)

So. If you were at that signing and you didn’t get a book, here’s what I’d like you to do.

1. Go onto The Tinker’s Packs.

2. Order whatever books you like.

3. When you go to Paypal, click on the “Note to seller” field.

(Click to Embiggen)

4. Type in “I was in Florida”

5. Type in whatever you’d like your personalization to be.

6. Complete your order.

• Note: The total will not be right.

7. When we process the order, we will refund some of your money.

If you want to buy some other stuff too, nothing would make me happier. Worldbuilders appreciates your support. But I’m afraid you’ll have to pay regular price for the other stuff.

What’s to stop *everyone* from jumping in and claiming they were at the event to get cheaper books?

First, we *will* be mailing this stuff to you. So if you say you were at the signing, then ask us to mail something to Ireland… Well… we’ll be a little skeptical.

Plus there’s the whole human decency thing. My readers have shown themselves to be cool, caring, generous folks. You’d have to be a bit of a wanker to try to screw a charity that’s trying to feed hungry kids, and my readers aren’t like that.

Right? Right.

*     *    *

Lastly, since we’re on the topic of the store….

We have a few new items in there, for those of you who haven’t peeked in for a while.

The newest and coolest of those are the signed copies of Beatrice’s Goat.

This is the book that first sold me on how cool Heifer International was. I like it so much I recorded a video of me reading it to Oot a while back.

The books we have in the store right now are extra-cool because they’re signed.

But wait. They’re even cooler than that. They’re not just signed by the author (Page McBrier) Not just signed by the illustrator (Lori Lohstoeter).

These copies are signed by Beatrice Biira herself, the woman the book was based on.

Beatrice has grown up since the book was published in 2001, and she’s gone on to great things. She got her BA, then went on to get her Master’s degree. (And I’m willing to bet money she got better grades than me when she was doing it.)

Suffice to say that we only have a limited number of these books. If you want one, you might want to grab it quickly.

*     *     *

Finally, we’re probably going to pull the calendar out of the store pretty soon, since the time for buying calendars is pretty much past. For those of you who want one as a collectable, or who are like me and tend to be forgetful about things like buying calendars: fair warning. In a week or so, we’re probably going to take it down.

But for now it’s still there, and it’s at half price.

That’s all for now, folks. More news soon.

Cool news.

Soon.

pat

Not too long ago, I posted up a video of a group of authors playing D&D at Confusion in January of 2012.

Earlier this year, a bunch of us got together again under the direction of ringleaders Myke Cole and Peter Brett, and did it again. And recorded it.

And here it is…

Honestly, I’m still a little traumatized by Chauncey’s injuries.

Let this be a lesson to all of you, just because someone is Neutral Good, it doesn’t mean we won’t rain down some truly old-testament shit when our friends are fucked  with.

*     *     *

In other news, if you watch Shark Tank tonight, you’ll see something very, very cool.

Odds are, if you’re the sort of person who enjoys watching other people play D&D, what you see could very easily spill over into the realm of untrammeled awesomeness.

This is simple truth. You cannot trammel the degree of awesome involved. Mostly because you don’t know what the word “trammel” means.

Still, the point is that I’m going so far as to urge you to follow that link and have a lookie-loo.

And if you love what you see there, I encourage you to order it *now* to get your place in line. You see, Geek Chic’s has a waiting list for their furniture. This is a waiting list I am currently on, because daddy wants some bookshelves. I’m tired of buying shitty ones at target. So I’m buying something beautiful that I’ll be able to use forever and pass along to Oot after I’m gone.

Anyway, my point is that after their prime-time appearance tonight, Geek Chic‘s waiting list will be LONG. So you might want to sneak in under the wire….

Did I already mention that they’re also a Worldbuilders sponsor? They are. They’re every kind of cool.

You have been notified and warned.

pat

*     *     *

Today we’ve got a video for y’all. A thank-you video from some of the people involved in Worldbuilders this year.

I’m really awful at recording little videos of myself on a webcam.

Put me in front of classroom of students, I’m fine. Ask me to sing on a video interview? Fine. Reading a sex scene in front of a crowd? Blushy, but fine…

But put me in front of a webcam and ask me to record an earnest little 20 second message? I’m useless. It probably took me 30 tries to do that intro. And even after all that, my intro somehow has *less* grace and elan than someone selling steak knives on QVC.

So let me say it in my ordinary, texty way.

Seriously, thank you.

This year we raised more than 600,000 dollars for Heifer International. (Including the 100,000 stretch goal and merchandise sold in The Tinker’s Packs.) We left last year’s $400,000+ total in the dust.

What’s even cooler is this: a couple days ago when I was doing a reading at Heifer International down in Little Rock, the person introducing me dropped a surprising number into the converstion. They said that over the last 5 years, Worldbuilders has raised 1.95 million dollars for Heifer. I was a little stunned by that. I hadn’t done the math….

So. My earnest thanks. You guys are awesome. You renew my faith in humanity.

Now, back to the video, I feel I should mention that the folks we included are only a tiny fraction of the people involved. Why? Because a three-hour thank-you video is just too long, so we had to leave a lot of folks out.

Like, just for example, my friend Joyce.

Joyce has been my friend for years. I’ve known her since my first year in Stevens Point back in 1991. She’s been involved in Worldbuilders since it started.

And yet, because she wasn’t around in the couple days we were putting the video put together, we… um… just kinda forgot to put her in it.

So if your favorite author who participated isn’t in there, or if you donated and wondered why we didn’t ask you for a clip, don’t feel sad. It’s not because we don’t love you. We do. It’s because we’re hard at work getting ready for next year, and it’s just impossible to fit everyone in.

In closing, two quick things.

1. I’m still trying to contact the winners of this year’s big prizes, and I’m having trouble with a few of them.

So if for some reason you haven’t been reading your e-mail, do me a favor and take a look in there, would you? Otherwise we’ll have to give the prize to someone else, then when you find that message in your spam filter six weeks from now, you’ll cry….

2. Apparently I’m not the only person who has to take a couple runs at getting their video right. We’ve got the outtakes from the thank-you video over here.

Personally, I like it better.

With love,

pat

Here’s the Facebook Event if you’re interested in more details. Or you can click on the “Tour Schedule” tab up above there…. 

I’m actually doing the event at Heifer International’s headquarters: The Heifer Village.

If you’re planning on going, you might want to drop a line to the folks at Heifer (501.907.2697 or email heifervillageregistration [squiggly atsign thinger] heifer.org) It’s a free event, but if you call ahead, your name will be on the guest list, and you get to feel cool. (And it will help them prepare.)

There will be books. I will be there too. I will talk. I will read and answer questions and be witty to the best of my ability. I will then sign books.

The event will be more fun than the above paragraph implies. It’s just that I’m a little tired right now, because I just got back from a little vacation. I got to spend 6 whole days with Sarah and Oot and my dad. Something that I don’t think has happened in years.

It was a nice time, which means there aren’t many interesting stories to tell. I’d post pictures of Oot being cute, but when I’m having a good time, I generally prefer to keep having it, rather than stop having it so I can take a picture.

(Instead, here is a picture of a giraffe licking a squirrel.)

I went to Busch gardens where I saw one of those cat-bear things. I went to the ocean for the first time ever and got to taste it. (Saltier than I expected.) I touched a crocodile. (Softer than I expected.)

Oot also displayed much bravery at the pool, dunking his face and making an honest attempt to float on his back. He was quite a civilized little man through the whole trip, polite and well-behaved even when he was tired or hungry. I am endlessly proud of him and love him beyond my ability to express with words.

See? Lovely to live through. Boring to talk about.

I just wanted y’all to know why I’d gone quiet for more than a week, and give folks a heads-up about the Arkansas event, as I don’t know when I’ll be back down in that neck of the woods again.

I’ll be posting blogs more often now that I’m back on the clock.

Stay tuned….

pat

Some of you might even have heard me read it story-time style. It’s huge fun to read to a crowd, and I do it whenever a venue has sufficient AV setup available, because, y’know, picture book. With pictures.

(It’s not what it looks like.)

• Side Note: we just recently managed to get more hardcover copies back in stock at the Tinker’s Packs, if you’re interested in picking one up. They were impossible to find for a while….

As I said. I’m guessing most of you who read the blog already know about this book, since it’s been out since 2010 and I’ve talked about it on the blog several times since then.

What I’m guessing most of you *don’t* know is that about a year ago I wrote up a script for a sequel. Since then, the fabulous Nathan Taylor has been slaving away in the art mines, hewing beautiful graphics from the living rock.

I have to say I really like this arrangement. I spend a couple days writing a script, then get to turn the story over to someone else for, let’s be honest here, most of the heavy lifting. It’s so nice compared to having to do all the work on a story myself….

Anyway, we’ve finally reached the point where we’re announcing the book all official like:

(Click to Embiggen)

Those of you who have read the first book know how amazing Nate’s art is. When I teamed up with him that first time, I knew he was good, but I didn’t realize how good. The quality of his work really amazed me. He turned my amusing little story into something really brilliant and cool.

So imagine my surprise when I started to see the finished art for this second book, and it was even better than before. Like all real artists, Nate is always developing his craft, and as a result he’s even more amazing now.

For example, in my script, I wrote. “I want something imposing. This is no mere door. I want a fucking eldritch portal.”

Nate worked on it for a while, then sent met this:

I said, “Yes. I think that is sufficiently eldritch.”

So what (I hear you ask) is this second book about?

Well… you should know by now that I don’t go in for spoilers. But I’m not opposed to offering up a bit of a teaser that doesn’t give anything away….

For one thing, the Princess gets a younger brother.

(Say it with me: Awwwww….. )

For another, in this book the Princess goes exploring in the Deep Below.

And no, that’s not a spoiler. Why? Because it’s in the title of the book. It’s called “The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle: The Dark of Deep Below.”

There are a few versions of the book available for pre-order over at Subterranean Press.

The first is the lovely hardcover with the nice paper. The same format as the first princess book.

The second is the limited edition. That one’s leather bound, and signed by both me and Nate. Plus it has extra concept sketches from Nate, a color dust jacket, and will include my original script write-up (parts of which are pretty funny, if I do say so myself.)

The third is the lettered edition which has everything included in the limited version, AND its own slipcase AND a piece of unique hand-drawn art by Nate himself.

Fair warning, the Limited Edition of the first book sold out in less than 24 hours. So if you want one of these, you might want to make your order sooner rather than later.

Or you could just wander over there and take a sneak peek at more of the teaser pictures.

It’s your call…

pat

A good time was had by all. You can watch it over here if you like.

pat

P.S. I think this might be my shortest blog ever….

For the most part, this is because you are gracious individuals. Intellectuals. The Geek Glitterati.

Those rare few of you who aren’t patient by nature, have been forced to learn this virtue waiting for my books. This is a service I provide free of charge.

Because you’re all gracious, patient human beings, it’s only in these last few weeks that a few folks have sent a few polite e-mails asking if we’ve sent out the prizes for worldbuilders yet.

And now, I’m happy to say that we have.

(You might want to Embiggen this.)

From left to right, we have Maria, Joyce, and Nicole (sporting the new Greysdale Mead t-shirt).

Then there’s Me, Amanda and Kat. I’m easy to spot, as I’m the only boy.

Unseen but not unloved is Nate, who took the picture. And Brett, who happens to be roaming the earth right now, trying to collect all the pieces of the triforce. Or something. I honestly don’t know what he’s doing, but I suspect it’s something like a vacation.

And honestly? He deserves a vacation. Everyone here does. Without these lovely people, Worldbuilders wouldn’t have happened. I would have had a nervous breakdown and lit everything on fire sometime around December 18th.

Of course it goes without saying that without all of *you* Worldbuilders wouldn’t have happened either. So you all deserve vacations as well. Take one. And if anyone gives you grief about it, tell them I said it was okay.

I feel like I should point out that what you see in the picture above aren’t even all the packages. That’s just the final batch we sent out Tuesday.

I would have liked to get these prizes in the mail sooner. But…. well…. things got a little complicated this year.

You see, up until this year, Worldbuilders has been something I banged together on my own with a couple people helping out.

The first year Sarah helped me. The second year (2009), I had an assistant to lend a hand.

In 2010 & 2011, I had an assistant and a half, and some other friends helped with packaging, e-mail, some of the bookkeeping….

But I was still trying to run it all myself.

I hope it doesn’t disillusion y’all to learn that I am not a great organizer. Worldbuilders worked, but things were pretty chaotic behind the scenes. This didn’t particularly bother me, as I tend to gravitate toward Chaotic Good anyway…

But every year Worldbuilders got bigger. And every year there was more to do. And every year I was a little more overwhelmed.

So this year I brought in people to run the charity. Smart, lovely people. People who could organize things. People who liked to make spreadsheets. People to answer the e-mail and run the store. People to package and talk to donors and take pictures and help me put together the blogs.

And I learned two things:

1. It’s awesome having enough help.

2. It takes a lot of time do things the right way.

We’ve got an inventory system now where we scan in books with a bar code reader. (Before we entered them into a spreadsheet manually.)

Now we can print out winner’s addresses on sticky labels. (Before we printed them out in Word, cut them out, and taped them onto the package.)

These thing are so nice, but it took us a while to get them all in place and running smoothly.

What’s more, we now have our own *building* now. For the last several years we’ve been running this whole thing out of an old student rental I bought on the cheap. Now we have space to spread out and grow. But it’s taken us a while to move in.

Plus, we had a lot more prizes to give out this year. A lot more books and a lot more winners.

Now, answers to a few questions.

• How will I know if I’ve won?

A package will show up at your house in the next couple weeks. A springtime surprise.

Please keep in mind that while there were a lot of winners, there were also a lot of donors.

If you won one of the specialty prizes, like the favor ring, or my tuckerization, or the ARC of Stardust, I’ll be getting in touch with you over the next couple days. So if and unfamiliar number shows up on your cell phone, you might want to answer it.

• Will you be posting up a list of winners?

Sorry. We won’t. It would be a violation of the winner’s privacy.

If the winners are okay with it, we’ll share what’s happens with some of the bigger prizes. Like the favor ring and the ARC of Stardust. But that will be their choice, I’m afraid.

If you’d like to take a picture of yourself with your prizes, you could post them up in the Worldbuilders Facebook Group so that everyone can gaze on you with envious desire.

• What were this year’s final totals? How much did we raise?

For that information and much more, stay tuned. We’ve got a lot of cool news coming up….

pat

And at the beginning of the month, spring started to arrive here in Wisconsin.

You would think this would be a cheerful thing for me. Birds singing. Flowers budding. All that Disney shit.

But you’d be wrong about that.

For one thing, you’re thinking of the wrong sort of spring. In Wisconsin, spring really just means the snow melts. Everything is brown and grey and muddy. It rains. The trees stretch their bare, black branches into the slate-grey sky like they’re auditioning for a part in a particularly emo T.S. Elliot poem.

Yeah, eventually things green up. It gets warm. Trees bud. But that’s in May. That’s *late* spring. Early spring is depressing as fuck.

The other reason spring isn’t very cheerful for me is that in my head, spring isn’t a beginning time. Spring is an ending time for me. Maybe it’s because for 20+ years of my life, I lived by the school year, rather than the calendar year. And May (Which again, is spring in Wisconsin) is the end of the school year.

Whatever the reason, spring is a melancholy time for me. I don’t think, “Yay! A new year is starting!”

No. I think, “I was so busy this winter that I didn’t take time to make a single snow angel. I didn’t build a snow fort like I wanted to with Oot. I didn’t even make a snowman with him. I don’t think I even made a snowball this year.”

It’s a depressing thought.

Luckily for me, Stevens Point got about three inches of snow last week. Then last night, on Saturday, we got about four more. Good wet packing snow.

It’s nice to get a second chance. Especially when you don’t deserve it. To ignore such a gift would be reckless to the point of arrogance.

So today I took a couple hours and focused on the important things.

(Click to Embiggen.)

Those of you who live in the uncivilized backwaters of the world might not know what Sarah is doing back there. But anyone here in Wisconsin can tell by the tracks in the snow….

We’re making snowmen. Snowpersons, rather. A whole snow family.

The one in the middle is Oot, pretending to be a snowchild with his corncob pipe. Or, as he refers to it, his smoker.

If you have trouble with snowman gender identity, let me clarify by pointing out that the one on the right is me, while the one on the left is Sarah. You can tell because the one on the left is more cheerful, and looks better in her hat. While the one on the right is more full of shit.

And no, I’m not speaking figuratively. I’m talking about this:

Can’t see it? Let me get you closer….

There’s a herd of deer that regularly hang out in our backyard. This is one of the many nice things about living in central Wisconsin. Some deer poop in your snowman is a small price to pay. It’s as inoffensive as rabbit poop. The two are virtually indistinguishable, truth be told.

The other way you can tell the difference between snowme and snowsarah is that snowme has an icicle beard….

Next time, I think I’ll go for the pine beard, as the icicle one is hard to see.

If you can’t tell which one is the real me, it’s the one on the right. I have better posture than snowme, and I’m more full of shit. (Figuratively.)

Also, for those of you who are curious, that is my favorite coat. (Well… I only have two, but it’s still my favorite.) I’ve had it for over twenty years. That’s why it looks a little the worse for wear….

Anyway, to wrap things up, here’s our whole snow family:

And with that I will leave you.

May you all have a relatively pain-free tax day. May you all have ample opportunity to make snowmen, and more second chances than you deserve.

pat

I don’t know if Sarah realizes, but he gets that laugh from her. When something happens that strikes Sarah as really funny, she does this deep, throaty laugh. It’s like the sound a donkey would make if it was suddenly turned into an cartoon stereotype of an overweight geek. It goes heah heah heah.

It is in no way a dignified sound. But it is my favorite laugh ever. It’s full of genuine amusement. And whatever it lacks in dignity it makes up in honesty. True laughter is rarely dignified.

Anyway, Oot is doing his version of this laugh, which means she’s probably managed to get his ribs. She’s good at the ribs, I’m a leg man myself.

(Dramatic Recreation)

I would like to digress slightly to say that I’m a master-class fucking tickler. Seriously. I’m amazing. I could teach a class on tickling. I could do a TED talk.

Anyway, I come in to Sarah’s bedroom and lay down on the bed all casual-like, ready to produce some bespoke tickling.

Then Sarah looks at me with lust in her eyes and says, “You smell so good. It’s making me stupid.”

To understand her statement, you have to realize that I am the next stage in human evolution. My pheromonic musk is developed to the point where it’s practically a weapon. In the best of circumstances, I smell masculine. And on a day when I’m staying home and have skipped my morning shower…

Well…. suffice to say that you know there’s a man in the house, even if you can’t see me.

On top of that, I’d been writing. I don’t know why, but when I’m writing, my man-smell gets particularly strong. It’s like my body is trying to establish its dominance over reality itself.

The effects of this pheromonal cocktail vary, but with a select section of the female populous it has two profound, complimentary effects.

1. It delivers a message directly to the woman’s hindbrain, saying: THERE IS A MAN NEARBY, AND YOU MUST MATE WITH HIM.

2. It immediately drops the woman’s intelligence anywhere from 10-50 IQ points, which makes it hard for them to realize that mating with me is *obviously* a bad idea, while at the same time rendering them more vulnerable to my not inconsiderable charm.

You have to admit that evolutionarily speaking, this is a winning combo.

Anyway, Sarah says that, and we laugh. Then, after giving Oot a good tickling, I ask her if I can post her comment up on facebook.

She agrees, and I go to amuse the internets.

But here’s the problem. I can’t find a way to accurately portray what she said.

It should be easy. I know exactly *what* she said. Eight words. Two independent clauses.

But it’s not easy. The trouble lies in the punctuation.

Let’s start with the most generic way of doing this.

• “You smell so good. It’s making me stupid.”

Punctuated like this, her statement feels choppy and wooden. More importantly, the statement feels matter-of-fact and emotionless.

But if you try to spice it up with an exclamation mark….

• “You smell so good! It’s making me stupid.”

There’s a reason exclamation abuse is a crime. Punctuated this way, Sarah seems hopelessly manic. Like she was hopping up and down, excited. That’s not right at all.

You can’t do it the other way, either….

• “You smell so good. It’s making me stupid!”

Then it seems like she’s excited that she’s stupid, which gives the wrong impression on every conceivable level.

And neither of those options address the other problem, that having a full stop in the middle makes it feel like she’s making two separate, unconnected statements. That’s simply not the case, she’s making one complex statement.

Here’s how I’d like to punctuate it…

• “You smell so good, it’s making me stupid.”

But that’s a comma splice. I’m not opposed to them entirely, I’m no slave to grammar. But when you’re relaying one line of dialogue and it’s grammatically incorrect…. That’s just not classy. It’s sloppy writing.

Technically, you could fix this with a semicolon….

• “You smell so good; it’s making me stupid.”

In some ways this is the right thing to do. A semicolon is the official way to show two independent clauses have a close relationship to each other.

Here’s the problem: Semicolons are for wankers. Seriously. You can go your whole life without ever needing to really use a semicolon.

Unless you’re an academic, of course. If you’re an academic, you’ve got to use semicolon to impress other wankers with how much of a wanker you are so you can get your paper published. You know, that paper you wrote detailing your in-depth Marxist interpretation of the last eight lines of John Donne’s “The Flea?” The paper where you used the word “moreover” twenty-seven times in eleven pages?

Most importantly, a semicolon looks really strange in a piece of casual dialogue. People don’t speak using semicolons. Unless they’re wankers.

A lot of time, I’ll default to an ellipsis. Because I love ellipses.

• “You smell so good… it’s making me stupid.”

But it implies too much of a pause in the middle of the statement.

What about an em dash?

• “You smell so good— it’s making me stupid.”

Nope. Just looks weird.

And don’t even think about using an en dash, you little fuckers. That’s *not* what an en dash is for….

In the end, the only way to make this piece of dialogue “sound” right to the reader is through use of interstitials.

• “You smell so good,” she said, looking at me with half-lidded eyes. “It’s making me stupid.”

That’s not quite right either. We need some foregrounding *and* an interstitial….

• Sarah looked at me lustily. “You smell so good,” she said, her eyes half-closed. “It’s making me stupid.”

There. That’s just about right. That conveys her tone and mood in the appropriate way.

What’s my point?

Well, first off, let me say that I never promised there would be a point here. Sometimes I just idly muse about shit. Sometimes I just tell stories. Sometimes there’s no point.

But if there *is* a point it’s probably this: When you’re writing, there are no small choices. Or perhaps it would be better to say that writing is nothing *but* small choices. And all of them have the opportunity to effect your story in a disproportionately large way. Punctuation can change the tone of a sentence. The tone of a sentence can change the feel of a scene. And the feel of a scene can change your impression of a character’s personality.

A secondary point is that this is why my revision takes so long. When you think all these little things to death, you tend to fidget with a text a *lot.*

More cool stuff this week. Stay tuned.

pat

I hope you’ll forgive me for bringing it up again, but I’m a little excited about the project. Plus the clock is ticking, and a few things have happened since my original post.

Actually, a LOT of things have happened, but I’ll just hit the high points here…

1. Support

First I want to thank everyone that stormed over to the Torment Kickstarter and signed up. The folks running the show tell me that the day I announced my involvement and posted up my blog was the second biggest day of the kickstarter so far.

I can’t thank you enough for that. It’s not often I get to look cool, but you guys made me look cool.

Also, your comments in that blog were delightfully supportive and encouraging. A few were kind enough to make me weepy.

So… yeah. Thanks for being lovely humans. And double thanks for proving that the internet is peopled with something *other* than wankers, whiners, and people that type “first.”

2. The Stretch Goal

The kickstarter has flown past 3.25 million, which means I’m officially going to be helping write a piece of the game.

Woo!

3. Character

After I was officially part of the team, I started to think about what I was going to write. And my thoughts kept coming back to what I really liked about some of those older games. Specifically, the companions your character travels with as you move through the story.

How cool would it be, I thought, to write the dialogue and story arc for one of these secondary characters?

So I called Colin and asked him how he’d feel about me writing a companion.

He asked me if I had any ideas for a character.

I told him I did. I explained the character.

He said it was weird. Not the sort of character that normally gets written into games.

But he also said I could do it.

So now I’m excited. I get to write a companion for the game.

I can’t tell you anything about her except that it will almost certainly be a she.

And she’s not going to be the usual sort of thing, because this isn’t going to be your usual sort of game.

4. Extras

They’ve added some new stuff to the Kickstarter since my last post. You can be a Beta or an Alpha tester now. (So if you’ve ever wanted to be a beta reader of mine, now’s your chance.)

I’ll also be doing a comic for the game, because comics are another form I’m looking to experiment with a little more, and it gives me a chance to work with Nate Taylor again. I’ll be using that story to introduce my character, and flesh out my little corner of the world. Plus writing comics is easier for me, as the artist has to do most of the heavy lifting.

If you’re interesting in adding stuff like being an alpha tester and/or getting some of the comics being written for the game by me and other folks, you can increase your bid over on Kickstarter.

5. The Final Days

As I mentioned before, the kickstarter is about a day and a half from being over. Right now we stand at about 3.6 million, making us the second-highest game ever funded on Kickstarter.

If we can hit 3.99 before it ends, we’ll be *the* highest funded game ever. I’m thinking we can do it if we can just get the word out to enough people…

So if you’re interested in getting in early, now would be a great time to jump on board. Supporting the game now is much better than doing it later, because if you buy in now, that money goes toward making a better game. Plus it’s cheaper to buy now. Plus you get the chance of cool extras and add-ons that won’t be available after the kickstarter closes.

Yeah. There you go. That’s my final pimping of the Kickstarter.

Here’s the link,

And I’m done.

pat