I could not possibly be more overdue with these, but I’ll get them done sooner or later. Let’s talk books (and game)!
Books: The High Window, Frogkisser!, The Lady in the Lake, Neverwhere
Games: Monsters’ Den: Godfall
You know the drill by now, so let’s go.
Hello! My summer has been extremely busy, so this (and the next two posts) are extremely overdue, but here we are! I haven’t had much time to play games lately, but I have read a lot of books, so let’s talk about that.
Books: The Dain Curse; A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Wide Window; Howl’s Moving Castle; Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency; The Magic Thief: Home
Comics: Rice Boy, Order of Tales, Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro
Let’s begin.
Here we are once again. It’s been real hectic lately with the summer coming in, so let’s talk about what I read and played in April.
Books: Guns at Cyrano’s; How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe; Farewell, My Lovely
Games: Shift Quantum, Dead Cells
Let’s jump right in.
Hello again!
So you probably haven’t noticed because nobody regularly checks this blog (don’t worry, I don’t either), but today I’ve made a bunch of changes to the website. For one thing, I’ve re-enabled the comments section! Hooray! I’m not really expecting a flood of comments or anything but hopefully now that I’ve added some anti-spam stuff, I won’t get all the spam comments that I was before.
I’ve also added a Blog Navigation page which lists all of the post categories and tags (in convenient groups, too!). That should make looking for whatever you’re looking for on this website a lot easier–not that it matters much now, when there’s barely any posts to begin with and there’s a search function besides. But eventually, I’m sure it’ll see more use. The important part is that it updates automatically, so it’ll always be up to date.
Most importantly, and the actual reason why I’m posting this blog post, is because I’ve finally set up a newsletter! No longer do you have to check this website once a month on your own to stay up to date or use the RSS Feed (which there’s nothing wrong with, but since Firefox got rid of their built-in feed reader it’s definitely more of a pain to work with), you can now get posts directly into your inbox almost as soon as they happen! You’ve probably noticed the giant orange button on the sidebar or at the bottom of the page, but if you haven’t, here’s another one:
The other benefit to subscribing to the newsletter (besides getting notifications in your inbox) is that you can choose what kinds of emails you want to get. Right now, I’ve only got four categories: Reviews, Essays, Project Updates, and Art, but the categories will probably expand some more once I post more content such as pen/ink reviews. You start out subscribed to all of them, but you can remove/add categories (or unsubscribe) whenever you want. I promise to only send out emails when I have new content posted, and you can probably expect to get emails slightly more than once a month (since I do Media Reviews monthly, with a few essays and project updates in between).
As for everything else, it is now the summer and I am…still as busy as ever. Busy in a different way, though, so we’ll see how much writing I get done. It would be nice to finish my manuscript by the end of the summer, but based on the amount of time I have to work on it, that seems unlikely. But progress is progress! I’ll see how far I go.
Fuck, shit. Dammit. I watched and read a ton of stuff this month, so this is going to be a long one.
Books: The Ocean at the End of the Lane, This Body’s Not Big Enough For Both Of Us, Proposal, Remembrance, A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Reptile Room, The Maltese Falcon, Goldfish, Hope Never Dies, Only To Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Novel
Movies: North by Northwest, Bringing Up Baby, Casablanca, Sunset Boulevard
Games: Plague Inc.; Dude, Stop; Stick Fight: The Game
Okay. Let’s get started.
So it’s the literal last moment for me to be posting this, but in my defense I actually started this one at the start of the month, but then things came up. Anyways, it’s time to recap the spicy (and not so spicy) things I’ve read and looked at and etc.
Books: Beheld, And Then There Were None, A Series of Unfortunate Events (The Bad Beginning)
Radio Dramas: Richard Diamond, Private Investigator; Rogue’s Gallery
Games: Pulsen; Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!
So here we go.
I totally forgot that I wanted to do this, so I’m doing it a couple of weeks late.
Welcome to Media Review, where I talk about the things I read and watched and played that month! It’s been a little bit so let’s see how much I remember…
Books/Novellas: The Annotated Big Sleep, The Glass Key, Double Indemnity, Red Wind, Blackmailers Don’t Shoot, I’ll Be Waiting
Movies: Double Indemnity; Murder, My Sweet
Games: Into the Breach, Overcooked! 2, Beat Saber
So let’s get into it.
Hello, friends! In case you’re not up with the news (and also not from the Midwest United States), it’s currently about -20 degrees Fahrenheit outside, a temperature which is also known as fuck cold. It’s so cold that even the state universities have closed for the day, and plain old subzero temperatures aren’t enough to make that happen. So I’ve been inside all of today under a very cozy blanket so I don’t freeze. I haven’t gotten a whole lot done today–it’s just one of those tired days, I suppose.
Anyways, in case you missed it, this past weekend, January 25-27, was the Global Game Jam. My good couch friend, who’s working with me on some other projects, invited me to come along, and so I did! I ended up doing basically all of the art in the game (and nothing else), and all in all, it turned out really well. We (a team of five people: three coders, me, and a guy who did basically everything else) really made a whole-ass game in less that 48 hours, with game mechanics and even a cutscene that took like 14 people-hours to finish. If you’re interested, you can download it here: https://globalgamejam.org/2019/games/spectre-protector
While I’m here, I’ll go ahead and talk about the process and how it went.
I’ve been working some more on my book (and also watching film noir movies like Double Indemnity and Murder, My Sweet) and I’ve been thinking for a while that Pearls and Smoke isn’t a very good title–or at least it doesn’t sound like a very noir title. I liked the inclusion of pearls and smoke, which are in-universe slang, but it doesn’t sound super exciting. So I’ve decided to change the name of my novel to The Crow’s Last Call, which is equally significant, in ways that I cannot explain without spoiling the entire plot, and actually sounds like a hardboiled novel title. So I’ll be referring to it as that from here on out.
Moving on from that, I’ve been going through my hardboiled library a bit more, my hardboiled library being the works of Hammett, Cain, and Chandler. Since I’m trying to emulate a story written in the 1930s or 40s, both in time period and writing style, I think it’s important to go off of stories that were actually written in that time, by multiple authors. It’s a good thing I’m not trying to emulate any one author in particular (such as, to pick a completely random example, Raymond Chandler) because it’s just impossible. I’m the least poetic person in history and I’m not able to come up with big exciting metaphors and clever uses of language. My strengths are in character interaction and action and emotionally-charged scenes, so it’s best if I play up to those.
Anyways, I recently read The Glass Key, which is apparently considered a very good mystery novel, but which I found a bit confusing, and Double Indemnity, which was a wild ride because I had no idea it was just about a dude trying to commit the perfect murder and get away with it. But it was! And it was so good that I decided to watch the movie ASAP afterwards, and that was really good too. I also read The Annotated Big Sleep which was partially because I love Philip Marlowe but also because I really enjoy annotated books and being able to see the kind of context involved in a story that’s very steeped in 1930s culture on account of being written at the time.
I’ll probably read The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Maltese Falcon next, along with Red Wind. We’ll see how those go.
I’ve been working on my book again lately, and let me tell you, it feels great to get some progress done. I’m around the 21k mark, which I estimate to be 25-30% progress, though it’s always hard to tell such a thing when you don’t know where exactly the 100% mark will be.
The point is, Pearls and Smoke is a story told in first person, which basically makes the entire book a detective noir monologue, and as such I’ve spent a pretty sizeable amount of time writing Sable’s character. And while this would be a great segue into talking about her character, the thing is that it’s not really that easy.
The thing about characterization when it comes to my writing is that I find characterization as a whole incredibly nebulous. Which isn’t to say that it’s a fake thing, because it’s very definitely real. What I mean is that while I’m fairly competent at consistent and compelling characterization, I’m not very good at articulating a character.
I suppose that doesn’t clear up very much. So let’s talk about it some more.