Lots of events have been happening in Metaplace lately, but this one, you might guess, is near and dear to my heart: a poetry open mic. 🙂 It is happening in WritersForumWorld in about half an hour (1pm Pacific time).
The WritersForum guys have been working to try to get a virtual workshop going as well.
We’re gearing up soon for even more events, so it’s worth following along with the events calendar. In the meantime, stop by for this one!
Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout, stalwart plucky young Southern Gothic reporter, has landed a prized interview with one of the first vampires to go public…
Sarah had fretted quite a lot before the interview; photos of Renaldo Angelicus Dramatico had revealed him to be exactly the brooding type that she used to dream about as a teenager. Which was only a year ago, before ths small-time local station morning show gig. But now that she was under the lights and before the cameras, she felt better about it. The assistant producer, Jodi from Minnesota, had tried to get her to calm down, but they couldn’t help but giggle about it, trading off-color remarks about long… fangs.
Until he walked in. A blousy white shirt, revealing smooth and hairless pectorals. A confident stride and a firm handshake, even as his eyes flicked up and down her body as if she were just meat. Which she supposed she was, in a way. His hand was dry but not clammy, smooth and uncalloused, and his skin sparkled under the lights.
As the cameras ran, Sarah felt like she babbled through the introductions: “unusual opportunity,” “learn more about these creatures of the night” whatever. The vampire merely looked on her patiently until the formalities were complete. Finally, the preliminaries were done, and he gave a little half-bow from his chair as she was introduced.
“I do hope you aren’t here to eat me,” she said, as her opening gambit.
“Ah no, senorita, I could never do such a thing. You are far too lovely to make that sort of meal.”
“You really aren’t from this century, are you,” she said, looking down at her notes. “So, tell me about yourself. I understand you’re a pacifist vampire–”
“War is such a waste,” Renaldo interjected. “All that blood running in the streets.”
“–A pacifist vampire who only drinks synthetic blood or blood taken humanely from animals under PETA’s supervision, and you are not evil but in fact are cursed to live forever with a remorseful soul to atone for horrific deeds in the past until you meet your one true love. Isn’t that a little unusual?”
“Not at all. In fact, that’s the case for about one in five of the vampire population.” Continue reading »
Listen up, kids. I remember. I was there the day it happened. I know, you’ll say there’s no way I could have been alive back then, but it’s true — the pace of change is faster than you young whippersnappers think, and advances in long-life studies have kept me going far longer than I ever expected.
So yeah, I was around back on the day when it all changed — the day when we learned that TVs outnumbered people in most houses.
I hope you like the new artwork. That’s what happens when I take my first vacation in a year. I had meant to also do some recording this week, but I didn’t get around to it, unfortunately.
So what’s changed? Let’s see… first off, this (News) is now the front page of the site. This should make it a little easier to find out if I’ve bothered to update lately. The Guestbook is still around, but you have to go to the Main section to reach it. I also got rid of the old Bio section and old front page and moved that content into Main under About. I tried to save all the guestbook entries, but if you entered a message right when I was putting up the new site, yours may be gone.
Under Gaming, there’s plenty of new content. For a while now, I’ve been working desultorily on a book on online world design. Some excerpts were published at The Rantings of Lum the Mad a while ago, but now I’ve decided to go ahead and toss up more here on my own site. Look under the “Book” section for that. Also, I’ve been working on a breakdown of typical design patterns for online world design (mostly extracted from the book, actually) for a GDC presentation next year. So that’s up there under Essays as a set of Powerpoint slides.
Under Writing, I finally went ahead and put some actual content in under Poetry, Fiction, and Genre. Hope ya like it. If you’re an editor starving for an author, lemme know. In fact, out of all the stuff in the site updates, this is the area that I’d most like to see comments on. I don’t write much anymore, and the stories are mostly a decade old, but I started out as a writer and I am sure that someday I will go back to it.
I reorganized the Music section. I recently wrote a guitar instrumental that I titled “Alice” after the character in the comic strip, and I’ve put up the sheet music and guitar tablature to it. There’s also another small guitar instrumental piece there called “Memorial,” with sheet music and tab.
I got rid of the Teaching Materials section under Books. I can’t locate any of ’em (somewhere in the garage no doubt). But I did add a new page on what I’m reading lately. Only four books there right now, as that is all I got to over the holiday.
There’s a couple of new images under Art; a new doodle and two ink pieces from over ten years ago.
In other news, I recently did an interview for Joystick101.org. This site is devoted to academic critique of games, developing a critical vocabulary, etc, and the folks who run it are all involved in academia. Check it out, leave a comment, support the site, whatever. 🙂
Looks like one of those Halloween stories won…
