I'm Lost in a Decadent Pool of Boredom... and Loving It

No seriously. I spend an hour or two each evening cleaning my office and then I spend the rest of my evening writing. I have added about 2k on Noble's Choice and 1000 or so on the short story for my husband. I had to read through my last nine chapters of Noble's Choice. So far, I've figured out where the plot is going and discovered that a character I thought was pivotal, may be cut from the story. Fortunately, that is a decision for future-me, once the story is written. I'm just under 60k now and the rough draft may hit 40k if the story keeps bloating like it has been. Not that any of it is unnecessary... it's just a lot that needs to happen in the book. Fortunately, if my rough draft goes over its fine. I can then look at whether it's bloated or if I just need to pare down on the side quests in favor of the main story. 

Here is a picture I totally did not draw this week of a decadent fish also doing nothing. Maybe I'll dray him playing Don't Starve Together with me for next week. Oh! Or I can do it digitally! That would be awesome.

The only other thing I've been doing is playing Don't Starve. Its been glorious to have a few hours a day to devote to my video game. I usually get no more than an hour or two to myself to play. So, it has been decadent to play for nearly 5 hours once. It was glorious. I've also been reading and cutting down that TBR pile, I have. I'm on my second book and loving it. I'm also still reading my way through one of my favorite book series, Red Winter by Annette Marie. I've talked about it on the blog before, but again, if you haven't picked it up, find it, because it rocks. 

And that's about it for this week. Next week, hopefully, I'll have something of more substance to talk about... if I don't find anything, I may put out the next update on the Norin religion. What has been keeping you busy this week? And what are you reading right now?

Who's a Good Boy?

I am not as much of a video gamer as I appear. I know all the jokes, but I rarely actually play the games. I'm not much of a fan of MMO's or RPG's unless its a JRPG. I have fallen in love with Pokemon since I bought my Switch and got the Pokeball to go with it and I can probably kick your ass Zuma's revenge. I fell in love with Terreria for a while, but as with everything, I eventually put it aside. 

Which is why when one of my friends offered me a free copy of Don't Starve, I originally declined. He'd told me about the game, but I couldn't imagine it being fun, and even if it was, I didn't want him to essentially waste a free game coupon on me. Still, later that year there was a sale and I ended up picking up a copy. 

That was a few years back, but I now have nearly a thousand hours between Don't Starve and Don't Starve Together. I went out of my way to figure out how to install mods onto my games so that I could add characters to the line up. Its the one game that I go back to every four or five months and then play into oblivion until I just can't do it anymore. 

And they released a new character yesterday (Thursday, March 28). 

I was excited as hell for it when I found out on Tuesday, but waking up with a sore throat, and aching muscles and feeling like I'm suffering real-life lag, I didn't even bother to wait and picked up the new character as soon as I could. 

This Good Boy is Wortox, wearing a set of gold bracelets that I received from one of the treasure boxes in the game. He is adorable and looks like a demonic puppy, which I find adorable. He eats the souls of the dead and uses them to do things like teleport short distances away. He's got pretty good health, but it's still going to take me a while to get used to playing him. 

While I was buying him (you can purchase him using in-game points too, but there was no way I was going to wait that long to play him), I also picked up all of his skins and the fire skins for Willow and Wendi while I was at it. I can't wait to try playing them again either, now. The picture just below is of my favourite skin of his, the Uncorrupted. 

So, yeah... expect to see me a bit less over the next few days, while I play this Good Boy for a while and try to not starve (though honestly, at this point, its always the big fights that end up killing me). What video games do you love playing? Do you know how many hours you've actually played them? 

Book Release Day! Hunter's Gambit Enters the World!

Woot! Today is the day! I have been waiting so long to share this with all of you! And while I won't be the first author to say that I'm incredibly proud of the work I'm putting out, I will say that there's also a part of me that is shaking in my boots, wishing I could change the cover or edit the book just one more time. It's so difficult putting your book out there, I think this is probably what parents feel like when they send their kids out into the world to take care of themselves. It's heady and terrifying at the same time.

To keep myself relaxed and not panicking, I've been playing a lot of video games and art. One of the art projects I ended up spending quite a bit of time on these last two weeks have been playing with the supplies I received from my Paletteful Packs art subscription box. This month was watercolour which is totally my jam. First, I painted an owl and after that, I decided to draw one of the characters from my favourite video game Don't Starve (and its sequel, Don't Starve Together). This is my version of Wigfried, the drama queen who plays as a barbarian. She's my second favourite character to play. Do you play the game? If not, what are your favourite games!

My fanart based on Klei's Character. 

Original Klei creation. 

And finally, my book is live now! Have you picked up Hunter's Gambit yet? Remember that I'll be looking for pictures of my book in the wild as well! Share them on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #Huntersinthewild? I'll keep an eye out for them and like/retweet all of them! You'd really make my day by doing so! Even if it's just a picture of my cover on your e-reader or tablet, I'd still love to see it! 

As always, here are some links to where you can pick up your own copy of Hunter's Gambit if you haven't already. 

Physical Copies can be ordered from

Amazon
Chapters Indigo
Barnes & Noble


And E-copies can be ordered from

Kindle
Kobo
Apple
Nook

Week Three and a Character Shakedown

          I had the best of intentions. Really. I meant to post last week.

          Then Klei, apparently not knowing that November is supposed to be essentially ignored by the world, opened its beta release to its newest DLC for Don't Starve. Hamlet is a Don't Starve world where the pigs have a civilization, but the rest of the world is a terrifying array of deadly everything.  I grabbed it and have already lost probably 20 hours or more to it at this point. It helps that it basically starts the game by saying, "Yo, you, the one playing this game. Yeah, You. So this edition is essentially Don't Starve-Hardcore Mode. If you're still starving to death within days in the regular game, you might want to play that mode a bit more before playing here."

          It does not disappoint. I can get to 15 days or so, but the last time two times the Thunderbird has come for me, I've died. Once because I was in the pig settlement and on my last few points of sanity... I think a nightmare got me before he could land that time. The second time I was in a battle with some houseplants that wanted to eat me and they got me just as the bird arrived. I am loving figuring out the world though. Wait until after Nanowrimo, but please pick up this game when its officially released on December 6th.

          As for my Nanowrimo, its going. I had a really tough time getting started. After 8.5k I finally figured out where I should be starting the story. Fortunately, those words weren't wasted because its Nano and they still count towards my total. I have stayed ahead of the game pretty much all month. I'm about 7k ahead of where I should be, giving me about 32k of words that actually further my plot. Unfortunately, at that point, I got stuck and my characters started falling into a bit of depression on me. 

          To get past that, I decided to talk to my husband and take an evening off from actual writing to do some planning (also, for those of you asking, yes, those words count towards Nanowrimo too. If it's written for the story during November it counts. Period.). I started by writing a kick-my-characters-in-the-ass paragraph. It was full of dire warnings and general bitching, which was not only cathartic but useful and funny as hell. Let me know if you want me to share that here. I don't think it has any secrets for the books in it, and you guys might find it hilarious. Anyways, from there I spent about 1300 words or so figuring out where all of the characters were going. Basic stuff; what is your motivation, where does it have a pivotal change and who's with you when it does? Why is that a pivotal change and what did the villain do to you to get you there?

          Surprisingly, this is working for me. 

          Here's a reminder that my poignant short story, Fated has been released and is available, pretty much wherever you buy your ebooks from. Check the links below. And please remember to leave a review about it and give it a star-rating, if nothing else. Those really help my book to get seen by more people. 

          Finally, I'm going to end here and put up a fair warning, that I think my next blog is going to be an art one... Maybe talking about Inktober, but certainly talking about my first Paletteful Packs subscription box. Keep an eye out for it!

Fated on ibook
Fated on Android
Fated on Kobo

Vitajte

I'm going to start off on a bit of a one-off comment here. Sometimes, I love looking at my blog stats. Today, I'm laughing because the most views of the week has come from Slovakia. Most likely its a bot, since the most used languages there are Slovak followed by Czech (though both use the Latin alphabet like English, so you never know...). On the off chance it isn't a bot, Vitajte to my Slovakian readers! If you aren't a bot, let me know by leaving a comment below, in whatever language you use. Google translate is a thing and I'm not above using it if it enhances communication.

Actually, looking at my stats, though most of my readers are in Canada, with the next largest country being (unsurprisingly) the United States, the next three are from Slovakia, Portugal and Germany. While I actually do know people in Germany (Hello Uncle Ragnar and Dan Wells*), I have to say that I think I've ever met anyone from Slovakia or Portugal. Part of me hopes it isn't the bots. I'd like to have a diverse readership when I start publishing. 

That does bring to mind Dan Wells, again though. He's an author (of Writing Excuses podcast fame as well as writing two of my favourite series - Partials and I am Not a Serial Killer) who found after publishing that most of his readership was in Germany, not his home country of America. Though I don't think that will happen to me, I'd be honoured if it did. I wonder how many writers look at their readership and viewers and how many of them are surprised by where they're most popular, especially indie writers who may be publishing everything online. 

The other thing I will mention, is that my productivity has suffered this week all due to Don't Starve. Every time I make the mistake of turning that game on, I lose hours to it without even noticing. Because of that and other general busyness, I only got a two and a half chapters finished. Bleh, back to editing... I'll make a deal with myself. After I finish editing this novel (and have most of my presentation figured out for August), I can play for a week straight with no regrets while I plan my next novel. 

*Note: While I'm throwing around Dan Wells name here, I don't actually know him in a "we're friends" way. Basically we've chatted on Twitter three or four times. If you haven't read his books, especially the above mentioned series, go find them. He's an awesome author. If you're in the stats, you can also look for his I am Not a Serial Killer book which is currently being made into a movie/theatre play right now. I'm linking his blog here, so you can find out all about his stuff as well.
TheDanWells