A friend of mine has been hit by a tragedy. Out of respect for his privacy, I am not going to go into details. (Those of you who know, know. Those of you who don’t know, don’t need to know. This is not the sort of thing you broadcast on the ‘net.)

It has rocked me. It is the kind of thing you read about, but never think will touch your life. For someone known for and by his words, I find myself at a loss for them.

I fins myself thinking about all the things we have in our lives, and how often we find ourselves reliant on them and defined by them. The loss of any of them would be annoying and bothersome to greater or lesser degrees (depending on the item… losing your ipod is an annoyance, losing your car much more of a problem, you get the idea).

But they are, ultimately, things and can be replaced. There are other pieces of our lives that cannot. There are fundamental parts of us that leave an unfillable void when they are taken away, and in many ways we take them for granted.

Anything with a price can be replaced.

Some things are truly priceless, and should be treated that way.

I mentioned Personal Effects: Dark Art in my previous post. As part of his promotion efforts for the novel, JC Hutchins has produced a number of “vlurbs” from people in the realm of horror/paranormal film and fiction.

Inspired in part by this, and wanting to contribute something of my own to this whole thing (aside from buying the book itself), I recorded a few minutes of video to capture some of my first impressions and thoughts about the book and my exposure to it thus far.

It is my first real attempt at working with video. I dabbled in audio production with my short-lived Vampire: The Requiem podcast “The More Things Change” (which is still available here). Video is a bit harder to work with, and a bit less forgiving when it comes to editing stream-of-consciousness material.

Anyhow, I hope to make more of these, and get better at it as time goes by.

Why yes, yes I am.

It’s been several months since I last posted anything here. Life has been busy, and there hasn’t really been anything worth talking about.

Until now.

Two cool things are coming from a pair of talented authors very soon. First up, the latest (and last) chapter of the Heaven series from Mur Lafferty launches on Monday. If you haven’t encountered this wonderful fantasy audio-novella series, you should really check it out. It starts with a premise that could be considered a bit cliche — a pair of friends die and start exploring the multitude of mythoogical afterlives. Fortunately, it doesn’t take long for Mur to put her own stamp on things, displaying a brilliant creativity and spinning the familiar into the unique.

You can get caught up on this series over at podiobooks.com. Here are direct links for the first four chapters:

1. Heaven
2. Hell
3. Earth
4. Wasteland

The other cool thing is coming from the pen of J.C. Hutchins, another pioneer in the world of podcast fiction. I recently finished his Seventh Son (also available at podiobooks.com), and it is a solid techno-thriller. It starts a little bit slowly, but once the action starts, it doesn’t let up.

Anyhow, J.C.’s print debut comes out this upcoming week as week. Personal Effects: Dark Art is a collaboration with Jordan Wiesman (yes, that Jordan Wiesman). More than a a simple supernatural thriller, this is a multi-media experience. Clues and inserts in the book connect to a larger experience that will give readers a deeper insight into the events of the novel, learning things that the main characters never encounter.

J.C. has a free ‘prelude’ novella available, Personal Effects: Sword of Blood serves as an introduction to the main protaganist, and if the first two chapters of that work are any indication, Dark Art will be a mind-bending ride. You can get Sword of Blood at jchutchins.net.

Is this post an indication that I will be blogging with a bit more regularity? Perhaps. I can’t say for sure, and I’m not going to promise anything right now, but we’ll see what the summer brings.

The lovely and talented Felicia Day (probably best known by my readers as Penny from Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog) is the creator and writer for a great little web series called The Guild, available at www.watchtheguild.com. If you haven’t caught this groovy little series about a group of MMO players, you should give it a look, especially since the second season will be starting up on November 25th.

Because of her success with The Guild (and, peripherally, Doctor Horrible), Felicia gave a talk at NewTeeVee, talking about New Media, web content, and how many of the people in Hollywood (or at least, those in charge of things) are vaguely interested, but don’t really ‘get it’.

I find it interesting, but not terribly surprising, that this is the case. If you recall the distant past of 2007, when the Writers Guild of America went on strike, one of the lynchpins of the WGA’s stance was that writers should receive some kind of compensation for online content they produce for the studios, but also that online ‘broadcasts’ of material should be taken into account when it comes to residuals. It all hinged on New Media, and while there are clearly a number of people who do get it, clearly the people with the big money (and looking to make even bigger money), don’t.

Web-based content is fundamentally different than traditional studio content (even niche studio content). There’s been a lot of discussion on various fora about how you no longer need to get millions (or even hundreds of thousands) of people to consume your product to be successful when it comes to the web — all you need are a couple thousand devoted fans. It takes work to earn them (you can’t just slap up a site and expect the masses to come), but they are invaluable to the success of any ‘net-based project.

The advantage is, with the internet, you are truly pulling your audience from a global community (at least, the global community with internet access). You’re not restricted by licensing deals, region restrictions, or any of the rest of that. In this environment, niche marketing, and niche targeting are the keys to success. The goal is to find your specific audience and hook them in. This is, in so many ways, the antithesis of traditional media marketing, where the idea is (generally speaking) to throw material out there on as broad a distribution as possible and hope that enough of it sticks to make a profit.

People like Felicia are on the leading edge of a revolution, and it’s really cool to watch this sort of thing develop.

So I stayed up way too late last night. The wife decided that she would go out to the midnight release of Wrath of the Lich King after all, and brought home our copies of the game (collector’s edition for her, standard edition for me).

After about 20 minutes of installing and reloading the patches, I logged on, made my way to Stormwind Harbor, and caught the boat to Northrend.

I haven’t done more than poke around the landing area, pick up the next level of training in my professions (and picked up a bunch of new recipes in the process), and do some of the ‘running errand’ quests. I haven’t ventured inland, or killed anything yet, in large part because my wife would be very upset if I started advancing and killing things without her (bloodthirsty little gnome that she is).

Within about 20 minutes of logging on after installing Wrath, we had three Death Knights in the guild. I know a lot of people were really grooving on the ability to play the new class, but I want to explore the new zone, level up my main character, and take the fight to the Lich King! I guess part of it is that I don’t really play my alts that much, and I can’t think of any pressing reason to add another one to my pool — after all, the Death Knight starts at level 55, and I wouldn’t be able to get to Northrend until after I did all the Outlands stuff that I did not that long ago with my Warrior.

So it’s hitting the beach with my main. It looks really cool so far (what little I have seen of it) and I can’t wait until later this evening when I can get back in there.

Kind of a meta-post today. As I said back on Nov 1, this month is a bit of an experiment, to see how successful I can be if I try and write one blog post a day for a month. So… eleven days in, how is it going?

Well, as the counter on this post indicates, I’m one day behind at this point. Other than the “one post a day” objective, I didn’t set myself any particular creative agenda, and I think that may (in part) be something of a problem. Of course, it’s a problem in my fiction writing as well.

You see, I have a nasty internal editor; this little imp holds me back by making me feel that I need to do something substantive, that my posts (or my writing in general) need to be about something, it can’t just be a little toddle for my own amusement. Of course, one of the more common pieces of writing advice out there is to write something that you enjoy, and the audience will find you (provided you do some sort of promotion… while some people may stumble across your work, you can’t expect to get numbers without a little bit of work).

One problem I’ve found thus far is the matter of topics. The first part of this month, leading up to and right after the election provided plenty of grist for my brain-mill. It did that for a bunch of other people as well — this political season was different in so many ways. But the political slant is kind of out-of-flavor for the tradition of this blog, which has largely been focused on fantasy gaming and fiction, with splashes of my life thrown into it.

I don’t know… I find that in some respects I’ve been rather unfocused when it comes to my creative works. After a long day at work, I would rather flop on the couch and veg out watching TV or play computer games for a few hours before heading off to bed. It isn’t that my job is especially taxing — in fact, other than the general stress of being in customer service for eight hours (minus lunch) each day, I don’t get much brain work as it is.

We’ll see how this continues… no doubt when Wrath of the Lich King comes out later this week, and I get hip-deep in the snows of Northrend, I’ll have more to talk about. We’ll see what happens.

(Of course, the whole reason I’m writing this post instead of playing WoW is because the servers have been down all day, and I’m more or less caught up on my TV watching. Kind of a sad commentary, really.)

No real ideas or desire to write much of anything today. So I am just going to share something cool I came across in my browsings the past few days.

I’ve been watching True Blood, an adaptation of the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris. It’s pretty good. What’s really been making the series for me are a couple of things. First of all (unlike the Sword of Truth books that Legend of the Seeker is based on) I haven’t read the books, so I’m more free to get into the story, and not be taken out of it by differences between the TV adaptation and the book.

The other thing that has really won me over to the series is the supporting cast of characters. Sookie is kind of… vanilla in some respects, but there are flashes of steel and spirit in there. The rest of the cast… wonderful.

A word of warning — it is very definitively an adult series. If you’re offended by sex, violence, language, and the generally messed up nature of life… it’s probably not for you. That’s okay, I mean, The Ghost Whisperer isn’t for me.

On the other hand, it is a well-written series, and while some of the more explicit aspects of the show seem to be there simply because it’s on HBO and they can be more explicit, I wouldn’t let that put you off if you’re able to get past it. There is quality here, and I think any fans of the so-called ‘paranormal romance’ genre would enjoy it. (Fans of Anita Blake, I’m looking at you!)

Kind of a short post tonight, but I am committed to keeping up with the experiment.

I play World of Warcraft regularly. I have a level 70 Dwarf Warrior, and a couple of alts that I don’t play so much these days. I’m the master of one of the coolest guilds on my server (or so I and the rest of my fellow guild members think).

I have taken to rewarding myself with WoW play time after I complete a post and upload it to the blog in an effort to drive the experiment forward

Wrath of the Lich King comes out in less than a week.

I am really looking forward to it. I imagine that it will provide me with quite a bit of content in the coming weeks. The previews that have been posted over at Project Lore are really sweet. The videos showing some of the instances, and the preview of the Death Knight quest chain…

I have my copy pre-ordered and paid for. My wife is getting the collector’s edition in order to get the special vanity pet that comes with it.

I’m trying to fit in as much “old” content as possible before Wrath comes out, because after that there won’t be much reason for me to backtrack to the old stuff (until I hit level 80, at least).

All right. Enough writing. The guild is hitting Zul’Aman tonight.

Let’s step away from the political for a bit, and get with the geeking. I caught the first episode (part one of a two-parter) of Legend of the Seeker, a television adaptation of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, produced by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, the same duo who brought us the fun (if rather campy) Hercules and Xena.

Long time friends and visitors to this site will know that I was (and to a certain extent, still am) a big fan of both shows. I’ve been a fam of Raimi’s for years, and I am interested in seeing what they’re going to do with the series in the long run.

My impressions so far, based purely on the single episode I have seen, are moderately favorable. The story more or less follows the opening events in the first novel, but there are some changes that make me curious about where they’re going to go long term. In the novels, Richard is Seeker because of his ability to see the truth. In the series, he is the Seeker because that’s what prophecy says (which is accurate, but the whole prophecy angle doesn’t show up in the first book at all).

Richard in the series is more of a traditional farm boy rises to be a hero sort of thing. That doesn’t mean the character can’t grow to something more, but it gives a very different starting point (and as a result, subsequent character arc) than the novel does.

Most obvious case in point with regard to what I’m talking about. In the novel, Kahlan doesn’t know Zedd is First Wizard, she only knows he went to Westland. Richard deduces that Zedd is the First Wizard, and in the face of his reasoning (haven’t read the book in years, so I don’t recall the exact reasoning) Zedd admits the truth despite his earlier attempts to hide or deny who he is.

In the series, Kahlan is guided by some kind of magic device straight to Zedd. She knows who he is (despite her probably never having seen him since he’s been gone twenty years), and there is no early indication of Richard’s strong, natural ability to reason (something that, admittedly, becomes rather more tiresome as the series progresses).

It’s like the TV series is following the basic plot outline of the book, but making some different choices and assumptions about things. I imagine that fans of the book will not be enamored of the series (depending on how tolerant they are of creative and adaptive license), and I suspect that the show will have a hard time finding enough of an audience to keep it on the air for more than a season or two (but you never know).

I’m willing to give the series a shot, because I have a certain amount of affection for any kind of fantasy TV — especially one produced by this team. I’m interested in seeing where they go, and how they handle the darker parts of the book.

As my impressions mature or change, I’ll be sure to share them.