Sims3: Snake charming and other skills

Disclaimer: Sims3 posts are in no way relevant to the actual events in the Iron Fey series.


When we last left the gang, Ash had just proposed to Meghan...

















And Puck was vacationing in Egypt.

















Turns out, Puck discovered more than tombs and sphinxes while on vacation.
















Could this be the start of something? Or will miles of separation kill anything before it even starts?






















Puck returned home soon after, but he brought a souvenir back with him.









Of course, he has never been one for safe, conventional hobbies.

















Um, I'm not sure that's going to make the snake appear any quicker, Puck.

















Right.

















Aha, there it is.


















Well, now he has an interesting party trick. Let's hope he doesn't use it for evil.


















Soon after, Puck met a familiar face in the park. It has been a long time since they had their fight; has enough time passed for them to try to mend things?



















They're not best friends anymore, but its a start.
















And just in time, too, for Ash has a big day tomorrow.

















To be continued...

Game Review: Fable 3

Oh look, another rant.

Warning: SPOILERS below! Do not read if you haven't played Fable 3 yet and don't want to hear the ending.



As you all know, I'm a gamer. And the game I was most looking forward to this month was Fable 3. I really enjoyed the first two, and I thought that THIS Fable was going to surpass them all.





















Boy was I wrong.

For those who have not played the game, Fable gives you the "moral choice" option of being a good, honorable hero, or an evil, selfish, power-hungry jerk. Your appearance will change depending on the choices you make, and I usually go for the "good" option the first time around. And for the first third of the game, everything was fine--barring a few annoying Fable idiosyncrasies (broken combat system, obnoxious identical NPCs, frustrating travel system). You were the younger brother of the king, who was a real tyrant, and eventually you had to flee the palace with your butler (voiced by John Cleese) and your mentor. You then traveled around Albion, gaining support, amassing followers, promising to clean up the land when you became king, and basically start a revolution.













Oh, and along the way, you discover an ancient evil is approaching Albion, and that the kingdom is in danger of being swallowed by darkness.

Well, then the big day comes. You storm the castle with your loyal followers, dethrone your brother, and become the king, as was your destiny. Turns out, your brother was being a jerkface tyrant because that was the only way to "get ready" for the army of evil that was approaching from across the sea. So, once you become king, you have one year to raise enough gold to combat the darkness, otherwise your people will all die.


















And from there, everything went to crap.

After you become king, the game gives you 5 days or "sessions" before the darkness arrives, forcing you to start each day in court, deciding the status of the country. You have to choose whether to keep your promises (i.e rebuilding the orphanage) or be a tyrannical jerk (i.e force all the children into child labor). Remember, up until this point, I was playing the good, just character. But all those good choices resulted in a massive loss of gold, sending your treasury into the negative and bumping the "projected civilian casualties" even higher. The game wouldn't give you a break, and the "choices" you had to make were all so black-and-white. Build a school or open a brothel. Construct a sanitation factory or dump all the waste into an eco community. Protect the lake and surrounding woodlands or destroy it for mining.

Each time, I would go with the "moral" choice. At the end of the "year," I was nearly 2 million gold in the hole, and you needed 6.5 million to protect your people from the darkness. Then the evil army came, and though you beat the final boss and drove it back yourself, your kingdom was empty of people because everyone was dead.

So, moral of Fable 3? Its better to be evil than good and just. Its better to break promises and send children into slave labor and be a selfish tyrant, because only by being evil can you save your kingdom. Yeah, that's nice. Great moral lesson there, Peter Molynuex. Try again.

My Pro-NaNoWriMo rant

All righty, so I am aware that there are those who do not like NaNo. And, to a certain extent, I can agree with them. NaNo is not for everyone. We all have our writing habits, and for some people, NaNo is far too crazy/frantic/sloppy/ect. I'm not here to argue with them.

I WILL say what I like about NaNo, and why it works for me.

1.NaNo makes you write crap. Some have said NaNo encourages sloppy writing, that it focuses more on word count then making your words pretty. And my response to that is: it absolutely does. Who here writes perfect prose their first time around? I know I certainly don't. That's what the rough draft is FOR, just getting the words down. As Stephen King and Ernest Hemmingway and Anne Lammott have all said: the first draft of anything is crap.

For me, my inner editor is constantly trying to make me write perfectly the first go-around. And when I listen to it, my writing slows to a crawl. NaNo frees me from the inner critic and lets me just write whatever comes to mind. And you know what? If the writing is crappy (as it almost always is) that's OKAY. I don't want to focus on pretty prose the first time around; I just want to get the skeleton down so I have something to work on later. First draft=crap. So, write joyfully, and don't worry that your words aren't perfect. You can always fix a bad page, but you can't fix a blank one.


2. NaNo gives you a deadline. I know everyone can finish a novel if they really, really want to. That doesn't mean its not hard. Having clear goals certainly helps me stay on top of things. I know that I have to write 1,667 words everyday to meet my goal of 50,000 words in a month. It keeps the pressure on to keep going. Before I was published, I wrote when I felt like it, when the mood struck, when I got "inspiration." And you know how long it took me to complete my first book? 5 years. Then, I signed up for NaNo, and suddenly discovered I could write an entire book in 2 months! THAT was a revelation. Now, when my contract says I have this many months to write, polish, and send a book to my publisher, I say: no problem.


3. NaNo encourages you to try something impossible. A novel in 30 days? Crazy talk! Before NaNo, even published, well-established authors would mock such a ridiculous concept. Even now, people will sneer at NaNo authors, stating that a book written in 30 days is certainly crap. That its just a bunch of words thrown together, with no plot, no style, and it CERTAINLY would never get published. To that, I say: you know this YA book called The Iron King? That was a NaNo project. So it can happen. That's not to say it will, and I HIGHLY discourage sending off your unpolished NaNo project to weary editors at the start of December. They will be receiving a flood of NaNo books already, still in the "crap" stage. You want your manuscript to stand out from the river of unpolished sludge. 50,000 words on paper does not a novel make.

Instead, NaNo encourages you to write, for the sheer joy of it. Don't worry about getting it perfect or published or penning a literary masterpiece. Just write. At the end of the month, you'll have written a novel. In 30 days. Who can say that, really? Let the Naysayers nay. You've finished a book. You've done what others only talked about. Be proud. You are now a writer.


Again, I'm not saying NaNo is for everyone, or everyone has to love it. But for those of us who DO love it (including yours truly), don't let anyone discourage you. Write joyfully, write everyday, and I will still see you at the finish line.

Julie

NaNoWrimo word count (day 2): 3,558

Teaser Tuesday, NaNo, and giveaway winners

Welcome to November 2nd.

How's your NaNo count going?

So far, so good. We shall see what it looks like after today. In other news, I also have a winner for the ghostly Grimalkin rock. I had so much fun reading through all the costume suggestions. Some of them had me rolling on the floor. But it looks like the general consensus is: Ash is too serious to dress up and Puck would go as Ash so he could annoy him, LOL!

Anyway, I decided to let random.org decide the winner, because I couldn't pick just one favorite. And the winner is:

Marciewood(at)aol(dot)com

Congrats, Marcie! I'll be emailing you soon to send you your prizes. :)


Anyway, onto today's teaser. It seems a couple ARCs of Iron Queen are already in the wild, which means that the teasers will be drawing to a close soon. With that in mind, please enjoy today's teaser, and a certain someone's possessive streak.


***

“Hey, princess.”

“Hey,” I whispered, as Ash slipped his arms around my waist from behind, drawing me close. I could feel his glare aimed at Puck over my head, a silent, protective gesture that spoke louder than any words. Mine. Back off.


***


Now, I'm off to NaNo! Good luck, fellow NaNoers; another 1667 words await. :)

Ready, set....NaNo!

Yup, its that time of year again.

NaNo Wrimo is upon us once more.

Even as I type this, I'm checking the NaNoWriMo official site, which is being ridiculously slow tonight, probably as hundreds (thousands?) of NaNoers are doing the exact same thing.

If you are one of these brave (insane) souls, kudos to you! Its comforting to know, as we gear up for the most frantic, stressful, neurotic month of the year (Christmas doesn't even come close) that there are thousands of writers going through the exact same thing. So, as the 1st of November looms ever closer, let's promise ourselves these things...

We will write everyday, through rain and sleet and falling snow, through TV shows and outings and parties and people who want you to socialize. By now, you should have warned any family, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, relatives, and spouses that they will probably not see you until December.





















We will not let our inner editor tell us our writing is crap. (Its 50k words in 30 days, its SUPPOSED to be crap.) This also goes for going back and "fixing things." Do not worry about fixing things; that will be December's project.


We will not fall behind.

If we do fall behind, we will soldier on and not give up.

We will not let the siren song of email, twitter, facebook, myspace, blogs, ect ect ect distract us from churning out our words. This also goes for phones, friends, children, pets, spouses, ect.


















At the end of the month, we will have written a 50,000 word mess of a story, with dangling plot threads, nonsensical scenes, holes you could drive a semi through, and so many mistakes our English teachers would scream, but we will have written a complete NOVEL. And we won't worry about the mess; we can always clean it up later.

So, my fellow NaNoers...on this last night of October, as the costumed children return from their candy begging, let us eat a good meal, get a good night's sleep, and say farewell to our loved ones.

For tomorrow, we NaNo.

I'll see you at the finish line.

Beating on people with sticks

As some of you know, I take Kung Fu.

What you may not know is that I also take Kali.

























No, wrong Kali.

Kali (Also called Escrima) is a Filipino fighting art involving sticks, knives, swords, and other weapons, as well as unarmed combat.







Kali/Escrima sticks.


Though the sticks are supposed to be proxies for blades, like machetes or short swords, so you're really learning double-sword fighting techniques.











Up until this point, we've trained with one or two Kali sticks and rubber knives (Kali also teaches disarms), but last night, we finally got to do something I wanted to do from the get-go.

First, we put on protective gear, so I looked something like this:





















Then we got to beat on each other with sticks. :D

Full contact, full speed, no holds barred sparring. It was the most awesome thing I've ever done. Coincidentally, I was paired up with my husband, so I can truthfully say I smacked my hubby around with a stick. ^__^ But he hit me, too, so it's all good.

I also might've broken a stick over someone's helmet.

AND got a new bruise. Probably from smacking my arm into said person's helmet. This week has officially kicked my butt.

I can't wait to do it again. :D

Teaser Tuesday: The Iron Queen revealed

A special Teaser Tuesday today.

A first look at the back cover copy of THE IRON QUEEN. (You'll probably have to click the picture to read it.)

So, what do you think? Personally, I think Harlequin Teen outdid themselves again in the cover department. You can also check out The Iron Fey Facebook page here.























The final installment of Meghan Chase's journey is almost here. What are your thoughts/hopes/wishes for the third book?