I can't believe I didn't dust off this old blog last year when The Mandalorian premiered! That show is like everything I ever wanted in Star Wars. I did take the above photo for my Instagram about this time last year. It definitely seemed like Filoni and Favreau's philosophy was to make a show as if they were playing with their old Star Wars figures. This week's episode was amazing- maybe the best? I dunno, I have like a top ten already and there have only been 13 or 14 episodes. But I don't want to talk too much about them- people on Facebook on Twitter just can't help themselves it seems, they gotta spoil shit. Well, not me. 

Can't wait for next week! 

I love learning about subspecies of bears. You'd think I would have heard of all of them by now but I still run into new ones. Quick shameless plug, but relevant - my story "The Winged Whale" in Volume 1 of The Ursus Verses is about one such subspecies, despite what the title might lead you to believe.

Pictured above, though, is a photo of an ad. I had to make it at least a little artsy to try to avoid copyright infringement and what not. I mean who takes pictures of ads right? But Canon's "Wildlife As Canon Sees It" is a legendary ad campaign that has run in every issue of National Geographic since 1982. This particular edition was in the April 1992 issue. (I'm still reading all the back issues I can, when I have time.) Back in 1992 they weren't even sure if the Gobi Bear was an actual subspecies or not. I see now on Wikipedia that it is recognized as such- Ursus arctos gobiensis.

I always find it useful to google the species Canon highlights in their ads, especially as I read back issues from a couple of decades ago. Where are they now, kind of. How many are left, to be blunt. It's not as depressing as you might guess, though it's rarely encouraging, either. So in 1992, the best estimate was about 40-60 surviving individuals. The wikipedia article cited a number of 30 from a study in 2007. And this site- which is awesome by the way, just discovered it now- guesses a population of about 40 right now. Which isn't awesome. Inbreeding alone is probably going to doom this subspecies.

 Ahsoka is here! Busy day, very tiring, but very awesome. Here's some pics, hopefully I can get some sleep tonight- the only thing she hasn't really taken to is crate training. She batted 1.000 for potty training though!

 

A current picture of my nightstand. I thought not working would give me some time to catch up on my reading but the pile just keeps getting bigger. The stars have aligned somewhat this past week, however, and I have finished reading a bunch of books in rapid succession. At least for me. You know how on Overdrive if you're reading a book and it expires it just goes away? Finally got a bunch of those books back that I was already mostly finished. Anyways. What follows is a list of the books I've read this month, but before I forget I made The Ursus Verses available for Overdrive collections, so if you have an Overdrive account through your local library could you take a few minutes to recommend it to them? That would mean a lot to me, thank you.

Ok. The books.

First up, The Genius of Birds, by Jennifer Ackerman. Birds are dinosaurs, right? Old news though. They are also geniuses. This book explains how. I have a newfound respect for Chickadees but also a newfound disrespect for sparrows. Go away sparrows! 

1990 was one of the best years ever, as far as I'm concerned. Many of my favourite albums of all time came out that year. Happens to all of us when we are 15 or 16, yeah? But in my beloved genre of heavy metal it is widely acknowledged that many of the genre's best offerings came out that year. Persistence of Time. Seasons in the Abyss. And Rust In Peace. Absolute masterpiece. Masterpeace. Anyways Dave Mustaine put out a book about the making of this seminal Megadeth album. Every metalhead knows Mustaine was kicked out of Metallica for being a junkie but I had no idea he only just got clean right when they went to record RIP. He was such a mess it's kind of amazing Rust is even coherent let alone the absolute monster it is. But him and Dave Ellefson did manage to get cleaned up and the rest is history. If you're not a metalhead this won't be of any interest to you whatsoever. 

I really like N.K. Jemisin. Her book The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was excellent, so I was glad to read the sequel, The Broken Kingdoms. Quite a different book than the first one, but still really engaging. I think there's yet a third book, and of course then I can tackle her other series. I also read her book about New York City earlier this year. She's the best.

Another series I enjoy has been Theodora Goss' Athena Club uh, I always forget the actual series name. Started off with The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter and the third one, that I just read, is The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl. The series is about the daughters of all the famous Victorian-era monsters. Mr. Hyde, Dracula, Frankenstein and so forth. Sherlock Holmes is in it- though he is not the star. Good books! I first discovered Goss in an anthology- a short story that I enjoyed so much that I immediately looked her up on Twitter and discovered her first book was coming out. I wish I could now remember what the short story was! I'd love to reread it.

One day earlier this year a package arrived in the mail, unlooked for- always the best kind! My brother-in-law's family, so Pallas and Naia's cousins, had sent us a book they really enjoyed. We had just outgrown our habit of reading aloud to the kids every night- we now read together but each their own book. I think my brother and sister-in-law read it to their kids that way. It's called The Green Ember. It's about rabbits, and is slightly easier to read than Watership Down, a book I read as an adult and had a hard time with. It was really dark, as I recall. The Green Ember is not as dark, though certainly has that fairy tale non aversion to violence, if that's fair to say.

Alright gotta go get some reading in. Ahsoka arrives tomorrow! 

 

 I haven't gone anywhere in forever but it's been an eventful few days. I mean, sort of. It's about to be, that's for sure.

First, online stuff. I signed up for a MOOC today out of my Alma Mater, the good old University of Alberta. It's called Indigenous Canada. Maybe you've seen Dan Levy tweet about it. It's really good so far. Some years ago I took what we wound up affectionately calling the #superMOOC which was about gender and sexuality in comic books, and that was really valuable and interesting. Indigenous representation, respect and reconciliation is something I'm very interested in and have been for a while, so this seems like kind of the bare minimum of something I should do before I go much further in writing Indigenous characters while not appropriating or being otherwise inappropriate.

Another very cool thing that came along at just the right time for me was a quote I got from one of the most recent episodes of Brené Brown's podcast, Unlocking Us- the one with wrier Gabby Rivera. I could just write the quote out but I think you should listen for yourself. It will jump out at you if you are a writer. And if you aren't or don't have the time or whatever multitude  of other reasons, leave a comment and I will tell you in the comments. It gave me life today.

What else. I got a professional logo made for The Ursus Verses, which is something I was waiting on before going ahead with the print edition. The logo I made in Word was alright just to get something out there but for a print version I knew I needed something professional. I'm quite pleased with it and stay tuned I am sure I will show it to you soon. Also leave a comment if you want to preorder the print version of volume 1 of The Ursus Verses, available already in ebook format on Amazon and Kobo. 

And I've said it on social media all over the place so this probably isn't news but I just realized I never said anything on the blog- on Friday we are getting a bear cub! Well, a puppy that looks just like a bear cub. Her name is Ahsoka and here is a picture because omg she is the cutest thing ever. I love her! Can't wait until Friday.

"If your story is about what your story is about, you're in trouble."

 -Robert McKee, paraphrased

I'm writing a story that's pure fun. Getting back to the joy of writing, for me. It's essentially a kaiju story, but hopefully one that's never been done before. It's also a love letter to heavy metal and is all about kick-ass women kicking ass. Among other things.  But at its heart, it is about fighting a monster. 

And that's really it. I realized the main characters don't really grow or change, or have any conflict amongst themselves.... they just start out kicking ass and end up kicking asser. 

The only real challenge for me as a writer has been figuring out how to manifest a giant robot using nothing but the awesome power of heavy metal! I tried googling that but it wasn't as informative as I would have liked. 

So as I write I'm also editing and adding stuff in, that's what we do, right? Write! Right! I think if I add just a touch of a character flaw that can be worked through, and maybe a minor interpersonal conflict, it will be a stronger story. I hope so! I freely admit that characterization has never been my strongest suit as a writer, though of course I'm working on it and hopefully getting better all the time.

The books in the photo have been helpful to me, though it's actually been quite a while since I read them, and I could benefit from a reread of a few of them. Bossk was flabbergasted about the Seven Basic Plots one- as far as he's concerned the only plot that matters is Bossk Gets Bounty.

Are you working on a story? Have any writing weaknesses you're working on?

 4 1/2 Writing Lessons Learned from the Boardgame Design Realm

On Instagram I finally changed my bio away from coal-mining stuff. It now says "Boardgamer. Also a writer." Little bit of modesty maybe in putting writing second, but boardgames is a huge love of mine. I spend as much time as I can get away with playing games, and when I can't I'm still consuming bg-related media, especially podcasts. I dipped a toe in the boardgame designer space though only as, at best, a tertiary hobby. Writing is the thing I am best at so I am choosing to focus on that. But, here are some lessons I've gleaned from over there that I think translates pretty well to the writing life, since both are, after all, about creativity.

1. Rapid Iteration: the doctrine in bg-design is to prototype rapidly. Have an idea? Cobble something together out of lint and whatever other odds and ends you have laying around and get something to the table, just to see if the idea is any fun and worth pursuing. Doesn't have to be pretty- in fact, making it pretty is a waste of time at this point in the process. I have a story in 40 Below Volume 2 that I wrote in one sitting and that didn't require any revision. I know, right? Why can't it always be so easy? I want it to be, but waiting for that to happen is actually hindrance, and I've started just writing a fast first draft by hand in a notebook, not worrying about making it polished at all. This tells you right away if you have a story worth working on. And it counts as writing, I think. Maybe even the most important kind of writing. 

2. Playtesting. There's this one podcast I listen to, the Board Game Design Lab, where if you made a drinking game out of every time they say "playtesting"you would die of alcohol poisoning in like five minutes. Playtesting means getting as many people as possible to play your (now much more polished) prototype so they can give you feedback, including feedback such as 'This game really sucks!'. Once you have a working draft get as many beta-readers and proofreaders as possible before sending it away. This is kind of tricky though, since reading someone's unfinal work isn't a huge priority for a lot of people. In playtesting it's the same problem so the advice is be a generous playtester so that you aren't always saying "hey try my game I gotta go bye!" Offer to read other writers' work. But offer good feedback too, which is a whole skill all on its own, for sure.

3. Play a Lot of Games: this is the best homework ever. Heck yeah I'll play a lot of games to learn about how to make them! The parallel is obvious- read widely. Read lots. Just read. It will make you a better writer. When I was a kid and read The Lord of the Rings for the first time, I immediately wrote my first stab at a fantasy story- it was about these creatures (that looked just like the mystics from The Dark Crystal which I also loved) who had.... ten rings.... and they had to . . . you know. . . probably destroy the rings so the dark lord . . . of course it was crap. Read read read and not just the same type of thing you love already, branch out and read stuff you wouldn't otherwise be interested in. It all goes into your mental cauldron and the soup that comes out is yum and unique to you.

4. Steal, copy, pillage and plunder. In boardgames, there are only so many gameplay mechanics, and though innovation does happen, it is completely acceptable to design a worker placement game about vikings even though there are already a ton of worker placement games about vikings. Maybe replace Vikings with zombies. But you take from here and you take from there and remix it and now it's new. This is ok in the bg industry. 

BUT

4 1/2 Make sure the best part of your game isn't something you stole from another game: Don't just reskin a game and sell it. Plagiarism is bad. As in my example with the ten-ring mystic creatures, simple regurgitation isn't cool. Add something new, something unique to bring to your story. You have a unique voice, and I want to hear it! This advice I can attribute directly to JB Howell, whose game Reavers of Midgard (a worker placement game about vikings!) is pictured below.

 Just went live on Kobo as well.