To-Do Eternity

Almost forgot about this thing.

So, last week was another hard focus on classwork and writing new things for my fiction workshop. I'm building up a story from a first line I wrote for a reddit thread last year. I took a quick diversion from it last week, and wrote something incredibly disjointed and it wasn't as well received. So this week I'm going to be working up the rest of my original story.

I'm a little bummed that it's a workshop for literary fiction, but it's refreshing finally not writing something so mired in genre tropes. Even though I try to write genre fiction like a literary fiction comic book, so you know, ripping off Alan Moore.

In videogame news, I've been screwing around in The Division with my friend instead of being productive in my off time. I reopened up my twitch.tv account and am going to start streaming when I'm playing on the ole' XBone. As for now, I've got about 6 hours of playing Division and 2.5 of me tooling around in Fallout 4. I haven't touched Devil May Cry 2 or Resident Evil Revelations 2 either. But I'm definitely going to be doing a broadcast through the TellTale Games collection and the new Fallout 4 DLC.

I'm all set up with my new computer, so I've at least opened up my word file for chapter 5 to get back to rewrites. Entering into the second quarter of the year, I need to get a move on that business. Life is full of possibilities and adventures, but that means I have less time for writing. I'll be back to posting new material soon.

Until next week folks. I've got some work ahead of me.

And my dog is getting his teeth cleaned today. Here's a picture of his stinky face.

Having an average weekend.

Hey gang, sorry for being so silent (if anyone is reading).

The last two weeks have been some despairing lows and hopeful highs. My lows mostly consisted of feeling directionless, existential angst, and the feeling of loss over an old friend whom I hadn't seen in years, and finding out that she had just died of cancer. It really hit me hard, since you never really think of someone you know as disappearing from the world forever until it happens. You can joke about it, but when it happens, it's such a blow to reality that it's hard to adjust to. I will say it lit a fire under my ass to be even more productive since awful things can happen whenever, and you don't want to be left standing unprepared when it comes.

So I finally transferred into University. Instead of waiting for CSUN to get around to accepting me so I can sit in a class for maybe 4 more years, I signed on for online classes at ASU. So far, using an online interface is so much nicer than having to be the only one paying attention in a sea full of blank faced droolers fresh from high school staring at their phones. So I decided on finishing my original goal of getting my degree in English, focusing on creative writing. I've already been too long without a degree, and getting by for a decent day job these days isn't as easy as it used to be.

And of course with the enrolling of online classes, the charger of my laptop broke, so I used it as an excuse to upgrade at last. I'd been using a Chromebook for 4 years anyway. I needed something that I could do some real work on.

So, now I'm splitting time doing more reading and school work, opposed to doing more work on To Slice To Sky. Instead, I worked on editing a couple short stories for publication. Working on cleaning up the shorts I've previously released in Urban Legends and By Starlight for the omnibus collections once TSTS is released. The shorts I've been working on are meant to be published traditionally, but will also see light in the first short collection of The Lilim Chronicles wave 2.

I'm not really focused on creating anything new at the moment. More legitimizing my already completed work and getting it in front of eyes. I finally feel like I'm in a place to make that magic happen, and am finally feeling hopeful for the future in a substantial way.

In videogame news, I've completed Devil May Cry 4, only have number 2 left to complete the series. DMC4 was a fun game to play, and would love to have seen Nero and the Devil Bringer/Exceed moves in another installment of the series. Going from Nero to Dante mid game really kinda feels like taking all the fun you've been having and holding it ransom to play through the game backwards before you get the privilege to play again. DMC4 mostly suffered from lopsided level design, and the enemies lack decent balancing. But the gameplay is so fun and fluid that it makes up for it.

So, yeah, depression, school, editing and videogames. Sounds like an average week for me. Have a dog picture.

Fuck titles, I'm not sharing this.

Almost forgot it was this part of the week again.

This week was an effective week in some regards, not so much in others. I finished beta-reading my friend's first work he finished. I've never really had the privilege of reading anything literary from one of my friends. It's interesting being able to read something and know what their influences are without having to dig for it. I found it to be a satisfying experience, and I'm glad he's putting some work into something creative again.

Haven't progressed any in my Resident Evil playthrough, but I've already cleared all but 2 Devil May Cry games. Last week I played DmC: Devil May Cry. This week I powered through Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening and Devil May Cry. I've Started up Devil May Cry 4, and only have no.2 to go after that. It helps that the games are meant to be completed as quickly as possible. But I'll be hot damned if DMC3 and the original didn't have me work for that ending.

The blog is late since I just started working on chapter 5 of To Slice The Sky's rewrites. I've been rewriting chapter 1 again, and I feel it's considerably stronger this time around. I'm not going to post it, because I've already done a chapter 1, but I'm looking at having to change up some stuff in chapters 2 and 3 because of the changes. It's a lot faster, less boring infodump crap, and also gives my stalwart aging punk rocker that I keep throwing into everything, Johnny Marko, another introduction. He pops up in the later chapters as well, so I figured it'd be better to introduce him early instead of waiting for it and relying on outside material.

I don't have anything else positive to say right now though. I've been on a downswing into depression which has only been progressing with all the awful news that keeps popping into my personal life. And as of right now, I really don't feel like saying anymore. I really don't feel like going all dramatic in my writer blog about the inner turmoil I'm currently experiencing, because if I start now, it's never going to stop.

All I can say is everyone you meet in your life will effect you in some way, and when you realize it, you'll wish you did the same to them.