I’ve also been working on my first novel. Oddly enough, I posted exactly a year ago saying I was almost finished with this book. And I was. Sort of. Because this is my first novel, I really wanted to take my time and do as good of a job as I could. Nearly every day, as Tom can attest, I’ve worked on this thing. It’s been written 3 times — last year when I posted, I had only written it twice. Every time I rewrote the story, I learned a ton about writing.

This final version is the final and best version, and I am going to submit it to some agents to see what happens. I feel stressed, but what do I have to lose? The worst (and most likely) outcome is that they will say no. If that happens, I’ll go another route – self publishing or internet or whatever.

At the time of this post, I have two chapters left to write and then I need to go through and finish my edits. The first three chapters are pretty much done and I’ve been passing them around. I even already have fans in my church, if you can believe that. It’s a weird feeling to know that I have fans, but it’s really encouraged me.

The book is called “The Fourth Channel” (sorry, I don’t know how to underline in HTML) and if you’re interested in taking a peek at the first chapter, post a comment below or send me an email.

I’m very excited about having this book done. Already my brain is churning over the next book, which is actually the practice book I had been working on before this one. A few days ago, I woke up at 3AM, and the first chapter just hit me. The idea is an exciting new and gritty start to the story, giving it a whole new flavor and tons of possibilities, and I’m excited to get going. Now that I’ve learned so much working on this current book, I expect new projects to go a lot faster. At least, I hope.

In gaming news, I’m sure it hasn’t escaped anyone’s attention that I disappeared from WoW yet again. Sorry. I’ve been playing a PS3 game called Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice. It’s a strategy game, which appeals to me because I loved Final Fantasy Tactics. Disgaea is similar in that it’s a strategy game, but it’s like FFT on crack. So when I’m playing games, I’ve been playing that. Maybe I’ll get back into WoW, but I think I’m nurturing a healthy fear of Sabe hitting level 80 and, if I invest a couple more hours into her, that’s what she’ll be.

And yes, she’s still dressed like the Ghost of Arenas Past.

My sound room is also done. In my spare time (har) I’ve been working on elements for a music project that is going to be coming very soon. Not much to say about that yet, but soon.

More to come, and hopefully some food related topics! Tom and I have a lot of cookouts and BBQ’s on the social calendar so I’ll have a wealth of photos and recipes to share… So stay tuned.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I’m back in World of Warcraft. My druid has been transferred to a new roleplaying server to be with Kerry, Jeff, Bob, and Mel, who have integrated themselves into a gigantic guild. Like a faithful lemming on a cliff, I’ve joined, too. I won’t give you the guild name, but I will say that it’s horde (of course) and has 5,000+ members.

Yeah. Needle in a haystack, man. I cope by setting up a separate window just to collect guild chat and announcements, and then I mostly ignore it. No, that’s not typically the way I like my guild participation to be, but for now it works.

For the most part, it’s the same kind of people on every other server. And, with a high-population server, first and second rate avatar names are already taken, so most people use what’s left.

Even if it was spelled correctly, what the crap is a CHASTITY HEART? A heart wrapped in gigantic, steel panties?

No, thanks. I’ll just stick with the generic one.

Life on a roleplaying server is a little weird. I didn’t really know what awaited me — a Tolkenesque world of imagination and adventure?

Nope.

I was really in the mood to play a noob toon (Mom: that’s slang for “brand new, low level character”), so I created a blood elf priest.

YEAH, I MADE PRETTY BLOOD ELF, YOU WANT TO MAKE SOMETHING OF IT? MY MAIN CHARACTERS ARE A GREEN ORC WITH UGLY HAIR AND A HUGE COW AND I WANTED SOMETHING A LITTLE DIFFERENT! Geez. It’s not like anyone creates these characters for moronic titillation.

Or maybe they do.

So I’m running around, minding my own business, when the general zone chat starts to act up. And when I say “act up” I mean “people acting retarded”. Or maybe I’m the one with the problem. Maybe I have an idea of how roleplaying should go in a video game, and these individuals were trying to expand my horizons.

But I doubt it.

So it starts out with these two not-really-roleplaying-retards, Angel and Shadowlands.

For some reason I thought we were angry, mean elves out for power and glory, and not channeling the world of Paula Deen.

I wasn’t the only one gagging at this. Enter Charmcaster.

Sorry, SPORT. This here’s some serious roleplaying and they’re about to jack up the action!

You know I have to get in on this.

I’d also like to know what the hell a TEGUILA is, but some things just aren’t meant to be!

And he did go away… for about 30 seconds. Apparently, his barfy affection for Angel couldn’t keep a roleplaying Rico Suave like him away for long, and he came right back — but that conversation was really boring and my interest waned for a bit.

Angel was nice enough to take a poll to make it easier for the zone noobs to hook up. Or something. I’m not sure what the point of that was and, judging by the looks of things, no one else did, either.

I didn’t think anyone was taking the conversation seriously anymore, and that was fine because I was just happy it was over. Or so I thought.

I leveled up and needed some spells, so I wandered into the inn where my trainer was stationed. As soon as I got to the front door of the inn, the chat spam starts filling up my window. Only it’s not being relayed over general chat, it’s happening upstairs in the inn, in an upstairs bedroom, right next to the NPC I need.

And here’s the level of genius we are now dealing with:

Because pr0n is real!

I run upstairs to my trainer and see two male toons and one female toon in there, sitting on random beds. And just as I’m wondering how old these kids actually are, I see this:

You think? Better wait for the engraved invitation. Do you know the secret handshake, because you’re going to need that, too.

The best part is that the female character was Charmcaster, the individual who was blasting our fabulous roleplaying duo earlier in the evening. I decide to stick around to hear what happened. It turns out I had just shown up for the casting couch portion, and Charmcaster (who I’m pretty sure is actually a dude IRL) was being asked about the size of her/his assets.

I can only guess that the two boys who were trying to roleplay/cyber Charmcaster were around the age of 11. I probably should have shouted out that my bra was a size “R”. They probably would have believed me.

And then for some reason it got really explicit to the point where I was uncomfortable, so I’m not going to post that stuff. But here’s some of the funny bits. You should be able to guess what the overall conversation was about. Or maybe not. I don’t think THEY knew what the conversation was about, to be honest.

Dude! It’s like FLEM! 4srs! Or maybe you’re retarded virgins who are so young, I might get arrested just for listening to this garbage.

I don’t know, man. Is that going to be enough?

I kept saying I was going to log out because I couldn’t stomach much more, but then the conversation started to get good. And by good, I mean ridiculous. And then Bob had a great suggestion for me — create a little ambiance!

Unfortunately they weren’t amused when they heard my contribution to the affair, because Charmcaster ran away, right past me, without any clothes on, and out of the inn.

And the red, shouting chat-spam began as our young perverts chased Charmcaster across the zone. My work was done at that point and I logged out for the night.

The end.

Today we took our final exam, and I feel somewhat good about it. I got into class early enough that I could flip through my flash cards one last time as a refresher right before the test – very important for me because the dates sometimes escape me, and it’s good to re-read those little, last details. You know. So, despite the snow, I got in early, sat down and started flipping through my cards. Three minutes before class starts, I still had a small stack to go through, but the instructor stands up and says, “Okay, we’ve got three minutes before the final, so everyone put your things away and move your bags and books to the sides of the room.”

Um… lolwut?

I quickly (and frantically) flip through three or four of the cards sitting directly on top of my stack and and reluctantly put everything away. The test then started early.

Luckily for me, the 10 identify slides she put up were ones I had looked through that morning, so I managed to get them all right. Hopefully I mentioned all of the terminology she wanted and will get full credit for everything. You never know though, because on my first exam she wrote “Excellent, I couldn’t ask for more!” and gave me a 96.

And before you ask, yes, I’m still wondering where my other 4 points are.

Otherwise, I have very few other complaints… but here’s one. (Ha!) A month ago, we all turned in a five-page paper (12 pt. font, double-spaced, so… 2 pages of actual text?). We didn’t receive them back until today, after we turned in our final exams. When she handed me mine, she said, “Great job.” I said thanks, took it and walked away. The front page said “A”. Inside… no notes. No number. An arbitrary A-grade. Who knows what that means — full credit or the “couldn’t ask for more, here’s your 96″? I don’t know!

But beyond that, I think everything went okay and unless something mysterious happens to my test I will receive my A. Lots of changes happening for me right now so I’m debating whether or not I even want to take the CAD class next semester. I probably will because it’s all project-based and will give me a break from paper-based study.

A couple of random items… I’m working on some new things that have me very excited right now. This coming Tuesday, one of my friends, Dan, (who is also my guitarist) is coming over to measure out a section of the basement so we can build a sound room. Once it’s up I can make noise and write music without having to worry about Tom overhearing. (Making him wear headphones and blast metal just isn’t working for me — I need a room of my own to create in.) So that’s another project on top of my other projects. Right now it’s my priority so I’m very excited.

I also started playing WoW again and transferred my druid to, um, that server Kerry’s on. Her name has been changed (yet again) to Sodi. I also started another noob shaman named Saere so those of you on the new server can find me. Ken and Ed are still on Agg, and I’ve still got toons there so I can hang out with them…

…but only a little. I’m very busy and strangely addicted to Fat Princess on PS3. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you also know I’ve been trying out a little Assassin’s Creed 2, though Tom and I are trying to figure out why the game has such a good rating. It’s a long, long time before you get to the good part of stabbing anyone and the story is lamesauce.

Yeah, and unfortunately I don’t have any screenshots. As I said earlier, I’ve been wanting to play some new games and have been tinkering around with a few others. Inexplicably, I loaded up Hellgate again. And every day, Tom would say, “Oh, so you’re playing that game that you hate?”

Yep.

So I made another sword chick and started chopping up post-apocalyptic London. Her name: SnoCone. (Pink Cupcake was taken by another toon, so I had to go with SnoCone.) Things were going relatively well for an entire 30 levels — yes, I was level 30! Then I got to the final “Test” quest, where you take control of an obnoxiously inept robot and blast your way through a street. When you get the robot to the end of the street, regardless of whether or not you killed anything at all in your path, you win, hooray.

Only I was so annoyed with said inept robot that I clicked the option to exit the robot and restart the quest. I ended up back at the beginning of the street, out of the robot. And that was fine except that I HAD NO BODY. No matter what I did, I had no body. I was just a mindless essence floating around, unable to do anything. I couldn’t even get into the portal. So I quit out of the game and when I came back… My quest log showed I was in the middle of the quest and NOTHING would let me get back into the robot, because apparently the game thought I was still inside the robot. I killed everything on my own and ran to the end of the street, stood in the portal where the robot is supposed to go… Nothing. Needless to say, this is one of those disastrous, show-stopping bugs that the game was so widely criticized for.

So I did the desperate thing that you know you are absolutely NOT supposed to do (I don’t even know why they make it an allowable option): I abandoned the main story quest line.

Which abandoned everything I had done up until that point. There is no way to get the original quest back, because the original quest line begins in a small training area that is closed off once you leave the area.

Level 30! No way to progress the game any further!!! What a piece of crap!!!!!! And you know what the worst part of all is????

I started a new swordmaster named SlapChop.

You’re right, you’re right. I should have named her MissParsley.