And Now for a Bit of Bragging

Those of you who know me to any great degree are probably well aware of the fact that I am extremely loath to talk myself up. It’s something that’s never really come naturally to me, to the point that tooting my own horn will outright make me uncomfortable sometimes. It even gets to the point where I’ll downplay myself enough to reach the point of putting myself down. I’ve never been able to understand why I’m so reluctant to brag about myself or speak of how I might actually be good at certain things; I suppose it’s just a part of what makes me me, and while I’m better about it than I used to be, I’ll probably behave this way until I’m in my grave.

However…

My regular readers will be aware that the community college at which I’m a student recently held a creative writing contest, as they do every year. I didn’t enter it last year, as I forgot about it until after the deadline, but this year I made a point to enter the maximum two short stories for the Fiction category. One of them was the zombie story I wrote for Halloween, with a few tweaks after I published it here at the Chef’s Hat. The other was essentially an edited-down (to fit the contest’s 2,000-word limit) version of the second half of the hero-free western that I posted this past summer. I submitted them right before the deadline and waited to see what would happen.

The deadline was November 10th. Nothing on the entry form indicated a window in which the winners would be announced, nor did my instructors know. And so, as time went on, I simply resigned myself to the fact that they had alerted the winners, and since I was not alerted, I was not one of them. Oh well, I thought. I wasn’t out anything for entering. There’s always next year; I was planning on entering it then anyway.

I got home from class yesterday afternoon at around four o’clock. I checked my school e-mail, as I do when I get home, and I find this waiting for me in my inbox:

I almost had to change my pants. Almost.

As should be obvious, “The Bloody Gold” was the title I gave to the western, and “The Dead Still Scream” was the title I gave to the horror story. For getting second place, you can see from that part of the e-mail displayed in the screenshot that I’m automatically entered into a statewide writing contest. I’ve also won $75, which is nothing to sneeze at. While it mentions “a record number of [entries],” it doesn’t say what that number was, so I don’t know how many students I beat out to not only get second place, but an honorable mention for my other story.

It was quite the shock, and to be honest, I’m still not quite sure I believe it. I’ve received congratulations from my literature instructors (word gets around in the ol’ English department, I guess), and needless to say, I’m rather proud of myself. It looks as though I can’t downplay my talent quite as much anymore, since it would seem that what talent I do have is worth something. It’ll be nice to think of this when I have those moments when I feel like my writing isn’t worth much. It’ll certainly help to motivate me to write for pleasure, which I should be able to do a little bit more of once the semester ends next week.

And so, if you’ll permit me one of my rare moments of egotism, I’m feeling pretty damn good about myself right now.

The Awakening

I slow things down a little bit for this Brandstone story. There’s no action in this one. No one fights and no one dies. I wanted to spend at least one story to quietly grow his character a little bit–let him examine the things he’s done and perhaps sow the seeds for his growth in the future. Rith’s druid Elianore makes her first appearance in this story; this serves as a brief introduction, and I intend to more thoroughly flesh out her character as the stories progress. The other three members of the “party,” Shadowmane, Mills, and Cogspark, are all products of my imagination and are reflections of no preexisting toons.

Enjoy.

A Little Something for Halloween

This is my first attempt to write a horror story. It’s an idea that had been swimming around in my head for a while, but as of late I haven’t felt the inspiration or the motivation to write anything. I’d tried to turn the idea into words a few times over the last couple of weeks, but every time I sat down to write this it just felt wrong and I would erase it a few hundred words in. Last night, though, I was finally able to get it out of my head and onto “paper,” so to speak. I still don’t know if it’s any good, which is where I hope you’ll come in.

Not only was this a story that I wanted to write for myself, it is a story that I plan on entering into the short story contest I mentioned a post or two back. (You can enter two stories in the “Fiction” category, and I was planning on modifying one of my previously-posted westerns for my second entry.) That explains why this story is a bit shorter than my others have been; the contest has a pretty firm maximum of two thousand words per fiction entry. I always like feedback on my work, even if I don’t receive very much of it. So I humbly ask that if you read this, leave a comment or shoot me a line on Twitter or the like. Constructive feedback is always appreciated, and that goes double for this post. If I decide to enter this into that contest, the deadline of which is the 10th, I want it to be as polished as possible.

I hope you enjoy it.

Yes, I’m Still Alive

It’s been a while since my last post. There are myriad reasons for this: Lack of ideas, lack of motivation, being generally busy, etc. I thought that it would be a good idea to write a little something in order to keep this blog from going completely dead. This won’t be a post about any one thing in particular, but rather a collection of things that have gone on recently that I feel like relating to you.

A Historic Inconvenience

It started about a year ago, give or take, when I received a letter from the county informing me that I had been entered into the system for jury service. I don’t know what it’s like in other places, but here that means that you fill out a questionnaire (standard bureaucratic questions) and send it back. You’re then in the system for a year, in which you could at any time receive another letter, with another questionnaire, informing you that you’ve been selected for a week of service, during which you must call in every day to see if the group in which they’ve placed you is needed for a jury selection. Since they don’t start trials every day, the possibility exists that you could go that week without being called in, and then the process would have to start all over again with your receiving that first letter sometime in the future, which could very well be years.

The Duel

After five months, I’m finally posting the next Brandstone story. I apologize for the wait; my editor’s schedule and mine didn’t always match up, so it took a little while for us to coordinate a Skype session. As far as content, the stories should be kicking into high gear with this one; I look for Brandstone’s development to begin in earnest now. I’ve also taken some liberties for the sake of narrative and storytelling; I hope that those liberties aren’t distracting. It’s also interesting to see how my skills have developed in just these past few months; going over this five-month-old story, I could definitely see the differences in how I write now. Enjoy.

A Letter for Eric

I’m back to Warcraft-related stories for this one, although this one is not based on any of my characters. Rather, it’s a simple one-off that came to me the other day. Stories of this type have doubtless been told many times before, but I didn’t let that keep me from writing it. I wanted to tell a story that’s more personal than my Brandstone stories, in the sense that the themes explored therein are more relatable than a death knight’s search for vengeance. It’s the kind of story that could easily be set in other places, even in the westerns that I’ve been writing. I enjoy these kinds of stories; I may return to them in one genre or another one day.

The Night John Came Back

In the intro to the last short western that I wrote and published here, I mentioned that the western is the closest thing to a uniquely American mythology. I wanted to indulge that a little more in this story. It began, as most of my stories do, with a single image coming into my head and refusing to leave. In this case, I had had the final scene of this story–or a close approximation of it, at least–in mind for a long time, and I finally decided to expand on it and write a story around it. The objective here was to present a story in the same vein as films such as “High Plains Drifter” or “Pale Rider” in that there is a mystical element within the western setting. Whether or not the results are effective, I believe that at the very least the premise is interesting.

Fiery Bits of Patchy Patchnitude

Since my last WoW-related post, I’ve made a little bit of progress. I reached Exalted with Therazane and Baradin’s Wardens on my hunter, as well as found and tamed Skoll and Terrorpene, both of whom were simply sitting there waiting for me to find them. I did a little bit of searching for other rare spawns, but to no avail. My playing time has consisted pretty much solely of doing daily quests, grinding rep and currency for items.

Patch 4.2 has been live for a little over a week now, and I’ve had a chance to examine some of the new content. By “some,” I mean the new daily hubs. I’m enjoying them so far; I think they did a good job showing the attempts to hold off the assault in Hyjal while at the same time establishing a foothold in the Firelands. I look forward to seeing how the story develops as the quests progress. A couple of the vendors at the end even have items I could use.

It’s pretty unlikely that I’ll be seeing the Firelands raid anytime soon. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my hunter’s guild is dead; most nights it consists of one other person and I on, and we keep mostly to ourselves save the occasional congratulating for an achievement. Rith’s on a road trip with her family; I may move my hunter over to her guild when she gets back, we’ll see. I haven’t done any dungeons since the Heroic I mentioned in my last WoW post. They may not be as difficult as they were at the beginning of the expansion, but I still hear enough horror stories to make me hesitant to do them with complete strangers. As much as I’d like to see that content, the potential stress isn’t worth it. I have to laugh when I realize that content that’s “current” for me has been old hat to most people for a while now, almost to the point that Wrath Heroics were, if the anecdotes are to be believed. I admit that it’s nice not having to always set aside blocks of time each week; there are times when it’s good to be able to just hop on when I feel like it for how long I feel like it, but it’s hard not to get a little jealous sometimes when I hear people talk about raids and hard modes and the like. Granted, I was never in a guild that did hard modes, but I can’t help but have little twinges of envy every now and then.

I like to do the best that I can with what I have, though, even when the most challenging thing I typically do is a quest wherein I have to kill an elite. It’s a bit disappointing, however, that the majority of the resources that I find are designed around what’s best for endgame: tailoring a build around a certain hard mode boss fight, reforging based on raid-level gear, that kind of thing. It’s been rather difficult to find out how which stats I should favor given my hunter’s spec and item level, or how to best approach tanking on my 83 death knight. The closest that I’ve been able to find is Mr. Robot, though I have to take its word that the information it gives me is accurate.

None of this should be interpreted as complaining; I still like the game and have plenty to do. It just feels odd to be as out of the loop as I am in terms of content seen.

Story Time Once More

I thought I would try something in the same vein as the stories I’ve been writing recently, but with a twist that I, at least, find interesting. The Old West bank robbery is, like the high noon shootout, more Hollywood than history. The thing about the western, though, is that it’s the closest thing the United States has a mythology all its own, despite its relative recent place in history. And so even when historical liberties are taken, the genre can prove itself to be a breeding ground for wonderful stories. And so I’ve taken advantage of the bank robbery trope for this story, and added what I hope is an interesting touch of my own style. Enjoy.