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About to Have Dinner First

For the first time in my gaming history, I’ve joined a raiding group working on high end content in an MMO. It has been a wonderful experience gaming alongside my brothers (one of who is leading the group) as well as some fascinating new friends who joined specifically for this content. We’re working on Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers first raid tier, Eden Savage, and while we’ve not completed the tier yet, we’re having a good time working on it.

A quick rundown of what this content is for those not familiar: The (Savage) content in FFXIV are special versions of fights in which a party of eight players are expected to handle complex mechanics, deal with a boss that has much more health than normal bosses, and have a number of extra surprises thrown at them that the average player doesn’t have to deal with. It’s optional content that can lead to bragging rights, achievement accolades, special treasure rewards like mounts, minions, and music, as well as access to dyeable versions of outfits non-raiding players won’t be able to access for some time (Glamour is the true end game). They push the limits in terms of how much damage players can do as a team, what healers and tanks can survive through, all while dancing to the rhythm of the fight’s design.

It’s been a good experience dealing with my first raiding team. The eight of us are working on fight three now after spending five weeks wearing down the difficulty surrounding fight two (we cleared fight one our first week together). There’s been annoyance, snarling, and an occasional need to just step away for a few minutes with the frustration of how challenging these fights are to newbie raiders, but there’s nothing quite like the thrill of hearing all of us cheer in glee when we knock out a boss. So many of us are new to raiding overall or new to raiding in FFXIV that our expectations are all over the map in terms of what we hope to accomplish, but we’re learning the quirks of jobs, of our role within the team, and of where we stand as a blossoming community.

Oh, the name? Yeah, our raid team is named About to Have Dinner First, shorthanded to Dinner First in most content. Blame our lead, Enthnal for that. When he was organizing this party, he asked me to come up with names. I obliged by offering to come up with names after I eat, because I was quote “about to have dinner first.” And he Dad joked that into our charter. So here we are, Dinner First. Stranger names have come out from worse.

Since we’ve been keeping at this for so long, I’ve now started to make some art to help identify us better. To give us a sense of community and growing as a team. Here’s our first desktop banner just finished today:

I’m rather proud of it. The icons on the top are our jobs in the order of tanks, healers, and then DPS. There’s more I’d like to add such as a banner for the trials we’ve cleared together, the challenges we’ve beaten up, and a list of our roster. All of that will come in time, no rush. We’re off to have this boss fight for Dinner First.

-null

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Late Fall Updates

We’ve been hitting NaNoWriMo pretty hard this year. Because of my involvement with an awesome group of writers, I’m hitting my goal of 2500 words a day with very little issue. They’ve convinced me writing sprints are the way to go and it shows in my word count.

Okay, let’s answer a few things.

First, what’s NaNoWriMo?

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing. 

On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 PM on November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm, determination, and a deadline, NaNoWriMo is for anyone who has ever thought about writing a novel.

https://nanowrimo.org/about

I’ve been a participant in NaNoWriMo for eight years now, and many of my works started out with this month of slamming out the words. DA: Doppelganger certainly did, it was my 2015 project. My first completed novel happened back in 2011, although that one hasn’t quite seen the light of day yet. So it comes as no surprise that book 2 of Draco Artifactium is coming together this month. We’re not even halfway through November and we’re over halfway to the NaNoWriMo goal of 50k words. This is but a fraction of what Book 2 will hold, but it serves as a foundation to the novel.

So what does this mean for the future?

I’m looking at getting Book 2 out early next year. Ideally, we’ll see the draft completed in the late December or early January. Once that’s out of the way we’re going to start polishing plans for book 3 and then jump into editing and setting book 2’s second draft and publishing draft. After that, prep for publication and onward to getting this trilogy tied together.

After that, we’ll see where the road takes me. If there’s significant interest in the world of Manta, we might keep playing there. There are other worlds I have in development, but right now Micara has my mind, and I need to see at least this first set of adventures through.

Okay, time to get back to those words. Those daily counts aren’t going to get themselves written.

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Status Update

I started today with a strange dilemma. My work day typically begins with loading up a stable of programs I use in relation to writing or editing the current novel project. Word for the core writing content, Scrivener for compiling, OneNote for my world building Wiki, Excel for a few of the math world building factors. It takes a few moments to get them all situated and where I like them on my displays, but in the past two years of work I’ve become adapt at getting started. Today, however, I’m having to pause because the routine is broken. You see, that novel is currently done.

I started the novel (Let’s just call it code name DAD for now) years ago, when I started braining storming a setting had started high fantasy but moved into a cyberpunk timeline. It wasn’t a copy of our own world, but many of the events that happened in our world would funhouse-mirror inside of Manta, just with the added factor of elves, orcs, dwarves, and elemental deities being a factor in world events. The threads of the story are almost a decade old, but the story of Micara, and her struggles in the city-state of New Castle were born back in 2014. By 2015, we had already created the first part of the book, part 2 came along in 2016, and March 2017 was the day the book was finished. A year came and went, and several surgeries later I was able to get back on task in March of 2018 to start the first full edit. Finally, after more than 4 years of writing, editing, world building, and podcasting, the book’s first edit draft came to fruition on July 2, 2018.

Is the book done yet? No. No, it’s currently at the editors, getting reviewed, poked, prodded, and overall ripped down and apart. I’m trying to not think about that too much because I’ve been in that book for so long. It’s hard for me to not want to think of the book as precious, but I have to distance myself from it. There will be more books in the future and I’m sure this will become an easier practice, but it’s the first one. That is special in its own right.

What next, then? Well this is a status update for July, let’s see what we’ve accomplished in the last month compared to our goals from May.

June Review

  • Writing – We accomplished the most important task here; finish the novel edits. Everything else was tertiary to that task. We didn’t do much here in the blog, nor over on Hiddennode, but that’s fine. Now’s the time between big project moments to get rolling with that.
  • Streaming – This has gone… poorly. I’m just not getting the population I want in here, and we’re coming up on our three-month deadline. It disappoints me, but I’m determined to not be broken by that disappointment. I’ve got a few new single player games I’m going to running with this week. Let’s see how they do (see below for details).
  • Podcasting – Hiddennode went the way of the blog. That’s okay. We’ll be picking it up soon. Hiddengrid/Codex podcast… That’s a long story, but one that I need to address in another post. I had ideas that didn’t work. That doesn’t mean I’m stopping.
  • Overall – We accomplished the most important task, but we slacked heavily in everything else. July is the chance to bring that forward. So let’s set some goals!

Writing

Focus: Short Story development

  • Bloggy activity
  • Short-Story-a-thon
  • Novel Concept

These three goals are meant to dominate my July. The blog content is meant to be the lifeline to my works to the rest of the world, or to sound more poetic “All roads lead through the blog.” The second goal focuses on the creation of short stories meant to sustain myself between the novels. While the novels are my flag ships, the shorts are meant to be teasers of content, tastes of my world, writing style, and way of thinking. I’m only supposed to write one per month, but hey if I can create a couple of them, I won’t be upset. Finally, I need to decide what to work on for the next novel. August is intended to be the month we outline and start book two. By the end of July I need to know what that concept will be.

Important links:

https://www.patreon.com/jsamueldiehl – sneak peeks, weekly updates, and more.

https://twitter.com/jsamueldiehl – Announcements and thoughts.

Streaming

Focus: Get on Schedule

  • Back to work
  • New Games
  • Schedule in place

The biggest problem with Streaming lately is I don’t keep to my schedule. That’s a flaw on my part I’m correcting this week. I’ll put out a post later this week with the new schedule listed. I’ve got several dozen games sitting in my Steam Library that I haven’t streamed yet, and keeping to my schedule will help me get through these. That’s really our goal for the month. The achievements I spoke about in May aren’t as important as just getting on schedule.

Important links:

https://www.twitch.tv/nulloperations – The official stream

https://twitter.com/nulloperations – Stream announcements and schedule changes

Podcasting

Focus: Hiddennode activity

  • The weekly audio -or- video log. We’re doing both on occasion.
  • StGM is going strong
  • New RPG content is delayed

June was a rough month for podcasting. July will have our Hiddennode return, but Codex and Hiddengrid needs some serious rethought. I’m iffy about those these days. I’ll have a workshop post later this month.

Important links:

http://www.hiddengrid.com/ – the podcast that was

http://www.hiddennode.com/ – the podcast that is

http://codexpodcast.com/ – the podcast that will be

https://www.patreon.com/hiddengrid/ – change is coming to this

July Goals

  • Short Stories
  • Weekly episodes of Hiddennode
  • Streaming Schedule
  • Weekly blog posts here
  • Weekly updates on both patreons

There’s a lot of good that happened in June, but we slacked here and there. July is about catching those issues and bring them back to the forefront. I’m not too panicked about those slips though because they took a back seat to the important editing project. That’s our flagship, and so it’s vital to be make the call to slice those off if they’re in the way. The flagship is currently docked through August and September, so it’s time for the skiffs to dot the lake.

I’m not sure where that metaphor is going. Boats I guess?

Okay, off to work. Have a great July and we’ll be back soon.

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Status Update

Let’s say it’s early May 2017. My wife is recovering from her hip replacement nicely, I’m still taking care of her but she’s getting stronger every day. I’m in between projects at the time, the plans being put on hold while I perform the important duties of household caretaker during her healing. One night, as I’m indulging in the grind for video game supremacy (really it was just trying to max level all jobs in Final Fantasy XIV before the Stormblood expansion drops), half of my left side vision drops. It’s like a curtain falling before my face and a cold fear fills my gut. I know what this is. I’ve seen this before.

It’s a retina detachment.

I debate what to do. Trish is recovering, but she still needs my help. If I go down for surgery I won’t be able to help her move about or take care of things around the house. I’ll be useless as caretaker and instead need a separate caretaker of my own. I’m quiet for the first few hours, but in the end I reveal my fears to her in the morning. She insists I go to my eye doctor. I relent, I go, but the doctor declares it’s just likely map dot fingerprint dystrophy. Nothing to be concerned about. Schedule an appointment with a retinalogist for next Friday and we’re good.

Cool. Nothing to worry about despite my vision darkening over the weekend. Nothing to worry about except that growing fear in my gut. I see the eye doctor at the specialist. Trish comes with me. She’s there when the gut punch come.

It is a retina detachment. No mistake this time.

There’s complications, issues with getting the surgery planned (What doctor can’t do surgery at a hospital?), and delays. I don’t have my surgery until early June.

The eye does not do well.

I’m out of sorts over the next year. Fear of loss of sight, the depression that sparked, my muddled mind between recovering from the anesthesia and pain meds after the surgery; it all adds up to a mess of creative garbage.

October comes, I have another surgery.

January comes, I have another surgery.

My vision isn’t restored. The eye isn’t dead, but it’s not working right. Daylight, bright lights, anything beyond a dimly lit room is rough for it. I wear a patch these days. Things are spinning.

But March comes. March brings with it desires for creativity. I start editing the book again, I start wanting to play role-playing games again, I want to do more than what I’ve been doing in the quagmire that’s been the past year, and I’m doing more. I’m doing this.

So after almost two years it’s time for a status report. The last one was July 2016, but it’s never too late to start back up. Because we’re starting back up we need to develop what we’re going to make the status report. I want this to be something valuable to me as well as followers of my content, so we’re going to start each report with a blotter on a given a section then thoughts on that section. Afterwards we’ll have a round up of what’s to come in the next month. Consider this our June 2018 update.

Writing

Focus: Editing Novel for publication

  • 61,515/136,966 words edited
  • We’ve completed part 1 of 3, and part 2 is editing smoothly
  • The blog is now relaunching

March saw us start the editing of DA:D, and the first third of the book held us up in April. We’re going to be doubling down in the coming days as I’d like to see part 2 finished by the beginning of June and have part 3 ready for Alpha Reading/Editing by no later than mid-month/the 15th. Once that happens we’ll pass this along to a few interested parties and then get started immediately with another novel. I’m still debating if I want to work on the TA.M. stuff or if I want to work on the J Samuel Diehl content. We’ll see.

Important links:

https://www.patreon.com/jsamueldiehl – sneak peeks, weekly updates, and more.

https://twitter.com/jsamueldiehl – Announcements and thoughts.

Steaming

Focus: Reaching Twitch Affiliate

  • Completed 2 of 4 needed achievements.
  • Completed 2 of 3 needed achievements for partner.

In early May we began streaming. This week marks our fourth week at the project, but it’s been slow going. I’m looking to expand my advertising of the stream over the next few days to try and draw people in. I also want to look into joining a community that might be able to assist with getting me into a group of active streamers. Admittedly this might mean pulling away from some of the normal folks I game with to get this occupation rolling.

Important links:

https://www.twitch.tv/nulloperations – The official stream

https://twitter.com/nulloperations – Stream announcements and schedule changes

Podcasting

Focus: Hiddennode reboot, StGM assistance, Starting the new RPG project

  • Hiddennode has been silent since November.
  • Seize the GM has reached a nice biweekly schedule
  • The New RPG podcast announcement is coming in a few minutes

We’ve been out of podcasting really since March of last year when Trish went into surgery. While we did some NaNoWriMo and Dog Days of Podcasting work, we couldn’t find the focus we needed to complete those projects. The Seize the GM work I’ve participated in is helping me to get back into the grove and the software I’m using for streaming will help me get recordings out the door quicker.

Important links:

http://www.hiddengrid.com/ – the podcast that was

http://www.hiddennode.com/ – the podcast that is

http://codexpodcast.com/ – the podcast that will be

https://www.patreon.com/hiddengrid/ – change is coming to this

http://www.seizethegm.com/ – Affiliated show, great RPG discussions. My voice returns in June/July

June Goals

  • Complete editing of Da:D
  • Weekly episodes of Hiddennode
  • Weekly episodes of Codex Podcast
  • Develop and stick to Streaming Schedule
  • Weekly blog posts here
  • Weekly updates on both patreons

The next six weeks are about getting on schedule. I’m cleaning up my language too going forward. I notice while writing these I say we, we’re, etc. I use a plural for myself when I should just say I, me, mine. I’m also taking out words like trying, going, or other “maybe” statements. The lack of definitive statements gives my mind the chance to “cheat” goals. I’ve built myself an out. So that’s two new June goals.

  • Stop using passive “maybe” language
  • Use definitive self-identifiers in my statements

I’m set to have a strong showing in June with these goals. With that the June Status Report is good to go. I hope you’ve stuck around long enough to read this, and if you have please leave me a comment. Feedback is something I’ve sought but haven’t asked for a ton. This time, I really mean it. Let me know if I’m reaching anyone out there. Let me know if my textual voice is carrying. I want to succeed, and I need your help to do it.

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The Beginning of the First Drafts

In early 2012 I finished my first novel. The working project name was the Key Worlds, and I think of it as a pretty solid story in the way I like to stage my three-act tales. I learned a lot about how I outline, how I write, and how I revise when I’m stuck from that book and three years it took me to write it. Six years, two months later, I’ve completed my second First draft novels and I’ve learned more about my process and what it takes for me to finish a story. This time I’m looking to do more than finishing a first draft. This time around I’m looking to get this sucker cleaned up, edited, and published. I’m about to make a number of mistakes, newbie flubs, and other screw ups I’ll have to fix on the back end, but I’m excited about it. So, excited that I want to share exactly what my plans are for the coming weeks. In Mile Markers, I talked about what some of those steps will be. I’m hesitant to give a time table for these events as I explain them but I will anyway just to give myself a bite of accountability.

Let’s talk laying a foundation first. Before I’m willing to let the book be edited or sent to anyone else to be read, I need to make sure the story is where I want it to be. Think of this as a skeleton. Do all the bones make sense? Can the creature even hold itself up? Can it walk? Run? I’ve got to make sure the base foundation for the story makes sense and that there’s not too many vestigial bones. A few of those are fine, as they can help lead to other stories, but there shouldn’t be too many that the story feels bogged down from them. That means step one is reading the book as is and seeing that these issues are handled. It’ll require some rewriting and cleaning but that comes later. First, we’re just identifying what goes where. Time table for this is to be done by the time this post goes live. I’ll add a comment to let you know if I knocked it out of the park.

Muscle comes next. The snappy strength that helps those parts move. Flavor and style of writing basically. Scanning what I have of the book and with previous micro-revisions, I know I’m solid with much of my exposition. When my narrator talks about the intricacies of New Castle, she presents a solid world that’s a character unto itself. I’m already pleased with those, and it means my fine motor control muscles in the story are strong. What’s lacking is some of the snap; the fighting, the conflict, the sex. I get too into the expansion stage with some of those scenes, and my narrator spends too much time explaining versus snapping into action and getting the fight done. Combat needs to be fast, dirty, and over. Guns end fights fast, and real fist fights aren’t delicate. They’re brutal, and she’s not Sherlock sitting there explaining the math of what’s happening to the combatant’s bones as she is twisting his arm off. Forgot the dissertation. Just hear the pop and scream. Fixing these scenes will come with the second draft. As I’m identifying where the bones need to go I’ll string the muscles along the joints and tendons to make sure the creature moves as a smooth jogging pace. The time table to conclude this step is early May. For fun, we’ll say the 1st for now.

Now can that creature sing? One of the things I noticed with the first draft was the inconsistency with voices for some of the characters, and that’s an issue I’ll be addressing after the second draft is set. This dialogue pass will have me go through the revised novel and make sure each character sounds like who she or he is meant to. I’m not suggesting the way a character speaks can’t be adjusted but I want the slang of someone born in New Castle to be true, versus someone who travelled a lot as a kid, or someone whose first language isn’t Central Speak. It will also give me a chance to work on dialogue for those other parts of the world and to find ways to make the world’s culture stand out more. I don’t expect the dialogue patch to take too long, so I’ll give myself a week. Due date will be on the 8th.

After that it’s grammar and flow checks, and for those we’ll outsource. I’ve got an editor lined up and several people eager for the first read through of the story. Here’s where I pimp things out a bit. If you’d like to be one of these alpha readers, jump over to my Patreon. While not the only way to become an alpha reader, you’re guaranteed a spot if you jump in even at the starter level.

Okay, that’s it for now. Time to get to work.

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the Trans-Dimensional Café -or- Echoes of the past

I became a fan of podcasts back in 2006, when my wife bought me an iPod Nano for my time working in the corporate world. I filled that thing with what I thought was enough music to keep me sane in the cubes, and The Flaming Lips, Journey, and Pink Floyd filled my ears during those 10-key days. But eight months of the same music started to burn me out. I craved more; something to keep my mind active while still letting me stay productive at the day gig. Enter podcasts. NPR at first, but then onto Escape Pod and Pseduopod. The latter lead me to Mur Lafferty and from there to the world of Farpoint Media and the dozens of shows I latched onto from there. In 2007, things got kind of muddy as the expanding 2007-2010 web of podcasts lead me to audio fiction, new favorite authors, great interviews, and more. Through all of that, I kept hearing the same echo “podcasting has a low bar of entry, you should do it.” Heck, many of the shows on the network shows I listened to had blossomed from fans of other shows, so why not?

In late 2010, my friends Andrew Henderson and Dakota Lewis worked together to form the first podcast I would take part of: The Trans-Dimensional Café. Over the next half dozen years, this show would start and stop four times as it took us through various stages in our creative journeys. It was always something to try to keep us on task though, to check in and see if we’re keeping up with our writing, our other podcasts, our game design, or production on other larger scale items. It was fitting as TDC basically started as a bet between me and Andrew about who could finish a book first. But last year, one of those journeys came to an end. Andrew left us in the midst of another set of goals being set. We had talked in the weeks before his passing about the idea of resurrecting the show. Of using TDC as our white board for a fifth time.

I was left with a desire, but at the time I felt like I had no one to share it with.

Dakota was the one to get me prompted, indirectly, towards continuing to relaunch TDC. We talked about new Role-Playing designs in early 2017, and it gave me the nostalgia of our talks on the podcast. It made me want to continue to poke the kindling until the fire of creativity sparked again. A chance conversation with Brian Hessee made me realize that if we were going to bring it back, it needed to be a trio. Duos work for one offs but TDC was always best when it was three, and so I invited Brian to be our third wheel. We are now a writer, a musician, and a game theorist, with each of us bringing a portion of these three seeds into our works.

Now we’re back. We finished posting our fifth public episode, our ninth recording together, to the world last week. Five episodes away from submitting to iTunes. Five away from starting a Patreon. Five away from feeling like this might be here to stay. I’m excited for the work, and where the podcast is going. There’s an itch to bring more people in too, to try and start back the interview portion of the show we once had. We each want to share more of our works, from short fiction to music and podcasting, and I think the podcast is actually helping that happen.

I don’t know if 2017 is the year TDC becomes a permeant fixture in my productivity. I’d like it to be. For now it’s serving the purpose it was meant to back in 2010: to keep me honest, to keep me on track, to keep me moving forward. Maybe there will be a time I’ll be past the need of tools like this, but until that time I’ll keep stepping into the café.

TDC will live on.