Christmas Eve 2015.

Tonight was odd. I blame the full moon.

My mother picked me up from work after making tamales all night at one of our friends' house and then going to a party. We went back to the party and it was some kinda near movie-ish gathering of family and friends except with booze and terrible gifts. We used the excuse of "We have to go back to our friends' house to pick up the tamales now that they're done steaming all damn day" (literally, all they did was MAKE them and drink) to go back and actually pick up the tamales (see above). So we head back there and a friend of mine calls me, says that he's got something for me so I run home, pick up a pack of cigarettes, head to our friends' house, grab the tamales and mom drops me off at the other friend.

As an aside: I totally have this bad-ass scarf hat neckwarmer thingy. It's almost like a ski mask with a hat - lookie.

http://www.amazon.com/Ski-Snowboard-Face-Mask-Visor/dp/B008GYZI3Q/ref=pd_sim_193_5/189-6056222-4386662?ie=UTF8&dpID=514XmAmJ3gL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL200_SR160%2C200_&refRID=06X74WTDSNKHMB5W5XVP

I headed home and found myself listening to "So This Is Christmas (Happy Christmas/War Is Over)" by John Lennon and realizing how sentimental I was currently feeling. That's when shit got weird because I changed the song to the next one in the "Recently Added" list and it was "Snow Came Down" by Trans-Siberian Orchestra. My brain was like "Okay, this is enough sentimental bullshit, imma think" and started to analyze the lyrics and going all intellectual about songs. I have no idea why I was feeling sentinmental but I have a pretty good THEORY.

About five and a half years ago, I started playing Second Life and I'd ultimately ended up renting half a sim (which, at the time, costed L$21230, or about $84 a week), and I discovered two things.

It was easy because of one of the reasons I mentioned above - this one: One, I make an excellent digital pimp/manwhore. Two, I like to learn and create things when I'm in pain. I was in pain because I was a manwhore - I'd get emotionally invested. To distract myself from the pain, I set my mind at work learning how to build in Second Life. To that end, I'd decorate the half-sim. To give you an idea of the sim, a very "luxurious" house was a 16th of the sim and I had a god damn castle, a forest and a city on it. (Medieval village, but still, it had god damn docks on it.)

On one extreme side, I had a forest. I called it the Grotto 'cause there were lots of little hidden things. Bordering the edge of the sim (and into the water) was a literal Arabian palace that I modified the shit out of and turned it into a video game castle. Inside the grotto were gazebos and shit (insert D&D story here). In the middle of the sim was a motherfucking castle with towers and a dungeon and those catwalks like in Castlevania and secret rooms and all sorts of bad-ass shit, including furniture I spent hours building (even sex beds). Then the village with the docks, which was bad ass because the ship in the harbor was "The Neverest" - the ship that took Dashade to Venomheart. Also, docks, which means pirates. The village itself just had some shops (I had to try to sell my shit), but it also had the ruins of a monastery that seemed to glow (because I was a god damn wizard (no, not really)). All of it, I built stick by stick (literally, it's flexi-shapy, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff) and all of it, I built because I'd get attached to clients because I was the best manwhore EVAR and they'd throw money and I thought they loved me for me. I didn't even mention the Skyclub, which is Exactly What It Says On The Tin - a club in the sky. I threw parties 'n' shit ("DJ'd" by way of Shoutcast servers streamed into the sim and sent through the Second Life clients) and hung out on the wall that overlooked the sky above the half-sim (which I called "The Villa" because melodrama and reasons). I looked like a pirate.

Anyway, I decorated the shit out of the half-sim for every holiday, and I ultimately outdid myself every year during Christmas. When I was walking home, I was listening to TSO and looking at decorations, and was thinking about Second Life. Mostly because this is the first year I was walking home on Christmas Eve listening to TSO and it looked (and almost felt) like Second Life, where I used to decorate the sim for Christmas while listening to that song by TSO (not to mention, Second Life was where I'd first heard the song)...

Hence - full moon and the start of this whole thing.

Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy Kwanza, merry Yule, happy holidays, season greetings and fuck you if you're offended because I missed your holiday. Go listen to some John Lennon and shut up.

Assessment.

I don't mind somebody who knows they're stupid because, really, how dumb can you be if you know you're stupid? It's kind of a Catch-22. Knowing you're stupid is important. It's like knowing you're ugly. It keeps you attuned to reality.

Example: "I'm 5'3" and I'm 215 lbs and I've got some curves... I'm not fat... but why do these guys just wanna fuck me and dump me?" Because you're not assessing yourself clearly, and stupid people need to do that too because I know a lot of stupid people that don't know they're stupid.

You know the number one thing a stupid guy (that doesn't know he's stupid) wants to do? He's an entrepreneur. Oh, he's got IDEAS. They have ideas that have to go on t-shirts or something. "I've got a clothing line, man! I've got an idea, man." (Speaking of which, ask me about a shirt I've got. Someone made a shirt. I know the person who made a shirt. That person gave me a shirt.)

So if you're stupid, you need to know you're stupid. If you're fat, you need to know you're fat. If you're ugly, you need to know you're ugly. If you're an asshole, you need to know you're an asshole. If you know you're stupid or fat or ugly or whatever, you can have a pretty decent life.

If you're stupid, and you've got a job, and you KNOW you're stupid, you can't just barge right in an office and demand a raise, but you know you're stupid so you don't. If you're ugly and you try to spend your time dating people that are hot, you spend your whole life getting abused and not getting laid. If you're ugly and you know you're ugly, you try to nail other people that (hopefully) know they're ugly (and you don't get fucked and dumped). If you're an asshole, and you KNOW you're an asshole, you're less likely to say something an asshole would say (because you'd say it) and get the shit kicked out of you for it.

Lack of updates and news.

It's been a while since I've updated the blog, 'cause things have been chaotic to say the least.

The last update I posted was made during a very strange time in my life, and it's only gotten worse and more bizarre.

I got on the plane in DFW, changed flights in New York and landed in Zurich. Almost immediately, I was deported because I didn't have the funds in my bank account to support myself for three months (which would have been really impressive since I don't even have a bank account), nor a return ticket to LEAVE Zurich... so I left Zurich about a day later after literally living in Terminal D in the airport (think "The Terminal" with Tom Hanks - just make it an American in Zurich).

Promptly upon arriving in the US, I let my mother know what had happened and that Zurich didn't send me back to DFW (where I at least could have called Justin and figured a plan of action out), they sent me to New York and left me there (on the opposite side of the country). She ended up bringing me to Arizona, and specifically, Munds Park. That's when shit got bizarre.

I got a job at Woody's, one of three gas stations in Munds Park (the other two being Shell, two buildings over, and Chevron, on the other side of the freeway). I was given two weeks of training but about halfway through, we discovered they were closing Woody's permanently. The day after my training ended (which was on my second of two days off that week), we closed the doors and I was unemployed.

A friend of mine, Eric, decided he didn't want me to leave and agreed to help me get money to pay rent and all of that up north while my mother was in Phoenix. We began (I shit you not) selling wood - we were amateur lumberjacks. Time rolls on and it worked for October and November... but some shit happened in November.

Samantha wasn't dead. She wanted to be and attempted to be, but she failed. Her now-ex-husband forced her daughter (the one who found her, if I recall correctly) to deactivate her Facebook page and state, very clearly, that she had succeeded when she didn't. He blamed the internet for her misery (when it was him). We were friends again but her computer had been broken and while the divorce Samantha wanted had gone through, the pension that she was counting on (to get her own place and out of under the thumb of an emotionally, mentally and formerly physically abusive ass) hadn't come through yet.

For December, Eric pointed out that he didn't know the forest closed and we were outta work. A former co-worker of mine, Andrew, ended up moving in with his girlfriend, Alex, and they helped cover bills for January and February. Unfortunately, time marches on and some more shit happened.

Meanwhile, Melanie and I were having problems and I ultimately said, "You can either make time for me or lose me entirely." Well, she opted for the latter and we agreed to take a break. Almost right after that (within a matter of weeks), Samantha had a heart attack and, within a couple of weeks, ended up leaving with the girls and all but cutting any communication we had to zero. Alex had to drop out of college - being an archaeology major at Northern Arizona University, or NAU for short, she needed to be able to drive there and Andrew was doing very little but spending her money (on vehicles that didn't work or that she couldn't drive) and because of that, she lost her tuition disbursement.

I rarely ever talk to Samantha anymore - that's her decision. Melanie and I talk semi-regularly and I still try to help Eric with work but now it's mostly computer-based (which is bad since my former beast of a computer didn't survive the trip from DFW to NYC to ZRH (Zurich) to NYC to PHX, leaving me with technology I can't actually work with since it's from about 2006). Alex got a job at the Shell and I've got a job "saved" for me at the only restaurant in town (at least according to one of the managers there).

I haven't had much time to write. There's some other stuff that happened (Alex and I stole a car that Andrew unlawfully took on behalf of the original owner, a couple of smaller fights, a couple of people barely worth mentioning leaving town (WHAT UP, REDNECK), things like that) but it's kept me busy.

In other news, I've decided to go an entirely different route with Unda Vosari for the time being. Patreon is a website that allows patrons to actually pay for individual pieces of work (or monthly, if the creator wishes to oblige to time constraints) and I'm optimistic. The old Wikidot site is now private (and basically being used as an archive for my own information) and I can put stories up as I can (I'm still debating on whether or not I want to go monthly or per-work).

It's 7:30 in the morning on a Friday. I suppose a shower and breakfast is in order.

Mornings are the worst.

Warning: This is gonna probably end up being long(ish) and rambling. Also, probably sad.

It's the 19th of July right now. In three days, I'm supposed to get on a plane and fly to Zurich, Switzerland to live with my fiance, Melanie. I was supposed to get on a plane in four days and fly to East London, South Africa to live with Samantha.

I can't do that now because she committed suicide Monday. It feels like an eternity because nothing's been the same. It was only five days ago.

I'm the goddamn Batman.

A few of my newer friends have been asking me why I've got a fondness for (and an affinity with) Batman.

Short story: my brain.

Long story: Mmmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyyyy braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiin.

Batman's considered a master strategist and one of the most prepared superheroes in the DC Universe. He doesn't sleep and he's trained himself in a large number of categories "just in case" he needs to know how to do something.

No sleep. Only justice.

He thinks in his sleep.

While I don't have billions of dollars and a company that can stand up to the government (Bruce Wayne did that in No Man's Land back in the 90's), nor do I have a dozen years of training in a hundred fields of expertise, I do have a brain like Batman. It's always going, always planning, trying to figure out how to best approach a situation to achieve a desired outcome (usually by setting up situations where people do exactly what others would expect them to do in a way that would benefit me). I'm also not afraid to use whatever I've got at my disposal (personality, audacity, charm, whatever) to further my goals.

If Batman wasn't Batman, he'd be a Magnificent Bastard. I've fully admitted I'm a magnificent bastard to many people on several occasions. The people that know me can't deny I'm bold, charismatic, audacious, devious and savvy, quick to think and aware of what kind of a challenge I'm dealing with when it presents itself (and sometimes before, if there's hints beforehand).

Batman got his back broken and came back from it. My own mother has told my fiance "Stick with him. He's a little trooper." Coming from a woman who's worked for the military (and Disneyland, and we all know they're secretly running or outright own about a tenth of the planet), that's pretty awesome.

Somebody had sent me a picture of themselves on the internet (not that kind) and I had spoken to them on voice (either over Left 4 Dead 2 or Skype) but my curiosity had gotten the better of me... so I used Google's reverse image search to do a search. It took me about 20 minutes but I discovered that it wasn't them. I've done this several times. The catch is, the image was flipped, cropped and had distinguishing features taken out of it... but I still found out what was really going on.

Generally speaking, it's usually kind of hard to get something by me if I care (which is my greatest weakness, apathy).

On the topic of Left 4 Dead 2 (and video games in general), I win a lot. I'm quick enough on my feet to handle a crisis situation and that's punctuated for emphasis in games where you're in a perpetual crisis situation. The same thing is true in every other video game I've played (which is why I go through them so quickly) - I figure out how to handle a given situation and I handle it. When World of Warcraft came out, rogues were infamous for stunlocks followed by the rapid and painful asskicking that killed their opponent.

SORRY, NOT SORRY.

During Burning Crusade, rogues were "nerfed" (weakened, or "given nerf weapons") quite a bit but even then, I was going on raids and doing respectably well in PVP (I was among the first into Karazhan on Shadow Council just because I brought more damage and adaptability to the table than some of the "hardcore raiders" because I wasn't a goddamn idiot, knew my class and was quick on my feet). During Wrath of the Lich King? Same thing. It was worse in Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria because we were OVERPOWERED then (which is sort of like giving Batman superpowers on top of being Batman).

Because my brain is wired the way it is, it gives me an edge in times where "brute force" isn't going to work. Of course, when brute force is needed, I'm not about to get MY hands dirty - I've got friends for that (kind of like Batman having Robin, Red Robin, Red Hood, Batgirl, the Justice League, the Outsiders, et cetera) on the off-chance I can't handle it (audacity helps in a fight and Tyler Durden wasn't kidding when he says "Skinny guys fight 'til they're burger").

I grew up playing a lot role-playing games. That helped me figure out how to deal with unusual situations and how to handle social situations. The video games I was addicted to helped me learn how technology worked (and it is, indeed, the Age of the Geek, baby). The comic books I read helped gave me a good handle on right and wrong in more abstract ways (because good does not always mean nice and sometimes, bad guys make the best good guys - bad guys may be the only good guys you get).

My upbringing may have been unorthodox but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good one, and a combination of things affecting me the way they did culminated in me being compared to (and thus, taking up the cape and cowl) of the metaphorical Batman.

Also, I'm the goddamn BATMAN.

Social media and my new guilty pleasure.

Today, I talked to Justin Achilli for a few minutes. In case people haven't heard of him, he's currently the Lead Social and Community Systems Designer at Red Storm Entertainment (creators of the Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six games as well as the immensely awesome Far Cry 3) and was formerly the lead developer of the World of Darkness line of role-playing games by White Wolf Studios. If memory serves me correctly, he pretty much drove the plot-bus for the entire World of Darkness for about five years.

That was pretty fuckin' awesome.

After that, I talked to a couple of my readers. It reminded me of the comparison of me and Stephen King that Courtney had made as well as the comparison to J.R.R. Tolkien that Andrew had made (due to my obsession with connectivity between my various works and my obsession with things such as the economy, religions and societies of Unda Vosari, respectively). We'd talked about future plot ideas and where I want to take the series after "the core series."

I made one character shoot another character in the face today before that character stood up and was pretty pissed off about getting shot in the face. That was right before I made a war between three reasonably large factions in the world of Unda Vosari break out into open warfare. Across the planet, armies are marching (or sailing) and a small group of heroes is trying to find the source of corruption that is threatening to ruin three of the six kingdoms of Unda Vosari. I don't get to tell stories like that anywhere outside of Unda Vosari, and prior to that, the only two chances I'd had to tell stories like that were in Dungeons & Dragons (in a homebrew setting that turned into Unda Vosari) and Vampire: The Masquerade (and that was largely because I had an entire carbon copy of earth to use as a battleground for hidden wars).

That's when I figured out Unda Vosari isn't just a bunch of novels kinda connected together, at least to me. It's a bastion of self-expression and adventure that I hadn't had since I was running games in Vampire: The Masquerade, back in the late 90's. It's a whole world of stories about whatever I want to make them about in a place where anything is possible.

Combining that with my ability to use social media and networking to talk to people that created (and continue to create) things that truly inspired (and continue to inspire) me to write in the Unda Vosari setting, I don't see myself running out of steam anytime soon.

... I still think it's awesome I got to talk to one of the authors that inspired me to start writing in the first place, and that aspects of my writing are being compared to two of the most famous literary entities in history. Woo!

"Tips for new authors" and how I want you people to shut the hell up.

Kat Heckenbach recently posted a pretty "common sense" blog post I felt like mentioning here because it's completely true.

Do any kind of search online for writing and marketing tips, and you will find about fourteen gazillion articles on blogs touting advice on how to be successful as an author.

Most of them say essentially the same things:

Learn and hone thy craft.
Get critique.
Edit-edit-edit.
Start thyself a blog.
Join Facebook, Twitter, and/or other social media. Promote thyself there, but don't be obnoxious about it.
Get thee an Amazon author page and establish thyself on Goodreads.

Y'know, while it may be good advice, it isn't. Not when there's such an abundance of "authors" all struggling for the same recognition. Sure, there's different demographics (the day I write a romance novel is the day I tattoo "I <3 TWILIGHT" on my scrotum in hot pink right before I commit seppuku) but in the end, there's only so many people who enjoy reading. Let's go down this list and point out the flaws.

• Learn and hone thy craft.
  There's only so much you can learn about writing. If your sentence structure is well-written, you don't have to spell-check every third word, you know how to use proper punctuation and you're familiar enough with the language you're writing in, there isn't a whole lot to learn aside from "how to tell a better story."
• Get critique.
  This is easier said than done. As I said above, there's only so many people who enjoy reading and trying to find people who are interested in your work and trying to find those people is a feat in and of itself (especially when you're competing with larger, more popular authors who have established themselves as proven entertainers in the literary field).
• Edit-edit-edit.
  Editing your own work. This is a point of contention I've got with a lot of other authors. People will constantly say "You need to edit what you've written and make it better." Sure, that's a great idea but there's plenty of authors who have been sitting on a finished piece of work for quite a while, and they literally don't see how else they can improve upon it. Without the ever-elusive critiques (see point two, above), this can be considered a brick wall; running into it over and over and over isn't going to accomplish anything.
• Start thyself a blog.
  Hi! Welcome to my blog! On top of this, I've got the Unda Vosari wiki that I use for updates (and free stories). So far, I don't see this helping a whole lot.
• Join Facebook, Twitter, and/or other social media.
  I've got a couple of Facebook pages going on and a TVTropes page as well. Still not interested in diving into the Twitterverse quite yet...
• Get thee an Amazon author page and establish thyself on Goodreads.
  Got the Goodreads page going on but am wary about Amazon Author Pages because they rather enjoy "exclusive rights" to things... I'll go on about that later.

In short, doing all of these things is the same thing everyone else is doing, so what's supposed to make you stand out as an author?

Good question, and I believe the answer is originality. For every Harry Potter, Twilight or Hunger Games "tribute" that's out there, there are an overwhelming number of stories that are truly original works. For every character that's nothing but a blatant ripoff of something that's already out there that's been done before (and to death, I might add), there's a herd of original characters with a personality and history that's never been seen by the world. For every knock-off of a popular story, there's something worth reading.

A good friend of mine, Andrew, has written at least a hundred thousand words (if not plenty more) for Last Mage (and I've read a good bit of book one, and as someone who isn't a huge fan of modern fantasy, I've got to admit, it's not only a damn good read, it's a truly original fantastic story that deserves to be published). I, personally, have written close to a million words worth of fiction, information and notes on Unda Vosari alone (not to mention things completely unrelated to Unda Vosari). I can point out another half-dozen would be authors on Facebook that I personally know that have written a substantial amount (if not professionally, for their own enjoyment of the craft).

Sadly, I don't think most of those will never get read, and I don't think it's much to do with the works themselves. I think a good portion of it is what society's done to itself. We've become attached to "shiny special effects" ('lo, Hollywood!) and "amazing computer graphics" (I'm lookin' right at you, first-person shooter developers). The world has let itself become lazy, wanting nothing more to be spoon-fed this month's ration of pap and stupidity. Frankly, the half-dozen unmentioned authors up there may as well take everything they've written and change it just enough to be compared to Harry Potter, Twilight or Hunger Games - people would buy it.

I don't want to do that. I want those authors to be able to tell original tales and stand out based on those merits. I want those authors to be successful not because they were carbon copies of something that's already been milked to death but because they had thoughtful, exciting stories that they came up with by themselves.

Then someone sends me some lists of "tributes" for popular works that are just going to push the original, good stories out of the way.

Nothing on the list of things to do "to be successful as an author" can fix that.