Revenge of the Gamer

I’ve also added some new content.  I finally put up the first short story I ever had published, Lord of the Deep.  It’s been a long time since I wrote it, but it seems to stand up pretty well. 

The first original short story I’ve written in a long time is up as well.  It’s entitled Tree of Blood and explains the origin of vampires in the Faelands world.  The final version will end up as part of my novel, The Bond of Jhordil.  It stands up pretty well on its own, and as I’ve never submitted a fantasy story I figured I’d give it a shot.  I’m also submitting it to the Dragonmount Anthology and I hope its accepted.  Wish me luck!

I’m currently working on three more short stories.  The next up is another part of the novel, a chapter called Taming the Blade.  The other two are both stories I’ve mentioned before, Sins of our Fathers and The Bargain. 

Tree of Blood took me two days to write, but it clocks in at around 10,000 words which is longer than most short stories.  The others are shorter and should take me less time.

Anyway, I wanted to keep this update short.  I’ll post another story from my past next week.  As I’m starting to get back into paintball I think I’ll recount how I shot Martin Lawrence in the face.

I’ve learned my first lesson about blogging.  People don’t care how my novel is coming.  They don’t care about philosophy or my nihilistic meanderings.  What they want are more stories.  The feedback on A Mullet and a Bloodstained Jacket and  Blooshot Eyes and Unsteady Feet have been tremendous. 

As nearly all of my handful of readers have requested more of the same I feel obligated to deliver.  From now on I will post a story from my past at least once a week, and if I do an update on the projects I’m working on it will be secondary.

This week’s story is one that still makes me smile.  When I turned sixteen I lived in New York.  At that time I had not one, not two but three jobs.  I had a paper route, I was the caretaker of a park and I worked at McDonalds two days week.  In addition I ran schemes like selling stolen porn out of my locker at school, but that’s a story for another time.

The point is I had money.  Every week I pulled in around a hundred dollars, which was a small fortune for a teenager in 1992.  Most of the money went to paying for clothes and the other things I needed for school, because my family was pretty poor.  The rest paid for junk food, novels and roleplaying books.

When I moved from New York to California all that changed.  I was the kid with long hair and a blood stained jacket, which was great for meeting girls and becoming the popular ‘bad boy’ at school.  It wasn’t so great for finding a job.  I wallpapered the little town of Rohnert Park with applications, but I didn’t get a single call back.

In hindsight had I been willing to cut my hair I could have found a job easily.  But at that age cutting my hair was one step above castration.  That meant I was perpetually broke.  My parents didn’t believe in allowance, which meant the only money I had access to came from scams I ran.  Those were fun but intermittent at best.

This sets the backstory for a discovery I made during my senior year of high school.  At the time my gaming group hung out with an older guy named Robert.  Prior to meeting him the oldest person in our group was Shawn, who was seventeen.  Robert was thirty.

The biggest reason we hung out with him was the fact that he had his own place, which gave us a place to game.  That setup lasted for a long time, until Robert and Jeff got into a fight.  Robert actually called the cops on Jeff, so we kicked him from our little group.

A few days later I stopped by Robert’s to pick up my gaming books.  He’d just started playing a new card game called Magic the Gathering, and asked if I’d like to try a few games before I took off.  I really liked the art on the cards, and the idea of the game was intriguing.

Robert showed me how to play and gave me a fistful of common cards to start my own budding collection.  It was a mismatched stack of cards, but it was a start.  I fell in love with the game and wasn’t the only one.  All around me friends were picking up Magic, and it spread like wildfire through Sonoma county.

Within a few weeks I found a comic shop that sold the cards, and my friends and I took to hanging out at New Century every day.  We weren’t the only ones.  Dozens of high school and college kids found the place, and finding games was plentiful.  Every day seemed to bring a few new faces.

Many people played games for Ante.  Each player put up a card from their decks, and the winner took both.  I was too poor to afford cards, but  found that I was very, very good at the game.  I won nearly every game I played, and used those games to increase my collection.

By the night of the first tournament I’d compiled a ruthless little black deck.  I was nervous and expected to be knocked out quickly.  Imagine my surprise when I stomped the crap out of everyone. 

I’d have won that tournament, but my parents gave me a 10pm curfew.   After four straight wins I dropped out and went home dejectedly. 

The next week finals were over so my curfew vanished.  I dominated the tournament, crushing everyone I went against.  I still remember dethroning ‘Hurricane Chad’ and taking the title from him.  Winning that first tournament was the start of something great.

I won every tournament for the next two months.  Each win gave me more cards and my deck grew stronger, which made it easier to stay at the top.  I also found I had a knack for working favorable trades (read: ripping off gullible kids and giving them crap for their ultra rare cards).

As the game’s popularity increased so did the value of the cards.  Suddenly my collection was worth a couple thousand dollars, and by the time my first semester of college started I was making a living buying, selling and trading Magic cards.

There were two brackets for tournaments, doubles and singles.  By this point I was at the top of both.  I was untouchable and I loved it.  I regularly used a card called Bad Moon, and the employees at New Century gave me the theme song Bad Moon Rising.  Every time I played someone they’d belt it out over the store stereo, and people would start cheering.

Most of the players were guys, but not all.  There were a few girls, all of whom were cute.  The best was a stunning Japanese woman with a soft smile and smoky brown eyes.  Darelene was twenty-seven to my eighteen, and I figured I’d never have a prayer so I didn’t even consider asking her out.

 She showed up for a few weeks in a row before I got close enough to actually meet her.  We ended up playing in a doubles tournament when she was partnered with a friend of mine named Damon.  My partner John was the guy who sponsored me into TKE and ran the store. 

The game was one of the hardest fought I’ve ever played, but in the end Darlene and Damon knocked us out of the tournament.  It was the first time anyone had done that, but I didn’t mind.  I was too busy making eyes at the hot asian chick, who gave her name as Darlene.  John caught me looking at her, and decided it would be funny to play a prank.

See, I was the youngest member in Tau Kappa Epsilon, and they saw me as a sort of mascot which made me fair game for pranks of all sorts.  New Century was owned by three members of TKE, which is how they’d originally found me.  I’d have never considered joining a fraternity on my own.

John told Darlene that I desperately wanted to meet her, and that I was head over heels in love.  Then John came to me and told me how badly Darlene wanted me to ask her out.  I totally fell for it, and asked her on a date that very night.

Unbeknownst to John he was actually right.  Darlene had been waiting for me to ask her out, and had apparently found me because I was at the top of both the singles and doubles division.

Less than twelve months later we were married.  Some prank, huh? 

I went on to win a lot more tournaments, culminating with the 1995 Origins tournament.  I won box after box of cards and for three years I didn’t have a real job. 

I made my living playing a card game and met my wife doing it.  I even joined a fraternity in the bargain.  It was one of the best chapters of my life.  I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

My last couple of posts have been more philosophical and less about my writing, so I thought it was time to give an update on the current projects I’m working on.  The most important (and time consuming) has definitely been the Yuri novel.

As of today I’ve edited 254 pages.  Some of those chapters need more work, but all of them read well enough.  Even if I’m not entirely happy with them at least they form the chapter framework for the final novel.  I might make more changes, but nothing major.  No more cutting or adding chapters, just minor tweeks to existing ones. 

I have another 50-60 pages of material to add and then the novel is complete.  Instead of adding the additional 150 pages or so I had planned after returning from San Diego I’ve decided to cut the novel at its orginal stopping point.  What I’ve added instead are a number of chapters that take place before the finale.  Instead of Chiaroscuro being a short stop Karissa and Yuri are given more of a chance to get to know each other, which makes the parting at the end that much more bittersweet.

Taking a step back I have to admit things feel a bit surreal.  The novel is over 300 pages in total, which is about the length your average paperback.  Mine is actually longer than publishers like to see.  After 28 years I’m about to realize my dream.  In a few more weeks I’ll be a novelist, even if it is an unpublished one.  I feel a great swell of pride at the accomplishment, and I can’t wait to show the thing off.

For the time being I’ll only show it to close friends, as I am going to submit it to White Wolf.  After they reject it I’m going to slap a decent cover on it, and then distribute it for free to the Exalted community.   Honestly that prospect terrifies me.  Not White Wolf rejecting it, as I’ve already accepted that they aren’t publishing novels.  What scares me is the reaction the community will have when they read it.

I’ve sunk eight months into writing Yuri Silvertonge & The Violet Spire.  I’ve written and re-written it and have read a half dozen books on writing while belting the thing out.  Looking at past work, I believe I’m a better writer.  The creation of this novel has taught me some valuable lessons, and future novels and stories will be better for it.

That still leaves me with the question, how much will people like the Exalted novel?  Will people even read it?  If they don’t I’ll keep my head up and start plodding along with the Faelands novel.  However, I do have to admit to having a large emotional investment in the Yuri novel.  The kid in me wants people to read it and go WOW, but the more I read it the less likely I think that is. 

I started out with the rather arrogant statement that my novel was better than the existing ones.  The further to completion I get the more I  question that.  Is it better?  I don’t know.  I’d like to think so.  Ultimately I’ll only find out when I release it, and the reception could be bad.  Or, even worse, it could be bad enough that no one reads the whole thing at all.

Even if that was the case nothing will make me give up writing.  It would just mean I have further to go before I master my craft.  Make no mistake, I will master my craft.  Someday I will write an epic that will eclipse the Wheel of Time and Song of Fire and Ice.  Someday!  I just wish it was sooner rather than later =p

When we are young we are told by our parents that we are special.  Our potential is limitless, and we can accomplish anything we set our minds to.  That’s what they tell us, anyway.  It’s a lie as empty and hollow as Santa Claus.

Look around you.  How many of your friends became rock gods, or famous authors or football stars?  How many of us are living the dreams we had when we were children?  Among my peer group the answer is none. 

Somewhere along the way each of us lost that spark.  We made a compromise, and then another.  Before long nearly all of us were working dead end jobs, or at least jobs that provided us with no sense of satisfaction or pride.

I numbered among those people until recently.  When I moved to Southern California I lived the corporate dream, but not my dream.  I made great money and had a ‘bright’ future.  Yet, my life bore no resemblance to my childhood dream. 

As an adult I was only concerned with the high salary and the job title.  I remember a sense of pride when I first held a paycheck over $10,000.  I also remember how I puffed up like a peacock when they gave me the title EVP of sales.  The sense of pride and fulfillment didn’t last long.  Why?

I didn’t derive any pleasure from the work.  Quite the opposite.  Most of us involved in the mortgage industry destroyed people’s lives, however inadvertently.

We got rich off the sweat and dreams of others, and lived a life of luxury brought about by peddling dubious loans that endangered the homes of those who took them.

Just after I turned thirty I had what you might call a mid life crisis.  I was having trouble sleeping, because I finally understood the damage my company was doing.  I couldn’t accept it and quit the six figure salary with no real idea of what I wanted to do next.

I did know that Los Angeles wasn’t a healthy place for me.  The anger, pollution, traffic and just the rat race itself are nothing I’d wish on my worst enemy.  I knew that if I ever wanted to be happy I had to get away from that place.  So I did.

I moved six hundred miles north to Santa Rosa, California.  The place is famous for exactly three things.  Wine country, redwoods and it was the home of Charles Schultz.  Beyond that its like any other small town you’d see across the united states.

The move home did wonders for me.  All the tension and stress faded.  I no longer hated what I did for a living.  Instead of being surrounded by smog and traffic now it was trees and smiles.  I’d come home.

Unfortunately, six years in the mortgage industry took a larger toll on me than I’d expected.  I was burned out and for several months instead of looking for a job I lost myself in a haze of drugs and video games.  Don’t get me wrong…I had a great time doing it and it very much recharged my batteries so to speak.

The thing is during the two years since I haven’t accomplished anything.  Or at least nothing that I feel matters.  I played a lot of World of Warcraft.  I got a chance to raid and to hit an 1850 arena rating.  I made friends and had good times, so I did take away memories.

I played a lot of pen and paper games as well.  Aaron ran his Eberron game, and then later a 4th edition game set in my game world, Faelands.  I ran an Exalted game and a short lived 4th edition game of my own.  Later, I even had a chance to play in the Exalted game Aaron ran.

All of this was good.  These activities are the hobbies I’ve had for most of my life, and I still love them…especially pen and paper roleplaying.  The only proof I need to see that is my current Exalted campaign.  I still love the hobby.

Somehow, though,  I’d lost my way.  I’d told myself before moving home that I was going to look for a good job.  Instead I took the first one available.  Two years later I still have that job.  I haven’t done a single thing to improve my job skills or to move forward professionally. 

And I could have.  I could have been promoted multiple times if I wanted to.  It would have taken hard work on my part, but I’ve worked as a software engineer, sales and a host of mortgage positions.  Getting promoted would be easy if I walked the same path I followed in Los Angeles.

I haven’t, and I think I finally know why.  I’ve been reluctant to walk the same path, because a large part of me fears where that path will lead.  Will I get to the top again only to find it as hollow and unfulfilling as it was in Los Angeles?  I think I would if I went in that direction.

I’ve subconsciously avoided walking the same path.  But spending my time goofing off isn’t the answer either, and while it was a great distraction for a while it didn’t last forever. 

Now I’m left with a strong desire to find a third path.  I don’t want to excel professionally.  I don’t want to be middle management or even upper management.  Nor do I want to spend my time indulging in vises and killing time with distractions.

I want to reclaim my childhoood dream.  I want to be an author.  Not just an author, I can already claim that title.  I want to be a novelist.  I want to see my book in another person’s hands, and know that the rapt attention they are paying to that book is because of the story I wrote.

Six months ago this dream re-awakened for the first time in nearly a decade.  It not only awakened but did so with a vengeance.  I know now what I was meant to do in life.  I know now what I find fulfilling.  I know what my craft was always meant to be.

I’m a storyteller.  I entertain.  I take people to fantastic worlds and show them fantastic things they’d never see in their every day lives.  I show people a world more beautiful than this one.

That’s what makes me happy.  This is what brings me fulfillment.  For the past seven months I have written like a fiend.  Last night was a fairly major milestone, because I finished editing 200 pages of the novel.  In another month, two at the outside, that novel will be finished.

I’m in the home stretch.  Soon, I’ll be able to wear the title that entranced me at the tender age of six.  I’ll be a novelist.

In my last post I mentioned that I was heading down to San Diego to marry my mother.  Makes me sound like a hillbilly doesn’t it?  I went down to perform the ceremony at her wedding and it ended up classy and beautiful.  I was nervous the whole time leading up to it, but when it came time to perform all the nervousness fell away and I really felt like I did it justice.

I was given a lot of compliments from the guests, and my mother was moved to tears.  This being the second marriage I’ve performed you’d think I’d have been less nervous, but I had good reason to worry about making a mistake.

Why?  The wedding was on Saturday night.  I woke up Saturday morning feeling like I was going to die.  I’d had a few beers the night before, but nothing to justify how I was feeling when I woke up.  I didn’t have a headache, but I couldn’t keep anything down and spent a good hour laying on the bathroom floor shivering after I got out of the shower.  It felt a lot more like food poisoning than a hang over.

I’d gotten up at about 8am and had planned to meet one of my oldest friends and his wife for breakfast.  I don’t get a lot of chances to see Trevor, and was pretty annoyed that I had to cancel breakfast just because I was sick.  The problem was every time I stood up I felt dizzy and more often than not sprinted back into the bathroom to be sick again.

I spent all day trying to nap and feel better, and by the time the ceremony started I was at least able to stand without being sick.  That was about the extent of it though.  I felt like death warmed over during the ceremony which was why I was terrified I’d mess up.  To add insult to injury while I was being sick I popped a blood vessel in my right eye, and now look like something out of a Wes Craven movie.  It’s healing, but it was bright red for the wedding.  Fortunately, no one seemed to notice.

I was able to reschedule with Trevor and Amanda and had breakfast with them Sunday morning instead.  I had a great time hanging out with my sister Alicia, and loved seeing my mother and John, but the best part of the trip was definitely breakfast with Trev.  We’ve been friends since I was a freshman in college and how we met is one of my funnier stories.

If you remember my post A Mullet and a Bloodstained Jacket I’d arrived in northern California as something of a minor celebrity.  The first girl that I dated was named Danielle, and that relationship lasted for the rest of my junior year, and over the summer leading to my senior year.  Just after school started I broke up with her, mainly because she’d decided we were going to get married and live in a little house with a dog and two kids. 

At age 17 I couldn’t think of anything more terrifying than that, especially with Danielle.  She was the clingiest woman I’d ever met and I still shudder and look over my shoulder in terror when I think about her.  But damn she was gorgeous.  Danielle was all dark curls and soft smiles, which was why I’d stuck around as long as I did.

So, I ran for the hills.  I broke up with her and enjoyed my new found freedom…for about three days.  During my junior year my friends and I had been kicked out of the library for playing Dungeons & Dragons, and we’d relocated to the bleachers as a place to hang out.  We were an accepting bunch and attracted all the freaks, misfits and geeks until there were a good twenty people hanging out there every day.

At first it was a sea of unwashed male gamer geeks, but as more guys came the girls started trickling in as well until we basically formed our own clique.  They looked to me as a sort of leader and right after breaking up with Danielle I learned one of the perks of being the alpha male.  All the girls want to date the guy in charge.  I had my pick of the girls in our little group, and ended up with a tall leggy blond named Casha.  She had a great smile and a bubbly laugh, and like Danielle she was gorgeous.

Casha and I dated for the rest of my senior year and had only two things in common.  We liked smoking weed and having sex.  Unfortunately, Casha turned out to be dumber than a bag of hammers.  I liked the physical intimacy, but we really had nothing else in common and the more I got to know her the less I liked her.  She obviously felt the same way, but neither of us wanted to break up and go through the effort of finding someone else.  So, we’d have sex every day in the bushes on the edge of campus and we’d get high whenever weed was available.

Things worsened in the relationship to the point where on Friday night’s I’d ask my father to lie for me and tell her I was grounded.  That way instead of hanging out with her I could hang with my gamer geek friends and play Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowrun, Rifts or one of the many other games we loved.  My friends were mostly single and looked at me like I was crazy of course.  Who gives up sex to hang out with his buds?  The guy who gets sex all the time and doesn’t like the woman he’s having it with.

I dated Casha until the summer after I graduated when I met the woman I’d eventually marry, Darlene.  I’ve always hated people who cheat and couldn’t do that to Casha so as soon as I realized I was falling for Darlene I broke it off with Casha.  By that time it was very mutual and we left each other on good terms as neither of us was interested in continuing the relationship.

About two years later I get a call from Darlene (now my wife) who tells me that one of her friends from work wants to come over for dinner with his new girlfriend.  The friend was a guy my age named Trevor, and apparently he liked to roleplay and watch Anime.  I’d met him once when he threw a party, but didn’t really know the guy.

While talking to Darlene I hear a very familiar voice in the background.  Sure enough it was Casha, and she was dating Trevor.  They came over for dinner which was incredibly awkward.  Her and I spent all evening trading barbs (she started it!) while poor Trevor and Darlene looked at us like we were crazy.  They pretty quickly figured out the full extent of our former relationship, and that was the last time we hung out with Trevor’s new girlfriend.

Trevor, on the other hand, was a really cool guy that I had a lot in common with.  We started gaming together on a regular basis and as I considered him a friend I proffered a warning about Casha.  After we’d broken up I’d learned that she cheated on me, and let him know he’d run the same risk.  Their relationship didn’t last too long, and after they broke up he moved in with Darlene and I. 

We were roomates for years and even after we moved apart have maintained our friendship.  Trevor is still one of my best friends and when we had breakfast it felt like no time had passed.  We were both kids again and all the years fell away.  Thanks Trev…I had a blast.