The quest Boy Wonder and Mom had embarked on had been exactly the kind of thing Ray expected the new AI to generate for a lore nerd and a hapless non-gamer dragged along for the ride. What he hadn’t expected was for it to involve a cliffhanger. In vain he’d waited for the cut scene or quest completion to drop—instead, the feed stopped right in the middle of the action. Digging into the logs hadn’t shown any activi...
2024-07-05 12:00:10 +0000 UTC
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After writing about 20,000 words in five days, the draft of Qora’s novel is done! First readers and continuity checkers, assemble (if you haven’t already!). Link at the end of this entry!
Some context! The first novel I started writing this year was not this one… it was Surela 2. I got three chapters into it when I realized that I needed to nail down some Very Important Events that were happening in the background… and it was while jotting down notes that I r...
2024-07-01 13:24:20 +0000 UTC
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No serial today! I did not get to write it. That's the bad news.
The good news is that I've written 15,700 words of Qora in four days, and it looks like I'll finish the novel entirely this weekend. All this despite the house being upside down from various Big Changes.
I've been posting chapters of that as I finish it (and I'm two chapters from wrapping up at this point), so if you want to read the ARC (and help with continuity/typos), here's the google doc link.
BU...
2024-06-28 13:52:22 +0000 UTC
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I continue to work on my online shop… last week I finished uploading and hooking up all the paperbacks, making them available for purchase to US customers. (International frens, you are few but mighty! I am researching options for you!) I listed all the reason I’m happy about this on the store announcement post, but the most pertinent are that I can offer them at lower prices, and I can bundl...
2024-06-25 15:37:12 +0000 UTC
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Nick had been home two hours before he noticed Shellie’s text. It was hard to be angry at her for taking so long when he hadn’t heard the notification because he’d been in the kitchen with Dad. They’d been… talking. Just talking. At first about food, and then, tentatively, about Mom. Then Dad had pulled out his plans for Donner’s Beck. “To get our minds off things. Run the camera. If it turns out well we can...
2024-06-21 12:00:09 +0000 UTC
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His father gave him a mock salute, and gratefully, Nick escaped.
At first, he walked, without destination or plan, or at least, any conscious one. He was nearly at the exit when he realized his prevailing need was ‘get out of here.’ Easing to a halt near the enormous doors, he felt the prickle of heat up the back of his neck that meant he wa...
2024-06-14 12:00:12 +0000 UTC
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One of my favorite gouache paintings of a Le'enle (unicornish thing). From the early 2000s, I think. I just like the limited palette and the serenity of it, and I hope you do too!
2024-06-11 12:00:00 +0000 UTC
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Nick appreciated Mom changing the subject, though he knew that meant he hadn’t changed her mind and she didn’t want to argue about it anymore. He did, though. He wanted her to love Omen Galaxica as much as he did. Sometimes he thought she was getting it… and then other times, like this, she wanted to rain on his parade. Again. About the things he cared about.
&nb...
2024-06-07 12:00:10 +0000 UTC
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We have had the most beautiful year I can remember here in Florida… a mild spring leading into the least humid, mildest summer, with mornings and evenings dipping into the low 80s F, with breezes. I have loved every moment of it, except for what it does to pollinating plants. We usually get a break when the weather gets hotter and wetter, and instead, the plants are burgeoning with joy!
I, meanwhil...
2024-06-05 16:19:53 +0000 UTC
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“Mom, you’re finally awake!”
Amanda, shedding the blanket some centaur had put over her character’s sleeping form, said, “Finally? It’s barely eight in the morning!”
“Woah, is it really eight? When did that happen.” Ah, she recognized that expression....
2024-05-31 12:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Update!
First things first: the void cat/kitten sticker and magnet kickstarter is live and at 286% funded, with 8 days to go! This campaign has a ton of add-ons, too, so if you like any of my other stickers/magnets, here’s a way to get them with cheap shipping. 2024-05-27 16:42:52 +0000 UTC
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“What is my purpose?” she asked.
“You’re here to help me make games. Pretty sure, at least.”
She had paused, aware of gaps in her knowledge that made it difficult to extrapolate useful data from this response. “You created me without a...
2024-05-24 12:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Ray stared at the email, Thai iced tea forgotten.
It had never been his plan to become a professional channel manager. His childhood dream had involved becoming a director for blockbuster movies. Well, and video games, but he hadn’t had the patience to code or the artistic skills to draw. Making movies, though… he loved movies. The streaming thing had b...
2024-05-16 22:12:09 +0000 UTC
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Rex had an interesting observation on an earlier post on Locals:
Earthrise feels like an interesting starting point to talk about prophecies. It was my first encounter with Liolesa's chess-playing. After coming back to it from reading the other stories that show Liolesa's talent more clearly, I started to realize just how much meddling she likely had been doing to nudge the right players on to that ship.
It would be interesting to see an article about what...
2024-05-15 12:00:12 +0000 UTC
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For this month's back-in-time Tuesday, and because May has Mother's Day, here's a watercolor of a couple of Faulfenza, indulgent mom and mischievous child. This one's from 2005--I was seriously into muted colors then!
2024-05-14 12:00:01 +0000 UTC
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With special offers and discount codes! (I will say this is the only place you can get PDFs of my coloring books and pick up expired Kickstarter extras.)
Check out the details here: https://studiomcah.com/blogs/news/we-are-live-welcome-to-jaguars-chimerical-shop
2024-05-11 12:31:04 +0000 UTC
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Downstairs, Mom was setting the table. “Could you get the broccoli out of the freezer? It’s rotisserie chicken night.”
“I thought Wednesdays were rotisserie chicken night?”
She grinned. “Yes, but we decided to do impromptu pizza night yesterday. So tonight is now rotisserie chicken night.”
“Sounds fine to me, I’ll eat whatever.” Nick ope...
2024-05-10 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
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I booked myself a virtual book tour for the 15th and the organizer asked me for at least 3 guest posts for the various blogs. I thought you all would be entertained by my first, though it's aimed (obviously) at people who don't know me. :)
Now I only need two more ideas! Give me some if you have one!
WHY NOT BOTH
I drink coffee in the morning, and love picking between different varietals and different styles of drinking it. I will drink straight espresso, Cuban coffee, Turki...
2024-05-07 14:59:04 +0000 UTC
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The village hadn’t gotten less depressing over night, but seeing it under virtual sunlight filled Amanda with the same desire to be productive that real sunlight did. Ordinarily that would have disconcerted her, but it had been so long since she’d been energetic that she didn’t care how she recaptured the feeling. It was enough to have it.
...
2024-05-03 12:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Why yes, thirty years ago...
2024-04-30 20:54:46 +0000 UTC
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Killz’s first PVP battle was a cinematographer’s dream, especially the way it happened. Everyone expected the leet MOBA player to hunt players, not the other way around… but Killz and Goldie had been heading north for the Banewood Hills, the level 11-20 area, killing every itinerant NPC and any animal they could snipe from the road, when they’d been knifed in the back by a team of assassins. Ray’s stream key did...
2024-04-26 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
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Nick glanced at the bobbing light. “What?”
Was it his imagination, or had it hesitated? “The surviving NPCs of Donner’s Beck must have feelings about their absent family members. I am trained extensively on human literature and can predict their behavior, but I was not programmed to simulate emotions and can only extrapolate what it is t...
2024-04-19 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
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For a long time, I set my Balance Card deck aside, for reasons I can’t articulate… and that’s probably in keeping with the concept of decks, anyway. That they’re tools for dredging the subconscious and the intuitive, so sometimes they excuse themselves without explaining their absence. Recently, though, they’ve floated back to mind, which… is probably also in keeping, and suggestive.
I pulled them off the shelf today: same simple white cards, blank except the quickly scrawle...
2024-04-15 13:37:24 +0000 UTC
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Nick tore off the wireset and rubbed his face. He’d checked out early because he couldn’t see himself marching down to dinner without some time to shake off his mood. The afterimages felt burnt into his retinas, though. The fourth expansion had involved the destruction of some of the landmarks in the starting zones, a controversial decision that the company had justified because they’d needed to update the game physics to acco...
2024-04-12 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
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This color pencil piece is probably from around 2000 or so, and it's Dlane and Thenet from The Worth of a Shell, in the house in het Narel...! I worked hard on that warm brown gradient in the back, there...!
2024-04-09 12:00:01 +0000 UTC
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By the time Mom logged in, Nick had found and looted six more bodies, including a [Petrified Harrier Heart]. He’d also picked up several [Pork Hanks] and [Cow Ribs], along with an entire new class of herbs he’d never paid much attention to. Once the cooking skill hit around 150, it started asking for herbs and spices that could be purchased from vendors, but Nick had hoped he could find some of them wild… and he had. He...
2024-04-05 12:00:09 +0000 UTC
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My AI experiment continues, frens! The first few days, where I fed Claude financial and marketing information and used it to generate everything from reader discussion guides to revenue projections were wild and obviously valuable. But I didn’t want to spend forever dancing around the claims that LLMs are useful as creative assistants as well. So I have been confronting my misgivings directly, coming up with sce...
2024-04-01 12:00:09 +0000 UTC
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The drama ensuing from the massacre at Donner’s Beck was so intense Ray made popcorn and gave up on sleeping. If someone had mashed up a reality tv show with an e-sports match, and shaken on a bit of forum-level trolling for spice, they couldn’t have come up with better clickbait. It was all Ray could do to keep up with Killz and Goldie as the former dragged the latter all over the starter zone, slaughtering random NPCs, b...
2024-03-29 12:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Crafting in a game was not more satisfying than crafting in the real world, but this was only minorly reassuring to Amanda because the materials she had to work with were so literally otherworldly that she wouldn’t be able to reproduce the experience outside the game. She remembered beading and improvising jewelry in her early twenties when she’d been in one of her hobbymaxing moods, so the motions were familiar, but how could anything she made in the real world evoke the same sense of ac...
2024-03-22 12:00:10 +0000 UTC
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