Games for Couples

There are lots of multiplayer games, but very few make for a great 2-person experience. In a previous post I mentioned how gaming is good for relationships so, here today, is a few listings, starting with:

Games for Couples

Oddly enough, 2-player games are hard to come by. I'm not talking about ye olde Mario where you played Luigi after Mario bit the dust, I mean simultaneous playing with a second, and only, person. So here are a handful of the best that I have come across. As I have mentioned I am a PC gamer, but many of these titles are available on consoles (I think Spelunky is available on all current consoles) I will be specifying whether you need more than one computer and whether they need controllers. Any time there is one computer but there are controllers required you need a minimum of 1. Player 1 can use the keyboard but player 2 has to have a controller. Two controllers are best. I use a corded Xbox 360 controller, you can plug it into your computer and it works right away.



Divinity: Original Sin

Number of computers: 1
Controllers: No

The cream of the crop. Divinity was an RPG literally designed for two people to play together. Even when you are by yourself you are still playing two characters. These two characters even interact with each other, and the dialogue trees even allow for them to have disagreements. Maybe you're a holy paladin who believes in doing good in the world while your spouse is a trickster who wants to steal everything that isn't nailed down? (actually you can even steal nails in the game.) The story itself is superb as well, and is heavily focused on the two. Initially it begins as a buddy cop game and slowly reveals that the two of you are closer to tragic soulmates. I don't often get romantic fuzzies from a game, but this one did it for me.

Chariot

Number of computers: 1
Controllers: Yes

The entire time I was writing my post Gaming is Good for Relationships and working as a team I was picturing Chariot. Adorable as heck, it will test your patience with gaming, your partner, your brain, and your index fingers. Playing as a princess and her fiance is also perfect for a gaming couple.

Portal 2

Number of computers: 2
Controllers: No

While the Portal series has a fantastic single player storyline and gameplay, Portal 2 is where it really shines for two people. Solving difficult puzzles makes for some great critical thinking together and requires the utmost of communication. Plus all of the robot high-fives and hugs are hilarious.

Resident Evil 5 & 6

Number of computers: 2
Controllers: personal preference (it's a console port but I did just fine with a keyboard and mouse)

Not a fan of RPGs or puzzle games? Prefer way more running and gunning? Resident Evil 5 & 6 is the way to go. While their interface is clunky (I felt) it was still a good, solid multiplayer experience. Don't worry about the storyline here, folks, Resident Evil has suffered from Kudzu Plot before I even hopped on the train with entry number 4 and I still enjoy them.

Battleblock Theater

Number of computers: 2
Controllers: Yes

Wacky and weird Battleblock Theater is designed specifically with teamwork in mind. You have to toss your partner across long distances, help them up ledges, and explode with a fart noise. Buckle your pants!

Orcs Must Die! 2

Number of computers: 2
Controllers: No

As a tower defense game Orcs Must Die! 2 (yes with an exclamation point) allows for strategy and communication between two people before the first round even begins.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

Number of computers: 2
Controllers: Personal preference

The third in the Splinter Cell series, I recommend it for much of the same reasons as Battleblock Theater, in that there are many areas that you, literally, cannot access without help from your partner. Later installments have attempted to recreate the multiplayer experience of Chaos Theory to no avail.

Lego Lord of the Rings and Indiana Jones

The Lego series make for spectacular 2-player experiences. If you want to be more casual, are introducing a spouse to gaming, or want to play with kids, these are a must.

Number of computers: 1
Controllers: Yes

Spelunky
Vangante
Enter the Gungeon
Moon Hunters
Crypt of the Necrodancer

Number of computers: 1
Controllers: Yes

These are lumped together because they are smaller but no less great. They are difficult, being of the rogue-like pixelated games (because, at some point, indie developers decided 8-bit = really hard) but have been some of the best multiplayer I have played. If you are playing on PC I highly recommend controllers.

Clandestine and The First Templar

These barely made my list. While not stellar games they are specifically two player. You can get some enjoyment but don't expect them to be triple A titles. My brother and I even nicknamed The First Templar "The Adventures of Squash-Head" because of the laughably bad graphics. Clandestine is a good game but was prone to crashing and the graphics harken back to the PS2 era.

But Jennifer, I suck at videogames, do you have anything for the craptastic gamer?

That's cool, that's cool. It's awesome that you're showing an interest in one of your spouse's hobbies and spending more time together. There are still some games out there that you can enjoy watching as much as your spouse will enjoy playing.

The Walking Dead
Tales From the Borderlands
The Wolf Among Us
Life is Strange
Bioshock series
Portal

There were some I really considered adding in this category, like the Zelda series or Mass Effect, but I'm using my own experience at watching and playing. I've watched my brother play every single Zelda game in existence (except for the portable gaming system ones) and, while I enjoy them for the most part, my attention span tends to waver during times when the storyline isn't right in your face. There are just times in games when watching isn't that exciting. To combat this I make a hybrid of my downtime, I read a book while the observationally boring parts are going on and snap my gaze up when a cutscene is occurring.



Technically 4 Player

These are all awesome games and the first three are in my Top 10 best games ever. While technically four-player they can also be played with three, two, or even one.

Borderlands series
Left 4 Dead series
Payday 2

Number of computers: 1-4
Controllers: Personal preference

These are together because they all have a similar gameplay type: first-person, four-player squad of people shooting guns for various reasons. The teamwork isn't quite as integral as helping others up platforms, but when you're down and surrounded nothing is better than your best friend running to your aid.

Castle Crashers
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
Overcooked!

Number of computers: 1
Controllers: Yes

These three are cute, quirky, and full of teamwork. Even with just two people it feels like a party.



Your mileage may vary with all of these games suggested and, with enough time, you will find the games that best suit you and your spouse together.

Did you enjoy this post? Then check out more!

Edit: As of this writing I have since decided to add The Red Rope (2 player) and We Need to Go Deeper (2-4 player.)

I suppose you could always both go outside but...

Gaming is Good for Relationships

I have only occasionally mentioned that I'm a gamer. Although it wasn't until recently that I started to realize that gaming is good for relationships. When I say relationships I'm primarily thinking on a husband and wife level, but you can substitute for any relationship: father and son, best friends, siblings, and so on. If I ran one of those Fortune 500 companies part of my team-building exercises would include gaming. I've broken it down into a few points that, hopefully, make sense.

I just scared away 97% of my readers by posting this image.

You spend time together

This is an obvious one. Spending more time together is always a good idea if you're looking to bond more. One of my recent posts also mentioned that, dollar for dollar, gaming is very cost effective. So if you're looking to hang out with someone without breaking the bank gaming couldn't be better.

You have to work together

By working together in a game you get suggestions and ideas from your partner, you also give in the same capacity. From that standpoint you could say that gaming is a neutral ground to allow the both of you to become comfortable with the idea of working as a team. Once you have the ability for teamwork you're like an unstoppable force against anything else.

High fives are not optional.

It's like a fire drill for when something really bad happens

Fire drills are a common thing done on a regular basis in the hopes that, with enough practice, the actual event of a fire will be treated with as much calm as a mere fire drill.

Sometimes actual fires are started to prevent clam turning into apathy.

Playing a videogame can create an artificial sense of stress for which you have to interact with each other during. Can't defeat that boss? Stuck on a puzzle? Do you devolve into arguing with each other, having forgotten the problem in the first place? Or do you work together, trying each other's suggestions? Now imagine you and your partner with a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, you can't really walk away from that.

Nor can you really look up a walkthrough...oh wait,

You lose to your partner

Losing is just as important as winning. In most cases you can't win without someone else losing. Even lottery winnings is the total of a combined group of people losing their money at one time or another. If you won all the time it removes the challenge and negates the actual reward, but I digress.

Nobody likes to be wrong and no one likes to lose, even to their own partner. I've focused primarily on the idea of working together but sometimes it's good to play against each other. By losing you realize it's no big deal and, at the end of the day, that nothing has been lost between you.

If there's a blue shell though, that's grounds for divorce.

Did you enjoy this post? Then check out more!

The Cost to Entertainment Ratio in Media
Life is Strange Review
TFTBL vs LiS: Episodes 1
I, Gamer

If all caps is yelling, is this like whispering?

Cinco de Kittens!

This blog post was five days late on purpose.

Exactly one year ago I ended up with a bunch of kittens. Not just your average age kittens like someone is trying to give away, these were dependent orphans.  A stray cat had some kittens and, unfortunately, got hit by a car. A coworker of a coworker is how I ended up with them. I did lots of research before taking them on. Still, there was lots I didn't expect.

Like the fact that they had all watched The Ring.

The lives of five little kittens were suddenly my responsibility. They were two weeks old (the picture above is from the day we got them, I do believe). I went in not expecting a single one to live. When the first one latched on and sucked part of the bottle down I had a good feeling. I felt even better when I got them to pee and, later, poop (I was always relieved to see them poop, which is probably the weird.)

Did you know Walmart carries tiny bottles and kitten milk replacer? I didn't either. Soon, I had making bottles of formula down to a science, feeding them every 4-6 hours. This went on for days, then weeks.

Four boys and one girl. Usually our kittens have a theme to their names, their theme was the letter X: Max, Drexel, Xero, Hex, and Pixel.

I still remember when they first began to play. It started as half-hearted bapping at each other, then wrestling.

"What do you mean you're not my real mom?"

They they got mobile enough that we had to start building fortifications. The baby gate we bought didn't last long before they began climbing it. Walls of Rubbermaid tubs and cardboard were built higher and more complex as they bested the previous versions.

No surface was sacred.

They had the run of an unfinished studio apartment.

Their claws grew sharp, and they became aggressive about eating. Soon, I had to wear a leather glove just to feed them, like a falconer of kittens.

The first night I didn't check on them once I sat in my house, listening to the quiet, wondering what to do with all of this time I suddenly had.

Occasionally I would watch movies with them. B-Grade movies à la Rifftrax was my culturing for them.

Which is probably why they chitter at the voice of Mike Nelson.

Soon, like all my kitties, they graduated to the outdoors.

I may be crazy and have lots of cats, but I ain't no lady.

This was the last photo of all of them together.

No, one did not die.

I had known a long time, from litters previous, that suckling for kittens is more than a food response, it is also a comfort one, like a pacifier to a human baby. What happens when you provide food, but not a pacifier? They turn to the only other thing that reminds them of their mother: Each other.

I learned the hard way that, apparently, male kitten anatomy tends to get, erm, suckled on. It was funny initially and I expected them to grow out of it, or at least the victim kitten would get old enough to knock some sense into the suckler. Out of the two of them, only one grew out of it. Unfortunately, the other one didn't. He was relocated to my parents house where he terrorizes their clowder to this day.

Even after subtracting one they got too big to all fit in my lap at once.

Despite not having a mother to teach them to hunt they managed very well. All of them were spayed and neutered because, after that much commitment, they sure as heck better not be going anywhere. The only weirdness different than other cats is the Pavlovian response to leather now.

Of course, with the spring comes a higher mortality rate. I still have two of them with me, and I gave them more time to experience life than they would have had otherwise.

That, and I have gained the most photogenic cat ever:

SO

GORRAM

PHOTOGENIC

Bring on NaNoEdMo!

Most writers are familiar with National Novel Writing Month. I say "most" because a writing friend of mine hadn't, but he's Canadian and I'm pretty sure I've worked around a Canadian long enough to get away with the phrase "Those wacky Canadians!" In a nutshell the rules are that you write a novel in the span of a month. Depending on the total word count you want to achieve depends on the number of words you have to type each day. Frankly I think Novella Month would be more achievable, but people have made some pretty good books under such time constraints.

I don't need that though, you know what I need? National Novel Editing Month.

Yes, I manage to procrastinate editing by more writing. I've written an entire manuscript to procrastinate editing the previous one, and you know what happened? I finished it. Now I have two written manuscripts in which neither have been edited.

Editing goes faster though, since the words are already down. You make a few tweaks here and there, maybe add a whole new scene, but it flies right by compared to writing from scratch. Right now The Crystal Witch clocks in at just over 38,000 words, a novella. Luckily the ebook market is more flexible about shorter stories. So, even if I edited a dismal 1,000 words a night (which is the goal I have each night when writing) I would still have it finished in a little more than a month.

More importantly though, Dusted came out all the way back in June 2012, and I don't want to pass the three year mark without publishing something else. What motivated me the most were two things, two authors really.

The first was Kristen Britain, she wrote a book called Green Rider, I already talked about it here, but the focus is how long it took her to write more books in the series. It wasn't that she was busy with other books like some authors, but it must have been some combination of a busy schedule and wanting to perfect it before release. Still, I dutifully read books 1-3, bought book 4 and have never read it (nor, do I think, I will), and now book 5 is out and I'm not even bothering. It took too long for the author between books, and it has taken her literally decades to get to things that were being foreshadowed in the first few books. Yes, you can always go back and reread books, but there are always new authors and stories coming along with promises delivered faster.

Second, and more relevant, is S.D. Tower. Who in the heck is S.D. Tower? This is an author who wrote a halfway decent book ("halfway decent" meaning I read it back in 2003) called The Assassins of Tamurin and then never wrote anything again. A "one hit wonder" except remove "hit"....and "wonder" too I guess.

Point is, I don't want to be like the first author, but I really don't want to be like the second.

So those are my motivations to edit. It won't be pretty and it won't be perfect, and I can't make any promises that I'll have something before the end of 2014, but I'll be working on it.

Let Me Get Sappy For a Moment

For me the holidays have never really meant a lot. Yeah, as a kid it's all the same "OMG stuff!" reaction but, as people get older, they tend to be a bit more family-oriented toward this time of year.


This makes my second winter since moving out of my parents place and, as of September, a full year of living on my own ("On my own" includes parents paying for bills, folding my laundry, washing my dishes, changing a flat tire, and cooking my dinner. Yep, good to be on my own...)

For me "family" doesn't really mean a lot. Whenever extended family visited (or we visited them) I'd be tortured by cousins as they broke my toys (I has toys that lasted 5+ years that only took 30 minutes to break in the hands of a cousin). I have always managed to interact better with adults than kids my own age and I'm glad I finally am one. Heck, I can't wait until I'm 30 so adults won't lump me into the "Stupid Young Adults" category.

You kids wif yer got dern laptops and infinity scarves!

Throw in the usual family drama llama sessions and figure the point I'm trying to make is that Thanksgiving and Christmas have always been a "Why?" thing for me. Had I known it was even a thing, I would have sequestered myself in my bedroom and listened to music with headphones on whenever the family thing happened.

When I got older my family stopped celebrating Christmas. It wasn't that we hated it, or were all bah hum buggery about it. We simply didn't bother. A tree was a pain in the butt to set up and maintain, wrapping paper is annoying, and we already get what we want the other 364 days of the year. Christmas is to me as what Labor Day is to you (except you don't have to hide for 2 months leading up to Labor Day.)

Except this year, it's like my heart melted. Suddenly I want a Christmas tree, something I haven't had in nearly ten years, and I want to put presents under it, and I want to get something special for my parents that says "I know you" and "I love you", and I want to go to their house and spend all day with them and have a huge dinner. We would load the wheelbarrow (or sled, depending on the snow level) full of wood, and I would pet all the cats who miss me (meaning everyone except Sandy), and we would do chores, and it would be lots of fun and as I go to sleep I have the warm fuzzies that only comes from being super duper happy.

Even if I don't accomplish all of that, it does give me an understanding of what real Christmas is.


...But no matter what happens, I will never tolerate Christmas music.

That Time I was Flash Robbed

Otherwise known as my first Trunk or Treat.

I know we're well past at this point, but if Christmas can sucker-punch me on October 28 then I can punch right back.

Plus, now that it's past October, have you considered adopting a black cat?

So the day started for me actually on October 30th. I worked 12 hour night shift starting at 6PM and had to switch to dayshift as fast as possible (I keep night shift hours even on my time off) so the fastest way possible was to stay awake long after I would have normally gone to bed. I got off at 6 AM, went home, waited for my brother to get up, helped him into his costume (which takes an extra person and 20-30 minutes to put it on), put on mine, and was right back to where I had worked only two hours earlier.

Now, I haven't done anything with Halloween since I was about eight years old. After that we would just buy our own candy and have a Simpsons marathon consisting of VHS tapes we'd recorded episodes on years ago. So it was actually a lot of fun to see people letting their inner child have free reign. There were people dressed up Mario Kart style, including 3 balloons and scooters. Green army men. Enough pirates to form an actual crew and enough witches (self included) for a coven. After getting my fill I headed home, 21 solid hours of being awake under my belt, and took a long nap while playing the "Just one more hour" game for 4-5 hours until my brother got home from work.

It was like having kids except  I actually got sleep.

From there we went to out friendly neighborhood trunk or treat.

Initially it felt like a flash rob, the participants becoming increasingly wild as the sugar in their system hit critical saturation. There were plenty of Elsas this year, and the one girl going as Cinderella was probably mistaken for an Elsa too, but there were a lot of cool ones too. A couple of my favorites were a tiny little Anna with a crochet hat made to look like her hair (complete with white streak) who's name was actually Anna, a Luigi with a ghost vacuum, and a kid in a stack of boxes I had mentally nicknamed Awesome-O.

If you're still young enough to go trick or treating yet watch this cartoon, your parents don't love you.

Now here's where I probably turn into an old coot.

I'm already awake trunk or treats defeat the whole point of the thing and that it has basically broken down into a fast-grab of candy, but what I wasn't expecting was the picky nature of the kids. I had one walk right up, take a good long look at the bowl, and proclaim "nah." And, by the end of the event, our bowl had actually gained different candies. That's right: the children were dumping lesser candies on us.

All I could think was "What the heck?" Back in my day (there's the old coot thing again), when we had to actually walk further than 6 feet for our candy, we appreciated every last bit we got.

I still enjoyed it though. It's been so long since I actually saw children dressed up in costumes that I guess I forgot the whole event of Halloween even existed on that level.



And, on a totally unrelated note do you have any idea how expensive razors are these days?

Yet Another Maximum Ride Book!?

If you've read my blog posts in the past you know about my Love / Hate relationship with the Maximum Ride Series by James Patterson. Well just last Monday I discovered this:

From Barnes and Noble:

THE NINTH AND ULTIMATE MAXIMUM RIDE STORY IS HERE! Legions of Max fans won't be disappointed by this encore episode in the beloved series about the incredible adventures of a teenage girl who can fly. As Maximum Ride boldly navigates a post-apocalyptic world, she and her broken flock are roaming the earth, searching for answers to what happened. All will be revealed in this last spectacular "ride"- a brand-new grand finale featuring all of the nonstop action, twists and turns that readers can rely on in a blockbuster Patterson page turner!


You know what I say to that? Bull. Freaking. Crap.

This book says to me "Remember that really crappy ending in book eight? Haha just kidding here's the real-real ending!" Book eight is literally titled Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure. I bet this is Patterson's (or, what I suspect, one of Patterson's many ghost writers) attempt at "fixing" the mess of the Maximum Ride storyline that was already so messed up even as far back as book three. So stop, just stop already.

Am I going to buy it? Yes, but my heart won't be in it. It died reading book four, and went through agonal heart rhythm during books five through eight. I'm going to read through book nine and watch as they take a bad taxidermy job and try to make it look better using a baseball bat.

What the series looks like, and also my current expression.

A Sunday Adventure Featuring Footloose, Brony Baristas, and a Zombie.

As you may or may not know I'm quite religiously inexperienced. My parents raised me under no specific beliefs and allowed me to think upon it and decide for myself. I've pretty much made my choice a long time ago, and continued to build upon it from there, but it's always interesting to experience new things.

Deciding to do something different, my dad took my brother and I to a Nazarene Church, which is apparently a Footloose religion that doesn't allow dancing (at least, so I've heard.) Being night-shift I go to bed at about 5am usually, service started at 9. Coupled with the fact that I had worked a long night Friday and got uneasy sleep, meant the whole thing had kind of a sleep-deprived wackiness to it.

Now, the area I live in is about 99.99% Mormon, so if you know anything about them picture growing up surrounded by them, but not being one.

Around here we have shirts that say "BYU Idaho" which mean the same thing.

So, first stepping into the church, I immediately fell to me knees and screamed "THANK YOU JESUS!"

Was it a divine revelation?

No.

...I just smelled the coffee.

Sweetened with the love of our Lord.

The place had a little coffee bar (plus juice and tea and muffins) and it was set up more like a cafe. They played some acoustic guitar group of three people and sang a little like a holy karaoke. The whole time I'm switching my attention span between the music and a picture of Jesus with open/closed eyes that followed you around the room.

Still not as creepy as Potato Jesus though.

Sometime during the singing one woman holds her hand up and I think at first that she's trying to gesture to a friend of hers to say hi. However, on the far side opposite her is an older woman doing it while her eyes are closed. Toward the end of the singing about ten percent were holding their hands up. At that point I start to wonder if I missed the memo.

Maybe they were all directing traffic?

Overall it was an interesting experience, although I don't know if I could consistently deprive myself of sleep like that. Still, the people were very friendly and nice and it looks like a great place to meet people.

Afterwards we went to a place called Villa Coffeehouse, a place I read about in a blog called Lost in Idaho (Hilarious reading about a guy moving from California to live in Idaho Falls, but a some of his subject matter is NSFW, so you've been warned.)

The barista was a Brony, judging by the hat he wore (he also had a Pokemon belt, but that never came up), and he was an interesting guy to talk to. I've never really been to more than just a Starbucks inside of a Barnes and Noble, like a little caffeinated tumor. So this was really interesting, and it had a group of people that I thought didn't really exist in Idaho Falls. I even saw a couple of girls who had some light PDA while waiting for their espressos. At least, I assume gazing deeply and gentle petting means they're more than roomies.

I think it would be rather interesting to see what the place is like in the evening on a weekday.

Afterwards I got home and crashed for about three hours. As much as I still wanted to sleep I knew any more would only mess up my sleep schedule more than it already was. So I dragged my feet into the kitchen and decided now was the time to try some Zombie Cure tea.

That's right kids, the zombie craze has infected tea now, and it is deliciously awesome.

Normally I'm pretty much exclusively a chai drinker, but when I first opened my little bag of Zombie Cure I already knew I was in for something good. It has a sweet, caramelly smell, which is the kind of teas I enjoy. It tasted the same way it smelled, going perfectly with milk and sugar. Best of all? It woke me right up and kept me going for hours.

So, in all, it was an interesting day.

If you hear me snoring, however, don't wake me.

Oh Look, Social Media!

A couple of days ago I made a Twitter account to help promote my writing. Me and social media get along about as well as oil and water, orange juice and toothpaste, wizards and television. But there are times when I feel like saying something that is far too small for an entire blog post here on Dusted Glen, so I decided to try my hand at Twitter after seeing my brother's Facebook and reeling backwards from it so fast I'm pretty sure I took out a wall in the process.

Nope.

After setting it up and dodging forced followings like bullets ("I don't even know five people!") I managed to get it up and running.

So sit back, relax, and watch me hilariously go down in flames. Come on, it'll be fun! (and I promise no updates from the toilet.)

Again, here's the link.

"I Want to Write!"

Recently, a coworker's friend's fifteen year old daughter (confused yet?) said she wanted to write. My coworker asked me if I could help her out a bit. My response?

"Sure!"

My expression?

OhgodwhydidIreplywiththatnowIhavetomovetoAustraliaandchangemyphonenumber.

But not for the reasons you might think.

In no way am I going to balk at a fifteen year old deciding she wants to write. I started "professionally" at around that same age (which I already told you about). However, any fifteen year old dreaming of publishing their first manuscript at fifteen years old and becoming a rich-successful novelist with the combined incomes of Stephanie Meyer, J.K. Rowling, Suzanne Collins, Veronica Roth, and Cassandra Clare, is going to be more than a bit heartbroken.


Which is why I warn people that...

1. I have to be mean (even though I don't want to)

Lots of people in the past have asked me for help, or have asked for help from anyone willing to on open discussion areas on the Internet.

Problem is, I have to be mean.

Not out of spite or hatred, of course I mean, if a little kid ran up to me with a crayon drawing of their house, I certainly wouldn't say "The house is not orange, there are more windows than that, the roof is hovering, your tree sucks, we don't own a space ship or a dog who can pilot one."

Unless it's actually fanart of Laika?

However, writing isn't a kid's crayon drawing. At its harshest writing is a profession whereupon you release a product that you expect people will pay money for. If you release an inferior product (meaning crappy writing) then people are not going to pay for your goods and services when there is a wide array of said product elsewhere.

In a lot of ways I have to be mean in order to spare you the real mean people.

I've done it before. The phrase "brutally honest" comes to mind. People post little snippets of their work, usually a first chapter, and ask for help. I come in and say "Nope nope and nope. Don't do this and this and this." Unfortunately 9 times out of 10 that person never wrote again as far as I'm aware.

That 1 person of the 10 though, his response? "Holy crap, you're right!" And that's toning it down a little.

The point is, your fans that are sugarcoating your writing skills (be they your parents, your BFF, your New Age Aunt who encourages you in all endeavors) will get your writing nowhere.

All families are required to have at least one New Age Aunt.

Being mean to yourself is a double-edged sword. It keeps you grounded and your ego in check, but it can also reach a destructive point. The latter is what I see more often than the former, your inner mean self is so mean that it causes you not to write anything at all.

This is why you practically need a designated Brutally Honest Person for your writing. Someone who will point out every flaw, but you know you can trust them because they want to help you.

The problem is, I have to be mean (in the eyes of the writer, their fans, their BFF, their New Age Aunt who has decided to put a Feri Witch Curse on me). I'm not, by nature, a mean person, but I put on my Big Girl Pants and hope the writer has theirs on too.

Being mean, however, is made difficult because...

2. I'm shy

Yeah, like a lot of  authors (or runaway best-selling indie videogame creators), I'm incredibly shy. I'm more than shy, I'm downright awkward. I spent two entire years in college with my eyebrows clear up into my hairline because it's apparently my listening face. Also, I bite my tongue by accident a lot, which can cause be to sound like I pronounce certain words like an idiot. I also get kind of pale when I'm talking to someone at length whom I don't know. This is all compounded by the fact that, when I panic, I stutter a little. On the whole I'm betting it's pretty funny to watch, like a dog pressing his face against the window.

I halp wif yur writing. Hurr durr.

Of course, all of this is made pointless to me and the person I give mean/shy/awkward/honest advice if they don't do exactly what they're wanting to to. That is...


3. You have to have already be writing

If someone ever says to you "I want to be a writer!" the first thing out of your mouth should be:

"So what have you written?"

99% of the time you're going to get "Um..." That's a really popular book title, that "Um." In reality there are a lot of what I call the Armchair Author. To write we sit in a chair...

A chair at Starbuck's with a frotha-mocha-lattechino if you're a hipster.

But I use the phrase Armchair Author to mean the same as Armchair Activist. Armchair Author means you want to be an author, but you spend so much time daydreaming/talking to people about wanting to write that you, as a result, don't write. Even before I had Dusted finished I could claim a whole slew of writing that I'd done, people were generally either impressed, or were too busy telling me to write about their ideas.

This is one of my fears in trying to help someone. I ask them "So what have you written?" and their reply will be "Um..." with an implied "Nothing" because they haven't written anything.

That's like saying "I'm having trouble learning how to play baseball."
"Well how often do you play?"
"Um..." (with an implied "I never have before.")

This leaves it too open-ended. There is an endless amount of things they could be having trouble with: hitting the ball, catching the ball, signals, keeping score,

The "No Crying in Baseball" rule.

For writing there is: character descriptions, area descriptions, action scenes, dialogue, chapter breaks, editing, publishing, first-second-third person perspectives.

These are just basics, we can delve further and start using more direct examples: Chekhov's Guns, red herrings, forshadowing, Mary Sues, cliches, plot devices, deus ex machina, dream scenes.

It goes on and on the deeper in you go. It's basically trying to visualize every line in a Mandelbrot Set in its entirety:

(The song that aptly accompanies the video drops an F-bomb, careful!)

Let's Try Something Different

Last week I went on a trip to Boise for a One Republic concert. Rather than make an ordinary blog post I decided to try something new, so I made a video.

For those of you not interested in seeing my face (with those dead eyes, toneless voice, camera moving between shots, stutter....I'm getting off track here) a video with just the concert is below.

Enjoy! (or mock, either way it was made for entertainment.)

Being in the Writing Chair

I used to read every piece of writing advice I got my hands on and would treat it like a holy sanskrit. That is, following it to the letter. Enough reading and, of course, I ran into information that was contradictory. I would always worry because I had no idea which one was the "right" advice and which one was wrong.

Along with your personality affecting the type of genre you are going to write (which, for those of you who suffer from 10+ days of amnesia, I mentioned in my previous post), it is also going to affect the writing habits you will have.


You have to read all kinds of writing advice and filter between "That makes no sense," "That makes sense," and "That makes sense to me." It's the "to me"s that are compatible with your writing personality.

What if you don't have any "to me"s yet? You find out by experimenting. Try one method and, if you find it's not working out well, try another.

Being an alcoholic like ye olde poets is neither recommended nor healthy.

That said I'm going to offer some contradictory advice about two versions of a Writing Chair works for you.

Be Free Little Bird!

Years ago I read writing advice that said not to tie yourself down to one special writing setup because it can cause Writer's Block.  "I can only write in my bedroom with Bach playing in the background," you'd say. Problem is, setting up that exact atmosphere is difficult, so you often don't get the chance and, thus, don't write. Instead, leave yourself open to any gap you possibly can, be it ten minutes or two hours. Laptops are handy for just such a thing.

Or...

Situate Your Brain

I used to have a lot of trouble sleeping. This led to long nights that, actually, let me come up with a lot of cool ideas for writing. I've read lots of stuff for insomniacs but what helped me the most was not to use your bed for anything other than sleeping. Don't read in bed, don't watch TV in bed. Your bed is not an awake-time place. It is for sleep only. That way, when you lay down in bed your brain goes "Oh, we're in the Sleep Place. So it's time for sleep!" rather than it becoming confused.

Brains are, ironically, really stupid.

I apply the same for writing.

Contradictory to the previous advice, I wait until a specific time of day, set myself down in a specific chair, and put on some atmospheric music. This says to my brain "Hey, it's time to write!" and I either get writing or sit back and work my way through a scene in my head for a couple of minutes.

So, try both of them out for a while, and decide which Writing Chair works best for you.

Writing Progress

I'm going to take a moment to sit down and talk to you. Not at you like I do with most of my posts, but to you.

Yes, you.

As you may know I started this blog as a way to promote my writing. I post the occasional helpful writing tip as well as a plethora of other things.

Satyrs anyone?

But I've noticed that, in the process, I don't talk much about my actual writing. Oh I give examples and the like, but if I were to personally ask any of you what I'm currently writing you'd just shrug your shoulders and say "I dunno."

When I gave myself a moment to really stop and think about it, I realized I have never told you guys because I'm afraid of letting you down. I don't want to hype a story only to make you guys wait two, three, maybe even four years (I'm being highly pessimistic here) to be able to read it, and that's if you even get to read it at all. What would be worse than announcing a story only later to scrap it because it never worked out?

The problem with not telling you guys anything at all is that you're left in the dark, and then you might start wondering if I'm even doing anything at all.

But fear not, today that all changes! I trepidly step out into unknown territory and reveal to you guys all of my writing progress, whether it's nearing completion or just a spark in my mind, including what round number of editing I'm in. To give you an idea, Dusted took 3-4 full edits, beginning to end. This won't be an exact number for all of my manuscripts, as the length of the story and how much work it needs will vary. Some may require only a few editing rounds, some may need tons.

So, here is my honest progress (the number of them should also show you why you shouldn't pitch your own ideas to writers):

Dusted: Needs new cover and editing.

All Just Survivors: On editing round 2, has 76,395 words. Procrastinating. (To give you a comparison, Dusted clocks in at 74,858 words, and it gained 10,000-20,000 words after editing.)

The Crystal Witch: 17,192 words in. Current focus.

Dreaming (AKA: Dusted 2: The Dustening): 32,963 words. Currently on hiatus.

The Witches of Dunraven (working title): 13,408 words. Resisting urge to work on it so I can focus on other, more complete works.

Lady of Crows: A spark. Resisting urge to even start it so I can focus on other work.


So there they are. This doesn't even include abandoned works, ideas that aren't even a spark yet, or works that need reviewing or writing, but aren't even on the back burner (mentally double or even triple this list for that.)

The problem is, when it comes to writing, I work best at shotgunning. I used to force myself to work on one thing at a time, but that often caused me to lax, sometimes for months at a time. By shotgunning, I'm all over the place. When I find myself getting tired of one thing, I'll jump to the other and work on it until I'm feeling up to working on the first one again. I'll admit, I probably won't get something done in a reasonable amount of time, but it's far more efficient than burning out and doing nothing at all. Best of all, when someone else is helping to read through and edit one manuscript, I'm working on yet another.

Have any questions? Curious about any of them? I'd be happy to provide descriptions of them (note that the less they're worked on the more vague of an answer you'll get). A few people have asked about the sequel to Dusted, so expect to hear about that in more detail another time.

The Opposite of Writer's Block

You hear plenty about writer's block, but what about when the opposite occurs?

Those times when you spend hours writing furiously. You forget about things like food and showering until something far more immediate manages to tear you away from the keyboard.

I shouldn't have had all that beer and coffee and watermelon!

 Even when you're away, you're still there, trapped in lala-land. You're still writing.

Your usual goal is 1,000 words. Heck, you're glad when you've got 500, it's still a good night.

But now?

Now you're cranking out 1,500 one night, 2,600 the next. Your muse, she's not just inspiring you, she's out having a house party (house = your head) with tons of other people, there are smoke machines everywhere, colored lights, and music that goes thumpa thumpa thumpa thumpa.

Like this, but with more glowsticks.

It's been four, maybe five hours, you want to keep going, you really do, but it's time for bed and you've already stayed up a bit later than usual.

When you wake the next morning the bright light of day is crisp. Your muse is passed out on the lawn, the house is a wreck and, for some reason, there is a goat eating your couch.

Normally I don't condone the myth that goats eat everything but this is a goat that lives inside your head.

You think back to all that work you've done, that feeling of being in the zone, and you smile.

This, my friends, is one of the perks of being a writer.

I Hate the Mall

Last weekend I went clothes shopping with my brother. He decided he wanted a new look while I realized I was wearing nothing but overly large, frumpy t-shirts that make my head look weirdly small.

So we went shopping at...The Mall.

Cue ominous lightning.

Apparently hating the mall is a rather common thing, but my mall is special. People complain that their mall is overly crowded and filled with teeniboppers, and so is mine, but I hate my mall for different reasons.

1. It's designed stupidly

Let's give you an example of how stupid it is through the use of the food court. The food court is the one place where you, as an inevitable group of teenagers, can split up momentarily to enjoy a variety of food options.

All crappy options, but still options.

Jessica hates tandoori chicken? Well nuts to her, she can have her pretzel and smoothie. Anyway, Barnes and Noble was feeling a bit too closed in and moved into the mall and the food court was demolished in favor of the bookstore.

Here's where it gets stupid.


So instead of having a single food court, they decide to spread the food stores (they don't even have the dignity to be called "restaurants") all over the mall. You want a burger but want an Orange Julius to drink with it? You're going to have to go waaaaay the heck to the other side of the mall. And what about chairs and tables? I can't even remember what they did for that because, one by one, they closed down. These days we have two food stores: a pretzel place and a Subway right across from each other. I like to think they throw things at each other like they're embroiled in some kind of turf war to be the last one standing.

And that's just the food court. What kind of variety do we have in our stores besides Barnes and Noble? I'll list them:

Clothing store.
Clothing store.
Clothing store.
Clothing store.
Clothing store.

Granted, you have your overpriced jewelry stores and Game Stop with obligatory crappy customer service ("We ran out" my massive, jiggly butt) but that's it. I used to complain about how boring our mall really is, but no one believed me (even me to an extent) until we went to the mall across the state while visiting family. It has:

A movie theater
A bank
A toy store
A miniature golf course
An arcade
A highly offensive novelty shop that would make even the most rebellious youth of this area faint.
A liquor store

Idaho is a repressed place (it has its pros and cons) where I live in Idaho, however, is extra repressed. The best way to put it is that the most conservative of people take one look and go "This place is weeeeeeird." (Except you guys, my lovely local readers. You're all awesome.) This is all represented in how stupid our mall is.

You know what? Previously mentioning my massive, jiggly butt is a great lead into my next point, which is...

2. They have weird sizes

Let me tell you my origin story.

I am actually a chimera: a fusion of two different things. It all started in a freak magic act. The magician was sawing two women in half when horror struck. Panicking, the magician put them back together, but he had gotten the halves mixed up, and it was too late to correct it. It wouldn't have been so bad if the women not been such different weights.

And that, my friends, is how I have the torso of a 120 pound woman but the lower half of a 200 pound woman.

In all seriousness, I do recognize I'm pear-shaped:

Like the woman in red, minus the jaundice.

I also recognize it's primarily my own fault. Yes, I can claim genetics has a hand in this, but I also write this as I am eating a bagel with cream cheese and about to start in on a 20 ounce Dr. Pepper. My favorite hobbies are sitting, laying, sleeping, lolling, and generally doing nothing. I hope to make some changes this summer but that's not what this is about. I'm a size 14 to 16 in pants which is, apparently, the average for women in the US. That means, logically, half the women in the US are a size larger than 14.

So why don't places in the mall carry anything above a size 12?

And don't tell me it's because only teenagers shop at the mall. I saw plenty of women with a toddler and a stroller in tow. So, either the place I live in has the most depressing rate of teenage pregnancies, or else women in their twenties shop there.

I was looking for a pair of jeans but found nothing but a surprising bunch of size 00. Is size 00, or even size 3, really so common that they stock the majority of their denim in those sizes?

What about their tops?

I'm a size Medium, though I occasionally prefer a Large. Already frustrated by their size in jeans, I expected a similar theme in that sizes only came in Small, Extra Small, or XXS. Instead I saw everything from Small to as big as Extra Large.

At that point what little bit of logic I tried to hold onto died a terrible death.

Not that I ever really bother buying much at the mall because....

3. It's expensive

Everyone probably complains of this, but malls really do jack up their prices just so that the tag can say Old Navy even though no one but you is ever going to read it. That's okay though, because it's Mommy and Daddy's money anyway. I meanwhile, have to keep from vomiting rage when I see a $40 price tag on what is a T-shirt.

Actual picture of me.

Then, they confuse you by throwing Clearance and Sale and BOGO at you. While there I saw a clothing rack that had 40% OFF CLEARANCE PRICE!!! slapped all over it. Original price? $80.00, clearance price? $79.99. I checked to make sure the one item wasn't just a fluke. Nope, the entire rack. Brilliant!

I've seen Hot Topic waffle every week between BOGO (buy one get one) 50% off and then have everything 25% off. Anyone with a modicum of math skills would be able to figure out it's the exact same thing (and don't judge me, I go there for the gamer shirts.)

I spent all of $20 at the entire mall despite walking into every single store. It took hours.

All of that overly-expensive merchandise, combined with their target demographic of risk-taking teenagers, is probably why...

4. They treat you like a shoplifter

 As I said, I only spent $20 at the mall, and it was for a single top, but you can be assured it will certainly be memorable.

I picked out a top I liked, it was certainly different from what I have ever worn before, and I wanted to see what I looked like in it. You know those scenes in movies where girls go to the mall and it has a montage of them trying on different things? It doesn't work that way thanks to the store employee having the key and there being a maximum of 2-3 items. Montages are created so you don't see all that fuss.

Anyway, I'm trying on a top. It's got spaghetti straps, which I'm completely unfamiliar with. Only since last year have I even delved into the mysterious world of tank tops. I choose my clothing as though I were the child of a stuffy librarian and an Amish. I like to think I look really good in this top, but my Amish/librarian clothing sensibilities start kicking in and I begin to wonder how it would look if I wore it over the top I'm already wearing. I'm spinning around while the thing tangles up everywhere because I have no idea how to dress myself. It currently resembles something between a lacy turban and a facehugger when I freeze at hearing a sound...

Wham wham wham!

Getting closer...

WHAM WHAM WHAM!

I'm next...

WHAM WHAM WHAM!!!

"EVERYTHING-GOING-OKAY-IN-THERE!?" she shouts while banging at the door like Johnny Quinn trapped in a Sochi bathroom stall (haha, I made a joke based on current affairs!)


"I'm fine," I say, coughing on plaster dust as it rains down from the ceiling.

But what I want to say is:


"Girl, I am a 26 year old woman pathetically trying to reclaim my squandered teenage youth through dressing like a skank! I am not currently stuffing that top into a pant leg or something so leave me the hell alone!!"

I discard the idea of trying it on over my current top, because I just can't now. It's a lot like the same reason some people can't use public bathrooms or two guys standing next to each other at the urinals.

As soon as I come out:

"Can I take that to the register for you while you keep shopping!?" she asks in that too-friendly way store employees are forced to act like.

"Er, sure," I reply, handing it over because I know she's taking it so I don't just walk out with it...or something.

Yes, I like the top, but you know what it needs? A good jacket. It has to be just the right length though. They have one, but it's a size Medium. I said I could fit Medium normally, but in this case me trying to wear a size Medium is like watching The Hulk squeeze into a pair of Size 4 thong (which you now cannot unsee) I didn't find anything else I liked, and the place was starting to creep me out, so I paid for my top and left in a hurry.

I'm not offended as being seen as a possible shoplifter. It's okay, I can understand being cautious, and I think I probably attract more attention than most: I'm twitchy, awkward, and quiet, I meander aimlessly a lot, and I wear big, heavy coats that make me look weird. If people want to keep a close eye on me, that's fine, but never, until that day, was I physically treated as a probable shoplifter.

Of course, I would think stores in the mall are some of the most likely places to be shoplifted. When I tried to look it up, I got this:

There are as many, if not more, searches to shoplift than there are to prevent shoplifting.





Ironically what made me feel better was shopping somewhere else the next day. Retail therapy, if you will (a phrase that just made me die a little inside to use.) Where did I go? My local thrift store. I found exactly what I wanted, including the exact kind of jacket I had been looking for at $6 instead of $40+, new jeans in my jiggly arse size, and a couple of new tops that, when they didn't have price tags on them, were given to me for $1 and $0.50.

So, the moral of the story today is go to the thrift store first: people will leave you the heck alone, save for the occasional hopeless, fish-eyed glance your way; there are no sales, so you don't have to do complex math to figure out what something costs; and no one will care if you try to steal a fifty cent, stringy spandex shirt.

....But seriously kids, don't shoplift. It's bad karma.

Yet Another Blog Reschedule

I've done a pretty good job bringing posts in a timely manner, but I think I need to push it back further than every Friday.

Before I hear complaints (or cheering? I'm honestly not sure who reads this thing...) here's a pretty good reason for it: I'm a writer first and a blogger second.

Lately I feel like the opposite has been happening. Whenever I have a free chunk of time to spare I spend it writing up a new post rather than working on a manuscript. With fewer posts that allows me to spread out my pre-scheduled posts further out and, thus, have more time to write.

So what is the new schedule already!? You ask in an increasingly frustrated voice.

Here it is: I'm going to try a format of every ten days. On the 10th, 20th, and 30th of every month, expect new posts (with the exception of February, with the last post of the month falling on the 28th).

Overall it won't be too much of cut. Some months have 5 Fridays, some have 4, with the new format there is going to be 3. Originally when I decided on Fridays, I did so with the purpose of giving people the weekend to read the new post, but from what I've been able to see from my readers' statistics it seems as though weekends don't really have an influx of readership (Wednesday actually seems popular for some reason.)

On the upside for my night owl readers, I will also be releasing my posts four hours earlier than before. You may have already noticed this particular time shift a post or two ago.

So, let me try this new schedule out for a few months and see how much work I get done.

Or I'll spend it looking at LOLcats.

 

My Book List for 2014

I have books piling up past my ears. A couple of months ago I had to sit down and review my bookshelves and really evaluate which books I was going to read. If the book had been sitting on a shelf for a couple of years and I still didn't find myself with the enthusiasm to read it, off to a better home it went. Things have gotten a little less cluttered from there, but I've still got quite a few sitting pretty, so let's see it I can get through 30 of them and look back on this list a year from now.

In all fairness I've intentionally left a few books unread so that I can read the next book in the series right after. I tried picking up Allegiant right away and felt totally lost, even with a scrap of paper I had written during the reading of Insurgent to help get me up to speed, and so ended up having to reshelve it.

Here is my list in no particular order, it doesn't include every unread book, just the ones I really want to get to.

Allegiant by Veronica Roth
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Girl in the Arena by Lise Haines
Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Claire
Three to get Deadly by Janet Evanovic
Delirium by Lauren Oliver
Starters by Lissa Price
Cinder by Marissa Meyer
Strange Angels & Betrayals by Lili St. Crow/Lilith Saintcrow (the gothiest name I have ever seen.)
Lure of the Dead by Joseph Delaney
Liberator by Richard Harland
The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch
The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan (I sped through all of these and then ground to a halt before starting the last one. Weird.)
The Royal Ranger by John Flanagan
The Alchemyst by Michael Scott

Here are more, in omnibus form or more than one in a series.

False Covenant by Ari Marmell
Lost Covenant by Ari Marmell
(Although from what I've seen I will probably leave these two alone until book 4 comes out. I loved Thief's Covenant but I heard Lost Covenant (book 3) left off on a cliffhanger.)

Through the Ever Night and Into the Still Blue by Veronica Rossi
(Another example of leaving book 2 alone until book 3 comes out.)


Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
(I read the first one so this is books 2, 3, and 4. Frostbite, Shadow Kiss, and Blood Promise.)

Flora Fyrdraaca SFBC Omnibus by Ysabeau Wilce
(This is two books in one: Flora Segunda and Flora's Dare)

Steel City Magic SFBC Omnubus by Wen Spencer
(Another two books in one: Tinker and Wolf Who Rules)


Witchworld: Swords and Spells by Andre Norton
(Three books in one, the Trey of Swords trilogy, Sword of Ice, Sword of Lost Battles, and Sword of Shadows)

Black Cats

"But Jennifer, you future New York Times bestselling author!" you say looking at the title of today's post, "It's past Halloween!"

"Your mom is past Halloween," I reply in a mature manner.

This isn't about Halloween, though I will mention it briefly later on. Instead, the focus here is specifically on the color of a cat (and prepare for this to be the most heavily-referenced and sourced post ever, as I want to show I'm not just spewing out random information.)

I did a speech paper on black cats once and learned quite a bit in the process. Since then I've been even more of an advocate for the adoption of black cats.

“A 2002 study in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science that examined adoption rates over nine months in a California pound found that black cats were about half as likely to be adopted as tabby cats and two-thirds less likely than white cats.”  - From startseeingblackdogs.com

Go ahead, take a look a look for yourself at petfinder.com I was browsing there  less than a week ago and the number of black cats there in comparison with any others is staggering.

Some of you at this point are probably asking why. Why are black cats so hard to adopt out?

Here's a rundown:

They Are Hard To See

Shelters can sometimes have poor lighting and, as a result, black cats get lost in the background. They're like the jokes people make about ninjas.

Adorable, purring ninjas.

How to solve this? Easy, take a harder look in what you may originally thing are empty cages or, better yet, specifically ask about black cats. The staff at the shelter would likely be enthusiastic to show you who might be unintentionally hiding from you.

People Think They Are Bland

 By bland I mean it in two ways. People want a cat with a more exotic-looking fur coat and, even worse, they think they will have a bland personality. Seriously, that's like accusing someone of being bland because they wore a plain T-shirt today.

Gawd I bet her idea of a good time is pricing brands of cotton balls.

I have plenty of anecdotal evidence to the contrary, but here's a video of one that has over 2 million views.


They Are Bad Luck

I really could just leave it at that, but the idea that black cats being back luck isn't exclusive. Some countries actually believe specifically black cats are good luck. Great Britain, Scotland, Japan, and many others (Germany is sort of halfway on the concept, believing right-left crossing is bad luck but left-right is good luck). Groups of people like sailors believed cats, specifically black ones, would keep them safe at sea.

No one really knows where the origin of black cats being bad luck came from. I've heard a large number of stores (one of which involves Vikings!) but while the origin remains fuzzy what really caused it to gain momentum was witchcraft. Even today people associate black cats with witches. To this day people still believe they're bad luck, I have a friend who's mom refuses to allow him to get a black cat because she believes them to be bad luck.

Hey, you know what happened last time we persecuted and murdered a bunch of cats? The Black Plague. But whew! Good thing we got rid of all those bad luck cats, it could have been way worse!



There would be sexy witches everywhere!

But in all seriousness if you are considering adopting a cat at any time in the future, please consider a black cat. Many shelters do keep people from adopting out black cats in October, as people have been known to "rent" them as Halloween decorations, returning them after the holiday (or much worse), which is why I bring this up in November instead.

There are shelters that have black cat adoption months, ask your local shelter. They might even offer you a discount right on the spot if you express enthusiasm!

And, most importantly, you'll be giving a home to someone who really needs it.