It’s time! For Links! And overuse of Exclamation Points!!!!!

:: Ending a campaign is a difficult process. One of my games is coming to a close within a month or so, and I’m actually extremely nervous. This current campaign is the final one of three that have taken three years to come to fruition, and now that the end is nigh, I have to worry about making it truly epic and worth the investment my players have put into it.

Part of the trepidation comes from the inevitability of The Big Reveal, in which a secret that I’ve hidden clues to throughout the campaign is unleashed, leaving the players hopefully with minds blown. Pretty much the entire game has been leading to this moment from level one all the way to level twenty. How does one reveal a game changing secret without making the players feel betrayed or cheated, and how does one end a campaign three years in the making? (One question I’ve considered over the course of the “video games as art” debate is: what about non video games? The story beats of a really well-run and well-designed game can become a HUGE part of one’s story DNA.)

:: Yankee Candle is overrated. (Ayup. But then, I pretty much like candles more for light than for scent.)

:: Sidebar #1: Did you see where Melissa Joan Hart is trying to get a project funded on Kickstarter? And here’s her big incentive: She’ll follow you on Twitter for a year. Oh, be still my heart! You and Melissa will be BFF’s! Every day she’ll go on Twitter to see how you’re coming on that dress you’re making for the prom. OR… she agrees to follow 20,000 people and never once looks at her Twitter page. Which do you think is more likely? (Huh? Of what possible use to me would be having Melissa Joan Hart as a Twitter follower? But then, I’m incredibly ill-attuned to things like who follows me on Twitter or on the blog. When people unfollow me, it often takes me months to realize it, if I ever do. So as an incentive, I…simply do not get this, at all.)

:: When some guy loses his life savings playing a carnival game, you just say, “Hunh?” When a government ministry lays down millions to buy pixie dust, you have to say “Wow!”

:: Well, one of the things I listed on the update was to go Somewhere Else and write a book. I’ve thought about this so often–whenever I’m in a new city for more than a few days. Writing books is the great activity of my life. Some people look at place and imagine the club scene–I imagine what it would be like to write a book there. For me, the process of writing is such an otherspace–out of my own everyday and into the unknown and odd and untethered to such things as like, a normal workday clock or regular meals.

:: I was asked to write the following quiz up by my boss, to distribute to the new hires. (Note to self: do this quiz.)

:: Back in the Spring of 1980, when I was 16 years-old, my family took a vacation trip to Washington D.C. with a side trip to the Amish country of Pennsylvania. I was particularly excited to visit the Smithsonian’s Air & Space Museum because I knew that the original U.S.S. Enterprise model, used in the filming of Star Trek, was on display there. Everything else about that trip was pretty much of secondary importance to me. What really mattered was getting to see that iconic starship with my own eyes.

:: I absolutely adore this, and can’t wait to hang it up. Anne may not be Dale Arden, and god knows I’m a long way from anything resembling Flash Gordon… but she awakens many of the same yearnings this painting always has. I’m thankful she’s still standing with me in this strange future land in which we’ve found ourselves… (Wow! I want one!)

:: I do know enough about myself and this farm to know this is a phase. And all this fear and frustration and deadlines and bill calls will ebb and flow away. Right now I need to focus on the work, and working a little harder to make ends meet, but it’ll all be fine. Whenever I feel panic wash over me I just sit outside on my porch and take a deep breath or seven with my eyes closed. I tell myself when I open them I will be surrounded by a farm I built by hand, through nothing but scrappy willm hard work, and the kindness and devotion of a readership all over the world. And when I open my eyes the proof is all around me. It’s in the waddling ducklings parading to the well. It’s in the sounds of Joeseph the sheep on the hillside. It’s in the flickering ears of Merlin, the toss of his mane. It’s in a dog with a sore paw, and a house with apple blossoms crowning a rack of antlers, and in the heart of the girl breathing slow on a porch.

Good things are on the way, and the only way out is through. (I love that: The only way out is through. I’ll need to remember that.)

More next week!

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