Kate's Notes

I HATE that amount of self-doubt... *sigh* ... less shyness and a bit more self-confidence would be nice from time to time... but I'll most likely never learn that.

Title: Man On A Mission
Author: Ky (venom69)
Fandom: Star Trek: Voyager
Rating: ADULT
Summary: Yup. He was a man on a mission.
Character/Pairing: Janeway/Chakotay
Spoilers: None... the show’s ended!
Warnings: Language, adult themes, sex.
Author’s Notes: Song belongs to Billy Gillman. This is a sequel to Cravings, as requested.
Disclaimer: Usual guff. Not mine, promise to put them back where I found them.
Date: 28/08/08

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wwdn/~3/376534645/wil-wheatons-20.html

Please excuse the indexing-friendly title. I hate it as much as you do, but I know there are literally fives of people on the Internets who may want to know this vital information for the coming weekend.

I'll be at Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle this weekend. I'm not keynoting, but I am on a couple of panels, and I will have a booth, stocked with all of my books, plus my glasses and my shoes, so I have them. I don't have a ton of stuff, though, so you should probably drop everything you're doing and go get in line right now.

My schedule looks shockingly similar to this:

Friday

3-4PM: Signing in my booth

7-8PM: Signing in my booth

Saturday

3-4PM : Signing in my booth

6-7PM: Panel - "Is Casual Killing Core Games?" in the Raven Theater. This should be an interesting conversation. I don't think casual is killing core gaming at all, but I'm interested to hear from people who think it is, and tell them why they're so very very wrong.

7-8PM: Signing in my booth

Sunday

11:30-12:30: "The Wil Wheaton Panel!" in the Serpent Theater. I'm going to be honest: I don't think a lot of people are going to come to this. There are two absolutely awesome panels at the same time, including Family Feud with Gabe and Tycho, and if the panel didn't have my name in it, I would skip it, too. However, for those of you who will be in attendance, due to your sacred vow to never watch Family Feud, I'll be reading from Happiest Days and Sunken Treasure, wand I'll do a Q&A if there's enough interest. We'll have fun (oh yes, we'll have fun. We always have fun, and we float, Georgie! We all FLOAT DOWN HERE!) and it will be awesome.

12:15-2PM: Signing in my booth

I reserve the right to bail on signings early if nobody's there, and stay a little longer if that's necessary.

Please, please, please come introduce yourself if you read my blog, especially if you're a regular commenter. It's pretty awesome to have faces to go with the names.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wwdn/~3/376507624/the-joys-of-uns.html

Inspired by my previous post and its related conversation in the geek group, my friend Andrew and I have been talking, as we so often do, about our RPG experiences. He said I could share this one:

Our college group wasn't big on subtle roleplaying. The anecdote that best exemplifies our attitude comes from a random night encounter.

The mage was on guard, heard a rustle in the woods outside the camp, and immediately unleashed a fireball.

"You aren't going to wait to see who it is?" asked the DM (different guy; we rotated). "What if it's one of your friends?"

"They can take the damage," replied the mage's player.

End of encounter.

There are times to take RPGs seriously (or so I've heard) but it's time like these that I look forward to the most when I play a tabletop RPG. If you listened to the Penny Arcade D&D podcasts (JIM DARKMAGIC FOR THE WIN!) you heard something remarkably similar to my friends and me playing . . . well, just about everything, really. That's sort of the whole reason we play games, isn't it?

I'm going to PAX this weekend, where I'm sure I'll engage in quite a bit of the video gaming. I'm especially looking forward to playing Rock Band 2 with the Enforcers, but more than anything else, I'm excited to spend some time in the Original Wireless Gaming area, which I missed last year. It's nothing but classic RPGs and hobby games, all donated and run by volunteers. Last year, there were opportunities to do a one-shot dungeon crawl, and I can't wait to get on the list for one of those if they're doing it again.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wwdn/~3/376410013/underrated-sci.html

One of my favorite topics when I was writing Geek in Review was the Guilty Pleasures series. It gave me an excuse to watch movies without feeling like I was slacking off, and always generated entertaining discussions (and more than a few suggestions for other movies to use in future columns.)

When I checked in on The Geek Group at Propeller this morning, I saw something similar: Ten Truly Underrated Sci-Fi Movies.

Take a look, and let me know what you think. I wouldn't have included Aeon Flux, which tried real hard but couldn't close the deal, but the rest of them are great, especially Primer, which never gets the respect it deserves.

I think Groups are where Propeller is going to set itself apart from the rest of the social news world, so I really want to build and nurture the Geek group. I think it's a fantastic resource and if there's enough participation, could become a wonderful place for geeks to gather and goof off - I already check in several times a day, even when I'm not doing admin work. In support of that effort, I'm going to close comments on this post, so if you're interested in commenting and stuff, you'll do it there. (Bonus: the Conversations are a lot of fun, too. D&D geeks need to check out What's the most audacious thing you've gotten away with in D&D?)

http://feeds.blogthings.com/~r/blogthings/NewestQuizzes/~3/376371532/

The Back to School Test - How did you feel about going back to school as a kid? And what does it mean for you as adult?

http://feeds.blogthings.com/~r/blogthings/NewestQuizzes/~3/376270157/

Do You Make Common Spelling Mistakes? - Is your spelling shameful? Find out if you’re making some of the most common spelling errors.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wwdn/~3/375653343/i-thought-i-was.html

Writing fiction is a scary, solitary experience for me. Eventually, I get stuff to Andrew and we start working together to hammer out the final draft, but I write my first draft with the door closed, as Stephen King advises, and it can be a lonely time, with Self Doubt and the Inner Critic dropping in uninvited and unannounced from time to time to mess with me before the real fun starts.

As I struggle through the first (really the zero, but that's just semantics) draft of this novella, I have to keep reminding myself that the first drafts of Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot weren't as easy as Happiest Days , and the first column I wrote for Geek in Review wasn't as effortless as some of the last ones. In other words, I'm learning a new skill, and since I'm mostly on my own as I explore this new territory, it's easy to get lost and confused.

Luckily for me (and all other writers) there are experienced authors who are willing to share with us how they got where they are, so that we may try to follow in their footsteps.

Elizabeth Bear is one of the most fearless, honest, and generous of these authors. Cherie Priest (who makes me wish my name could be turned into a cool anagram) and John Scalzi are right there with her, and if you're a serious writer, you need to be reading their blogs every time they update. I've lost count of the number of times I've read something of theirs and said, "Thank jeebus. I thought I was the only one." It's tremendously reassuring to know that some obstacle I'm struggling with isn't unique to me, or a result of my inexperience or illustrative of a lack of ability, as much as it is just a part of the writing process, something other writers who are much more successful than me have also experienced (and, probably annoying to them but incredibly reassuring to me, still experience.)

Way back in February, Cherie wrote:

I give the hell up. On its present track, Awake Into Darkness simply isn’t working. It’s a tough thing to admit, especially when I’m almost 30,000 words deep in the draft; but if I’m going to be completely honest with myself, I’ve known from the start that it was b0rked — because I was doing a shitty job of recycling old material. I knew from the get-go that I ought to just trash the whole thing and rewrite it, and I didn’t, and that’s nobody’s fault but mine.

At least I’ve come to grips with it in time to do something about it. Following much head-desking and a whole lot of emailing, badgering, and drunken grumbling (at self, husband, editor, etc.) about this story, I think I’ve finally got an idea of how it can work — and yes, it definitely involves starting over from scratch.

I can't imagine starting over after 30K words. Hell, I have a hard time even getting to 30K words, which is something I look forward to not being completely intimidated by in the future. Cherie says that she wrote most of the stuff that didn't work when she was still a rookie (like I am right now). When I've struggled with a story I thought was worth writing, I always thought it meant that I sucked, and just wasn't cut out to write fiction. After reading this, though, I was relieved to have permission to let something go if it just doesn't work. It's also a good time to remind myself: Don't be afraid to suck, and learn from the mistakes you make.

Elizabeth Bear recently said:

... one of the reasons I need breaks between writing things is that telling stories is an exhaustive mental effort. They use up all my thinky, and then I am left without too much else to fill up my time. [...]

And it cracks me up, because when I am actually working on a story and it's ready to be written (as opposed to being hacked out of the living rock to beat a deadline), I am crabby and reclusive and very defensive of my precious time, and very very aware that there's not nearly enough of it. The winged chariot is right at my heels, and there is never enough time in the day and strength in my poor mortal frame to get as much done as I want to.

From time to time, I get creatively exhausted and no matter how hard I try, I can't put two words togeher. Usually, it happens after I get across a particularly important deadline, like my brain just shuts down and refuses to do anything until I take time off and recover HP. Problem is, I always feel guilty, like I'm being a deadbeat while Anne does real work during these times. Other times, I feel like a ferret on meth, struggling to help my fingers keep up with my brain as it unleashes idea after idea at me. It's reassuring to know that someone as successful and as consistently awesome as Elizabeth Bear experiences similar extremes.

In his introduction to The Secret History of The Lost Colony, John said:

The lesson here for writing is that even your “failures” — the stuff that doesn’t work for your book, for whatever reason — can still have value to you as you’re wrestling with your work. This is one reason way, whenever I chop out a significant chunk of text from a book I’m writing, I don’t simply delete it: I cut it and paste it into an “excisions” document that I keep handy. That way I can go back to that material for reference, or to drop a line or an idea into the final version, perhaps in a completely different context, but where it will do some real good. This is what I do, and it’s worked for me so far.

I got a whole book out of one of those folders. I'm intensely grateful to be living in a digital age when it's simple and efficient to hold onto tons of stuff that I'd otherwise throw away, if it was printed out.

As long as we're talking about writing, I wanted to point all my fellow rookie writers to 5 Writing Lessons I Wish I'd Learned the Easy Way. I also wanted to point all my fellow bloggers/writers to a fantastic post I wish I'd written about the difference between writing a book, and writing a blog.

I'm not under the delusion that I'm anywhere close to the same league as the authors I've mentioned in this post, but that's the point. They're all successful and talented and awesome, and instead of hoarding their knowledge and guarding their experience, they share it with us, so that we can dream of one day being like them.

http://feeds.blogthings.com/~r/blogthings/NewestQuizzes/~3/374695242/

What Religion Should You Be? - What religion best fits your views on God and spirituality?

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wwdn/~3/374508028/fuh-nuh-muh-nul.html

So there's this movie coming out next year. A lot of people want to like it, but an equal number of people are concerned that it may not be as good as they hope. There's a lot riding on this movie for a lot of people - some would say an entire franchise - so there are a lot of people who get . . . touchy . . . when people like me express opinions about it. The studio's done a great job clamping down on actual news, so lots of rumors and speculation have filled the resulting vacuum.

This morning, SF Signal linked to an interview with Kevin Smith (I swear, this blog isn't going to be all Kevin Smith, all the time) where he obliquely discusses a movie that he can't really talk about:

Host: So thumbs up on The Watchmen, what else you got?

Smith: I saw a movie last night that I cannot talk about.

Host: Was it good?

Smith: It was phenomenal.

Host: Any stars, any break out stars, and do they trek?

Smith: The stars absolutely trek in this film. It is fantastic. Anybody who was worried doesn’t need to be worried–about this film I cannot talk about…It was in very capable hands. The director did a phenomenal job–the director and his crew. Top notch cast and the guy that plays the lead is an instant star. That dude is going to be so famous. He is so wonderful. He picked up a role that I would say is pretty challenging for someone to step into the shoes of, because it is a role that has been played before many times by the same guy.

Host: How do you out Shatner, Shatner?

Smith: I don’t know what you are talking about.

Host: I was just saying that as an expression.

Speaking of Kevin Smith (and, really, I swear this isn't going to be a regular thing), Anne and I went to the opening of Crazy 4 Cult 2 at Gallery 1988 on Friday night, thanks to an unexpected invite from Jensen, who I believe is the gallery's owner. It is phenomenal. Let me just say that again, to make my point: fuh. nuh. muh. nul.

I didn't know that some of my favorite artists are in the show, including Ben Walker (who does awesome work with bears and guns) and Dan Goodsell, who does Mr. Toast. Andy Suriano, who you may have seen play the part of my Russian mail order bride on Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show, also has a piece in the show that's spectacular. My favorite pieces in the show, though, have got to be Scott Campbell's*, including the poster for the show, and Kirk Demaris's** family portraits.

I was absolutely blown away by this show, and if you're within . . . let's say two hours of Los Angeles . . . it's worth the effort to come into town and see it before it closes. While you're in the neighborhood, you can buy comics (including the new Star Trek Manga that has my story The Art of War in it, plug plug) at Golden Apple, see a show down the street at ACME, and have dinner at Bulan Thai, the best vegetarian Thai restaurant I've ever been to.

* He has a webcomic that's tremendously entertaining. He also did great showdowns of the 8-bit era for I am 8-bit.

** You could easily lose a few hours enjoying retro culture at Kirk's Secret Fun Spot.

Title: Simple Liberties – Endgame
Author: Ky (venom69)
Fandom: Star Trek: Voyager
Rating: Mature People
Summary: What if Chakotay had said no?
Character/Pairing: Janeway/Chakotay
Spoilers: None... the show’s ended!
Warnings: Language, adult themes.
Author’s Notes: Song belongs to Boys II Men. Part 9 of the Simple Liberties series. 262,018 words and 715 pages later. This baby is officially finished.
Disclaimer: Usual guff. Not mine, promise to put them back where I found them.
Date: 25/08/08

http://feeds.blogthings.com/~r/blogthings/NewestQuizzes/~3/373785641/

What Piercing Are You? - Are you a sexy belly button piercing? Or are you a non-conformist lip piercing?

:) Our beloved Captain and her ship, Captured.

WARNING! THIS DOES CONTAIN NUDITY AND IS RATED NC-17, not work safe!!!

http://belanna.faketrek.com/misc/jway-chainedup.jpg

antoinette + charlotte coronet

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wwdn/~3/372237692/have-you-played.html

Around 1981 or 82, I learned to program - if you could call it that - on the Atari 400, copying programs out of magazines, one uncertain finger at a time. I also learned the proper way to cuss out a computer when I'd miss a comma or make some other mistake, getting nothing more than SYNTAX ERROR for my hours of hard work. Guess which skill still serves me today?

While I was doing some admin stuff on the Geek Group at Propeller this morning, I saw that member JBooth had submitted Atari: The Golden Years. It's a fabulous article at Gamasutra that covers 1978-1981:

This four-year period -- from 1977 to 1981 -- contains some of the most exciting developments the company ever saw in its history: the rise of the 2600, the development of some of the company's most enduringly popular games (Centipede, Asteroids) and the development and release of its first home computing platforms.

This comprehensive look back, filled with quotes from the original creators and other primary sources, offers a detailed peek into the company that popularized video gaming as the '70s turned into the '80s, and created the first viable market for home consoles.

If you ever owned an Atari computer or played any of their ubiquitous games, this article is going to be an awesome ride on the nostalgia bus for you. It's also useful for you damn kids today who want to understand why guys like me get all worked up about 8-bit computers, but get off my lawn before you read it.

You know . . . there are lots of great 80s computer emulators available now, and I've often wondered if it would be as fun as I think to fire up an Atari 400 emulator, track down one of those old magazines, and see if I can actually get one of those games to run.

http://feeds.blogthings.com/~r/blogthings/NewestQuizzes/~3/371365237/

What Does Your Bed Say About You? - Are you more like a philosopher, a king, a guru, or a warrior?

I am doing a 50 icon challenge for the community of episodic100. You may take as many as these as you wish, but please give credit. Feedback is always nice to have!

PLEASE NOTE: Please don't alter any of my icons. I have worked really really hard on them!!

Special Thank you to Trekcore for all the images!! :D I WUB YOU GUYS!

These icons are dedicated to my big sis, lil_blt_2 who requested Fair Trade. Hope you like them, XXOO



( They don't really need a cook, and I don't think our Captain really required an Ambassador. I've tried to find some other area where I might be useful, but, the truth is, I'm not needed. I'm hoping you can help me. I can't let Voyager go into that dangerous without some idea of what's there. I have to find a map! - Neelix )

Okay, so I was bored off my ass, I couldn't sleep, so I was just surfing the net and came across a picture. I smiled as my brain (from lack of sleep), came up with the idea of the Goddess as Princess Zelda.

Now, for you guys who don't know who Princess Zelda is... you guys need to get out more.. seriously. 0_o

Anyways, Here is our beloved Goddess as The Princess of Hyrule. Special thank you goes to Lillyxandra for the original image :D ♥

( Princess of Hyrule )

*F*O*L*L*OW**M*E**!!!


♥▼♥

Title: Simple Liberties – Season 7
Author: Ky (venom69)
Fandom: Star Trek: Voyager
Rating: ADULT.
Summary:What if Chakotay had said no?
Character/Pairing: Janeway/Chakotay
Spoilers: None… the show’s ended!
Warnings: sex, language.
Author’s Notes: Song belongs to Elton John. Part 8 of the Simple Liberties series. For Amanda, who bugged me incessantly to write this, from about an hour after Season 6 was posted. Happy Birthday, hon.
Disclaimer: Usual guff. Not mine, promise to put them back where I found them.
Date: 19/08/08.