I Did It!

Hello!

As you may recall, the last time I posted I was freaking out just a little bit about the fact that I was soon to GM a Fate game. Well, I am pleased to report that the game happened Labor Day weekend!

All in all, it took about 9 hours and by the end, I was completely worn out, but it happened!

I feel very grateful, because the group I play with is fantastic. Everyone is very creative, we spend a lot of time laughing, and everyone is very respectful and kind. It is FUN to be their GM and I am already chomping at the bit to do it again.

I know this is a short post, but I just wanted to pop in and share.

"Fateful Flailing"

Afternoon, Everybody!

Why is it I can't write the word "everybody" and not hear it in Dr. Nick's voice?

Anyway...

I wanted to talk a little bit about a new project that has both everything and nothing to do with my writing ones. About a year ago (it seems much longer), some wonderful friends of ours introduced us to a game called "Fate".

Now, this would probably be a good time to acknowledge that up until about 3 or 4 years ago, I didn't really have any tabletop gaming experience at all. My games were limited mostly to Neverwinter Nights, Dofus, WoW, and, only recently, Skyrim. It's only in the past few years I have learned the fun of games like Cards Against Humanity, Munckin, Pandemic, Lords of Waterdeep, Smallworld, Forbidden Desert, and a couple of others.

However, there was one type of gaming that I hadn't really touched, that being RPGs. I am not sure why. In retrospect, it seems like something right up my alley. So when Husband suggested we do a Fate game with our friends C & M, I was a little nervous. I agreed to play, though I'll admit I wasn't really expecting to enjoy it. Husband was certain that I would and, as it turns out, he was 100% right.

Fate is at its core a collaborative storytelling game. The math that plays such a big role in D&D is far more simplified in Fate, which definitely appealed to someone like me. Our first game, once we got past the requisite rolling for characters, was so much fun. I was hooked as hard as I'd been with Harry Potter or Neverwinter and seriously couldn't wait to play again.

Our group has never once failed to produce a game that started off weird and got progressively more ridiculous. And I have to give it to Husband and C, because they alternate between GMing so that they each get a chance to play and they are amazing. They come up with fantastic stories for us to play with, they let us drive the game, and they know how to do a boss battle that leaves us wrung out at the end.

Perhaps this is why I am so freaked out. Because you see, our group recently decided we were growing out of the rascally city of Freeport. So we made our own city. We worked as hard building this city as I ever have on any world-building for my novels, and then took turns GMing a kind of starter set of encounters and quests.

It's my own fault, really. Because I have been saying for awhile that I wanted to GM a game. So when GMed my little mini-session, I got SUPER into it. I loved it. I don't know if I'd say I loved it more than I love playing my current badass ranger, but it was CLOSE. Husband and C, seeing my excitement, were very supportive, suggesting that I GM the next game.

And I am SO stoked. I have ideas, I have characters, I have locations, I am ready but also guys?

Fucking eeep.

This will be the first time I GM anything and I am honestly kind of freaking out. The two GM examples I have are so fantastic, and our group is so great, I have this powerful fear that I am going to fuck it all up.

I know this probably seems weird, given what I do. I love to write, I love creating worlds and stories, I LOVE doing it collaboratively. But...what if I suck?

The mini-session I did went well...I think? The group seemed to enjoy it. But I felt like I talked to much, or was steering the story too much? I don't know. Something that was the wrong the thing and will make my players hate me/my GMing/want to kill off my RPG character so that they don't have to deal with me ever again.

A lot of this is just...anxiety, which is as always a fun part of my particular flavor of mental illness. Negative self-talk is kind of my thing. But some of this is also because it manages to be weirdly more personal even than writing a novel. I re-read, re-write, edit, and edit again with my novels before anyone ever sees them. But this...if I fuck it up it will be right there literally on the table almost immediately.

Also my novel characters cannot throw dice at me. I am sure they would if they could, but they can't.

So yeah. I am crazy excited and if the group is ok with it, I'll write about my experience GMing here, but I just wanted to share that that is a thing that is happening and I am excitified. Terricited? Some combination of those things.


Love to you all as always.

~EW

Updates!

Before I do my post about RPGs, I wanted to do a quick writing-oriented update post.

I know that I don't blog nearly as often as I really should, mostly because I feel sort of strange when I do blog. I ask myself a lot why anyone would care what a random fantasy writer/nanny thinks about, well, anything. But that's not an excuse. What I do want y'all to know is that even when I'm not blogging, I AM working. So far I've completed three novels (including Dragon Touched) and a novella, and while none of these projects are perfect, I am proud of the work I have done on them.

Besides the Overlord Rising series (where I am now working on book 3), I have written an urban fantasy novel about werewolves in Wisconsin and a sci-fi novella about a group of fighter pilots who have a lot in common with my beloved Wraith Squadron. 

So as you can see, lots of thematic cohesion there.

In all seriousness though, I am glad to have a few different things going on. I feel much fresher when I am able to switch between projects.

The werewolf novel is in DEEP edits right now, but I'm seeing the light all the way at the end of the tunnel. I'm still undecided if the sci-fi novella will become a novel, though my worry there is that it will then turn into a series because I appear incapable of stand-alone novels.

Anyway, that's what is going on in terms of writing and as I get back into blogging, I'm looking forward to sharing more about those projects with you.

Ok, on to fun RPG stuff!

Still an odd duck and also still here!

Well hello, everybody!

I am sorry that I have been 100% off the grid lately. The past year has been....just freaking nuts. Husband and I bought a house, I started a new job, I finished book 2 of The Overlord Rising. Yeah, it's been a crazy year. I won't pretend that some of my silence hasn't been due to my old friend depression, but I am still here and am going to make a concerted effort to post more regularly.

Ok, so today I want to talk about my intro to fandom.

To get into my relationship with fandom, we kind of have to get into the kind of kid I was.

I was a bit of an odd duck. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, but as many of you know, that can suck for a kid. I got bullied a lot when I was younger. I had trouble relating to other people my age. I had an easier time talking to my teachers than I did to my peers. I was that kid. I was also an avid reader. I read in the car, waiting outside ballet class, every spare second at home; if you gave me a book, I would devour it. However, I wouldn't say I was in a fandom.

That being said, there were authors who I read assiduously. I read Boxcar Children, Sweet Valley High, and Babysitters Club. And then, I kind of found my niche. I stumbled upon Werewolf of Fever Swamp by R.L. Stine and then proceeded to devour pretty much every Goosebumps book that existed. From then on, I was a full-on horror reader. I gobbled up the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books (and spent probably an unhealthy amount of time looking over the amazing illustrations). Despite the urgings of my godparents, I read Pet Sematary when I was way too young and was completely hooked on Stephen King by about age 11. The opening of Cujo is still the reason that open closet doors freak me right the fuck out as an adult. However, none of my friends were big horror readers, so this wasn't exactly something we could share.

Fortunately, we soon got the chance to share something special. In the fourth grade, my dear friend Elena noticed my love of animals and shyly introduced me to the Animorphs series by K.A. Applegate. Welp. That was a problem. Problem in the sense that I read the first one and was completely, irretrievably hooked. She was very kind and let me borrow her copies, which I devoured but was an absolute BEAST about returning in a reasonable manner. (I only just returned a Dragonlance anthology to Kevin that I've had for about 10 years (sorry again!)). Well, this led to countless hours of talking about what our different animals would be if we had encountered Elfangor. We had lists (btw, guys, I still have those) talking about what our North American morphs would be (I was a wolf, obviously), African, Australian, Ocean, River, Prehistoric (Utah raptor, obviously). There may have been fanfiction, although I can't find proof of that anywhere.

We obsessed about the series, coming up with our own theories about what would happen next, plugging ourselves into the stories, and generally just getting really creative with the fun ideas that Animorphs gave us. We learned a lot about each other during this time. We learned how we saw ourselves within the group dynamic, which of us favored head on confrontation and which favored diplomacy, we learned who wanted to operate within the rules and who was ok being outside of them. We had charged debates about the merits of our “morphs” within the greater context of saving the world from alien domination. We even talked about what we'd want our friends to do if we were infected by a Yeerk and they knew. We talked about our weaknesses and how they would be reflected in the animals that we chose. These conversations gave me a whole lot of insight into the person that I was and how that might not exactly line up with the person I wanted to be.

For example, Cassie is the one who I wanted to be. She was kind and good with animals, lived on a farm, and was the estreen, the one with the natural gift for changing shapes and doing it beautifully. Realistically, I was a lot more like Rachel, the one who's battle form was an elephant and consistently threw herself headlong into situations without all the way thinking them through. Some people who know me might be inclined to say that I still operate more on passion than sense, though I certainly hope I've gotten a little more steady as I've gotten older.

As you can probably guess, Animorphs had a huge impact on my relationship with reading. It was the first time that I really got personally invested in a series and the first time that I really engaged with “fandom”. I had never really put myself in the place of the characters before. I'd never considered the idea of “what if I could actually make a difference?” before, but Animorphs was the series that actually made me start thinking about that. Granted, this very idea has lead to some embarrassing self-insert Mary Sues in my own fanfiction, but we'll get to that in time. Maybe. If I don't burn it.

Thank you for your patience and for reading!

Love,

E.W.