d&d night

Tonight, I’ll be running the third session of my newest Dungeons & Dragons campaign. I’m still learning as a Dungeon Master, so it’s nice that two of our players are new, one is my husband, and the other two have only played for a short time. I don’t feel so self-conscious about my DMing style. Even still, I feel disappointed at the end of a session, like I could have done much better. I always ask afterward if they liked the encounters, but sometimes I think they’re just being nice, silently ridiculing my encounters and judging me harshly. Sometimes, I think I’m too fragile to DM.

And that’s strange, because I take writing criticism really well. I’m like a writing rhinoceros.

I wasn’t always that way. When I first started writing, I was really eager to get others to read my half-finished work. After a general consensus of meh, I stopped letting other people read my stories. I lost confidence in myself, in my writing, and I suffered for it. For a long time, I constantly questioned myself, every single decision I made within a story. That led to timid, safe stories. I didn’t try to write anything I didn’t feel safe writing.

It seems that my DMing has taken this turn. I started out gung-ho about it, but when my players didn’t respond to my encounters and story the way I had envisioned, I lost my confidence. In an effort not to have anyone complain about my sessions, I’ve thrown in simple battles, a straightforward quest, and I’m even working with an official D&D low-level campaign. Personally, I find it all safe and boring.

writer growth

A lot has changed in my last year of writing. I look at the pre-writing process, the actual writing, and the revision differently than I did a year ago. Last August, I had just finished the first draft of my Indian-inspired fantasy, a standard quest adventure with magic and mayhem abound. I did not plot that story. I did little more than brainstorm before I dove headfirst into writing. When I first started, I wrote maybe 2000 words a week. With school, I didn’t really have time to do more. I wrote without regard to quality. When I graduated, I had a lot more time. I wrote 2000 words a day. 3000 words a day. Even 6000 words a day. Still not concerned with quality. So when I finished, revision was a daunting task. I went through several revision drafts. My beta readers responded with meh to good feedback. Undaunted, I started querying. No responses. Not a one. So I started revising again. And again. I reworked the plot. I changed the entire story. I rewrote the first half… and quit. I spent too long working on that novel. Fourteen months! When I started my steampunk project, I knew I wanted to do it differently.

review: delirium

Before scientists found the cure, people thought love was a good thing. They didn’t understand that once love -- the deliria -- blooms in your blood, there is no escaping its hold. Things are different now. Scientists are able to eradicate love, and the governments demands that all citizens receive the cure upon turning eighteen. Lena Holoway has always looked forward to the day when she’ll be cured. A life without love is a life without pain: safe, measured, predictable, and happy.

But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena does the unthinkable: She falls in love.

new writing project

Well, for those of you that pay attention on other social media fronts, you already know this, but I think I’ve found my next story. It’s a weird mix of The Prince and the Pauper and Aladdin (romance aspect, not flying carpets, genies, and fictional Arabia aspect). That’s the best way to describe it off the top of my head. It’s going to be a sort of fairy tale fantasy set in a small kingdom of no consequence, told from the perspective of a princess and the daughter of an innkeeper as they vie for the prince’s love. I don’t remember exactly when or how the idea came to me, but it did, and I wrote it down. I didn’t have the passion to write it until yesterday, when I sat in front of our movie shelf, looking for something to watch. I wanted to watch a fantasy, something lighthearted and romantic and full of mischief, but none of the movies I owned fit the bill, neither did those on Netflix. So I decided I would tell that story.

non-writing update

New blog design!

I’ve been busy working on non-writing-but-still-book-related things, including my official website. It’s a very basic website that will likely be updated every few weeks, and it will, of course, link back to my blog. My husband, being the computer genius he is, graciously worked on the website Saturday. It should go live soonish, probably in the next month. It’s mostly finished, and it reflects the new blog design. Simple colors. A pretty tree in the header. I like it. It’s professional without trying too hard. What do you think?

There are a few more things that need to be done, mostly in preparation of my book release. I need to make a Facebook fan page (gag). I know, I know. It’s a must. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. It will take a whole five minutes, but I’m putting it off just because I try to spend as little time on Facebook as possible. Twitter is where it’s at, yo.