Nothing Can Survive In a Vacuum

Updates:

- Escapee, episode 10, is up. It's starting to change gears...

- I'm working on a drawing to accompany a very cool poem by Marcy Rockwell for a web-zine called The Sword Review. Should be interesting. Give me a few more days, Marcy! I've been swamped!

- I'm having a gaming session this Saturday. Haven't gamed since, oh, last February? It's a game session/barbecue/multiple-birthday party. We do that kind of thing in our group.

- I may be taking on a new monster project soon. The cool part is that it'll have me working with someone I've wanted to work with for some time. Till now we've only just shared our own respective work.

Why do we fall, sir?

Batman Begins. Go see it. A damned fine film. I love a good back-story. It also reinvigorates the character after the slap-dash Batman & Robin many years ago. The characters are all believable—which is hard to do in a comic book movie. The villains, while villainous, have real motives...and some even have good intentions. It's a dark movie with great ideals. While I'm semi-looking forward to The Fantastic Four, I'm not expecting those ideals. We'll see. But Batman Begins does it right.

So if you haven't seen it, do. Let's encourage this type of storytelling.

And the ninth episode of Escapee is up. Check it out, if you're bored.

Coconut Coffee

Let me just say... Getting Dunkin' Donuts coffee outside of NYC vs. getting it within NYC: completely different experience. Outside of the city (when people who live in NYC say "the city," they mean Manhattan), they will add milk and sugar for you, and they somehow get the ratio just right—even for a sugar stickler like me. However, in the city you're on your own, so if you get a coconut-flavored iced coffee, you've got to add sugar yourself and some of you may know how long it takes and how incompletely sugar dissolves in iced coffee. It's just no good.



Last night I watched Dawn of the Dead until midnight. Had to get up at 5:20. I'm very tired.

Output

The Candlekeep Compendium Volume II is out now. It's a free download of Forgotten Realms lore put together by fans. My artwork features on pages 9 and 10. Just standard-issue NPC drawings, really. Haven't done any in a while. It was fun to have a reason.

Escapee episode 8 is up.

A Force Field and A Flexible Plan

(Edit: Escapee episode 7 is up.)

At this time one year ago I was planning a wedding, trying to think up a good Eberron story, and dreading the coming heat wave. The only difference this year is that I'm already married and so other plans are in the works.

Otherwise, it's the same. I did so much of my thinking and reading on my R-train commute the last time around, I feel I ought to hop on the train with the ECS and see if I can't repeat the process. Already the threat of summer is upon me, and I can feel the evil of humidity ready to pounce. But yesterday I went swimming (in the Hamptons, no less) and that felt pretty good.

As usual, I have a stack of books I'm trying to get to. Currently I'm finishing up the Eberron novel Marked For Death, and while I want to jump on the third book in that line, there is both Maiden of Pain awaiting my attention and The Winter King, which Harley has graciously sent to me. Be expecting a counter assault, Mr. Stroh.

Ah, Maiden of Pain: The threshold through which I got back into writing. Okay, let's be more truthful. The threshold through which I finally got into writing seriously for the first time. I'd long needed the excuse, and Maiden offered it. Now, I can't stop. (Kam, I'll let you know what I think when I do actually read it.)

August and GenCon draw nearer. I'm really, really looking forward to it, to the adventure of renting a car, making the drive out there, and staying with Ed and Lara as much as the convention itself.

Living in Real Time

Nothing much new to say. I've been working on our long-overdue wedding Thank You cards (which contains a disk full of photos from our wedding day and songs from our reception), pondering my next writing project, feeling happy about good news with some friends and worrying about others.

Incidentally, Escapee Episode 6 is up.