Weekend Bonus Burn I: Delaying Tactics II: Wait A Little Longer

Gentle readers, please forgive me for breaking my twitter-given promise of a post about the brilliant Amber Benson reading at Borderlands Books in San Francisco to promote her new book, Death's Daughter (that's a link to Amazon.com, click here for the official site). However, I have good reasons. It occurred to me that if I wait until tomorrow, I can include the pictures the Abigail took.

Don't think of it as a broken promise - think of it as an investment.

Instead, please enjoy this awesome, free, online graphic novel by Warren Ellis, Freak Angels. Tomorrow's weekend bonus burn will include actual content, I promise.

Plus, a chance to see what myself and the beautiful the Abigail look like (also, Amber Benson, if by some strange chance you don't already know her by sight).

Autumn Moon Intertainment

Normally, the informational interviews I'm going on as part of my job search (and there have been many of them) don't warrant a comment on the Burning Zeppelin Experience. After all, they're with consultants and ghostwriters and the managers of Godiva chocolate shops, not fun people like William Tiller, the CEO of Autumn Moon Entertainment, the computer game makers who brought us A Vampyre Story, A Vampyre Story 2: A Bat's Tale, and a mysterious new game tentatively entitled Teal Harvest: Terror Beyond the Act or Power of Forming a Mental Image of Something Not Present to the Senses or Never Before Wholly Perceived in Reality.

You see, nearly every time I tell someone that I am a roleplayer and that I freelance for game design companies the first thing I hear is "you mean like computer games?" After the fourth or fifth time this happened, I decided to give it a shot. After all, what did I stand to lose?

I had a great time having lunch with Bill today at the delightful Hallie's Diner in Petaluma, California (I recommend the patty melt - Bill had a tuna melt, which also looked and smelled great), not far from Autumn Moon Entertainment's offices. Our conversation meandered back and forth across a wide variety topics, and I came home with several take-home lessons:

• The computer game industry is perpetually suspended between creativity and the bottom line. Ideas often bounce back and forth between various departments - marketing, finance, design, and the licensing departments of other companies - which can lead to great collaboration or huge headaches. Conflicts between the Suits and the Hawaiian Shirts are common.
• Politics is a problem in larger companies, with people shooting each other's ideas down for the sake of their own ideas or to pursue various obscure agendas of their own, rather than on the ideas' own merits and flaws.
• Making art is hard, and making money is harder.

In other words, making computer games is just like everything else in life: easy to do poorly, hard to do well, and worth it.

On a more optimistic note, I do carry this good news for all us writers:

• There are jobs for writers in the computer gaming industry. Thanks to the technology of "scripting," which uses an easy-to-learn engine to create the skeleton that the real programers later use as a basis for the meat and potatoes of the game, you don't need to be a computer expert to write for a game company. It certainly doesn't hurt to know something about some of the simpler programming languages, but you can go to a game company with "I'm a writer who loves video games" and stand a chance of finding work.
• The entry level positions of the computer gaming industry are level designer and game tester. You can start teaching yourself with the Unreal Tournament or Neverwinter Nights level editor.
  
• The best way to prepare yourself for a job in the computer gaming industry is to play a lot of video games.
• The go-to website for aspiring game designers of all kinds is GameJobs.com, which includes a mailing list function. I'll be signing up, myself, presently.

And finally, on a completely unrelated note, Bill Tiller recommends Crook Factory by Dan Simmons. I haven't read it myself, so you'll have to take Bill on his word until I do.

I don't know if the video game industry is the place for me, but it's good to know that I have more options for making the craft I love my life. After all, I'm already involved in one of the geekiest forms of professional writing - what do you say I make it a life goal to hit them all?

Burning update Experience IV: Son of Burning Update

Fear not, gentle readers. Today's Burning Zeppelin post is late, but not forgotten.

Clearly, a lot has been going on, so I'm going to do my best to give you an update before I go under again. Here is a quick list of what I'm working on:

FREELANCE MADNESS!

Remember how I crowed about the contract that sought me out rather than the other way around? Well, I have the last 8k of that assignment to write in just 5 days. It's going to be a wild ride. My situation is compounded by the fact that I just found out about a great teaching program (the Oakland Teaching Fellowships, if you care to know) whose application is due the day before my first draft. Fortunately, I have the Abigail, who helped me plan out the weekend, hour by bloody hour.

I'm beginning to understand what people like my boss at White Wolf meant when they warned us about taking on too much. I'll add to that advice: just because I don't have a day job doesn't mean I have unlimited time to write. Looking for work always takes up more time than I think it's going to - I think it has a way of worming itself into the time allocated to other tasks and duties, invading and corrupting it like a nanite plague - and the structure afforded by having a day job is, surprisingly, good for me.

There is good news on the horizon, however. If the Oakland Teaching Fellowship works out (or the Godiva thing, or the standing on street corners accosting passers-by to donate to charity), I might have a day job as early as next week. Freelancing will slow down on Tuesday when my first draft is due, which will be nice. There will still be final drafts due in another month, and I'm always looking forward to my next paid gig, but it will be nice to spend some time hacking away at my personal projects. I haven't done that since December.

The final piece of good news to come out of the Burning Zeppelin is that White Wolf finally announced the book that started it all, my very first freelance contract.

Have a look at the bottom of this page. The very bottom, in the October to December range.

Look closer.

Fine, here it is.

I can't reveal anything more, however, except that I worked on it, which is why you should all buy it and tell White Wolf how awesome it is, especially the part about...

I'll tell you later.

Why It Sucks

Bookgasm, a blog of books, for books, and by books (wait a minute...) recently posted this list of the top fifty reasons why no one wants to publish your first book, and you should check it out. Not because it is particularly enlightening - the essay is entirely and intentionally tongue-in-cheek - but because it will make you smile. If we can't laugh at ourselves and our desperate scrabble to get our words in print, what can we laugh at?

Some highlights of the essay include:

• “ts u hor! i dnt gv dam :< !”
• “Mommy and Daddy’s door is always locked and your online access is completely blocked! You asked them why and they say, ‘Don’t worry, honey, we’ve just found a fun new way to earn some money!’”
• “’Oh, Morimoto,’ Chef Batali sighed, ’stuff me like a pepper!’”
• And most of all: "where are the freaking vampires?"

Enjoy!

Barf! Barf Barf!

And then, life happens.

I'm sorry there wasn't a post yesterday, and there won't be a post today. There will, however be a post tomorrow.

You can count on at least one weekend bonus burn to make up for this heinous mistake on my part. The Burning Zeppelin Experience isn't going anywhere; I promise.

Burning Humility Experience

I have a bad habit. I talk about books I haven't read. I could blame it on my days as a bookseller, when being able to talk intelligently about books I hadn't read was absolutely necessary, but really it's that I have a tendency towards arrogance. I've been called out on this blog (once by a childhood idol of mine and the author of one of the books I was talking about!), but until now I haven't wanted to do anything about it.

Until now.

As I'm sure you know, I've talked a lot of trash about the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer, all without reading it. That's going to change. I have in my very hand, Twilight, and I'm going to read it with an open mind.

All of it.

And if I like it, I'll admit it. I'll sing it's praises, even. And if I don't like it, I get to say whatever I want about it for the rest of my natural life.

More to the point, I'm promising right here and right now that I'm going to stop it with the talking about books I haven't read. It's obnoxious and arrogant, and if you catch me at it you have my permission to mock me mercilessly.

Theory from the Canon Keeps Me A Messiah

Near the end of February, Clyde Rhoer of Theory from the Closet posted this podcast in which he interviewed and was interviewed by (it was an ambi-interviewal situation) Chris Perrin, formerly of Canon Puncture. Clyde talked about his game Silence Keeps Me A Victim (the link is to a stub in a Wordpress Blog that I believe will eventually hold information about Clyde's game), while Chris talked about his roleplaying strategy game, Messiah.

This is shaping up to be a link post, so I'm going to let all these beautiful links speak for themselves. You don't need to have been reading the Burning Zeppelin Experience for long to understand why these projects will tickle me in particular. For those of you who are knew to the Zeppelin, I'll lay it out for you.

• Silence Keeps Me A Victim is a roleplaying game that tackles child molestation and the wall of silence that keeps survivors of molestation cut off and isolated. I believe that fantastic literature - including roleplaying games - is just as well, if not better, suited to dealing with serious issues as "conventional" literature. I applaud Clyde's efforts and think everyone should follow his game eagerly and buy three copies apiece when it finally comes out. I was at the GenCon where it was released as an ashcan, and I'm still kicking myself for not buying it.
  
• In this interview, Chris Perrin spoke passionately and intelligently about grappling with faith and rationality in the modern world, as a Christian and a roleplayer, and how out of that grapppling came...
• Messiah, a strategy roleplaying game about how if the messiah came tomorrow, humanity would try to pervert, silence, and subvert his or her message, just as the Christian Bible depicts was done to that infamous nice Jewish boy from the Galilee. Dealing with themes of choseness, bible-style prophecy, and the screwed-upedness of the world we have created, Messiah looks like a sure buy for me, except that I don't really go in for roleplaying strategy games. If you do, however, this is another game you should follow eagerly.

That's all for now.