Archive: 2012

157 entries. 51,500 words.

January, 2012

• Update. 2012-01-28 12:05 AM.
  • News
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I like to keep both of my fans informed of my work, so here’s what I’m doing. This month I have been working on revising my NaNoWriMo 2011 novel, and it hasn’t been going very well. I finished close to half of a second draft, wherein I rewrote a lot from scratch, but I had to stop when I sensed a rather major flaw. I like the characters and I particularly like the character relationships, but there is unfortunately a startling lack of plot around them. In fact, the plot that I had intended to be the main focus of the novel back in November doesn’t start until about the halfway point, which I’m pretty sure is not the way these things are supposed to work. Breaking it up into two different novellas is the only way I can imagine rescuing it. I have patched together the first one as a third draft, but it still needs considerable work before it turns into a Three Act Story. 298 words.
• Idle Thoughts On Reincarnation. 2012-01-31 11:26 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I overheard some people talking about reincarnation today, so I thought I’d write down what I thought about it. Mainly because I’m trying to write 1,500 new words every day as part of my grandiose plan to take over the world, and I figure blog posts should count as part of that, right? 734 words.

February, 2012

• Learning From Mistborn. 2012-02-08 1:41 AM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve been listening to the Writing Excuses podcast lately (which is excellent imo), and Brandon Sanderson often refers to his own works as examples of the points he’s making, so I thought I’d read some of his stuff. First up is Mistborn. I’m reading this book “critically,” as opposed to reading for pleasure, so I’m making notes along the way about what I think works and what doesn’t. (I think a big part of learning to be an author is learning one’s writing preferences, which might sound silly, but one doesn’t always know what one likes writing when you start.) By the way, calling Mistborn an epic fantasy really stretches the definition of the genre, if you ask me. It feels more steampunky or urban fantasy-ish to me. 975 words.
• Reading Makes Me Sleepy. 2012-02-10 10:30 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  For some years now, I have spent roughly the last hour of my day before sleep reading. I now realize this was a gigantic mistake, and I don’t recommend any writers do this. Why? Because now when I try to read at any other time of the day, it makes me incredibly sleepy. I have accidentally trained my brain to associate reading with going to sleep. This is an awesome trick if you have trouble sleeping, but it’s not cool at all when you are trying to read more during the day. So I need to figure out how to reverse this. 102 words.
• Tinderbox Demonstration. 2012-02-19 12:57 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I was about to write in my medieval fantasy story about a character entering a dark room and lighting a candle he found on a table. Then I thought, hey, how exactly would one have done that before the invention of matches? Apparently you would have used a tinderbox. But I couldn’t figure out from the descriptions and pictures how all the pieces of a tinderbox actually worked together, so I watched this YouTube video. Then I realized there is no way any medieval person would use a tinderbox just to light a single candle in a dark room. They would either build a roaring fire and light the candle from that, or they would not light the candle at all. Stupid reality! 123 words.
• Learning from Servant of a Dark God. 2012-02-23 2:41 AM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I finished Servant of a Dark God by John Brown the other day, and I thought it was a pretty good epic fantasy. It is the first in a series of books (as is the unspoken requirement for “epic fantasy”), but it was still very self-contained. Ie. the book had a satisfactory ending, and I didn’t feel like I was being coerced into rushing out to get the next book. (Don’t get me wrong, there were many questions left unanswered, but answering them would begin a new story.) 753 words.
• Learning from Kinshield Legacy. 2012-02-24 11:15 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  So in my continuing quest to read more modern epic fantasies, I started The Kinshield Legacy by K.C. May. I honestly don’t remember where or why I got it — it’s possible it was a free Kindle offer at some point. Actually it looks like it might be self-published since Peach Orchard Press isn’t exactly lighting up a Google search. Here’s my question: How many pages should I give a book to grab my attention before I set it aside? I’ve read 69 Kindle pages, which is 19% of the book (it’s short). Thusfar it’s not grabbing my attention but maybe I’ll stick with it until the 25% mark. Okay that’s my new rule: From now on, I will give a book 100 pages or 25%, whichever comes first, to become awesome. At least, for authors I don’t already know. 861 words.
• February Update. 2012-02-26 2:14 AM.
  • News
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Time for another fan update. Because real writers do that, or so I’ve read. Last time I mentioned a short story about a magic sword with a bad personality. Well, I got bored with that. I was trying to write it from the perspective of the sword, which sounded very cool in my head, but, well, it didn’t work out. I did, in fact, write a short story called Lucas the Jewish Vampire, which I thought was hilarious, but it will probably not be as funny when I go back to revise it. (In it, I learned that vampires are afraid of rabbis… who knew?) 418 words.
• There Is Too Much To Read. 2012-02-28 10:27 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  It is said that new authors should read recently released books in their genre to get an idea of what publishers are looking for. It is also said that new authors should read everything in their genre to avoid repeating what has come before. The problem is, in the fantasy genre, that is quite a daunting task. I actually thought I was reasonably well-versed in the classics of the genre, but guess what? There’s an enormous list of people writing fantasy now (I mean books published since, say, 2000), and every time I look at another “best of” or “worst of” fantasy list I have to add more: Joe Abercrombie, Daniel Abraham, Jacqueline Carey, James Dashner, Steven Erikson, Neil Gaiman, Terry Goodkind, J. V. Jones, Scott Lynch, Robert Newcomb, Patrick Rothfus, Fred Saberhagen, R.A. Salvatore, Brandon Sanderson, Naomi Novik. Those are only the most famous names; there are probably ten times more out there. And these are not small books we’re talking about. Many of them are the 1000-page whoppers we’ve come to expect from epic fantasy, not to mention that many of them are series of anywhere from three to one-hundred-and-fifty-three books. 344 words.

March, 2012

• Rolf Sighting. 2012-03-02 1:02 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I find it amusing and heartening for some reason to see “famous” authors using a character name that I’ve thought up for one of my novels. I somehow feel like it validates my own work as an aspiring author. The other day I was looking at the description for Fred Saberhagen’s Empire of the East, and noticed that the protagnist’s name is Rolf. The five of you who have read my Lute of the Sparrow may recognize that as the name of Jasper’s quirky sidekick. 135 words.
• On The First Book of Swords. 2012-03-04 1:20 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I read most of The First Book of Swords by Fred Saberhagen. I’m not sure, but I think I was supposed to start with Empire of the East. But I didn’t feel like I missed any essential pieces of story. I stopped reading about 75% through because it was pretty clear there would be no ending, and I would have to read all of the other Sword books. Saberhagen’s writing has a more literary feel to it. I can’t quite put my finger on exactly what makes it seem so. Perhaps it’s the average sentence length and complexity, which seems higher than average. Perhaps it’s just the natural quality of an experienced writer I’m seeing. 355 words.
• On Wizard's First Rule. 2012-03-06 1:12 AM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  In catching up on the fantasy genre, I wanted to read popular books that were considered good, and popular books that were considered bad. So now I’m reading Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind, the first in the Sword of Truth series, which for some reason is often seen as the “rival” to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Goodkind is a very devisive writer. People seem to either love him or hate him, which I suppose, is exactly the reception that Robert Jordan gets. Usually people like one or the other, but rarely both. 861 words.
• Wizard's First Rule, Part Two. 2012-03-07 3:34 AM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Well, I don’t know how Goodkind did it (which makes it a good topic for study, I guess), but somehow Wizard’s First Rule crawled up under my skin and embedded itself there. It kept getting better and better and in the end, I am shocked to say that I had a hard time putting it down and enjoyed it. Why? I think because it had a lot of “heart.” The characters won me over. First Kahlan, then I even started rooting for Richard in the end. Though I must admit I thought the final solution was a bit cheesy (spoiler alert: love conquers all). I guess the whole book was cheesy too. It’s basically Romeo and Juliet where the tragic ending is narrowly averted. It’s a fairy tale, with a (spoiler alert) fairy tale ending. 776 words.
• On Kushiel's Dart. 2012-03-12 2:19 AM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  In my continuing look at other modern fantasy books and authors, I landed on Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey (2002). It consistently ranks high in top ten “best fantasy” lists. From this book I’ve learned: The “inciting incident” should be early in the book. The characters need to struggle early in the book. A beautiful setting isn’t enough to make a good book without the above. (Also, just now I learned that my WP Theme doesn’t do bullets for crap.) Allow me to explain. Carey’s prose is beautiful. The world of Terre D’Ange, an alternate history version of Renaissance France, is complex, lavish, and exotic. It reminds me a lot of Dune in its … I don’t know … what’s the word? Grandiosity? Splendor? Otherworldliness? 741 words.
• Finally Coming To My Senses. 2012-03-12 4:24 PM.
  • Administration
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This very moment, I decided that I’m going to abandon my home-grown blog platform. I haven’t updated it in quite a while, and the thought of doing so fills me with dread. I just don’t have the time or energy for it right now (my free time is dedicated to writing). So I guess I’ll be switching to WordPress pretty soon. The only problem is that I will likely lose every one of my old posts. Not that they were anything special, mind you, but still, it’s part of my online history, such as it is. I suppose I’ll have to put them on an “old site” link somehow. But how to keep all of the post links in the Google index working? Hrm. 124 words.
• It Is Done. 2012-03-12 6:02 PM.
  • Administration
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is now a WordPress blog. Let the hackers and spammers now commence exploiting WordPress bugs. The old site is still available, kind of, at http://thomaskrehbiel.com/oldindex.php. Through judicious manipulation of the .htaccess file, old links to posts should still work, so hopefully I won’t drop off of Google completely. No, I am not at all happy with the theme yet. 60 words.
• ICS Virtual Keyboard. 2012-03-13 3:30 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  How the crap do you close the virtual keyboard in Ice Cream Sandwich, if the app doesn’t provide a way? I love my Galaxy Nexus but sometimes I miss the HTC Incredible’s Sense UI. Particularly the HTC clock, calendar, and weather apps. 42 words.
• On The Fifth Sorceress. 2012-03-15 1:01 AM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I half-heartedly read the first five chapters of The Fifth Sorceress by Robert Newcomb (2002), knowing it had received generally unfavorable reviews from fans of the epic fantasy genre. (It has an Amazon rating of like 2.25 stars, which is pretty bad for a book from a major publisher.) Five chapters might not sound like much, but the chapters in this book are miles long. Five chapters works out to 149 pages or 25% of the book. 562 words.
• Heat Arrives. 2012-03-15 7:52 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Once again, here in Richmond, winter has turned into summer with no intervening spring. Not that it was much of a winter. Now that I think about it, winter was spring. 31 words.
• From Fiber to Cable. 2012-03-16 1:34 AM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  As part of an ongoing restructuring of our telecommunications connectivity here at the house, we’ve gone back to Comcast cable for Internet. We’ll be disconnecting the FIOS TV and land line soon. I’m not at all sad about losing TV or telephone, but going from a solid 25Mb (up and down) to a spotty 1Mb (down) is kind of a drag. So if I didn’t have enough incentive to move before, I definitely do now! (Just kidding. It’s still better than the connectivity at work.) 85 words.
• Comment Rules. 2012-03-16 11:11 PM.
  • Administration
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here are my rules for comments: If your anomymous comment contains a web site link but does not in any way mention something specifically from my post, it’s going to be considered spam. Just letting you know. I apologize in advance if I accidentally moderate something legitimate. 47 words.
• Critiquing. 2012-03-18 1:06 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve signed up for a couple of online writing critique groups. I’m not ready to submit anything yet, but I thought it would be a good thing to try. It’s a lot more work than I thought it would be! If you think reading 5,000 words from someone else and writing a constructive criticism is easy, think again. The hardest part is being positive while still being helpful. I’m well aware of how fragile a writer’s ego is, so it feels like walking on egg shells. You want to say, “Wow, this is the greatest thing I’ve ever read!” But, well, it’s usually not. There’s always something that can be improved (I know this from my own writing). But you can’t exactly say, “Wow, this is terrible. Don’t quit your day job.” Because that’s probably what they’re telling themselves. 193 words.
• No-Go Importing Paged Atom Feeds. 2012-03-18 2:02 PM.
  • Administration
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today I was pondering importing all of my old posts into WordPress. This is not quite as simple as you might think when trying to import from a custom blog platform. WordPress has this handy RSS Import plugin, but it requires the XML to be a file on your hard drive. No problem, right? You just open up the source of the feed on the old site (which, in my case, is actually an Atom feed) and save it to a file. Wait, not so fast. That old feed has like 5000 posts in it. And the feed only shows the last 15. There’s a whole chain of rel=next links to follow to get the entire feed, 15 at a time. 163 words.
• My Outline Is Letting Me Down. 2012-03-20 1:03 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  For my current WIP, I spent what I considered to be a fairly lengthy amount of time writing a cohesive outline of the events that would take place in the novel. I actually did it three times because I had to toss out the first two. So imagine my surprise when I reached somewhere around the 2/3rd mark of the story, consulted the outline for what comes next, and realized, “This outline is incomplete, and all wrong.” 187 words.
• Why Must Data Binding Happen After Control Events?. 2012-03-21 10:16 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Okay, I know why. But just pretend like it could be different for the sake of this rant. Let’s say you have a GridView using a SqlDataSource on an ASP.NET page. Each row displays some data from a table. No problem. Now let’s say you want to put a RadioButtonList in the first column of the grid. You want to update the underlying row when the user clicks one or the other radio buttons. You do NOT want to use the standard ASP.NET patterns for updating data because they suck and this is a slightly special case. You want to put a “Y” in a column if they click one of the radio buttons, and an “N” in the column if they click the other radio button. And you probably want to put it inside an UpdatePanel so it looks all AJAX-y. 418 words.
• When 4G Beats WiFi. 2012-03-24 10:57 AM.
  • Personal
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So here at the house we switched from FIOS Triple Play back to plain old Comcast Internet, not because there was anything wrong with FIOS – in fact, in my opinion, it’s a thousand times better than Comcast in every possible way – but because of an overall strategy to lower household expenses. So now we only have two choices for TV: Over-the-air HD television using vintage rabbit ears, or Netflix on a PS3. (Guess which one I usually pick.) And we don’t have a land line anymore. None of that is the slightest bit of concern to me, in fact I’ve wanted to “cut the cord” for a long time. 193 words.
• Kindle Edition Editors. 2012-03-25 1:23 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Can I have a word with you people who take published books and turn them into Kindle books? Let’s talk about the Kindle version of The Stone of Tears by Terry Goodkind. Seriously, what kind of crack were you people smoking when you gave this project over to a high school intern? The number of typos is astronomical. The intern apparently speed-typed the text without ever looking back at what he’d typed. Possibly on a smart phone with auto correct enabled. Or, more likely, somebody OCRed it but never bothered to look at the results. 267 words.
• March Writing Update. 2012-03-26 12:08 AM.
  • News
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  At the end of this weekend, I should be around 50,000 words into The Sovereign of Tel. I hope to be finished with a decent first draft by the end of April. I am not completely happy with it right now, but I’m soldiering on anyway in the hope that I can patch it up in a rewrite. My coolest achievement for the month is this nifty spreadsheet to keep track of my word totals. It does nifty gradients and everything. I set a 7,500 word goal for Monday through Friday, and originally I set a 5,000 word goal for the weekend, thinking I would obviously have more time to write. Well, perhaps counter-intuitively, it turns out, after a week of a day job and writing, I don’t seem to have the energy to write a lot on the weekend. So now I’ve shifted it back down to the regular 3,000 words. (I can’t remember where I read it, so I can’t give credit, but somewhere I read that setting a weekly word count goal might work better than a daily word count goal. So far it’s working for me.) 515 words.
• Email Lemmings. 2012-03-26 6:51 PM.
  • Personal
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s a quick way to disable a large mail network: Wait for an email titled “World wide distribution list test,” hit Reply All, and write something like “I got it.” Watch the lemmings destroy email capability. 36 words.
• How Does He Sing That High?. 2012-03-27 8:59 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Simple joys in life: When 80s hit Come On Eileen starts up on the random shuffle during the drive home. 20 words.
• Four Is Enough?. 2012-03-28 11:46 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I thought I would next tackle The Fires of Heaven, the fifth book in the Wheel of Time series. But I don’t seem to have the same enthusiasm I did with the first four books. After reading the prologue and one chapter of Fires, I’m getting a bad feeling. The Prologue was a mind-numbingly gigantic info-dump that went on forever. Chapter One follows Min with Siuan, Leane, and Logain. It wasn’t terrible but Min is the only one I care about in that bunch. Then Chapter Two gets us back to Rand, who, I’m sorry to admit, is one of my least favorite character in the books. (Possibly eclipsed only by Mat.) Reading Rand and Mat chapters always feels like a chore. 186 words.
• Epic Terminology. 2012-03-30 11:37 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I read another chapter of Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings the other day. All right, I get that it’s an epic fantasy with an epic world filled with epic people, lands, animals, and plants. But in the first non-prologue chapter, the reader is slammed with an epic number of unfamiliar phrases and terms. I usually enjoy these kinds of things, but in this case I found myself asking “who or what or where is that?” quite a lot. So much that I started highlighting them: 279 words.
• ReplayGain. 2012-03-31 2:12 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I would just like to say that ReplayGain is the greatest invention EVER. I am completely ashamed and embarrassed that I haven’t used this technology before. Anyone who has an MP3 collection of songs spanning more than a single decade desperately needs to download MP3Gain or something like it and apply it to your entire library. Unfortunately, now I need to re-upload all my stuff to Google Music, a rather daunting prospect with my current connectivity. 76 words.
• Welcome Back. 2012-03-31 8:31 PM.
  • Administration
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  If you had previously been following /blog.feed or /stream.feed or /comments.feed, you may or may not have noticed that you weren’t getting any new posts. You probably thought it was because I only post every six months, but in fact, this time, it was because I forgot to redirect them to WordPress’s feeds, which are /feed and /comments/feed. So, if you were subscribed to the old feeds, welcome back! 69 words.

April, 2012

• Spam Attacks. 2012-04-01 11:44 AM.
  • Administration
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Okay, I’m thinking about going back to my custom blog platform. I never got comment spam on it. (At least I never noticed it. :) But now I’m looking at WordPress telling me to moderate 13 spam comments, including this gem: “Attractive component of content. I just stumbled upon your blog and in accession capital to claim that I acquire in fact enjoyed account your weblog posts. Any way I will be subscribing in your augment and even I fulfillment you get entry to consistently rapidly.” 139 words.
• Book and Chapter Word Counts. 2012-04-01 10:35 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Since I’m an aspiring writer, I am intensely curious about some of the “inside baseball” facts of the books I read. A took a random selection of Kindle books (the ones that just happened to be on my hard drive at the time) and figured out the approximate word count for each book when converted to plain text.** In the table below, the number of pages is as shown by Amazon. 776 words.
• LTE Outage?. 2012-04-02 7:45 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Verizon 4G LTE has been pretty bad today south of Richmond. :/ 12 words.
• Meta Writing. 2012-04-04 9:26 PM.
  • Process
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  So I thought I would start writing a bit about what I’m writing. Get it? Meta-writing! It occurred to me that somebody out there might actually be curious about the process of writing, or the process of becoming a writer, and since I happen to be in the position of “aspiring writer,” perhaps somebody else could benefit from my experiences. I know I would want to read something like that from another aspiring writer. 900 words.
• Vence hires a mercenary. 2012-04-05 9:45 PM.
  • Process
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Another meta writing post. Yesterday I finally finished a scene between Vence, Ril, and Ali inside the castle. I know you don’t know who those people are, but I’ll get back to them. Chronologically, it is the most recent part of the story, but I kept stopping in the middle and going back to write other scenes, because frankly I’m not precisely sure how all these pieces are going to fit together so that Elenora can retake the castle. (This despite having written a nice outline for the whole story, which has been utterly useless after I passed the halfway point.) Anyway that was about 500 words, which I wrote in bits and pieces during the day. 465 words.
• The Fires of Heaven, A Rant On Dense Characters. 2012-04-05 10:44 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve read ten chapters of The Fires of Heaven, the fifth book in the Wheel of Time series. In Robert Jordan’s world, ten chapters is about 205 pages. I really have a love/hate relationship with these books. Sometimes they are brilliant. Other times they make you want to throw the book (aka. Kindle device) at the wall. And it’s almost never in the middle. It’s usually one of those two extremes. 688 words.
• Poison and Pain. 2012-04-06 10:55 PM.
  • Process
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  In the continuing adventures of authoring The Sovereign of Tel: First I wrote about Vence, who had infiltrated the castle, starting his plan to weaken it from the inside. First he had Ali (the cook) add some poison to the food supplies going to the castle soldiers, then, after dark, he dumped a bunch of poison into the castle’s well. When I’m writing about medieval life, I worry a lot about “getting things right.” So when I put an indoor well into this castle, I wasn’t sure if actual castles had indoor wells, even though, to me, it seems like a pretty logical thing to do. If you’re building a castle to withstand sieges for months on end, you would need to have some supply of water inside the castle walls, right? So why not build it inside the keep so it would be super convenient? I couldn’t think of any reason this couldn’t be done with 14th century technology. I found a few references to castle wells in my primary research sources (Google), so I feel pretty good about that bit. 741 words.
• First World Problems. 2012-04-06 11:26 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is what’s wrong with America: People who go to a fast food drive-through window and order for twenty people. 20 words.
• Rescue In Progress. 2012-04-07 11:50 AM.
  • Process
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Only wrote 800 words yesterday, which still put me 500 words over my 5-day goal. Most of those words went into the continuation of Vence’s subversive mission to bring down the castle. After poisoning the well, his next goal is to rescue Hayden and three Metherel cousins from the prison. (Except when he gets to the prison, only the three cousins are there. Mila took Hayden upstairs the day before.) The two guards at the prison are easily dispatched, so now he’s ready to open the cell doors. Not much to say about it, really, except I thought the guards were a little too easily dispatched (but really, they deserved it, since they were not paying attention). I might go back and make it a little harder in a revision. 130 words.
• The Spam Fight Goes On. 2012-04-07 3:34 PM.
  • Administration
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Continuing the fight against spam. 62 words.
• 2012 Hugo Award Nominations Announced. 2012-04-07 9:35 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  2012 Hugo Award Nominations. I have to say I’m a little surprised that A Dance With Dragons is a nominee. It was an awesome book, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t think it was quite as good as the previous ones in the series. Still, you could do a lot worse. I haven’t read any of the other book nominees. 61 words.
• Cultural Fit and Ageism. 2012-04-08 12:16 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was reading a Coding Horror article by Jeff Atwood about how to hire a programmer. I agree with most of it, although he is clearly hiring his programmer to work in some fancy schmancy Internet startup in Silicon Valley, not out here in the real world of enterprises and business intelligence. Here’s the part that irritates me when industry people talk about jobs and hiring: “Cultural Fit.” To me, that basically means you’re not going to get hired if you don’t have the right kind of personality and attitude. Your skillset doesn’t matter; you’re being evaluated as a roommate more than a skilled worker. 257 words.
• Burning Grain, New Characters, and Names. 2012-04-08 1:23 PM.
  • Process
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Yesterday’s writing: Vence rescued the Metherel cousins from the castle prison. Of course, as planned, he was caught in the process. Then I started a new chapter from Mila’s POV, where Lord Garret receives the news that someone has poisoned his troops, burned up his food stores, and freed his prisoners. He goes to have a chat with Vence, now a prisoner. There’s another “getting things right” issue I worry about here. Does flour burn? :) I have no idea. I’m just assuming that if you dump lamp oil on a bunch of sacks of flour and grain and then set them on fire, they would actually burn. I seem to recall stories of grain silos exploding, and I think they did something like that in Mythbusters. I’m also making the possibly bold assumption that a fire would actually burn for a while inside a closed stone room inside a castle. 488 words.
• Happy Easter!. 2012-04-08 3:27 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Happy Easter! 20 words.
• An Unintended Day Off. 2012-04-09 11:27 PM.
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Yesterday was an epic fail of a writing day, the biggest failure in recent memory. I suppose I could lie and say I was too busy with Easter festivities, but the truth is that I didn’t do anything special and in fact had the same amount of time for writing that I always do on Sundays. I managed to write a single sentence during the day. Actually, I wrote two versions of the same sentence. (Because someone asked, that sentence was: “Mila thought the man deserved a beating for displaying such insolence in front of the sovereign.”) Then, around 9:00 pm, I buckled down to put 2,000 words on the page before bed no matter what … and got through about 100 words before giving up for the night. 215 words.
• Monday Meta (4/9/2012). 2012-04-10 9:42 PM.
  • Process
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Not much to say about yesterday’s writing. I worked on another “beginning” scene, from Ordicus Metherel’s POV the night he falls into a coma, which sort of sets the whole book into motion. I am still not happy with it, so the search for a way to start this book continues. (This one fails because there is too much information delivered. It’s really frickin’ hard to introduce a new world in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the reader.) 148 words.
• On The Hunger Games. 2012-04-12 9:39 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I finally get around to reading Hunger Games. (See what I did there?) I think it’s not terrible. It’s a decent action adventure yarn, but it’s not very deep, which I suppose is normal for a young adult book. It has a Dan Brown sort of flavor to it. I would have given it three stars out of five (“I liked it”) on GoodReads, except I did not like the ending, so I went back down to two stars (“it was ok”). 760 words.
• Hunger Games Dialog Tags. 2012-04-13 9:31 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  One thing I forgot to mention about The Hunger Games: The dialog tags. It’s funny the things you notice when you’re an aspiring writer. Suzanne Collins uses the “X said” model when Katniss says something, but uses the “said X” model when other people speak. Like this: “I’m leaving,” I say. “You can’t,” says John. But then, if she uses a pronoun, she goes back to the “X said” model. (Obviously, because “says he” would be dumb.) 147 words.
• Next Victim Please. 2012-04-14 11:28 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  E. Wayne Powell is the next Democrat to charge incumbent Eric Cantor’s machinegun nest in the Virginia 7th District House of Representatives election. 68 words.
• Hunger Games Descriptions. 2012-04-15 12:34 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  As I’m reading the Hunger Games trilogy (I’m on the last book now), I am trying to analyze why it is so popular and addictive. The story is okay, the characters are okay, the setting is okay, but somehow it adds up to something greater than the sum of its parts. Maybe it’s all marketing. One thing I noticed just now, which contributes to the fast-paced, concise text: There are hardly any descriptions of the settings. Most of it must be filled in by the reader’s imagination. As an example, from Chapter 6 of Mockingjay: 270 words.
• Like Me!. 2012-04-15 1:55 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Everyone go Like my Facebook page. Sometimes I put stuff there. UPDATE 8/8/2022: Yeah, don’t do that. 17 words.
• Subject-less Sentences. 2012-04-16 11:28 PM.
  • Writing
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I noticed another little trick Suzanne Collins used to pull readers along at breakneck speed in The Hunger Games. I hadn’t noticed it in the first two books, but I saw it often in Mockingjay, the last book. She often clips the subjects off of sentences, especially in scenes of intense action or confusion. For example, she might take a paragraph like this: I walk into the room. I open the curtains. Then I put some clothes in the washing machine. 199 words.
• Facebook, Say It Again. 2012-04-19 10:55 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Facebook. Huh. What is it good for? Good God y’all. I have no idea any more. I’m thinking about mercilessly purging my friend list. Here’s what I want to see when I look at Facebook: A short note about something interesting or amusing that happened in someone’s day. A picture someone took of something interesting or amusing they saw in their day. Links to things people think I might be interested in. But here’s what I actually see when I look at Facebook: 310 words.
• The Sovereign of Tel Draft Completed. 2012-04-22 11:54 AM.
  • News
  • Process
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Okay, here’s the sitch. I have finished what could loosely be defined as a “first draft” of The Sovereign of Tel. (Although, technically, it is the third draft of the March project. It’s hard to define these things. The first revision might not count since it was a totally different story and world.) Now I face the same dilemma I had after I finished a draft of Kubak Outpost. I’ve imported everything into Scrivener for Windows, which, sadly, is the best thing out there for novel management on Windows, as far as I can tell. So now I can look at the draft from a very high level for the first time. (I used WriteMonkey during the actual writing.) 259 words.
• Me and Bella. 2012-04-25 2:51 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Me and Bella I don’t know why but I thought this picture was funny. 14 words.
• Scrivener for Windows 1.1.0.3 Beta. 2012-04-26 9:19 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  The folks at Literature and Latte released beta 1.1.0.3 for Windows. I am ignoring their friendly warnings and using it for my precious, irreplaceable novel project despite the fact that it could destroy all of my work at any moment, because I live dangerously like that. 46 words.
• On The Fires of Heaven. 2012-04-27 10:28 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I finally finished The Fires of Heaven, the fifth book in the Wheel of Time series. I say “finally” because, compared to the three Hunger Games books, Fires of Heaven reads like an encyclopedia. Apparently this is the book where most people gave up on the series, and I can certainly see why. It’s kind redundant at this point to say “half of the text could have been removed without any effect on the plot,” but it’s never been truer. Yes, yes, it’s all very rich and imaginative detail about the world. But in writing, story is king. 445 words.
• First Person Writing. 2012-04-29 12:55 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Read using a Seinfeld impersonation: What’s the deal with first person writing? It seems like nearly every popular book these days is written in first person. And it seems to be a mandatory requirement for the Paranormal/Urban Fantasy genre. They all have the same sort of dry sarcastic narrator. It’s almost like reading a blog post, except a really long one. It’s getting to point where I groan whenever I see another first person book. 398 words.
• Slightly Belated April Update. 2012-04-30 9:28 PM.
  • News
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I was scheduled to finish the first draft of Tel on April 30. I think I did pretty well on that, in that I was indeed finished Monday night. Until I thought of a tiny thing I needed to add to resolve one plot line. Then on Tuesday morning I thought of one other tiny little thing I needed to add to explain what happened to one of the characters. 631 words.

May, 2012

• May the fourth…. 2012-05-04 2:43 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s Star Wars day again already?! 23 words.
• Introvert Discrimination On Display. 2012-05-05 3:35 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Introvertedness is not an illness. You don’t “become” an introvert. You can’t “catch” it, like the flu. You are born an introvert. 271 words.
• Four Dreaded Words. 2012-05-07 9:57 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  “What’s your book about?” It seems like a simple question, until I, as a newbie author, try to answer it. In my mind, my book is about 100,000 words of carefully interwoven plots that took months to get right, complex characters that grew and evolved on their own, colorful and exotic places and worlds, literary devices, clever uses of punctuation, good parts, bad parts, terrible parts, loathesome parts, unfinished parts, and a title. 114 words.
• Mobile Internet Obtained. 2012-05-13 1:52 PM.
  • Personal
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I think I’ve mentioned before that I am on a 1 Mbps Comcast connection for the time being (until I find another place to live, where I can hook up FIOS again). You might think that this would be sufficient for most Internet tasks. At least, that’s what I thought. It works for email. And some web surfing. But unfortunately, there are these things called “streaming video” and “games.” Guess what? 1 Mbps is not enough to watch high definition streaming video. It’s barely enough to watch low definition streaming video. And remember when I could see a game on Steam and do an impulse purchase and download 8Gb of files in 15 minutes? Yeah, I can’t do that anymore. I did an impulse purchase of TERA, and then sat and watched the estimated download time remaining crawl all the way up to one and a half days. During which time, I could do absolutely nothing else on the Internet because the bandwidth was saturated. 296 words.
• May Update. 2012-05-23 11:17 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Brainstorming for my next writing project is scheduled to begin in June. I intentionally left a month of “space” between projects because I figured I would need time to recharge, but I realized I didn’t want to stop writing altogether, so, when last we left our intrepid hero, I had decided to revise Kubak in this “off” month of May. I’m relatively pleased with the revisions so far. At one time I thought I needed to break it into two novellas, but then I realized that I couldn’t query two novellas, so I went back to working on it as a single novel. That basically meant trying to shift the focus of the first half of the book a bit more toward Caudren than Fen. I moved some Caudren scenes to the beginning, and wrote some new ones. I also re-wrote some scenes that were from Fen’s POV to make them Caudren’s POV. So far so good. 309 words.

June, 2012

• Bad Character Habits in Wheel of Time. 2012-06-10 12:34 AM.
  • Writing
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  There are a few bad habits that the characters in The Wheel of Time have that they don’t seem to be able to stop themselves from doing even after six books, so I think it might be time for an intervention: Scrubbing their hands through their hair. Knuckling their moustaches or their backs. Gaping at anyone or anything. Smoothing their skirts. Sniffing. Obsessing over the neckline of women’s dresses. It’s sort of laughable to see these things in the seventh book. Here’s Rand scrubbing a hand through his hair again. Uh oh, Elayne’s sniffing again. And here are some women entering the scene. What kind of dresses are they wearing? Will their necklines be ‘swooping’ low or just ‘dipping’ low? Will there be an oval cutout? 126 words.
• Not A Good Start. 2012-06-12 10:15 PM.
  • Writing
  • Curses
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Okay, this is not good. After a couple of weeks of brainstorming, I started writing on my new project, tentatively code-named “Curses.” I’ve written perhaps 4,000 words, starting not at the beginning, but at the first sort of exciting milestone. I did this because I wasn’t really “feeling” it so I thought I would start at a “high point.” I hate it. It’s not exciting. It’s not even interesting. The characters are dumb. The plot is moronic. It’s flat, lifeless, and dead. 170 words.
• The Nuclear Option. 2012-06-14 9:22 PM.
  • Writing
  • Curses
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  The other day I mentioned that I hated my current WIP (work-in-progress, for you non-writer-types). That night I decided to use the nuclear option. In NaNoWriMo, they say if you’re bored with what you’re writing, you need to shake things up by adding an explosion, or killing everyone off. That’s what I’ve come to think of as the “nuclear option.” So, I blew things up. An angry god descended and pulverized everything. He killed Lyeale, the mad old woman who was going to be an antagonist. He teleported Roduk, the brash young hero, back to his homeland, hundreds of miles away. And then he had the nerve to kidnap Emmie, the young woman who was on her way back to her family in the city. As if that weren’t enough, he took the crystal that the protagonists were there to find. 192 words.
• Raking Instead of Scrubbing. 2012-06-15 12:19 AM.
  • Writing
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Oh! I almost forgot to mention this: Raking a hand through his hair, he made himself turn to face her. Jordan, Robert (2010-04-14). A Crown of Swords: Book Seven of ‘The Wheel of Time’ (p. 668). Macmillan. Kindle Edition. Rand raked for once! He didn’t scrub! 46 words.
• The New MacBook Pro. 2012-06-15 11:21 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Apple announced their new MacBook Pro model. It’s a beast of a laptop, and it looks beautiful. But is it worth it? 261 words.
• Home-grown Wheel of Time Encyclopedias. 2012-06-17 1:49 PM.
  • Writing
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  You know what the world needs? Wikis without spoilers. I just finished A Crown of Swords, Book 7 of the Wheel of Time. If you haven’t read these books, let me assure that you will not remember everyone and everything. It is physically impossible. You’ll see a name pop up and wonder who or what it is, and where you last saw him/her/it. In those cases, there’s only three things you can do: 1) Keep reading and hope that Robert Jordan fills you in on the details, 2) Use the handy search feature of your Kindle and hope the name is found somewhere earlier, or 3) Lookup the name on a helpful Internet Wheel of Time Wiki Page. 348 words.
• Surprise, Vizio Makes Laptops. 2012-06-18 10:50 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Just when everyone’s done talking about the new Apple MacBook Pros, along comes a slick new PC laptop from Vizio. 91 words.
• Write Like the Wind (George R. R. Martin). 2012-06-28 10:19 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I think this sums up everyone’s feelings on the matter. Write Like the Wind (George R. R. Martin) 18 words.
• Verizon Galaxy Nexus continuously rebooting after Google Maps update. 2012-06-29 1:11 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  My Verizon Galaxy Nexus started rebooting continuously after I updated Google Maps. 288 words.
• The Secret World. 2012-06-29 9:08 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  I’ve had a burst of gaming enthusiasm in the last month or so, ending my streak of playing basically nothing since Christmas. As usual, I tend to gravitate toward RPGs and MMOs. The last MMO I played before my break was Star Wars: The Old Republic, which I found enjoyable, but not enough to keep playing past the free month. Then recently, on an impulse, I bought TERA, which boasted a totally fresh new action-based combat system, but again, it didn’t keep my attention past the first month. After that I played LOTRO again, which is a bit dated now but still one of the best MMOs around. 283 words.
• The Secret World. 2012-06-29 9:08 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve had a burst of gaming enthusiasm lately, which has led me to play in The Secret World head start this weekend. 283 words.

July, 2012

• The Secret World, Likes and Dislikes. 2012-07-02 2:08 AM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  Here are some of my impressions from playing The Secret World for a weekend of beta and a few days of the head start. Likes: The “investigation” quests are awesome! You can Google the answers, of course, but trying to solve them without is a trip. We’re talking old school adventure-style puzzles and riddles here. (Make sure to turn off General chat if you don’t want to see spoilers, ‘cause, you know, people are lazy.) You can die. You don’t really know how powerful new mobs are until you attack them. (In fact, as it turns out, sometimes you have to die to complete quests, because the ghost world can be explored too.) It’s pretty painless—all you have to do is run back to your corpse, just like WoW. Almost every quest is repeatable daily, so you never have to grind on mobs. (Though it is still fun to shoot zombies at random.) Having an out-of-combat sprint toggle is great for getting around. It’s sort of like riding a mount, and you can do it from the beginning. I wonder if you can increase the speed later on? The flexibility of creating your own “backpacks.” You can carry 50 things, but they can be organized into any number of bags of any size, which you can pin to the screen or not. For example, I made one to hold crafting supplies, another for things to sell, and another one pinned to the screen for healing drinks. Humorous NPC quest givers and great voice acting (which you can easily skip if you’ve seen them before). Dislikes: 836 words.
• The Secret World, Likes and Dislikes. 2012-07-02 2:08 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here are some of my impressions from playing The Secret World for a weekend of beta and a few days of the head start. 836 words.
• Fireworks Frenzy. 2012-07-04 1:28 AM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Why are people in my neighborhood so obsessed with fireworks? 60 words.
• Melanthius Is Open. 2012-07-04 9:55 PM.
  • Administration
  
  I had this impulse to put all my gaming-related posts on a new site, so here it is. I had the melanthius.com domain sitting around doing nothing, so it seemed like a fine time to put it to use. Needless to say, I will be modifying the theme considerably. I am not sure why all of the “gaming” WordPress themes all look the same: Awful. The only thing I will salvage will probably be the color scheme and possibly the Opal font (I don’t know what it’s actually called, but on the Amiga, the super-rounded-letters font was called Opal). 99 words.
• UltrViolet in The Secret World. 2012-07-07 2:22 AM.
  • MMORPG
  • Stories
  • Theory
  
  This is what my main character looks like in The Secret World. He makes me laugh whenever I look at him. I just wish I could have made him with a pot belly. FYI combining shotgun and sword seems like a bad idea, now that I’ve already committed to it. I was going to use the shotgun for AoE attacks and the sword for single-target attacks, but there’s no compelling need to split them up like that. Both shotgun and sword have plenty of AoE and single-target attacks. 88 words.
• Maybe Some Other Time. 2012-07-08 12:40 AM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I was going to write up a bunch of hints for The Secret World’s investigation quests, but then I realized that 1) I don’t really have the time to do that, and 2) I don’t really want to do all of the SEO to get them into search results. So, if you were dying to see spoiler-free hints for The Secret World, sorry. :) 64 words.
• Canine Allergies. 2012-07-08 7:17 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Poor Bella had an allergic reaction to … something … yesterday. She came in from the back yard with a bumpy head and a red belly. Very strange. After a trip to the emergency vet, she spent the rest of the day on Benadryl and steroids. 46 words.
• The Blade Itself. 2012-07-09 12:16 AM.
  • Writing
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’m taking a break after Book 8 of The Wheel of Time and reading some other things. I’ve started Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself. Thusfar it’s not growing on me, but it’s still early. It is, at least, a very different style than Robert Jordan. I know, I know, I haven’t written enough in the last few weeks. I’ll get back to it any day now! I will. Don’t look at me like that. 74 words.
• Down the Rabbit Hole. 2012-07-17 1:59 AM.
  • Dungeons
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  • Theory
  
  I’m a bit surprised to say this but I don’t think I’ll be playing TSW beyond the free month. In fact, I stopped playing long before the free month ended. I’m still glad I pre-ordered it, though, because it deserves to have a chance. But I realized that I don’t feel much of a sense of character advancement while playing. You don’t get new weapons very often, and you don’t really get new powers very often, either. Like I said before, as your character advances, you get more choices of powers, but you don’t really get more powerful powers like you might expect. So often times, when you gain new abilities, you find there’s no reason to change what you’ve already been using. The only things to look forward to are new NPCs telling new stories, and maybe a new piece of clothing now and then. 1,371 words.
• The Squared-Off Sine Wave. 2012-07-19 1:06 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I forgot to do a status update in June, so this will be a two-month report. So, yeah, I haven’t written much. :) I’ve been playing The Secret World and Rift and rebuilding my computer and watching tv and other non-writery type things. If I had a deadline coming up and an editor or an agent or something like that depending on me, they would probably be quite distressed over it. 332 words.

August, 2012

• Moving Weekend. 2012-08-15 12:53 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  No time for blogging! Am moving into a new place this weekend, trying to figure out which things to take and which things to throw away. It’s amazing how the amount of stuff you have multiplies exponentially when you have to move it. 43 words.
• The Museum. 2012-08-17 2:22 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Couple of pics of the new place… The living room, which I think of as “the museum,” because it retains the original architecture from when the house was first built in the 1930s. The two bedrooms also have museum qualities. This is what I think of as “the game room.” This part of the house was clearly added as an addition somewhat recently, because it has a much more modern styling. 108 words.
• Liveblogging Deliveries. 2012-08-17 5:08 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Since I will be doing a fair amount of hurrying-up-and-waiting this afternoon, what better way to pass the time than to make a liveblog! 1:07 PM - I am in the new house with my laptop tethered to my phone. FIOS is scheduled to be installed tomorrow. For now, I’m waiting for a washer/dryer delivery. 1:14 PM - Oops. Moved laptop from kitchen to living room so I could sit on the sofa. The most convenient plug for me to use is, of course, not grounded. So I’ll have to move the power cord when the delivery dudes get here. 377 words.
• High-Efficiency Washing Machines. 2012-08-19 11:10 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I am using a high-efficiency washing machine for the first time. 48 words.
• Getting Back Into It. 2012-08-22 2:04 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve been distracted a bit by moving into a new place. Which is a flimsy excuse for not writing, to be honest. Even in the middle of moving, one can easily take an hour out of one’s day to write a thousand words if one really _wants_ to. The truth is I have gotten out of the habit of writing every day and getting back into it is kind of hard, which is why 95% of potential authors don’t ever write 179 words.
• The Blade Itself, Part Two. 2012-08-24 10:00 PM.
  • Writing
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I have heard for quite some time that Joe Abercrombie was more of a “gritty” fantasy writer, more in the vein of George R.R. Martin than Robert Jordan. So that’s what I expected in The Blade Itself. What I read was not gritty. I would describe it more as an action-adventure with a fantasy flavor. Actually it felt more like an urban fantasy style of writing in a medieval fantasy setting. The characters had a lot of flippancy in their dialog, and it was very fast-paced with no setting descriptions. But I’ll admit I only made it 15% through the book before I got bored. 134 words.
• Protected: Curses, Abandoned First Draft. 2012-08-24 10:13 PM.
  • Curses
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  [The following is the abandoned first draft of “Curses.” If enough people say, “Wow, this is awesome, you should finish it!” I might try to resurrect it.] Olivaer Toebem woke from another dream in which had two arms, startled by a loud commotion in the common room downstairs. He threw off the bed covers and tried to stand, fumbling for balance in the near-darkness. He staggered to the doorway of his small room to find out what had happened. Perhaps Tias had dropped a stack of books. 10,201 words.
• Guild Wars 2 Head Stop. 2012-08-25 1:58 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Well I thought it would be a nice Saturday. I’d get up, log into the Guild Wars 2 Head Start along with the rest of the entire Internet, and have a nice morning of adventure. But nooooooo. It’s been down for two hours now. Not just intermittent connectivity issues; we’re talking 100% dead. And the information coming out of ArenaNet is somewhat lacking. About once an hour we get something like, “We’re looking into connectivity issues. Thanks for your patience.” 80 words.
• Guild Wars 2 Head Start Weekend. 2012-08-27 2:23 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  • Status
  
  The hype is finally over and Guild Wars 2 is out (if you pre-purchased it, that is). After being down Saturday morning, GW2 worked flawlessly for the rest of the weekend. Usually the hype far overshadows the actual game. But in this one rare case, it’s possible that the hype was justified. Let’s talk about Guild Wars 1 for a second. I never got into it. Certain things just bugged me. Mainly the lack of a jump. I’m not one of those people that bunny hops everywhere, but I never realized how often I jumped until it was missing. The other thing I couldn’t get past was left-clicking everything instead of right-clicking. 410 words.
• Necromancer Daggers. 2012-08-28 1:59 PM.
  • Classes
  • MMORPG
  • Theory
  
  Whoa.. I knew that Necromancer had melee-ish capability when you equip daggers, but I didn’t realize until last night just how much raw damage it puts out. I’ve been using a Staff or Axe/Dagger combo, but last night I decided to try out Dagger/Dagger again, and holy crap I was suddenly killing stuff super fast. I’m still not really happy with the Necro’s AoE capabilities. I haven’t found any decent AoE damage spells (compared to the Elementalist at least); it’s mainly AoE debuffs, which are not terribly useful in PvE events. I mean they are useful, but everyone just blasts AoE damage so debuffs aren’t necessary. By the time the debuff spell finishes, all the mobs are dead anyway. 170 words.

September, 2012

• Airworld Experiment. 2012-09-02 12:03 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’m trying an experiment. You may have already noticed it. I’m going to post the text of my novel draft “Airworld” as I write it (more-or-less). Some days I might post thousands of words, and some days I might post a couple of sentences or nothing. (Lately it has been more of the latter.) I’m also trying an email subscription plugin. The idea is that you subscribe and new posts are sent to your inbox, so you have a serialized story delivered right to your doorstep without the hassle of using a bookmark link. The emails don’t seem to be working yet, but I’m still tinkering with it. 184 words.
• Two Related Observations. 2012-09-04 5:28 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Two quick and related observations. 19 words.
• The Kindle Fire HD. 2012-09-07 6:36 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Is it finally time for me to get a tablet media player? It suddenly seems very convenient to have a dedicated Netflix player that I could set on the table while I’m computing, or I could carry into the kitchen or living room or bedroom, or whatever. Coincidentally, Amazon just announced a new line of Kindle devices. First they announced a new e-reader called the Kindle Paperwhite. This is a no-brainer, and I have already pre-ordered it. It has a slightly higher 195 words.
• Dr. Who Season 7, Episode 2. 2012-09-08 11:57 PM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Liveblogging Dr. Who stream on BBC thanks to a proxy … 00:35 - Sometimes it’s impossible to figure out what’s going on without rewinding a bit. 01:40 - Oh, the dog barking outside was actually on the stream … 02:30 - Wow, he doesn’t even ask anymore. 02:50 - That was a super-fast setup. 06:00 - Wait, is that a two-headed dinosaur? Oh, it’s just a pair of them hanging out together. 181 words.
• Dr. Who Season 7, Episode 1. 2012-09-09 1:30 AM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I really don’t remember how the last season ended, and I haven’t yet seen the Christmas episode. (Thank’s for nothing, Netflix.) 00:00 - Who’s Hannah? Oh. 02:30 - WTF! They’re all grown up! And broken! 04:15 - Why doesn’t Matt Smith look human? His face is all … weird … 05:20 - And why is he slurring his words? I mean, more than usual for British television. 06:00 - The intro looks different somehow. The tunnel is more blue-green than blue. And, oh, that red fire is definitely new. 240 words.
• A Cavern of Black Ice by J.V. Jones. 2012-09-12 1:12 PM.
  • Writing
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  A Cavern of Black Ice by J.V. Jones was a hard read for me, but I made it all the way to the end. I should warn you that there is no resolution whatsoever; it’s one of those series books that simply stops, rather than providing a self-contained story. According to the Internets, there are four more books planned, but only two have been released. 403 words.
• Dr. Who Season 7, Episode 3. 2012-09-15 11:00 PM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  00:00 - Took forever to get the stream running tonight. 01:48 - Dr. Who in the Old West is just weird. 04:45 - His face still looks weird. 08:13 - I guess this is a nod to steampunk. Well, more like a jumping up and down pointing frantically to steampunk. 09:38 - I wonder if this actor is American or if he’s a British dude with a great accent. 10:33 - So far Rory and Amy are props in this episode. 195 words.
• Pointers in Games. 2012-09-17 2:06 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Opinion
  
  Guild Wars 2 is an awesome game. But there is one thing about it that drives me insane. In fact, I have the same problem with almost every game that has a pointer. You can’t see the pointer! This is a major problem in GW2 because many of your abilities are ground-targeted spells, so you need to be able to point to the spot where you want to cast it. (I use the option that automatically casts wherever you are pointing.) If you’re out soloing it’s not a problem, but many times you’re in an epic battle with fifty people pounding on a boss and there’s flashing and fireworks and dazzling spell effects going on all over the place. Picking out the pointer in those situations is near impossible for me. Even when I wave the mouse around like I do on the desktop, it can still take a long time to find the damn thing. 214 words.
• Greens and Blues. 2012-09-17 7:55 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  Am I crazy or did GW2 make green items better than blue items, which is 100% the opposite of every other MMO in history? Did they just arbitrarily pick the colors or is there some logic to it? Somebody “on the Internet” said blue < green < yellow makes more sense because it follows the color wheel. But, like, green < blue < purple follows the color spectrum (ROYGBIV). 69 words.
• Writin' Like A Pirate. 2012-09-19 7:39 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Arr! 'Tis fittin' that I do be a'writin' about piracy on Talk Like A Pirate Day. 16 words.
• Dr. Who Season 7, Episode 4. 2012-09-23 10:31 PM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Starting Episode 4 stream as soon as I find a working proxy… Ah, it’s working now. Starting the stream in a second… wait, maybe it’s not working after all… Ah, I see. Had to add bbci.co.uk to the auto-proxy-switch list. And here we go. For the record, I am eating heated up leftover vegetables from a can while I watch. 1:09 - “The year of the slow invasion.” Woo, cool concept. 281 words.
• SGU (not to be confused with SG-U). 2012-09-24 7:33 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve started listening to a podcast called the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. So far it’s the only podcast I’ve found to challenge The 404 for the right to be the first podcast played on the morning commute. Commuter podcasts have to have a certain conversational quality to them, and they also have to be funny. The 404 and SGU are perfect examples. Of the two, SGU is considerably more substantive. :) 254 words.
• Jelly Bean Arrived. 2012-09-25 2:40 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Got Jelly Bean on my Galaxy Nexus this morning! (Otherwise known as Android 4.1.) It’s … um … better? I can’t really tell much difference, to be honest. It might be a tiny bit snappier. And the notifications look slightly different. 41 words.
• Not So Paranoid After All. 2012-09-28 5:44 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Yesterday I decided that I was being stupid and paranoid for embedding secret adjectives in my text, so I stopped. Today, I see in a Google Alert that someone jacked that exact same post!! On one hand, it’s really annoying and disappointing to see that my Internet fears were completely justified. On the other hand, it’s like, Yes! People are stealing from me! Hello, free exposure! Anyway if you find me on Google, make sure you’re actually clicking on a link from everettrenshaw.com. 83 words.
• Dr. Who Season 7, Episode 5. 2012-09-30 10:31 PM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Getting spaghetti made and getting setup to watch Episode 5, “The Angels Take Manhattan.” I’m not sure I really want to watch this one. It’s the “half-season finale” (whoever came up with such a ridiculous concept?) and … it’s the last episode with Amy and Rory. It says, “The Doctor’s heart-breaking farewell to Amy and Rory” on the site. This does not bode well. Okay, food ready, now playing! 2:25 - Neat imagery… 215 words.

October, 2012

• Doctor Who Redux. 2012-10-01 6:38 PM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Back on the subject of Doctor Who for a moment. Tor.com posts “reviews” of each episode, which I find interesting to compare to my own reactions. In their review of The Angels Take Manhattan, the author had a lot to say about the “inaccuracies” in the episode regarding the Angels and how they affected their immersion. Sure, it makes no sense if you think about it. But I didn’t really notice. This is Doctor Who. Inconsistencies are not unusual. If you haven’t figured out that you have to suspend your disbelief by the seventh series, something is seriously wrong with you. Still, the author ultimately praised the episode. 373 words.
• Back!. 2012-10-01 9:42 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Sorry, I forgot to update my credit card info so the page was down for a bit. :) 18 words.
• Upcoming Schedule. 2012-10-02 5:22 PM.
  • Writing
  • News
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Looking at my schedule, which is really a virtual schedule, in that there is nothing to physically look at, I see that October has just begun, and I’m currently a little over 15k into Airworld, and writing at what I estimate to be a slothful rate of 500 words a day. NaNoWriMo begins on November 1 and runs through November 30. Naobi still has to have an adventure in Sarin Morn, some kind of discovery or adventure in Leavon, and, assuming nothing else happens, she still needs to deal with the Council. Which does not even consider events going on back in Motiva. Basically what I’m saying is that there is very little chance I’m going to be done with Airworld by the end of October, unless I miraculously begin writing closer to 2000 words a day. 162 words.
• The First Debate. 2012-10-04 10:07 PM.
  • Politics
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Hey, did you know there was a presidential debate last night? I did, but I forgot to watch it. So I did what anyone else would do: I went to C-SPAN.org and started watching it tonight, because I watch television on my own schedule! Because I’m a rebel. And stuff. 50 words.
• Prologue to NaNoWriMo. 2012-10-04 11:33 PM.
  • NaNoWriMo 2012
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I just totally cheated and wrote the first paragraph of my NaNoWriMo novel. I couldn’t take the chance that I would forget it before November 1st! First there were sounds. Indistinct, without description. From far away. Then there were shapes, shadows on shadow, fluid. But something familiar about the shapes. Some took on forms that were recognizable. A tree. A house. A home? My home? A face, lips moving, speaking words just out of reach. Mother? Sister? All so strange, so far away. Who am I? What is that feeling? Coldness in the air, clutching his skin, shivering his bones. I am dreaming. I am a he. I have a name, and I am waking. Why should that seem so strange? 150 words.
• The First Debate, Partial Recap. 2012-10-06 4:03 PM.
  • Politics
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So I didn’t finish watching the first debate, I had to turn it off after around 45 minutes. 254 words.
• The Blade Itself, Part 3. 2012-10-09 7:15 PM.
  • Writing
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’m sure you’ve been wondering what I’m reading. After The Cavern of Black Ice I wanted to read something a little less heavy, so I went back to Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself. Previously I wrote such scintillating endorsements as “it’s not growing on me” and “I got bored.” Well, the book *did* eventually grow on me. In the second half, I was glad to be reading it. The author did some very interesting things with the narrative voice. Normally, books tend to have a single voice throughout, but Abercrombie was able to change the narrative voice depending on the POV character. For example, the chapters from The Dogman used very down-home, earthy style, like you might hear from a southerner. Whereas the chapters from Jezel, a cultured city-dweller, used more grammatically-correct language. Only the chapters from Glokta had self-dialog, the italicized talking-to-oneself kind of text. I found those things interesting, at least from a behind-the-scenes perspective. 355 words.
• That or Which: The Bane of My Existence. 2012-10-10 12:10 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Is it: She thought it must be stuck, a problem that was not uncommon in her own Orderhouse. Or: She thought it must be stuck, a problem which was not uncommon in her own Orderhouse. Grammar Girl is not helping me. I think it is “that” instead of “which.” UPDATE: Looking at this post on 7/25/2013, I now think it should be “which” instead of “that.” 66 words.
• Second Thoughts About My Story Seed. 2012-10-13 12:24 AM.
  • Writing
  • NaNoWriMo 2012
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  NaNoWriMo is flying closer with every second, and I’m terribly unprepared. Last year, I spent months worldbuilding beforehand (and then used almost none of it). This year, I have a story seed that’s been in my head for quite some time, but I’m starting to have second thoughts about it. Mainly because this “seed” is not much of a story. It’s just a collection of ill-defined characters and the barest thread of an excuse for them to come together. It doesn’t feel “ready.” 281 words.
• Lute of the Sparrow Available Again. 2012-10-13 7:57 PM.
  • Writing
  • News
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I have re-published my first novel Lute of the Sparrow on Amazon and CreateSpace. I disabled it a while back because … well, I don’t actually remember why. Possibly because I thought it might hurt my “career” as an author (such as it is). Perhaps I thought that if I ever did submit that novel to a publisher, they might Google it, find it on Amazon, see that only four people have read it, and drop my manuscript in the trash. However the odds of me submitting that manuscript to a publisher without significant alterations is pretty slim. 169 words.
• Going Rebel for NaNoWriMo. 2012-10-22 7:12 PM.
  • Writing
  • NaNoWriMo 2012
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Drumroll, please! I have decided to go Rebel for NaNoWriMo this year and continue my current WiP, instead of starting a new one. Possibly as many as 2 people could like this news. I finally decided to drop my previous story idea (which I had sort of dubbed Mixtime - for mixing up people from different times.. get it?). I just couldn’t think of a goal for these disparate characters from different times to work toward once they were together. Every plot idea I wrote down sounded ridiculous, so I would have been writing 50k of pointless nonsense. 128 words.
• What the heck are these things called?. 2012-10-22 11:31 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Consider this contemporary engraving of a woman by Wenceslaus Hollar, from around the mid-1700s: From here, btw. Sadly, I am a complete moron when it comes to clothing. If I look at that picture, I see a woman wearing an old-timey dress thingy, with a hat thingy on her head. But for some reason, that description wouldn’t go over very well in a published work of fiction. So, what the heck are these things called? 219 words.
• An Annoying Hurricane. 2012-10-29 1:04 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This hurricane is really annoying me with its extremely inconvenient schedule. So I’m staying home from work today, not so much because Governor McDonnell told us to stay off the roads, but because I didn’t want to leave the house and Bella alone, on the off chance that anything bad happened while I was gone during the day, or anything bad happened with any of the bridges over the river. But really, it’s not supposed to get “bad” here until late this afternoon or tonight, so I’m basically throwing an entire day of leave away for this. Odds are it will be worse Tuesday (in terms of strong winds, at least), so I might have to throw *another* day of leave away. (Which basically means I won’t be taking any time off around Christmas.) Grr. 135 words.
• NaNoWriMo-izing Imminent. 2012-10-31 7:13 PM.
  • Writing
  • NaNoWriMo 2012
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  You may notice some changes in Airworld’s writing style now that NaNoWriMo is starting up. Until now, I have made some small efforts to write grammatically correct sentences, avoid too much repetition within a paragraph, find the right words to describe things, put events in the right sequence, etc. With the start of NaNoWriMo, all of that is going out the window. I will need to roughly double my daily output, so I will have to go into a more stream-of-consciousness sort of a writing mode and discard all filters. I will at least try to keep the story in order, although I can’t guarantee I won’t put in a “flashback” chapter to events in Rorco, if I find myself stuck. And I will try to avoid writing parts that have nothing to do with anything, like a unicorn charging in from nowhere and stabbing people, or a squad of WWII bombers flying overhead, or a hole dropping the characters into an alternate universe. 164 words.

November, 2012

• Walking Dead, Season 2, Episode 1. 2012-11-04 11:08 PM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Okay so I’m a little bit ahead in writing today, so I thought I would finally sit down and watch the first episode of Walking Dead Season 2 on Netflix. I thought the first season was “okay” but I didn’t see where it deserved all the nerd praise it got. I guess it’s a generational thing. Zombies are “cool” with the kids and whatnot. But since Walking Dead is now in it’s third season and everyone is still raving about it, I thought I should give it another chance. 651 words.
• Falling Back Sucks. 2012-11-06 8:48 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Why doesn’t anyone else understand that “fall back” is worse than “spring forward?” Everybody’s all like, “Woohoo! An extra hour of sleep! This is awesome!” But you also get an extra hour of work. And you LOSE an hour of evening time. Come on people, get with the program. 49 words.
• Oh, Forgot About That. 2012-11-06 10:15 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I just noticed that I probably should have followed up on my October 29th post. Sorry. In short: An epic amount of nothing happened in Richmond. 26 words.
• Apocalypse. 2012-11-07 7:54 PM.
  • Politics
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I have to admit I’m fairly surprised that Virginia went for the blue president, considering the general anti-Obama atmosphere around here. The only thing I can figure is that Virginia Republicans didn’t think Romney was red enough, so they stayed home. (I know they hated McCain, so I can only assume they didn’t like Romney either.) I’m also very surprised that Virginia went for the blue senator. I have no explanation for that. (Admittedly, I didn’t follow that race much so I don’t know how it went. I assume it was a bloody massacre from start to finish.) I’m not at all surprised that the 7th district went for the red congressman, though. I’m not sure why they bother having congressional elections there. 359 words.
• It's all fun and games until someone gets their throat cut. 2012-11-14 12:04 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I started out writing Airworld as a sort of light-hearted adventure. Despite a somewhat serious premise (the home town is dying!), I didn’t intend for anyone to get into any real trouble. But somewhere along the way, things got pretty serious. People are getting their throats cut. People are getting their heads smashed on stone walls. People are getting framed and tortured. People are coming face-to-face with their worst nightmares, and doubting their own convictions, and having to make life-altering decisions. 99 words.
• Secession. 2012-11-17 3:50 PM.
  • Politics
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I see that there are a bunch of petitions for states to secede (I like to link to Fox News stories so conservatives can’t complain about biased sources) from the Union after the president was re-elected. These make great sensational headlines which further push people into “us” and “them” camps. Of course, the first thing I thought, and the first thing any critical news consumer should have thought, was: It makes sense that there would be an increase in secession petitions after every election, so this is probably not news. I set out to prove my theory and provide a tiny bit of context to these stories. (You’re welcome, journalists.) 549 words.
• The Missing Word. 2012-11-18 1:32 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I am sure you have all seen this photo by now. https://twitter.com/whitehouse/status/269785942326398976/photo/1 I am SO glad that this picture came to light, so I can ask this vitally important question: WHAT IS THIS EXPRESSION CALLED?? Preferably in a past tense verb form. The president _____ ed for the photo. Here is the context in which I would like to use this word. 277 words.
• New Theme. 2012-11-18 3:33 PM.
  • Administration
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I installed a new theme, obviously. I like the simplicity of it, and it looks pretty good on mobile devices, so I think I will stick with it for a while. It’s called “Blaskan.” 34 words.
• Hi!. 2012-11-18 3:41 PM.
  • Administration
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Hi! My name is Tom. I’m a veteran software developer from Virginia 53 words.
• When The Pitch is Better Than The Book. 2012-11-20 1:30 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  In a fit of inspiration, I wrote out a “pitch” for Kubak Outpost, in case I wanted to write a query letter for it. This is what I wrote: Fen, a man who has lost his love and his livelihood, enlists in the army to fight in the war against magic-wielding kaanfar warriors encroaching on the border. Along the way, he meets The Demon Hunter, who has to drink the blood of his victims to power his own form of magic. Together they must find a way to stop the kaanfar from summoning a powerful ancient foe before the king’s defenses are overwhelmed. 133 words.
• What’s a Fiscal Cliff?. 2012-11-20 1:58 AM.
  • Politics
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So I’m trying to catch up on this whole “fiscal cliff” thing. What is it? Well, according to Wikipedia, the only information source that it’s completely safe to link to, the fiscal cliff is a combination of events that are scheduled to take place on Jan 1 2013, if no one intervenes. One is the end of Bush tax cuts. Another is a broad set of spending cuts. A third is something about new taxes related to Obamacare. 381 words.
• Comments…. 2012-11-22 12:49 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Hrm.. something wonky is happening with comments. I am investigating. UPDATE: Okay it’s working again. It was not displaying any comments, even though they were there in the system. The Facebook plugin was the culprit, so I have disabled it. 40 words.
• Happy Thanksgiving!. 2012-11-22 1:32 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  (This picture was stolen outright from travelblat.com, a site I know nothing about.) 13 words.
• The Walking Dead, Season 3, Episode 4. 2012-11-23 12:20 AM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  A while back I was making fun of the first episode of Walking Dead, Season 2. I still think that episode kind of sucked. But I diligently carried on and the show got much better. I thought the pacing was really slow, though, and then everything happened all at once in the season finale. So of course I had to watch Season 3. But that’s the current season, so it isn’t on Netflix. And I don’t have cable or even a television (I’m watching on an iPad), so I did something I’ve never done before: I bought Season 3 on Amazon Prime. 125 words.
• Analysis of a Blank Page. 2012-11-23 2:12 PM.
  • NaNoWriMo 2012
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  So this is what I’m staring at today. 8 words.
• Rachel Aaron Talked To Me!. 2012-11-28 1:19 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Squee! A real live fantasy author answered my question! (This was actually the second one she answered - the first one was more about my own personal insecurities though.) This is what I asked: Hi! Me again. Early in this thread you said: “Fantasy has changed a LOT as a genre over the past few years, and if you’re not reading modern books, you might be surprised.” I didn’t see where you had already done this, and if you did, feel free to ignore this, but I wonder if you could expand on that a little (or a lot, that’s fine too :). In your view, what’s changed about the genre? I am curious to hear your take on it. Thank you! 1,050 words.

December, 2012

• This Is First Publication? Really?. 2012-12-01 2:21 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Soooo um, ahem. I may have screwed myself a little bit by posting the Airworld story as I go. There’s this concept of “First Publication Rights” which is apparently kind of a big deal to publishers. For some very strange reason, many of them are only interested in publishing things that have never been published before, and some of them might think that posting on the Interwebs is publishing. Oops! 226 words.
• My First Smoothie. 2012-12-02 9:32 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Cut up one apple and break up one banana and put the pieces into a blender. Add a handful of ice. Blend. I immediately discovered that my new blender kind of sucks for this task, since the blades didn’t hit anything at first. Next time I guess I will cut the pieces a little smaller. Or possibly do a little research on what kind of blender to buy instead of randomly picking one from Target. 112 words.
• How To Keep Reading Airworld. 2012-12-02 11:50 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Okay, if you want to continue to be an Alpha Reader, here’s what you need to do. Click on the link on the right that says “Register,” under Meta. (If you’re reading on a tablet or mobile device, it might be way at the bottom of the page.) Pick a username and an email. Don’t use a fake email because it will send a password there. Copy the password in the email and click on the link below it. Enter your new username and paste the password into the box below. That will take you to your profile page, where you may want to change your password into something that you can actually remember. (It’s near the bottom of the page.) It would probably be best not to put anything secret in your profile, since this is WordPress and everybody likes to hack WordPress. 204 words.
• Airworld Agenda. 2012-12-04 12:05 AM.
  • Writing
  • News
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  After two whole days without writing anything (where it felt like I had about 5 hours of spare time each day), I’m back on it! However, I’m going to take a short break from Naobi and Cheton and work on some scenes from Motiva that have been in the back of my mind for a while, which will hopefully become relevant toward the end of the story. I’m also going to wait a few days before I start posting again. Thanks! 81 words.
• Adult Fantasy–Worst Genre Name Ever. 2012-12-07 1:39 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I stumbled on this post from Rachel Aaron entitled “We need a new name…” which made me laugh. Me, “I’m a fantasy author!” (always so cool to say) Lady, “Oh wow! So like Harry Potter?!” Me, “No, Harry Potter’s YA, I write adult fantasy.” Lady, “………….” Me, “NO! Not THAT kind of adult fantasy!” This is probably one of the main reasons I’m using the name Everett Renshaw. Because it is unbelievably embarrassing to say to real people in real life that I write in a genre that the industry calls “adult fantasy.” I don’t even like telling people that I read in this genre. It would be marginally better to call it “epic fantasy” or “urban fantasy” but unfortunately I’m not writing those. Pretty much anything with the word “fantasy” in it makes me cringe and want to resign myself to a life of cubicles. 225 words.
• My First Look at Skyrim. 2012-12-08 2:09 AM.
  • RPG
  • Single-Player
  • Steam
  
  I finally got Skyrim in a Steam sale. I’m not sure exactly what I expected but I kind of thought it would be something a bit more … well, different from Oblivion. All of the same annoying things from Oblivion are still there in Skyrim. The most annoying of which is when five people walk up to you and start talking at the same time. While you’re already talking to someone else. Not to mention the laggy, unresponsive sort of feel to the interface, which is particularly annoying considering you’re supposed to play it like an FPS. I’ve played FPSs, Skyrim, and you, sir, are no FPS. 133 words.
• Playing the Age Card on Facebook. 2012-12-08 2:57 AM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I decided to leave a comment with a Snopes link on a dubious Facebook post. But why this one? 699 words.
• Outlining The Rest of Airworld. 2012-12-13 2:34 AM.
  • Writing
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve not forgotten about Airworld. I’m outlining the remainder of the story. I find that I can only be a pantser up to a certain point (usually that point is about now, where the story needs to start moving toward a resolution), at which time I really have to sit down and figure out how to resolve things without using magical faery dust. In this case it’s harder than I might have expected, because Airworld became rather complex, and there are many threads flying about loose right now. I suppose this is why writers always advise you to know your ending before you start. It’s good advice, but extremely difficult for me. Unless you count something like, “Then they figured everything out. The end.” 399 words.
• Sigh. 2012-12-15 11:39 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I first heard about the shooting around noon on Friday when I overheard a coworker telling his cube-neighbor about it. The second words out of his mouth were something about gun control, so I guess it’s never too soon to opine after a tragedy. The world is very, very dangerous, and it is a miracle that any of us have survived this long. It’s easy to forget that. It’s human nature to search for answers, but most of the time there aren’t any. 283 words.
• Meaningful Action. 2012-12-16 5:14 PM.
  • Commentary
  • Politics
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was pretty disappointed when I read reports that Obama had called for “meaningful action” following the shooting tragedy Friday. If you’re not familiar with the lively debate over the Second Amendment in this country, those words mean that he is planning to push through tough new laws to take away our rights to arm ourselves. It was disappointing to hear him say that, because I have always enjoyed giggling when I hear fear-mongerers misguidedly ascribe a radical left-wing communist agenda to the Obama regime. 342 words.
• A Few Loose Ends. 2012-12-17 11:35 PM.
  • Commentary
  • Politics
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A few more comments on uncontroversial topics like mental health and gun control. 1,318 words.
• New Smoothie. 2012-12-19 12:48 AM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s the newest recipe from the evolution of my daily-fruit-intake smoothie. A banana, cut up into pieces. A handful of frozen fruit from a generic bag of mixed frozen fruit, slightly melted. A bit of orange juice. Not so much for the orange but because I discovered that the orange juice makes the blending process work about a thousand times better. Blend. This makes a cupful of fruity beverage-ish that is about the consistency of a milkshake. 77 words.
• Merry Christmas!. 2012-12-25 2:05 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  And the Christmas season begins! That’s right, I said BEGINS, you secular pseudo-Christian retail slaves. 50 words.