Are You Listening, Lost? BSG? Especially You, BSG!

The best word to describe Breaking Bad's finale last night (no spoilers, don't worry) is 'elegant.' If did everything it needed to do and did it well, as one would expect from such an amazing series. I'm sad that it's over but don't feel a Firefly/Serenity-type ache for another chapter. Wonderful. Well, as wonderful as a story about a meth-kingpin can be.

I'm under tremendous time constraints lately, and the contest I volunteered to judge for just told me to expect my entries soon. Yeesh. You entered, right? Right?

Writing: zero words Saturday, zero words this morning. Yeah, I know. Saturday I needed to get some editing done, and this morning followed the pattern of the entire weekend and was centered around helping someone move. Totally, totally worth it. The words will flow tomorrow.

Bloody hell, I keep forgetting about this

Busy and lacking interesting things to write about, so I'll just get tot he motivational part.

Writin': 688 words Thursday, 888 today. I feel a good chunk of today's is going to get slaughtered during editing, but again, this is the 'vomit words on the page' portion of the writing process. Have a good weekend, gang.

Just an update, then

Busy today. No time to blather. LUCKY YOU.

writing: 743 words. starting to get concerned about length again. Time for someone to die.

'So, Which One are You?' - Hockey Clinic Night #3

For those who know who the guys in the picture above are, no explanation necessary. For those who don't and aren't easily offended - or even moderately offended - go watch the movie Slapshot, which is deliriously raunchy and hysterical, in that order. Anyway, night #3 found us missing Sheq again. Missing a bunch of people, actually, as we went from the 30 skaters of last session to about 18 of us.  Jeff proved he has a heart of gold by giving me a thing that sticks to the inside of your helmet and keeps the sweat from running into your eyes. I almost kissed him. I had no issues there and the sweat was content to emerge from every other pore on my body in great quantity.

I had taken the family skating Sunday but that didn't work out so well. The place was packed, so much so that my kids weren't interested in trying to wobble around on skates that needs sharpening for too long. That gave me some time to practice, and I spent a good 20 minutes skating the center ice circle trying to get a crossover down. There was a lot of falling. There were two sorta-crossovers but really, not so much. That skill remained elusive.

That, along with the other boatload of things I'm terrible at, had be a little nervous before the session. But tonight proved to be full of Drills That Kit Didn't Totally Suck at For Some Reason, probably because they were a little weird. For instance, we had to skate to the red line as fast as we could and then drop into a squat and see if we could glide to the end boards. People fell all over the place or ran out of speed. For some reason this was really easy for me, and the first person who says it's because of a large butt gets a hockey glove in the face. Another one was skating, then dropping to your knees and hopping back up as you slid. Not only did I do okay at this, but it was fun. Give me more freaky drills to be moderately non-sucky at!

We broke into two squads, with some people reluctant to admit they'd been down with the remedial skaters like me last week. Dudes, own it. It's a clinic. It's all about getting better, not having everyone think you're a better skater than they are. The coach set up a death wiggle of cones and then told us we were going to make turns through the tight confines. While skating. MADNESS! I envisioned myself scattering cones to the winds as my inability to commit to inside edges doomed me.

Then the coach said something that may have changed my erstwhile career as a beer league hockey player and upgraded me from hopeless to terrible: when you start your turn, bring the stick around ahead of you in the direction your turning and turn your head to look at where you're going.

That's it. It sounded too simple and I prepared to sprawl mid-turn, but instead I moved the stick around the cone and looked to the next one and cut a pretty damn tight corner. It happened the next time too, and after that, and after that . . . so simple, but so effective. We did it several times and my confidence continued to grow. I could do this! 45 isn't too old to play for the Rangers!

Then he gave me a puck, and hilarity ensued. Suffice to say I was a little less polished. Plus we also had to shoot at a tipped over net at the end of the course, and I was fine as long as I kept it simple and didn't do anything but shove the puck at the damn thing. As soon as I applied any wrist action it went wherever it wanted. It would appear I have not yet acquired a goal-scoring touch.

Splitting into teams of 9, we started scrimmaging. Our first shift ran about 2 minutes. To give you an idea of what it's supposed to be like, the average NHL shift is about 30-45 seconds. It didn't matter. I would have stayed out there for twenty minutes straight if I could have. Too much fun, despite being fairly incompetent in a most frustrating way. Here's the killer: I've been watching hockey for almost 40 years now, and despite not playing until recently I have a pretty good handle on the game. When Wayne Gretzky, one of the greatest players of all time and certainly the best I've ever seen, was a kid, he used to watch games with a cardboard cutout of a hockey rink in his lap. He'd use a marker to follow the puck and at the end of the game he'd notice where the heaviest amount of ink was. In games, he'd go to those places because that's where the puck seemed to end up. I'm not on that level, but I can see plays developing and know exactly where I need to be to either jump in on offense or break something up on defense - but I lack the actual skill to accomplish it. SO FRUSTRATING. For instance last light I was on left wing and the puck was at the right sideboards. A player on the other team got the puck and I knew she was going to shoot the puck around the boards to my side to clear the zone, and I headed for the boards as she did just that. But when I got there the blade my stick hit the boards, bounced off for the second that the puck shot by, and then when my reflexive act was to poke at the board against it unbalanced me and I fell on my butt. SUPERSTAR!

The best skater on the ice is a woman who looks like at the end of the night she's going to trade in her stick for a spear as she heads off to gather fallen warriors to take to Valhalla. Of course she was opposite the line I played on and covering her was like trying to cover smoke. At one point there was a loose puck that i actually swept away from her and started to head up ice. I heard her curse behind me and the chop of her skates and everything I'd learned over the past three weeks vanished in a rush of panic as I tried to RUN UP THE ICE to stay ahead of her. I managed to pass it away just before she stickchecked me and I fell to the ice laughing so hard I couldn't breathe.

As for the picture above, as I remember it there was a loose puck and one of the guys chased after it with his head down, and well, Jeff checked his ass into next week. I was close enough that I couldn't stop and sort of fell on his as well, which caused one of the other players to laugh and say, "Hell, you guys are the Hanson Brothers. So which one are you?"

I'm figuring Jeff should be Jeff, as long as I don't get any of that stinking root beer.

What is This, Texas?

I'm not going to get into details but I ran into Those Guys this weekend at The Boy's flag football game. The Guys who teach 5 year olds that they have to WIN and one who has his obese kid throwing a CRACKBACK BLOCK on a kid who weighs about 30 pounds soaking wet. It was insane. Suffice to say I stood up for my ducklings. But seriously, in a Kindergarten-age game of flag football where nobody is keeping score, you shouldn't be watching to see which side I'm telling my ADHD kids to run to and then STACKING ALL YOUR KIDS UP THERE. It was nuts. Jerkweeds.

Spent over twenty minutes circling the center ice circle yesterday and managed to fall down a lot around two brief, weak crossovers. Not ready for the NHL yet.

Writing: 711 Saturday, 347 today. Not too bummed about this morning's lousy output because it was a new chapter and I had to do some cleaning up of my outline. Also, I managed to get my novella/novelette/not-short story sent off to an anthology actually considering long pieces, so fingers shall be crossed there.

It Might Be Time

Alarm clock didn't go off again yesterday and I slept through my writing session. Maybe I should break down and replace this 20 year old one. Just a thought.

writing: yesterday bupkis, today 693. Not sure if I'm going to have the protagonist screw up a little or a lot AHAHAHAHAHHA he's totally going to bone everything in a major way and that's not a euphemism for sex.

Arghhh

I'm downwind from the local Chinese food place and the smell is killing me today. I could go for some boneless ribs, but living gluten-free means ninety-nine percent of Chinese food is off limits and I'm not in the mood for mei fun noodles. Maybe the wind will shift and I'll smell the pizza place instead.  Wait . . . dammit.

At least my fried food intake has essentially vanished. I think the only times I've had any in the 4 months or so of this were fries at 5 Guys. My taste buds are ever so pissed at me.

writing: 497 words. Disjointed session as I wasn't feeling so hot. Happy with the word output, given the situation.

Cut Me Another Slice of Humble Pie - Hockey Training, Part 2

Last night found me back at the Icehouse ready to learn again (incidentally, they claim that this is the largest 'beer' league in the country. Really? I gues NJ is becoming a hockey hotbed. Too bad it's going to get fouled by my ice capades). This time my friend Sheq made it in his gear acquired via Ebay, which included a jersey with a number. I did not have such boldness (although I thought about my vintage Mark Pavelich jersey for a long time) and stuck with my grey CCM jersey that I and about five other people picked up for 10 bucks. We were an anonymous legion!

I felt good during warm-ups. First I worked on the proper style to build better skating, and then even worked on backwards a bit. We started with the push-leg skating drill from last time and I still felt good. From there we went to the stopping on the lines thing and yeah, I wiped out spectacularly a few times but I was making actual stops (when I didn't wipe out) instead of snowplowing. Improvement! Ice ice baby!

Then we started skating backwards.

All of the limited success I had before went out the window. I was awkward, unbalanced, and sloooooooow. After a bit the coach pulled me, Sheq, and one kid who made us look like Apolo Ohno off tot he side to work on that for a while. Did I get better? Maybe. The problem with skating backwards is that everyone else skates so much faster forwards that I'm reluctant to use it. It will come with time. I was a little down on myself this morning because it was a rough night - more coming on that - and then I remembered that THIS WAS BASICALLY MY 4TH TIME ON SKATES and I should maybe relax a little with the self-hatin'.

Time for a new feature: Things I didn't know about playing hockey!
1. Sweat pours in your face constantly and since you have a cage on it's a pain in the ass to get rid off. The fingers of your gloves will NOT fit through the holes.
2. If you step on the puck while skating there will be comical results.
3. Stopping is a good thing to know how to do.
4. Any idiot who still thinks women can't compete with men in sports should come watch the two we had out there. The blond was possibly the best player on the ice.
5. That weird smell? It's you.
6. Getting over the boards from the bench to the ice is like a mini-game. I feel ridiculously proud for having not wiped out yet. Yet.
7. Jeff is getting his legs and game sense back and will soon be far, far better than me. If he isn't already.

We moved to the crossover step again. I still couldn't do it, but I at least failed while trying instead of just skating in a circle like last time. Of course this screwed up everyone behind me but they all seemed to treat it as an accepted thing.

From there were moved to passing, and evidently I am capable of standing sideways and pushing a puck to a stationary teammate approximately ten feet away. I do feel a sense of accomplishment about this. Don't judge. It was a rough night. Meanwhile the good skaters - and there were a slew of them - were whizzing around through cones and aiming for top corner with wrist shots. I had to once again note that while this was a clinic designated for beginners, at least half the people here were far beyond that labeling.

This became even more apparent when we shifted to a game. I was on a line with one of the superstars, so to speak, and he determined it was his job to skate around with the puck and not pass to anyone. At one point he was steaming down the right side with three guys covering him, and I drifted into the slot all alone and started banging my stick on the ice. Actually, two other guys from my team had found spots as well and we were all banging our sticks on the ice, calling for a pass. He ignored us and tried to swoop around himself, losing the puck. Jerkweed.

In the defensive zone I got schooled a couple of times by guys blowing right past my attempts to skate backwards and cover them. Sure, I cleared a few pucks, but for the most part I looked like what i was - an old guy trying to learn how to play hockey against vastly superior players.

Know what?  That's okay. I'll get there. See you next week.

Writing: Yes, I got up at 5 and wrote, although believe me my body wanted to go back to sleep. I'm surprisingly un-achey today. 620 words. I started to slow down to muse over ideas and then remembered this is the 'vomit words on the page and clean them up later' phase.

A 2 for 1 Special Would Be Nice

If anyone has figured out a way to cram more hours into the day, let me in on it? yeesh.

Short and not really sweet today, as I'm busy at work.

Writing: 711 Saturday,  724 today. I reserve the right to take a morning for self-editing or gaming prep. These things happen.

Edit for Credit

As i start to cobble my copyediting career into being I'm faced with the decision of how to charge. Rear a book and it says to do it per page. Read a different book and it says to do it hourly. Consult an online editor and see that he does it by project. Or by word. Or in other ways as fits the situation.

I don't like the time model because while I have a pretty damn good work ethic, it's still designed to make me be more inefficient. The longer I take, the more I get. The per-project model is appealing, but I fear my lack of experience will have me hitting either way too high or way too low.  The per-page is persnickety as well, because different projects will have vastly different variety in the number of words per page.

So it seems that per word might be the way to go for me. I'm a fair and honest person, and I take pride in a  job well done. The project I have going on right now has had me going over the same chapter more than once as the authors revise after my initial pass, and you know what? I'm okay with that. We've even triple-dipped a few times and it doesn't seem to bother me at all. They seem pleased with the results and really, that's the point, right? Now if it were going to be my sole source of income the back and forth might be more of an issue, but then I'd have more time to give to it as opposed to the hours I steal here and there to stay slightly ahead of them. So it seems I'm getting my footing, and, as it turns out, I pretty much freaking love editing. Now this could be colored by the fact that the writing I'm working with is really interesting, but I feel it might be the case no matter what. hopefully I'll find more work in the future to find out.  In the meantime, I need to assemble a rate page. I'll do that in my spare time ::cue laughter::

Writing: oh right, that. 672 words as there was a little grooving and shaking going on. No, not for the characters, who are well and truly fucked. I meant with my writing mojo and just my life in general. Good things are heavily outweighing the bad lately and that makes Kit a happy writer.

not necessarily a good writer, but a happy one.

It Totally Counts

Uhm, my super-long hockey post from Tuesday covers all week, right? Right?

Writing: You may have noticed there was no update yesterday. Well, I plumb forgot, but there was no update anyway because my alarm didn't go off and I slept through until 5:51. No words ! ::cue sad trombone:: Today there was 543 and lucky to have that because curse you Card Hunter announcing you're out of beta and linking me to my account! CURSE YOU!

Drop the Puck, It's Time to Go!

He zipped across the blue line, alone, puck cradled against the curve of the blade of his stick. The only thing between him and the goalie was me, my gray shirt dark with sweat, and he drove to the outside on his forehand trying to swoop around me. I drifted back with him, waiting for the moment when he realized that path was closed and tried to cut back toward the middle. He was bigger, stronger, more experienced and ten times the skater I was, but I had the angle on him. At least, I hoped I did. After all, I'd only been a hockey player for all of 80 minutes or so. What the hell did I know?

His skates slashed into the ice and his momentum shifted direction. My blades dug in as well and I struck . . .

***

I'd been looking for something new to challenge me, as time constraints had caused me to give up on rugby and I was feeling the need for a new sporting outlet. At a party consisting of people I didn't really know the host mentioned that he'd started playing hockey recently, despite the fact that he'd never played before and couldn't really skate. Hey, I had those same qualifications! If he was a hopeless spaz as well we might be brothers. Turns out one of the local hockey rinks had a league just for us, filled with players of  'zero to limited experience.' His enthusiasm was contagious, and I started to look into actually doing this thing, because man, I love hockey. One or two nights a week after the kids were in bed? No problem! Equipment? My brother-in-law thoughtfully donated his old stuff, and I filled in the gaps with a trip to HockeyMonkey. $45 hockey skates? How couldn't I? (My fear at buying such cheap blades, even if they were Bauers, was allayed when I noticed at least ten others wearing them at the clinic). And when I mentioned it to my friend Sheq, he seemed pretty interested too. His brother wanted in as well, so the three of us took the plunge and signed up for the winter league.

First we figured we should, you know, learn how to play, and signed up for a four-session clinic. Out of the three of us Jeff, Sheq's brother, had the best chance of not being horrible, as he had several years of rollerblade hockey in his distant past. I took the family skating two weekends in a row, which turned out to be a big hit and allowed me to shake of thirty-plus years of rust from someone who was never an avid skater to begin with. Thanks to Sheq's daughter Zoe by the end of the second session I could sort of stop, sort of skate backwards, and glide for about  five feet on one blade. I was ready to take this clinic by storm.

Ice House in Hackensack is huge - four rinks and fifteen locker rooms under one roof. Jeff showed up at our agreed-on time - we wanted to get there early to figure out how to put on our medieval knight's worth of gear - and informed me that Sheq had left work with a migraine and was unlikely to appear. As he had a couple of pieces of Jeff's gear that made an interesting show of confidence on his brother's part, as he had to go without a faceguard or hockey pants. Let me just say that hockey pants are awesome. Remember skating and landing on your tailbone? Hockey pants make that go away. They're like the friend who shows up with coffee and bacon after a night of hard drinking.

We found our rink and, with help, our locker room, which looked less like the carpeted opulence of Madison Square Garden and more like a prison cell. I was able to figure out what went where mostly by observing others getting suited up, and before long we were out on the ice, two goalies and twenty-six skaters. As the coaches had us warm up skating laps it became obvious that the rumor I'd heard that much more skilled players often took the clinic for fine-tuning on their skills and cheap ice time was true.  There were four or five guys in white Ice House jerseys who zipped around with the ease that spoke of years of practice. Still, I wasn't bothered. I'd left my ego in my hockey bag. For fuck's sake, I'm 45 years old. I'm not expecting to be Gretzky out there.

The first thing we worked on was skating. I was doing it wrong. It seems my two sessions of rec skating had done more harm than good but to be fair, pretty much everyone was told this as well. We worked on keeping our feet beneath us and pushing off with the inner edge, while keeping our heads up and sticks on the ice.  One of our drills involved skating from the goal line to the blue line and stopping, then to the red line, and so on. Over the course of several trips up and down the ice I fell numerous times, but I didn't care. It was fun and I could feel myself getting a little bit more confidant each time. Moving to the faceoff circles, they introduced the concept of the crossover step. I simply didn't have the confidence in my skating yet to pull it off. Maybe next session. Jeff had it down after a little while. Bastard.

The coached talked about how to use your stick (PHRASING!). I was doing it wrong. My hands weren't in the right position (PHRASING), I had it too far away from me (PHR - aw, forget it), I had it too far out to the side.The coach corrected me. I listened.

Then we were given pucks and worked on stickhanding. I was doing it wrong (are you seeing a pattern here?). The coach showed me how to do it correctly, and I practiced it as we skated in circles and around cones. It's SO MUCH more difficult than it looks like on TV. The puck has a mind of its own and skitters everywhere. I pretty much just laughed at myself and my antics, but kept trying.

Then, with about ten minutes left, they divided us into teams and said, "Let's play hockey!" By virtue of where I went on the bench I was dubbed a defensemen, one of two players who think more about protecting their own goal than attacking their opponent's. A kid of like twenty was my first defensive partner, and he offered me good-natured ribbing as we headed out for our shift. The game moved so quickly that at times I was lost as to what was happening. My first few shifts I was extremely timid about going anywhere past the red line, afraid to get caught too far up. I knew everyone else could easily out-skate me forwards, and backwards would be even more of a disaster, so I played it safe. On my second shift the puck was in our zone and went back to one of their defensemen, who was not scared to be there and wound up for a shot as I placed myself in harm's way.. His shot glanced off my foot and either bounced away or deflected to the goalie behind me, who made the save. In any case, they didn't score. I had a rudimentary idea of where a defenseman is supposed to be in certain situations so I wobbled to and fro, just trying to get in the way. Also, having a load of fun. This was GREAT.

Jeff and I ended up as a defensive pairing as someone's idea of a joke. Jeff could actually skate very well but couldn't stop. One of the good players in the white shirts had the puck and skated from Jeff's side of the ice over to mine above the blueline. Jeff stayed with him, which left me in a quandry - what to do? Stay at home, which left the other side of the ice open, or back off and cover that but leave open the chance that this guy would have a breakaway? I stayed home, and he fed it to his wide open teammate in the slot. Our goalie bailed us out with a nice save, snapping shut his pads and denying the gap between his legs known as the 'five hole.' Jeff and I skated off, talking about what had happened. A coach skated up and pointed to me. "You did the right thing." To Jeff he said, "You didn't. Stay on your side of the ice." Jeff countered that he thought he had the angle on the guy, but the coach shook his head and disagreed, saying "Staying at home is more important. next time you know.  You're doing great!"

Which brings us back to the play I started with. When the guy made his move, two things occurred to me at once: one, I was in the right position, and two, I had been skating backwards to get there and not even thinking about it. Scary! My frantic pokecheck was lucky enough to get the puck and send it out of the zone, and later on as we clambered out for the last shift I felt daring enough to venture all the way to the other team's blue line as we attacked. One of their defensemen tried to clear the puck from the zone but sort of whiffed, and I was able to get to it before his teammate and shove it toward one of our forwards, who made a shot that was saved. I had contributed in the offensive zone! Then the coach blew his whistle and I fell flat on my ass.  The zamboni was already coming out onto the ice, and I skated off with reluctance, knowing I'd been lucky out there but looking forward to having the opportunity to be burned again next week.

Now how do I clean all these pads?

writing: 486 tired words and you better believe my body is PISSED I made it get up at 5am to write. You don't even want to know the creaks and groans that came later during pushups and situps.

R & R

Yup, taking of Saturday to relax with friends ended up being a good idea. I managed to get some of the novella edited last night and was in a good writing mood this morning. Tonight nothing will get done as my hockey clinic starts - well, it's not my clinic per se, just one I'm attending, and I'm figuring if I get there 40 minutes before start time I should be able to figure out how to wear all the equipment by then. Rugby was so much simpler.

This weekend we had a round of Cards Again Humanity with such lame answers that we didn't allow anyone to win it. It happens. Friends are fun.

writing: 685 words as I hit the trigger point for, in Fiasco terms, the tilt of the story. Sticking to my writing schedule as the rest of my time goes a little bananas with hockey, Zack's football and karate practices, copyediting, gaming, and the usual family stuff. Plus cleaning out a garage and building a studio, prepping for a garage sale, judging a  story contest you should totally enter but do it soon because it's over on the 27th!  I HAVE TO DO THE THINGS. Ye gods.

A Good Excuse

I have friends coming to visit this weekend, which plays merry hell with my writing schedule. Noyt tht it needs the help, as I have a novella that needs editing, my weekly Pathfinder game to be prepped, a looming con I need to prep games for, a professional copyediting job I'm working on, and now hockey starting up. Plus, you know, the job and the family. Damn kids. ALWAYS DEMANDING ATTENTION.

Anyway, I'll miss a writing session or two while they;re hear and THAT"S COOL. The book will wait. My mental health will not. I need to take all of our kids to the Bronx Zoo and have a great time and then when the rugrats go to bed break out the Cards Against Humanity and laugh myself sick hanging out with these awesome people. My friend Kevin said it best - 'There are people you meet that you know you'll be acquaintances with, and then there's a very few that you know from the moment you meet you'll be dear friends with for life.'  Sage words, those.

Writing: a surprising 612 words. I wasn't feeling it, but evidently my brain was. Finished a chapter and in the next one IT ALL COMES DOWN. Poor Jack.

Bare Bones

Just the facts today, busy at work. Nothing like a holiday weekend to help people wreck their cars. ye gods, I live off the misfortune of others.

writing: 497 hard-fought words. Wasn't feeling it this morning and it showed as I fell short of my 500 word goal. Tomorrow morning I may take a break from writing and edit my novella instead, which is getting closer to deadline. I'll mean 3 days without writing (we have guests coming in this weekend and I anticipate staying up late and drinking heavily) but I think it'll be okay. Monday morning, nose back to the grindstone. I'm sure there's a reason people use that expression but man, it makes no sense. Just sounds painful. Kind of like this post -ZING!

Bronx Lightning

Just made it from NJ to 233rd Street in the Bronx and back in 80 minutes. I'm boggling. I have boggles and they're taking over. What have NYC done with my traffic?

Writing is a weird hobby/vocation. When I went to bed last night at 12:45 I was both chagrined and excited that I had to get up in four hours and fifteen minutes to write. I will see this done. Then I may go on a video game bender for like three years or something, I don't know.

Hey! Whatcha doing December 6-8th? Whatever it is, I bet it's not as cool as going to Anonycon in Stamford, CT! This is a great little con and I will be there running games! Probably Kobolds Ate My Baby! and perhaps Dungeon World, which if you do not know is a really fun system and I will make the same mistake I did before and equip a very smart and experienced player with a immoveable rod. One of the best mistakes I ever made GMing. There will also be MUCH BETTER GMs there as well running all sorts of cool games! Go check it out!

Writing: 661 words, gutted out. I'm delaying setting the final act in motion and I really should stop doing that. TIME TO WRECK MY PROTAGONIST'S LIFE.

That's Good, Right?

My 73 year old aunt informed my father that my story made her cry 'happy tears.' Uhm, good? I'm just happy she was able to read something I wrote that wasn't flecked with various bits of profanity and thinly veiled euphemisms. Those might have made her cry in a different way. But hey, I'm accessible to the masses! In the meantime I'll try not to think about how The Gorram Novel is perhaps spiraling a bit out of control.

Was going to edit my novella last night but watched an episode of Orange is the New Black and spent the rest of the night making NPCsthat my PCs will slaughter with depressing ease - OR WILL THEY? Barbarian brother and sister twins. Spellcasters. Archers. IT WILL BE EPIC. It won't. The party will massacre them. Such is life.

Writing: The Gorram Novel is perhaps spiraling a bit out of control. I did 678 words Saturday, 721 Monday (day off my ass), and 522 this morning. Saturday was the end of Chapter 33, which is an unsightly 9500 words. Things happen. Editing will slim it down. IT'LL ALL BE FINE. There's accusations! Fighting! Drinking! Magic! Guidos! Tea! It's all win!  ::sobs::