This is pretty cool - an anniversary video featuring stop motion using book covers.

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

Via Nathan Bransford.

file under: books Jen found the stars at 10:09 PM .:. Permalink |

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(From Darths & Droids)

Roleplaying games are, in some sense, all about getting to make decisions in the game world that you never get to make in real life. Decisions that are really important. Decisions that can change the course of history.

The Playing Characters are the people driving the story. What they decide to do really matters to the people around them.

As a Game Master, it's good if you can really underline this point at some stage during an adventure. Make them acutely aware of the import of what they are about to decide. Make it painfully clear that the lives of thousands, or millions, or even billions of people will be affected by this decision. And make it a really tough one. Back the characters into a corner against their morals (alignment is a handy tool here). Throw them on to the horns of a dilemma.

Put them between a rock and a hard place.

Scylla and Charybdis.

Make them sweat.

Make their own safety hang in the balance as well.

And then give them a time limit.

Yes, this is directed people participating in RPGs, but it makes sense for writing as well. Conflict drives the story and makes it interesting. Course, somehow you have to come up with the conflict, which can be rather difficult...

Thanks to Ash for pointing out Darths & Droids to me.

  Love Came Down at Christmas, Jars of Clay
  Fathom, Cherie Priest
file under: thoughts , writings Jen found the stars at 8:27 PM .:. Permalink |

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Because I'm lame and busy and have no time to make a spiffy graphic. This has always been one of my favorite Christmas commercials. Merry merry Christmas to all of you and have a very happy holiday season.

  Just finished The Eight by Katherine Neville
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I've heard this on the radio recently, and it's a lot of fun. I've just started listening to Christmas music willingly (though I can't find one cd, and it's driving me batty), so even though it's not quite 12 days till Christmas, I thought I'd give you a gift...

  Anathem, Neal Stephenson
file under: celebration , music Jen found the stars at 9:34 AM .:. Permalink |

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With Neil Patrick Harris, Allison Janney, that chick from SNL, and Jack Black as Jesus.

file under: politics Jen found the stars at 11:29 AM .:. Permalink |

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I did it! 50k in 28 days, boo-yah! Ashley had this silly little idea that since she crossed the 50k finish line on the 24th (and she's 24 this year) that I should try to finish on the 28th (since I'm 28, and man do I feel old). Well, I did. YES WE CAN.

And I'm not done with the story, but I'm close. I know, I know, I say that every year, but this time I think I mean it. I think.

The ending is much better than the beginning. Makes it more fun. That's good when you have to write 233 words in 7 minutes in order to slide in the official word count before midnight...

Now to finish it. (Yes, I quoted A Knight's Tale.)

ETA, whoa. Win No. 5. Five years I've been doing this. Five stories I've wrangled out of my brain. I might actually be a writer someday.

  Marry Me, PotC:AWE Remixed
  Odd Thomas, Dean Koontz
file under: celebration , writings Jen found the stars at 11:59 PM .:. Permalink |

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From a post by Calanoriel on the NaNo forums:

We few, we happy few, we band of authors;
For they today that sheds their ink with me
Shall be my sibling; be we ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle our condition:
And non-writers in the world now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their day jobs cheap whiles any speaks
That wrote with us upon NaNoWriMo!

(yes, that is like the speech from Shakespeare's Henry V.)

Still working on the NaNovel. At least I got them out of the brothel. Almost.

  3x5 (live), John Mayer

file under: writings Jen found the stars at 4:23 PM .:. Permalink |

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