I Won my First Short Story Contest!

I had a short story published today by an online eZine publisher who runs a short story contest called Fiction Tuesday! You can read it on their website or listen to my recording of it with sound effects. I had a blast writing it and putting the recording together, and I think you'll have a blast reading it or listening to it. Here's the link to my story:

http://flyingislandpress.com/cove/2011/08/16/fiction-tuesday-2/

Enjoy and thanks for stopping by!

Videogame Memories 09 | Laura NicoleGUEST BLOG POST

 

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A chick with a game controller is hot... or that's what I was told anyway. I didn't play video games much when I was younger. This is mostly because I was outside rollerblading, camping, or taking my dog Lady for long walks in the woods. When I got older I learned to appreciate the artistry of video games through watching my friends play Final Fantasy, Zelda, and the like. I loved the story lines and how the game made you interact with the story and you could see the consequences that your choices had for the character.

When I went into the Army is when I really started to move from a button masher to an actual console queen. Street Fighter, Soul Caliber and those games were my favorites to play. They had beautiful female characters with amazing, paralyzing moves that I learned to master. Naturally, all of my male counterparts wanted to take me on and I think I only lost a handful of times but those few times lead to some good conversations.

Later on in life, I gave MMO's a try. Not my cup of tea. The biggest reason is that if I want to hang out with people, I like it to be face to face with no other distractions like a group from another faction trying to gank you. RPGs on the other hand are my favorite way to escape when I want to be more than an observer as I am while reading a book. Right now my favorite is Dragon Age: Origins, Though Neverwinter Nights 2 is up there on the list.

So that's my spiel on video games. I hope you all enjoy. I am really looking forward to Dan's new work, and I hope you all will stay tuned. To find out more about what projects I am working on, you can visit my site at http://www.gypsylaura.com/ or http://www.scrivenerscircle.com/.

Videogame Memories 08 | Nathan LowellGUEST BLOG POST

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Hey everybody, the post for today will be a little different. Nathan Lowell, my favorite podcast novelist, was kind enough to share his video game memories via his daily podcast #TOMMW (Talking On My Morning Walk). Everyday he goes for a 2 mile walk, and records his thoughts for the day on the second half of that walk. Today he talked about his video game memories. Enjoy.

Nathan Lowell is the author and podcaster of several novels. His books can be found on Podiobooks.com and now on Amazon.com as well selling eBooks. He is with Ridan Publishing now and has been able to make a great living selling eBooks. You can learn more about him at http://www.nathanlowell.org/

Videogame Memories 07 | J.R. MurdockGUEST BLOG POST

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I grew up with video games. I think I was 5 when I was first introduced to the PONG console and I could hook up the Atari system to the back of the television by the time I was 7. I watched the games in the bars (yes, I grew up in a town where kids could go the bar) change from Tank and Breakout to Pac Man and Zaxxon. Computers in the schools that started appearing were the Apple II and Apple II+. I discovered Lode Runner quite early.

I was fascinated with video games. It was in the early 80s when I discovered Dungeons and Dragons. It was also in the early 80s when I discovered Dungeons and Daggorath for the TRS-80 that my father had bought for me. I was entranced by the thought of exploring a dungeon, but it was a difficult game that was slow, clunky and you couldn’t save your place unless you had a tape drive (that I would acquire much later).

But then I found Wizardry for the Apple II. This game took much of what my young brain knew about Dungeons and Dragons and put it into a game that I could play. I could roll up characters, put them into the dungeon and explore, map, and discover and best of all save my progress! Before my eyes games grew up from being a static simplistic game to something where you could grow, expand and play longer than the machine you were playing on was turned on.

My characters were saved and I would find any excuse to sneak out of class and into the computer lab. I skipped lunch. I would go to school early. I would stay at school late. Anything to get more time on the computer to play that game just a few minutes longer. It didn’t matter that the game was green lines on a black background. I knew those dungeon levels like I knew the back of my hand. I would send hours trying to map out the mazes before I realized I was in a maze and have to erase much of what I’d mapped out.

Eventually I would have an Apple IIe of my very own. With a color monitor! I would play any game that provided me a story to follow. The Zork series which was entirely text based. The Ultima games. Bard’s Tale. Alternate Reality. I couldn’t get enough and played every chance I could.

Even after the Apple IIe was no longer a viable gaming machine I continued to play RPGs on gaming systems. Moving on to the first Nintendo gaming systems and playing Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda. Games had finally started to mature with similar story lines, but far better graphics.

I knew my addiction and I knew it well and I also knew what it took to feed the beast. I stopped playing games for a long time. I missed out on the first wave of World of Warcraft and after hearing so many people rave about how great the game was, I knew I had to stay away. I would easily be sucked into a game like that, I know.

But even today, I still enjoy going online and downloading an Apple emulator and picking up the games I used to play so much. I still have a copy of the original Wizardry on my computer and every once in a while, I’ll make a bishop, identify 9, and take a couple of characters at super high level around the dungeon and have fun.

J.R. Murdock is an avid reader of almost anything he can get his hands on. That being said, he also writes with near reckless abandon in any and every genre. His style is intended for pure entertainment. Over the years he’s written nine novels and over one hundred short stories. Only a few short stories have seen print (in actual print and on the web) so he’s decided to throw his hat into the podcasting arena with his novel V & A Shipping. Since then he has also podcast his novel Billy Barbarian and released his YA novel Astel: Chosen, not to mention the great short stories he's podcast in his Murdockian Tales series.

When not writing like a mad-man, J.R. Murdock does have a day job as a computer programmer and loves to spend time with his lovely wife and beautiful daughter.

Videogame Memories 06 | John MierauGUEST BLOG POST

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Note: A few choice words lie below but were blipped from the audio.

It's kind of odd that I'm a science fiction and fantasy writer, an IT pro and-yeah, sure, world class geek-but not a gamer.

So why am I blogging about gaming? Well, I WAS a gamer. It showed up in my life at exactly the right time: my most formative years- right at the end of high school and my first year of university -and it has informed my life ever since.

My big games -now, don't laugh!- were Doom, Command & Conquer, and (ah, the memories!) Duke Nuke'em.

When I started university, a friend of mine got me my first gig in networking. It was summer, he was busy as hell with this weird new gig and he asked me to help him out.

The gig was installing network cards in a bunch of 386's for the federal government.

Back then it was a brand spanking new gig, working in IT admin. And it was a doubly wired gig, seeing as my buddy Jason went to college for Fisheries & Wildlife, before finding out on a summer job with the government that he was an idiot savant with all things computers.

A few times that summer, Jay very patiently led me through how to input scripts and plug in cards and test the network. A windows 3.11 network.

Ground floor, I tell ya!

Well I'm a slow learner, and it was probably more work fixing my mistakes than any help, but we got through it, and I was hooked on computers!

This was not the floppy-disk powered DOS computer my Dad had in his study, these puppies had hard drives and could access 'the internet'!

I was hooked on this new world. I asked for more. No, I begged and pleaded and cajoled until Jason got me a computer to set up in the hall of the place I rented, then busted up old laptops with dead pixels and dead batteries.

Then... He got me a 14.4 modem. I didn't even have my own email address and Netscape was just a painfully slow screensaver (OK with jaw-dropping possibilities) when I discovered my first true joy of the IBM clone: gaming!

That summer my wife-to-be got used to me staying up 'til all hours. I spent hours adding ram and reinstalling windows and then tweaking modem to goose a little faster data transfer.

And why? What was the key that led to what would become one of the biggest careers and passions of my life?

The Duke, baby!

Running, amped on adrenaline, through pixelated halls. Listening on my headset for telltale gunshots or movement through cheesy, looping midi music. Watching the bottom of my screen for taunts and chatter as Jay moved in for the kill--or swore his head off after I got the drop on him first!

Of course, the Duke got all the best lines:

"Damn, those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my ride."
"You're an inspiration for birth control."
"Uh, uh, uh, where is it?"
"Groovy!"

Before my ride on games ended, the love affair carried me through early Star Wars, Myst, and my second favorite video obsession: Unreal Tournament.

Those were heady days, oh, new-gen geeks... heady days.

And I never left the digital theme park, I just got tired of the rides. Networking an support paid all my bills for a decade. My first ongoing blog followed the beginning of the smartphone and mobile tech revolutions and of course I'm as wired as ever today.

Twitter and very real online friendships and one other thing-a dedication to my writing- have replaced the need and buzz I got off of gaming.

Because it wasn't the 'game' aspect, not the puzzler challenge of those first crude titles that hooked me: it was the communication. The head-to-head battles. Joining forces with people far in the distance to beat some ass sniping people.

It was the community.

Like a lot of you reading, I suspect, I have many meaningful interactions online. I learn online. Sometimes I work online. I'm always entertained and in so many ways I play online.

There's a lot in the way of community to fill that need in me nowadays--not the least of which is the 5-person fire-team that Is my nuke-lear family!

It's not to say I don't crave clearing a new level or taking a beautiful headshot... it's just more meaningful to me now to use the precious little time left to a family man, and provider, to write my own stories, create my own danger, my own witty comebacks, and see who gets out of *my* levels in one piece.

Duke taught me a lot. I'm putting the lessons to work somewhere else these days, but when it comes time to kick ass or chew bubblegum?

Those times, I think the Duke... And it's GAME ON!

John Mierau writes science fiction and fantasy. Ebook and podcast Stories available at ServingWorlds.com, along with roundtable and interview podcasts regarding content creation, speculative fiction and anything else I choose to stick under that umbrella!