Elizabeth Drakes's Site

Fantasy Romance

video games

COVID-19

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Everyone is talking about COVID-19, at least where I work. Our global supply chain is interrupted. We’ve stopped all travel, even domestic travel in the US. No one is allowed to shake hands, and there are hand-sanitizer stations every 10 feet.

I don’t really have anything to say that hasn’t already been splashed across the news.

I had a whole post on this, then everything changed.

Yes, we had already made a few changes because of it.

For example, we canceled all our vacation plans as they would’ve taken us to a high-risk area. We are currently trying to figure out what to do on our week of vacation that will be fun but not in large public spaces. My kids like the idea of unlimited video game time. I may not say “no”.

Animal Crossing
They’re angling for this. Suddenly, screen time doesn’t seem so bad.

No, a cruise was never in the plans. I can honestly say I had never liked the idea of a cruise ship. Not surprising that I, as an introvert, would not want to be in tight quarters with thousands of people I don’t know. After everything that has happened, I can all but guarantee I will never go on a cruise. Ever.

It’s a scary time, made worse by the misinformation and fear-mongering.

I had taken some other precautions. I bought extra fever reducer and allergy medicine in the event of supply disruption when we would most need them. I picked up an extra jar of peanut butter and some rice and beans. I had planned to keep picking up a little bit more each week on my grocery runs until we have two weeks of non-perishable food on hand in the event of quarantine.

When this is over, we’d just incorporate it into our regular meal rotation if we don’t use it.

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No, I didn’t buy 12 years worth.

I knew others are doing a lot more, but we were trying to be smart without giving into fear. Maybe I was not as terrified as others as I actually have colleagues in China. While not in the Hubei province, they are within a four-hour train ride of the epicenter, and they were on all but lock-down for a month. Yes, it was hard, but they and their families are all okay.

And then everything changed.

Our governor declared a state of emergency. All events with more than a certain number of attendees were canceled.

Our federal government declared an emergency.

Our state further acted on emergency measures and canceled all public and private schools for the next month.

Grocery stores are empty.

My work went from a, “we are not allowing telecommuting” policy to an urgent e-mail over the weekend asking anyone who can telecommute to do so for the next few weeks.

Trying to stick to prepare but not panic mode. Trying to be the rock for my department as I called each of them over the weekend to explain all that was happening, what they needed to do today, and to try to keep them from panicking.

There really is little more I can do. So I’m losing myself in my pretend worlds. Both reading and writing. Playing a bit of Outer Worlds (which is like Fallout is space. Highly recommend it so far).

And reminding myself of the Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”

My characters are calling it karma for all I have done to them. But I did give them all a happily-ever-after, so let’s hope it is karma.

 

Writer’s Life: When You Can’t Shut Your Brain Off

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One of the things about being a writer that some people often overlook is how much time goes into revisions.

For me, I spend less than 25% of my writing time on the first draft. It’s probably closer to 10%.

revision4
I try to remember this.

Part of it is because I am a pantser. That means I do not do extensive plotting before I start writing. I do spend a lot of time thinking about my characters, their relationship, and their romance. But the actual progression of the story happens as I write. My characters tell it to me, and if I try to be an author-god, it gets bad quickly.

Because I am a pantser, I spend a lot of time revising. I have to go through and make sure the plot works. That characters are consistent throughout. That what happens in act three has the groundwork laid in act one.

Yes, this is a lot of work. But even though I tried again last year to plot out a novel, I made it less than ten thousand words in and was done. The story died. I did write three other first drafts during the year though. Without an outline. *sigh*

Yeah, I don’t like how my brain works either. But I have learned to accept it.

migraine
Well, mostly.

But this does make it difficult to sit back and simply enjoy other works of fiction. Whether an RPG, a movie, or a novel, that editor brain doesn’t seem to shut up.

Interestingly, I have different levels of editor brain depending on the medium.

For example, with video games, I am far more lenient. Yeah, the story is poorly written, the characters inconsistent, and the plot is hanging by a thread, but a lot of the game is the battle mechanics. If it’s a strategy game with cool characters, even inconsistent characters, I am pretty forgiving.

For books and movies, though, I am more merciless.

RomeoJulietNotRomance
Truth.

For example, Frozen II. if you have not watched it and are planning to, and don’t want spoilers, don’t read ahead. But I figure it’s out on DVD now, so it’s safe to talk about.

Yes, Frozen II was a visual spectacle. I give it that. The animation was amazing. The songs are still being sung in my house *grumble*. But the plot? The characters? *shakes head*

  • I really struggled with Elsa simply “freeing” the unknown magic simply because it called to her and might be as confused about its identity and where it belonged as she was. Throughout the story, she is a cautious character very concerned with ruling her people well.
  • Later, we have the trolls tell Anna to protect Elsa from the magic. It is alluring but dangerous. However, then the crux of the story is Elsa literally pushing Anna away and embracing this same magic?
  • Elsa literally dies at one point in the movie, and is magically resurrected. Not sure how…They did establish Olaf coming back with the water has memory, but that doesn’t explain Elsa

All in, while my family loved the movie, I had to suspend a lot of disbelief. Too much.

I am even worse with books because then there are no pretty visuals to distract me.

I try hard to turn off my brain and enjoy entertainment, but I think this difficulty is just what it’s like for a writer sometimes.

However, it also means when something is well, really well, you get that, too.

And then you try to figure out how they did it so you can do it, too.

 

 

Expectation vs Reality

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We all have that moment where reality does NOT meet expectation.

I have been happily married for over fifteen years, but I have heard the horror stories about dating apps. I also know many people that have strong feelings about franchises *cough* Star Wars *cough* and how those may have played out in recent cinema.

While I can’t speak to dating apps or Star Wars, I play my share of video games. Rather than playing a broad base of games, I tend to play a few games very deep. Meaning, I will hours and hours of Skyrim in order to find every Daedra shrine, complete every quest, and totally have the most awesome house imaginable. With amazing armor on every armor stand.

Yeah.

house-in-skyrim

My moment where reality an expectation collided was in a recent game. It forced you choose a path, and none of the paths were truly happy. You had to make choices and kill characters you may really like.

Romance reader and writer here. That isn’t my cup of tea. But, the series had done this before, and they had then released DLC (down-loadable content) that created a romance-writer-approved path.

So, when the game was released, I immediately purchased the DLC. I played all the paths presented and waited for the DLC which is when I was supposed to get the “happy path”.

Except, expectation did NOT meet reality.

I thought I was getting a unicorn with the DLC. I got a rhinoceros instead.

RhinoUnicorn
You are…cute? But not what I had in mind.

The DLC was almost half the cost of the game, so I had expectations. They released bits of extra content to keep those of us that had bought it appeased. It consisted of a few new outfits. Okay. Whatever. A few “new” battles that were really recycled from other parts of the game. Again, whatever, I bought it for the “happy path”.

I was *so* horribly disappointed.

The creators announced AFTER they released the final installment they had never planned to do a “happy path”. They did that in a prior game and didn’t want to do it again. Even though their fans really wanted it.

What did they give us instead for half the price of the game?

A handful of new characters, a storyline that made no sense and actually messed up the timeline of when certain things were revealed sooner to the main character, and horrible game mechanics.

And I mean horrible.

The designers didn;t like how gamers were playing the game or using the mechanics as they were. So they decided to “fix” them and maeke the game *way* harder. Of course this was a better idea that redoing the mechanics so they were useful and players would WANT to use them.

EyeRoll

Sure, I beat it. That’s how I am. But it wasn’t fun. And this is a GAME I play in my free time. No point to it if it isn’t fun.

Add to this, beloved characters that featured in the DLC from the main story were flat cut-outs of themselves. I loved all three of them when I played the main game and was torn when I had to kill one. I couldn’t have cared less about them in the DLC. And this is after playing all of their paths and loving all three of them.

*sigh*

So disappointed. Maybe my expectations were too high. Not sure. But I can guarantee I will never buy the DLC from this company again until it’s already been released.

New Year’s Resolutions – 2020

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It’s that time of year. Everyone is discussing their New Year’s resolutions.

I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions, but I do make goals. I feel like resolutions are too easy to throw up my hands and say I failed. Goals are trickier, particularly when I map them out with tangible steps. The two things I am focusing on in 2020 are health and writing.

 

Health

I have really studied what it will take to get me downstairs and onto the elliptical machine or treadmill nightly.

Treadmill2
Very complicated.

First, I need to feel like I am still part of the family group.

  • That means whatever we are doing upstairs as a family, whether playing video games or watching something, I want to be able to do in the basement. I can’t right now as the 1990s is calling and wants its TV back.
    • Solution: We purchased a new television for the basement compatible with the new gaming systems. Yeah, our other one really is so old we couldn’t hook the Switch up to it. At all.

Second, I need to give myself permission to be bad at exercising until I can be good at it again.

Treadmill1
This  might be generous.
  • This means allowing myself to walk, slowly, as I rebuild stamina
  • It means letting myself be done after 15 minutes if I’m tired.
  • It means counting things like playing dance games with the kids rather than feeling guilty that I am tired

All the science says 30 minutes a day of just brisk walking will get us a majority of the health benefits of exercising. I need to tune out the rest of the nonsense and focus on that.

 

Writing

I have been using Wunderlist for a couple of years now, and I use it to create monthly goals with subtasks within that tell me if I’m where I need to be each month.

It allows me to set my yearly goals then work ahead in months where I have more indoor time. Hello January in the frozen tundra! So that if something is happening later, say spring break with the kids, I can plan for it.

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Okay, a little dramatic, but you get the idea. 

My goal is to publish two books in 2020 and set myself up to do the same in 2021.

  • A Knight’s Redemption, available here, will be released in January.
  • I am working on The Pirate Captain’s Daughter, and I plan to release that in June of 2020.
  • I also have specific goals related to revising The Shadowguard so that it is ready for publication in 2021.
  • I have created a timeline to write the first draft of an interconnected three novel series that takes place within the Knights of Valor world.

Yes, it’s aggressive. Particularly with a demanding day job, two kids, and a spouse. Plus, I need to sleep. Really.

But I figure its best to lay it all out, try, and fail than not to organize myself for success.

 

Anyone else out there have New Year’s resolutions? What are they? What is your plan to achieve them?

Why Romance Writers Shouldn’t Be Gamers

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As you may or may not know, in addition to writing, I enjoy playing video games.

We played World of Warcraft back when it was vanilla. I remember when Burning Crusades was released…yeah, I just aged myself. We decided online games were not for us. We explored other games, and fell in love with many fan favorites: Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed etc.

NeedLifeSkyrim.png
Not even going to confess how many hours we spent on this game.

My disappointment that many of these games abandoned decent writing in a desperate attempt to create a MMO (looking at you Mass Effect) aside, you will note that many of these are open worlds. Giant sandboxes to play in with little or no plot. Why? Because as Assassin’s Creed taught me when they killed the main protagonist (Desmond Miles, not Ezio or the various other past lives you jump into), the concept of story is not something most gaming companies do well.

So give me Fallout where I roam the wastes to find my father and basically get to explore, find cool stuff, and the like. Which, incidentally, is another game where their story-telling was SO bad they had to patch the ending. The game is so old I won’t consider this a spoiler, but literally most of your companions could complete the ending quest of walking into the radioactive room without being harmed (robots) or actually being healed (super mutant – which yes, I was such a goody-two-shoes I had one as my companion), but nope, you had to do it and die…for reasons… Yeah, they had to patch that. Not even their core gamer population was swallowing that.

HobbiesBobbleHeadsFallout
And you know I have every one of these.

 

Fallout is not kid friendly. Especially not the way we play with the one shot, one kill mentality. Yes, we like to play snipers in our house. As we play through Skyrim and find ourselves already able to sneak without penalty in our full daedric armor before ever find the Nightingale quest line…

But we have not yet figured out a way to turn off the graphic violence of a head shot in these games, and the heads on pikes in Fallout are not for children. So kids has meant we turned to many old favorites that are family friendly, like the Legend of Zelda and Mario Kart.

As part of this, we bought Super Smash Brothers mostly to get a chance to play the characters from a whole slew of different games.

Because my daughter desperately wanted to play Zelda.

Sad that Zelda was not even a favorite in the game…But there was this whole slew of characters I had never seen before that intrigued me. So, I started checking into their games, figuring they would be more games I could share with my kids as they were all Nintendo…

 

FireEmblemFates
Fire Emblem Fates

Ummm, yeah. I got sucked into the Fire Emblem series in 2019 through Super Smash Brothers as so many got sucked into it over two decades ago when Smash Brother came out on the Nintendo 64. The only reason Nintendo even brought Fire Emblem to the US was how many people wanted it after playing Smash Brothers back then.

Fire Emblem. A strategy game, with crazy characters that I build relationships with so I can marry them off then recruit their kids to my team?!? This exists? And no one told me?

I discovered my ultimate gamer catnip.

CatNip

Or so I thought.

Then I learned the hard way. The Fire Emblem series doesn’t believe in happily ever after.

 

4 Reasons Why My WIP Isn’t Done

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I was supposed to have the first draft of my current WIP with Sir Gabriel done last week. It isn’t.

Why, you ask?

4 Reasons Why My WIP Isn’t Done

 

1. Technical Issues

I updated my computer to the latest update in Windows 10. At that point, all bets were off. When I tried to open the Word App, the computer decided to type 4 repeatedly so I couldn’t access any apps. Then, the cursor decided to move backwards one letter at a time. Good times.

Windows10
Real footage.

How did I solve it? I still don’t know. Which means if it comes back, I don’t know how to fix it.

 

2. We Decided Child 1’s Room Looked So Great, Let’s Tackle Child 2’s!

I wish I was joking. We have taken out all of the furniture and are painting the trim. We bought the paint for the walls today.  Seriously, I don’t know what’s wrong with us.

 

3. Dance Recital

No, I did not take up dance. But let me tell you how much time a dance recital your child is in consumes. You must take them in for pictures and final costume touch-ups. Then comes dress rehearsal, wherein you will spend 45 minutes in the car, after leaving work early, to pick them up and cart them two towns over to the auditorium at which they’ll perform. Then, you get to spend another 45 minutes in the car going home. All for them to have 5 minutes on stage.

This does not include attending the recital itself. It was over 4 hours last year. Enough parents fussed that they added another show and reduced the run time to 3 hours. Yeah. 3 hours. My kid’s dance was 2 minutes and 15 seconds.

dance1
All the dads.

3. Planning for Vacation

We’re taking a family vacation. That means I have to get done all of the work I would during the time I’m taking off before I leave. Because that’s what vacation means, right?

 

4. New Video Game

It’s sad to admit, but we got a new video game. It’s really just hack and slash, but we’re playing it as a family and having fun. It’s hard to be the odd-one-out when the whole family is cheering and playing.

 

Yes, I am serious about publishing that book in September. And yes, I am serious about 3 books next year. Just a little more paint on the wall. Or another round of Hyrule Warriors. Promise!