West Coast Wildfires

I just want to let everyone know that I’m ok. I’m surrounded by fires, but there is little chance of those fires actually reaching Salem. Monday night, we had a strong wind system come in from the east while we’re under dry conditions. It exacerbated existing wildfires in the Cascades and started new ones by knocking down power lines in both the east and west ranges. Tuesday morning, I woke up two hours after sunrise in pre-dawn darkness, the whole world cast in an apocalyptic red glow. The day remained dark and eerily red, and it darkened to dusk two hours before dusk as well.

Conditions are improving gradually, the skies have faded from orange to yellow to gray. The ashfall is less today. We now have cooler, moister air coming in from the ocean and hopefully a little rain early next week. However, these fires have been catastrophic for my region. Places I know and love have been razed. Lives and homes have been lost. The worst part is knowing that this likely isn’t a freak occurrence. We are suffering the consequences of greed, selfishness, and a blatant disregard for not only the delicate balance of our ecosystems, but for our own future. I have to hope we can turn it around and learn from our mistakes.

Friday Update #11

I’m emerging from the absolute hell of serotonin withdrawals. Physical symptoms are abating but now to see if my brain can balance out production to a survivable degree on it’s own because right now, I’m really struggling.

Garden Update

Everything is going well. I’ve been planning some new projects in the front yard for when I have the energy to work on them.

Dollmaster & Vagabonds

Everything has been on hold while I acclimate, which is endlessly frustrating because I was doing SO. GOOD. with the pomodoro technique, and now I’ve got to start over with conditioning myself after my downtime.

Worldbuilding

I may not be working on my main projects, but my hyper fixation on the Forsaken Land has been haunting me. When I’ve been able to, I’ve done some work on the wiki, written down some ideas, ironed out character timelines, considered some story arcs. I also worked on a new map! I blew up and printed the section of Meg’s map, traced it, and have been reworking my original concepts into the new map. Here’s the almost-finished product (still need to identify a few new features). I finally justified my purchase of a set of colored mechanical pencils.

Friday Update #6

My focus is gradually coming back. It’s a fickle beast, swayed not only my deficiency in certain neurotransmitters, but seemingly by the weather itself. Medications can only do so much, I suppose. No garden picture this week, but things are still gradually growing and we’ve had enough alternating sun and rain that everything is staying watered and getting good growing light.

The Dollmaster

I’m back to work on revising chapter 4! I made some good progress Monday. If only I could do that well EVERY day.

Worldbuilding

I’ve been stuck for awhile on figuring out how to do infoboxes in a wiki, but I’m starting to understand now. I wish I could outsource the work to someone else, but I’m afraid it’s only me. This week I’ve been doing some research and adding extensions for the wiki. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to use them and satisfy my organizational needs.

Friday Update #2

Things are coming back together this week after last week’s mess. Distance learning is being worked out, but I still need to be involved a fair bit to keep him on track. I really feel for the parents of multiple school-age children right now.

I reached out to a number of people from the role-play and I would like to put together a monthly newsletter. I only got a response from a couple folks so far, so I may end up messaging people individually through other means. I don’t know if it’s quarantine or just the result of revisiting old memories, but I feel the urge to reach out even further to old RPG friends. If you would be interested in a newsletter, please let me know.

Vagabonds

Currently, I’ve been focusing my effort on the Voyage to Ertia/Vagabonds rewrite for Camp NaNoWriMo. I’ve made a good bit of progress off and on this week, and I’m hoping I can push for more. I don’t know if I’ll hit my 20k word count goal but if I get even half-way there it’ll be a good start and a lot of good practice for daily writing. You can keep track of my progressing word count on my NaNo profile.

The Dollmaster & World Building

Progress on The Dollmaster is being paused for the rest of April so I can focus on NaNo, but I will continue with the revision of chapter 4 in May.

Worldbuilding on the wiki, likewise, is paused while I catch up on a week’s worth of missed work for NaNo.

Maybe the start of a weekly update

Maybe I can stick to something like this. We’ll see.

The last couple weeks were pretty good. I was productive, I made progress on the things I’ve been working on, it was fine. Life was good.

Then, Distance Learning arrived.

My son started his online lessons for school. The instructors themselves had individually organized their plans, but for us, it was a bit chaotic to start. In true 12 year old fashion, I got a lot of pushback and arguing. Though, by the end, I set it up for him to work with limited distractions and get used to the lay out. Maybe it’ll be ok. Holding his hand through his school work killed my time to work, so I really got nothing done Aserra-wise this week. Add in the tragedy of saying goodbye to a beloved pet and it was just a wash. But here’s the current projects:


The Dollmaster

So, I have updated with a scattering of chapters over the years, but I’m doing a final refinement of the story organization now. To clarify, this is the current progress…

  1. Prologue: Voris claims his first victim, Avaline, along with her friend Chera.
  2. Chapter 1: Naclia and Terin emerge from the Ardir and enter the village of Worrell at the border of Kosony.
  3. Chapter 2: Naclia and Terin have found themselves in a bar fight, but the merchant Laban steps in and takes them under his care.
  4. Chapter 3: The story switches to Naclia’s perspective as she reflects on a previous visit to the village and overhears some rumors before departing with Laban.
  5. Chapter 4: Currently in progress. We switch to Talen’s perspective at his family estate where he is preparing to meet his bride and dealing with old scars–physical and emotional.
  6. Chapter 5: Talen meets his bride for the first time, the day before the wedding. Forthcoming.
  7. Chapter 6: The day of the wedding begins. Pharen is introduced in the village and meets Thalia, who is to officiate the Drecloud-Kyrden wedding. Meanwhile, Talen is preparing for the ceremony. Forthcoming.

I am currently working on revising my original draft of Talen’s introduction, which may have been another number, but is now chapter four. I rewrote the role-plays for this segment entirely, but it’s also a bit to heavy on exposition and inner dialogue that I’m trying to whittle down to something easier to digest. The original draft also covered the entire day and a lot of information, so breaking it down into more manageable pieces is important too. Chapter 4 will introduce us to Talen in the present, his home and family, and end with his elder sister’s arrival and her giving him a stern lecture that snaps things into perspective for him.

The next chapter will cover Adra’s arrival and introduce her worries over Voris. After that, I hopefully won’t have to edit Pharen and Thalia’s introductory chapter because I did a big revision of that in a class. Some of my original chapters need to be split in half because they ended up way too long.


Vagabonds

My second project is what I may spend the rest of the month primarily focused on after losing a week of working time. I started the month with about a page and decided to use it for Camp NaNiWriMo. “Vagabonds” is the beta working title for what began as the Voyage to Ertia RP. What I’ve decided to do is work on an episodic sort of series for Wattpad using this RPG’s first plot as a starting point for “Season 1.”

Wattpad is a good jumping off place to get my name out there and build a network, hopefully a fan base, in a writing community. As I want to publish The Dollmaster traditionally, I didn’t want to put that out there. My attention to detail on the Dollmaster manuscript is extremely precise, but this story will be less editing, more just getting the story out there.

The first installment of Vagabonds will jump off from our RP with Zharis, Rissya, Zaole, Gurt, Lianora, and Breagan helping a girl escape an arranged marriage in Samonight to be with an Ertian merchant’s daughter. Their ferry to Ertia will be attacked by a privateer hired by the girl’s father and betrothed, whom they must escape and fight off. It will probably also include a lot of character building to establish our main party.

The second arc will merge with the “Scourge of Thervordel” RP, where they solve that mystery, pick up one or two characters from there, then continue onto Ertia for the third arc. After that, I would like to explore Ertia with them and pursue personal plots–Zharis’ reunion with his sister, Rissya finding other Asath and uncovering her birthright, Lianora’s “quest,” etc. I don’t have an end point, but I want to explore the world, give these characters their resolutions, and just get ideas out. I may give the school RP the same treatment in the future too.


Worldbuilding

I was trying to keep this part to the weekends while I did more work during the weekday, but nothing got done last weekend. Anyway, I’ve been working on the wiki in the last couple months, putting up worldbuilding stuff I have, revising, updating, adding some more here and there. I was a little scattered, but I wanted to focus on updating the races next. The weekend before last I completed the Mariel revision. Before that, I did some work on the Nafod, and the Zaedyn article was revised a couple years ago, so I just copy and pasted and did a little editing on what I had there.

I’m making a few tweaks to certain aspects of the races from the original drafts we used during the RP–things to make the world a little more interesting and dynamic. Here’s some of the changes to races I’ve made in the last couple years while I was revising off and on.

Iengi

The giant race has been altered from being just big and dumb. They were an early front-runner for the dominant human race on Thiskel. They established societies and had a rich culture, but the War of the Gods devastated them. Their lifespan is an increase by a factor of three, but this doesn’t just affect how long they live, it also affects their maturation rate. Unlike the elemental races that mature at the same rate as humans and then their aging process freezes, Iengi take three times as long as humans to reach maturity. They have been gradually dying out for thousands of years and live in scattered small populations that have failed to recover what they lost.

Kiar

The Kiar were originally short lived, but I’ve made them the opposite of Iengi. They age faster than humans by a factor of three, meaning they live shorter lives and mature much faster. Their origin has also been moved to Ageond (the original continent) and I’ve made them the progenitors of the Kuzo. The ancestral Kiar were corrupted during the war of the gods to make the kuzo a fast-breeding, fast-maturing, and easily replenished army of footsoldiers for the followers of the dark gods. Kiar who survived the pogrom in Ageond escaped to Kalesten where they established new isolated colonies.

Kuzo

As mentioned above, the kuzo originated from Kiar corrupted by the dark gods and their followers. Their intelligence was decreased, but there may be occasional throwbacks, like Gurt. As they were essentially canon fodder, their handlers did not often care about them, so when survivors of the war retreated, kuzo were abandoned throughout the world and quickly went feral.

Mariel

Increased the amount of time spent on land to five years, as one year is not enough time to significantly travel in a pre-industrial world.

Idayn

I will be adding another (I know) Idayn off-shoot. I’m not entirely sure what I will call them, but they will be East Asian in appearance, as they are descended of Idayn and western Thiskel humans. The Idayn, being as uptight as they are, were unwilling to accept mix-blood children after the war, and with their long lifespans, these children would never fully integrate into human society. Instead, they took up residence in forests to the west of the Chasm where they have intermingled with Nafod and humans, eventually homogenizing into an Idaynian race with the phenotypical features of the humans of the region. I’m not certain if they will have any inherent magic, but I think they may have a magic system of their own devising.

Nafod

The progenitor race of the Ochae’nafod, Dra’nafod, and Marfod did not have a fixed form of shape-shifting, but within a few generations after their creation, the Nafod split into the three current races, then further into distinct tribes bound to a single species in the case of Ochae’ and Dra’nafod. Crossing the different Nafod races will lead to a throw-back with more shape-shifting freedom, though descendants of this individual will be likely to return to a fix form of shape-shifting.

Marfod

I haven’t done this entry yet, but I want to mark this idea out. Marfod will be predominantly an all-female race, but each individual is capable of transforming into a male for reproductive purposes (like some fish). I’m not sure how it will work (one time period of their lives? Triggered by some dynamic?).


So there’s the summary. I may end up doing some catch-up work on Vagabonds this weekend for NaNo. Fingers crossed!

Updates from Quarantine

Like many others, I’ve been shut away from the world (except for some supply runs) during the Covid-19 pandemic. School has been cancelled until the end of April (though I expect that to extend) so the kid is home. My partner is working from home, and my search for gainful employment post-graduation has been halted. In a way, it has taken a lot of weight off my shoulders, but added a burden in others. It was almost blissful at first, not having to stress over my son’s grades or putting myself out there. I got a lot done at home. I’ve started gardening more. I had only planned to plant a few things, like tomatoes and herbs to round out our collection, and some flowers, but with so much changing, almost overnight, it became apparent that it would be prudent to grow more of our own food. So, I’ve been starting more seeds for produce we can use. At least, what I know I can grow–there are a few things that require a little extra care in our climate and I don’t want to overwhelm myself.

Getting all that going has taken a lot of my time that I hoped to turn to writing, and the rest of the time, it’s the endless ADHD struggle of switching focus or feeling adrift in internal chaos. I probably need to reevaluate my daily schedule to return structure to my life with everyone stuck at home.

I did make some progress on my plans, however! In addition to working on The Dollmaster for publishing, I’ve also decided to turn some of our other stories into episodic adventure series on Wattpad. I’m starting with the “Voyage to Ertia” storyline and we’ll see where that goes. I made some solid planning last month, but it will take me building structure and discipline to see it through. As long as my partner is working from home, he’s laid claim to our office, so I’m working in the living room at the couch and coffee table, either sitting on the floor or curling up on the couch. May my back forgive me.

Last month (February, that is), I made progress building the wiki, planning out stories, and giving myself some direction with the wealth of characters and storylines I have at my hands. I intend to lay some of that out in another blog. I also want to post some of my other writings from school here. I have some short fiction and non-fiction and poems I can share to round out my “portfolio.” So, look out for those!

Site Consolidation

A few months ago, my old Record of Lodoss War role-playing site was due for renewal, but since it’s only there for nostalgia, and it’s been years since I closed the forum, I decided to just let it expire… but then I realized that I didn’t want to just archive all those years of creativity and hard work only for myself. The original Aserra site was aserra-rpg.com, but now I’m focusing on creating those stories as novels rather than running a role-playing community. So, I registered this domain as primarily an author’s blog, but also an archival location. Until the old registrations expire, they will redirect to archival locations here.

The Eiyuu Kishi Den website is here: http://www.ekd.worldofaserra.blog/ and the forum is here: http://www.ekd.worldofaserra.blog/forum/ . The old coppermine gallery is deleted and won’t be put back up. I have no interest in updating the software and leaving it as it was made it highly vulnerable. I have the pictures saved.

I imported the blog posts from the original Aserra wordpress to this blog, though they really aren’t much. The forum is here: http://forum.worldofaserra.blog/index.php . I wouldn’t say the forum is completely closed, and we may use it in the future. I also installed a wiki, but I haven’t put any work into it yet. Also, no more gallery, for the same reason as the EKD gallery, but I will probably re-publish images on this blog at some point. There will probably be missing images on the forums but I have most important things backed up and it’s an acceptable loss.

I don’t have any solid blogging plans (or even publishing plans) right now, but at some point, this will be needed and here it is!

I still want to do this…

Every term ends and I think that maybe I’ll have the time and energy for this.

I’m almost done with my BFA. I should have 3 courses and a capstone left, then I should hopefully graduate in spring. While I don’t look forward to paying back all those loans I took out (YOLO?) I am done. So very, very done. Maybe one day I’ll consider graduate school, but it is not this day.

I’ve been having some problems with mental (and physical) health. Or, for the most part, I’m addressing pre-existing mental health problems. My partner and I took a road trip down the Pacific Coast Highway from Oregon to California, and then to Las Vegas. It was tons of fun, but when we got back, I suffered one health issue after another (and some on top of each other). It was rough. I thought someone might have cursed me. I finally received a diagnosis for ADHD and I deal with some pretty frustrating shifts in my focus and mental health with my menstrual cycle. In attempting to regulate it with birth control, my problems became exponentially worse, so I quit birth control and I’m pretty much back to normal–which isn’t great, but better than what the pills did to me. I’m still looking for an option to help regulate me, but for now, just the normal bi-weekly ups and downs of the menstrual cycle. Hooray.

I did have some writing success over the summer though. I completed a revision of my Dollmaster prologue. With the fall term, I wasn’t able to move forward on the book. I have been working on a short story for Pharen for a class, but it’s turned into a disaster. We’ll see how it ends up when I revise it for my final portfolio.

So much for blogging…

Didn’t get to doing that. -_-

Anyway. Winter term is over. I did a short story for my writing class based on my character Aroal’s background that got some great reviews. It was much more constrained, as I had a maximum of 10 pages. It kind of suffered at the end, but most of it ended up being pretty good.

I submitted my Dollmaster prologue for workshop. I got some good feedback, but I knew that I would have to whittle down a lot of it. There’s excessive exposition and other bad habits that my writing suffered in the past. I didn’t have to do a revision for this writing class, which was great for reducing my stress for finals, but I tend to get shit done better with a deadline! I still need to prepare my portfolio for graduation anyway, so I should present a few chapters anyway. Next term I’m taking another fiction course and will hopefully work out my first chapter. I feel as though there’s a lot that I need to fix there.

After these last few terms, my writing has definitely improved, which makes me more confident that pursuing my degree in writing was the best thing I could do.

Winter Term

I’ve started my winter term taking two literature courses and retaking a fiction writing class. I will likely workshop the Dollmaster prologue at the end of the term, but the course has a requirement for two stories, which can’t be from the same novel if that is the source for one. Anyway, the deadline for the first story came up fast, so last weekend I had to hammer it out. I ended up writing a bit of Aroal’s past. Soon, after I do a little editing, I will likely post up a polished version of my short exercise and Aroal’s story.

I’m doing a lot of reading this term. I took a Fantasy Fiction course (I mean, I kind of HAD to, afterall), and we’re reading Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series. We’re on the third book now. I also need to read The Last of the Mohicans for my American Fiction course. Busy busy busy.