Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 74

New book: A Perfectly Empty Vessel

As promised, this week I released another e-book, A Perfectly Empty Vessel (sin City #1) Fans of Wendy Stoffel who have been waiting patiently to see what became of Wendy after she exposed the elites and killed Richter will finally get an answer. And for those of you who don't know Wendy, this book can also offer a new starting point in the Mystical World Wars series with Wendy moving to a new city and living with new guardians. She also makes a new friend, a necromancer who saves her life early in the book. Wendy also meets an old enemy, some she'd know before in the state asylum.

There's a lot going on in this book, and I hope you'll check out the free preview at Smashwords. I want to remind y'all this was edited professionally by Lisa Boucher, and the cover is by a very talented artist Teodora Taneva. I was also lucky to have help on the font design by Karen Koehler, who is as talented an artist as she is a writer.

Of course, if you prefer to hold off of reading this until after you've read Wendy's first story, you'll want to pick up a copy of The Lesser of Two Evils (The Campaign trilogy #1).

Hope you enjoy the story, and I'll be spending this week trying to come up with ideas to promote the new release. For now, though I need ot crash on the couch for a bit. It's been a busy day. Whew!

All Maid Up moves to a new home…

As All Maid Up moves into the conclusion of the third season, it's occurred to me that Tumblr really is not the best place for an ongoing series. I will post new episodes for the Tumblr peeps, but doing the episode recap here was starting to get a bit out of hand, and the story really deserves its own home anyway. And this way, people who want to read the story without extra rants and rambles from me can just got to http://amuserial.wordpress.com/

In slightly related news, there will not be an update today because I had a relapse yesterday so bad that I'm still not fully recovered from it today. We're talking full body shakes, muscle spasms, shallow breathing and some genuine scary moments where I was like "No, come on, God, I still got another 20 novels to finish in the MWW series first…please?"

I'm better today, but still very drained and will need to spend more time on the couch. But I do know what happens in the next episode, and I'll work to get it down just as soon as I'm more recovered. Truly people, multiple sclerosis is nasty stuff, and I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. If you have to pick a disease, go with something less invasive, like perhaps ADD, or herpes. Or, maybe not herpes. Anyway, YAY, new home for the serial! You're welcome. Hope the design is

Game Review: Glitch

I started playing Glitch last week after seeing the trailer for it on a gaming site and deciding it might be an interesting way to waste a few hours. Oh, I wasted a few, all right. I'm now just under level 20 with skills as a Master Chef and lesser talents as a miner, farmer, and as an animal tender. This does not make me an expert in the game yet, although it does make a strong case for my OCD…er, my CDO.

But what I know so far leaves out a HUGE selection of skills which I cannot yet learn, and so while this is a thorough review of Glitch, it should not be considered a final review of the whole game. This review instead is much like my book reviews where I will not finish, except here, I'm still playing, and I just have to break away to give my impressions after roughly 150 hours of game play.

First, Glitch is a Flash game for web browsers, and players can customize their avatar in nice or humorous ways. I've seen guys that look like Stitch or masked riders, while players in game who know me have noted that I've made my avatar look like myself. (I do this in most games where customized avatars are possible, but apparently lots of gamers don't. Or, so I'm told.) Lots of combinations are possible, so whether you want to look like you or like Jokey Smurf, it's all good. You can go nude, or if you're cheeky but prudish, you can go nude, but wear black bars over your non-existent naughty bits. Some skin textures also make you look like a stuffed doll, and with a sewn mouth and button eyes, you can be Raggedy Anne or Andy. (Did I just date myself? Yes, I believe I did.)

Once you get into the game with your wacky avatar, (Or non-wacky, like mine) a talking rock mentor will guide you through a basic tutorial about petting things. Trees need petting, and pigs do too. Up to a certain skill level, pigs HAVE to be petted before you harvest meat using the Nibble command. So let that sink in…after petting a pig, you BITE into its side and rip out a few flank steaks. And the pigs love it…provided you pet them first. If you just bite them without foreplay, it's molest, and it makes the pigs cry. I swear, I'm not making this up. The game makers are, and they've got to have some great drugs in their offices.

Butterflies are massaged to get milk, and after you shake milk, you get butter. And after you compress butter, you get cheese. Why do you need cheese? For grilled cheese sandwiches in your sandwich grill. Duh.

Chickens are squeezed for grains…again, think on that. You're making the chickens vomit their meals and collecting the individual grains for your bread. (Again, working on that grilled cheese recipe.)

By the way, eggs don't come from chickens. Eggs grow on trees, and you season blank eggs to make pig eggs, butterfly eggs, or chicken eggs. Then you take the egg and have a chicken incubate it, provided you've studied Animal Kinship IV and Animal Husbandry. It's crazy, and yet in the context of the game world, it all sort of makes sense and works well together.

But getting back to making our food, in addition to the manual labor involved, there's also buying a grill and taking a grilling class so you know HOW to make grilled cheese sandwiches. There's lots of tools you can use without learning a skill, but the cost to use them is higher, and you wear out your tools faster. Using a tinkertool and the Tinkering skill set, you can repair just about anything you own, so investing in this early means not buying tools over and over and wasting your cash.

And, another good investment is better learning, which speeds up the time it takes you to learn other classes. And, given that classes can take up to 4 days without Better Learning, it really is in your best interest to take a few BL levels early on.

What else? Altars. The 11 creative "giants" who made the game demand sacrifices, and they give favor points in return. These bribes to the creative gods lead up to Emblem badges, which when spent allow you to take more advanced level training classes. Because of those Emblems, I was able to learn Cocktails II and Mining III. Oh, and if you aren't afraid to burn off a few favor points, while learning a new skill you can go to an altar and spend points to accelerate your learning. You can even go to multiple altars and make a lesson zoom by, if you're willing to spend the points. I did, which is why I'm level 19 after less than a week in the game. Mwa-ha. (Pro Tip: Mining is your go to skill to earn lots of cash or favor points. Just dump 30-40 raw minerals in, and *mwah* instant good karma.)

Oh, and something I love about this social game? The PLAYERS. They are awesomely sweet, and I can't walk through a level without someone kissing me, hugging me, giving me food, or just chatting me up. By the end of day one, I was passing out free food too. THEN I got a badge and realized the game rewards players for being nice. That's fucking awesome.

There's a lot of nice little touches, like all vendors offering good prices on broken tools to encourage recycling. The game also encourages team play and fosters an ideal of respect for one's environment. With educational underpinnings like this, you might think I'd say "put the kids on this NOW."

Erm, no. One of the first missions in the game is to buy 10 beers and chug them all. Based on missions like this, I would call this a casual game for adults and young adults, but kids might get some strange ideas from this, and I don't mean biting the family pet. You might just come home and find Johnny Jr. with a blender, half the fruit from your crisper, and half a bottle of Jack Daniels already gone. And then who's going to have to clean up after that Technicolor yawn has spewed past the cat? That's right, you. So hide this game from your kids and only play it yourself.

Actually, good luck even noticing you have kids or pets after starting this game. If I have one illegitimate complaint about this game it's that it may be TOO addicting. My Twitter stream is filling up with people going "Oh, my god, what happened to me in the last day? I've just been playing this game…AND I CAN'T STOP!" Seriously, it's like digital crack. I get up and open the game "just to check one thing," and three hours later my stomach is growling and my shoulders are sore from hunching over. I have to pee and the circulation is going out in my legs…but I have to harvest just one more egg tree before I go.

For a game named Glitch, it seems almost fitting that the game is buggy. But it is all kinds of buggy, sometimes even in infuriating ways. You're supposed to be able to drag and drop items with the game changing the context of your actions depending on your target. So, if you grab a cooked meal from your inventory to give it to another player or to donate it to an altar of the giants, you would see a little note above your dish that tells you the action depending on where you position the food. Except every third play, the menu gets stuck on one command, Link, which doesn't do anything useful. So no matter who you drop the food on, it isn't going anywhere. You have to click on the target, select a menu to give them something, and then peer through your HUGE inventory for that one freaking item that you could drag in the last level before the game glitched. (And if you have more than one of that food item in your inventory, you must additionally select how many to give.)

And while I'm complaining, I don't like how there's no text box allowing me to type in how much I want to give. The menus group stackable items in lots of 10, 20, 30, OR you can choose to give just one or give everything. Just, no. Seriously, would a text box fucking kill them? (>_<)

Butterflies are damned hard to click on, and most people opt to kamikaze dive at the poor thing and whack the Enter key to open a context menu at the moment of connection between avatar and butterfly. Which seems okay, but you have to do this twice to massage and then milk your flighty prey, and cheese, milk and butter are major components of lots of recipes. I don't mind the two step process, but I wish the butterflies' flight patterns were just a little less chaotic.

Reboots are frequent, and patches add new functionality all the time, which also add the potential for more bugs. But setting the technical problems aside, this is a really fun game. And when the browser is crashing out for a reboot, I admit, I love the error message: "WAIT! You were just about to win the game."

No, my fine friends, I am nowhere close to winning. But I know that after I finish writing this review and editing another serial episode, I'm going back into the game. I still have to learn how to make Gurly Drinks and buy a house to hatch my collection of butterflies on.

So, my current but not final verdict is four stars. It would have been five, but I do have to acknowledge that the bugs sometimes detract a lot from the game's elegant system. When this game works, it's beautiful. But when Glitch glitches, it can lead to eyelid twitches. Bitches.

This is damn fine entertainment, but I warn you again, this is digital crack. Sign up for free, and you WILL lose part of your life. Oh, and regular blog reader Widdershins would be amused to know that Glitch has a whole month named after her. I kept meaning to tell her that in previous comments, but I was already thinking about stuff I needed to do in the game. Yes, it's that addicting. (^_^)

All Maid Up 17

Yeah, there's a Glitch review coming soon, cause anything sucking this much of my life needs a review. BUT, I still keep writing for you. Because I love you, even if you make me want to drink heavily and cry to the porcelain god about how unfair life is.

In Episode 17 of All Maid Up, Red decides he may be Lancelot after all.

So, here is All Maid Up 17.

Now, back to Glitch. I'm SOOOO close to level 20 it's not even funny.

All Maid Up 16

Yes, it's further proof that even if I have an addict's personality, my addictions do not rule my life. Despite the siren call of Glitch, I wrote up another episode of All Maid Up. Since the last post was a recap, I don't need the copy pasta.

So, in this new episode, Ginger must deal with school with a bruised face, only to discover that Red has been doing some nefarious plotting.

So here's All Maid Up 16.

All Maid Up 14 and 15

Weather shifts today are sending me to the couch, so today's update really will be a copy-pasta with links for the new episodes. I apologize for the sporadic updates, but this weather and my MS are beating me up very badly. As it is after I finish this, I'm going to go lay down again.

To recap, Ginger meets Kevin working as a replacement maid for his mother in episode one. In episode two, Ginger learns about Kevin's bed reputation and decides they should be just friends. In episode three, Kevin tries to make good on his promise to be a friend by taking Ginger to the pool. Ginger meets Kevin's sister Hannah, and one of Kevin's cheerleader friends, Tonya. In episode four, Ginger molests a bear and breaks her arm. No, really. In episode five, Ginger's best friends Aggie and Babs finally get wind of her coming out, and they demand a visit. In episode six, Ginger finds something that Kevin had been hiding from her.

In episode seven, Ginger attends her first day of high school with surprisingly little drama. But she and her friends are all still wary of the other shoe dropping. In episode eight, Ginger must start her first Gym class with an awkward introduction to her coaches and the other girls. And THEN the other shoe drops. In episode nine, Kevin swears there will be revenge for Ginger being attacked, and he makes good on his promise. In episode ten, Ginger and Kevin cut classes, and then Ginger returns to school to tryout for an extra-curricular activity. In episode eleven, Ginger's new social status grants her access to the first party of the year. She just has to convince her parents first. Ginger attends her first party in episode twelve.

The party is still in full swing at the start of episode thirteen, but now party hostess Bunny has called for a round of party games, and Ginger gets roped in for a round of spin the bottle and seven in heaven by Bunny's cousin, Mariah. But who would be willing to make out with her?

In episode fourteen, Ginger and Kevin are busted in a compromising position by Donna, even though they weren't doing anything, and then in episode fifteen, Ginger agrees to babysit for a new client and discovers that babies are evil.

Sorry again for the funky updates. Anyway, I hope you're enjoying the story, and unless Glitch steals my brain tomorrow, I'll try to have a Saturday update. Anywho, I hope your weekend is better than mine, or Ginger's.

Glitch in the plans…

Okay, so I found out about a new flash browser-based game called Glitch. I thought, What the hell, it will give me something to do now that I'm no longer on Facebook trying to be an attention whore. (This is not in any way intended to demean the fine tradition of attention whoring or diminish any individual professional or amateur attention whores. I'm not dismissing your noble whoring. I'm just choosing to work off of my blog and Twitter on a more exclusive basis. It's like attention escorting, really.)

So, long story short, there is no episode for All Maid Up today. I'm very sorry, but my nerd roots have pulled me deep into this game, and I just don't love you enough to pull away. Go play on the highway for spare change, or something.

Seriously, I do know what happens next, (Ginger takes her first and ONLY babysitting job.) but I've got to learn grilling, saucing, and smelting tonight, so you'll have to wait for the text updates.

If you want to hunt me down in Glitch, just join and look for AccidentalAnnie. (I was feeling random when I chase my name, obviously.) If I have enough ingredients on me to cook, I'll whip you up a nice meal, m'kay?

There will probably be an update tomorrow. But tonight is a no-go. And now I must go. The divine crepes await, and buttery scrambles don't make themselves.

My absolute favorite updates…

Are new reviews, even if it's for a free story, and Good Lesbian Books chose to review My Gay Sparkly Vampire Romance: A Twilight Parody. The reviewer is in the "hated Twilight camp," and found lots to love in this book. Her only complaint is that the book had anything to do with with Twilight, and she thought I should rewrite this as a vampire story all its own without the Twilight references. And, if you gotta have a complaint about a parody, this is a good complaint to have. The reviewer also wrote to me on Twitter when I said, "Sorry you didn't like the epilogue," and she replied (sic):

heh – it was quite funny, actually, it was just a let down to go back to the Twilight stuff after the rest of the story took off

So, yay, the freebie Twilight parody wins another convert! I'd like to thank the reviewer for Good Lesbian Books, and I hope that she will find other books worth reviewing from my library.

The Life & Death of a Sex Doll and other writing updates

My publisher has sent me an email for my sale figures for June up to this month for print and ebook copies of The Life & Death of a Sex Doll. Print sales were flat, which should be no surprise to anyone at this point. I've never had a print audience, and print sales are so rare on all of my titles that I'm not exactly rushing to fill in my back catalog of e-titles with print editions.

Ebook sales total are 24 since the book was released at the end of June and I've sold 14 Kindle editions. For me, the numbers and the time frame to get those sales are both really good. But it's not going to knock my publisher's socks off. So, most likely I'll need to start doing at least two or three ads a day on Twitter for it and hope for some more positive reviews to roll in and give me something to talk about. The book has had nothing but glowing reviews so far, but to get regular sci-fi readers into it, I guess I need a lot more reviews than I've got.

I know it annoys you that I ask, but if you read my stuff, I really would appreciate you taking the time to go to Amazon and leave a rating or a short review. Or, if you don't like Amazon, maybe leave a rating or a review on Goodreads, or on Smashwords? Word-of-mouth advertising is all I have to work with in most cases, so if you read my work and it doesn't make you gag to death, can you please help me out with a little ratings shout out? And if it does make you gag, but not to death, you too should write a review. Please.

September's numbers were very low, but this has been the case with all my titles this month. It weird how most of the summer I did well during that time when I was expecting a slump, and then the summer ends, and then I hit a slump. I'm like the literary world's walking paradox. I just…is there a rulebook I can consult for this? Or maybe some chart I can compare myself to to verify that other people end up with these same odd results?

I did make sales on a number of titles that I'm advertising, and I am grateful for those. I just hope I can do something with the next book release, A Perfectly Empty Vessel (Sin City #1), since it's a Wendy Stoffel novel, it's got a great custom cover, and font work by someone far more qualified than me. It was professionally edited by Lisa Boucher, who also handled editing duties on Redemption Lost and my short story Walking Home With Strangers. So this isn't just my finest work. It's combination of my work, the work of two artists, and one editor. The only thing I'm missing is a publicist. Damn.

Setting aside the new book's pedigree, this is a good, fine novel, with many life lessons about friendship, doing the right thing, discovering old rivals, necromancy, and how to pack your own shotgun shells at home. There's a bit of gore, a bit of violence, and a teensy hint of romance. (translation: nobody loses any clothing except for Cora, and she only loses a half a sleeve and the top layer of her forearm skin to a dark energy attack.)

A Perfectly Empty Vessel should go to the markets in the first week of October, and I'll be selling it on Amazon too. I'm already selling Wendy's first three books there, so it makes sense to see if past readers will come back for a fourth book after Jobe and Wendy have split up.

And since I'm talking about writing anyway. there's still no sales on my bizarro story NINJAWORLD, and very few previews either. I know bizarro is an acquired taste, but I've tried to make a story that while visually bizarre does not stray too far off the beaten path for its allegorical underpinnings. At its heart, this is a story about an unlucky underdog becoming a hero on his new home world and learning all over again what an ugly thing racism can be. It's got ninja octopodes and ant-like pirates and singing ninja mermaids, and it's really a swell book if you'll just give it a chance. Please?

I really need to invest in a set of kneepads. This cold tile floor leaves bruises, don'cha know.

All Maid Up 13

To recap, Ginger meets Kevin working as a replacement maid for his mother in episode one. In episode two, Ginger learns about Kevin's bed reputation and decides they should be just friends. In episode three, Kevin tries to make good on his promise to be a friend by taking Ginger to the pool. Ginger meets Kevin's sister Hannah, and one of Kevin's cheerleader friends, Tonya. In episode four, Ginger molests a bear and breaks her arm. No, really. In episode five, Ginger's best friends Aggie and Babs finally get wind of her coming out, and they demand a visit. In episode six, Ginger finds something that Kevin had been hiding from her.

In episode seven, Ginger attends her first day of high school with surprisingly little drama. But she and her friends are all still wary of the other shoe dropping. In episode eight, Ginger must start her first Gym class with an awkward introduction to her coaches and the other girls. And THEN the other shoe drops. In episode nine, Kevin swears there will be revenge for Ginger being attacked, and he makes good on his promise. In episode ten, Ginger and Kevin cut classes, and then Ginger returns to school to tryout for an extra-curricular activity. In episode eleven, Ginger's new social status grants her access to the first party of the year. She just has to convince her parents first. Ginger attends her first party in episode twelve.

The party is still in full swing at the start of episode thirteen, but now party hostess Bunny has called for a round of party games, and Ginger gets roped in for a round of spin the bottle and seven in heaven by Bunny's cousin, Mariah. But who would be willing to make out with her?

And now, All Maid Up 13, which is NSFW.