A Day Late and Dollar Short

I don’t know how many in the younger generations have heard this used, but I’ve employed it frequently when speaking of my luck. In this case, however, I means I’m posting a day later than I normally do and, well, the dollar short thing? Aren’t we all short a dollar?

For a Few Dollars More, with Clint Eastwood. If you remember the movie, you probably heard the “lo-lo-lo-looooooo, wah-wah-waaaaaah” in your head when you saw this image.

I got knocked sideways for a day due to a sinus infection–I can get over them fairly quickly, or at least “over” enough to get back into my routine, but I have to remind myself that I shouldn’t feel guilty for spending a day to rest and heal. Am I the only one like that, who gets anxious when sick and have to get up and do chores around the house because of the guilt that it’s not getting done?

ANYWAY… to what I’d actually planned to write:

I am one of many in my family who plays video games, and have since all the way back when my dad bought us an Atari. We went through the Atari variants, moved on to the Commodore and Amiga, and hopped right on the PC and Mac. (Well, at least I did, with the Mac, and am quite comfortable on both platforms.) What types of games, you ask? LOTS. Arcade, sides-scroller platformers, first-person-shooters, simulators, point-click-kills like Diablo and Grim Dawn, etc. I’m kinda hooked on House Flipper at the moment, which is a lot more fun than I expected, and whets my interior design appetite. But my deepest love goes to the good old role-playing game (RPG).

Why, you ask? Probably because 1) I’d been an RPG junkie since I could read (and I was four). My brother, 10 years older than me, and I would run through the Dungeon! game a few times a week, which was really my first foray into the genre in spite of it being more boardgame-esque. He had the version with the mat, not the boards. I wonder if he still has it…

But even more important than the RPG aspect was the storytelling aspect. Any of you who play Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) or any other tabletop RPG understand that it’s a cooperative storytelling setting. The only problem is getting together a bunch of like-minded* players who can come together on a regular basis to play. The video game version eliminated that need, as all it requires is a boot up and go. Now, don’t get me wrong, nothing really substitutes for a good sit-down with a few 7-dice sets, my DM screen and a group of enthusiastic players. And most of the video games play through exactly the same way each time, although there are some brilliant exceptions that give you a different play-through or endings depending on your decisions (see the Fallout and Witcher series).

So what is all this about? The storytelling. Someone else gets to be DM for a while and crafted a story that I get to experience for once. It creates an immersive environment that can, and does, spur imagination and other takes for a stalled story.

Not that I’m stalled on writing. It’s the revision that I’m working through–Eater of Dreams, still. If you want more details on my progress you can sign up for my free newsletter and even grab a free novelette, Whispering Dusk, set in the universe just for joining.

Speaking of freebies, don’t forget to take advantage of the free stories in the sidebar – two of them are ending on Friday. Some are available in Kindle Unlimited, others available through StoryOrigin (Readers join for free, authors foot the bill).

*I say like-minded, because it completely kills momentum for people when someone is only casually involved, or when one player wants a lot of combat and little role-play or vice-versa. Not that one is better than the other, but in order for everyone to have fun, the aim and the commitment have to all be even or kaput.