@Nimran: I really need to get an agent. The first book has been complete for over a year. It's so easy to put it off. It's a maxim in foreign policy that the urgent tends to override the merely important, and there's no deadline for publishing it.
Still has to be done. A guy at the homeless shelter pointed out to me that you always start out at failure. You've got nowhere to go but up.
I'm actually almost finished with a set of seven fantasy novels. It starts with an energetic young farm girl who teams up with a ditzy undead psychopath to steal a WMD/time machine from the medieval equivalent of Kim Jong-il...
And then the story gets kind of strange.
Is this a biographical enterprise... Sounds familiar...
I'm actually almost finished with a set of seven fantasy novels. It starts with an energetic young farm girl who teams up with a ditzy undead psychopath to steal a WMD/time machine from the medieval equivalent of Kim Jong-il...
Don't have much hobbies left nowadays. Dunno why, but as I get older, I get more lazy it seems. Even gaming is reduced now to a few hours per week at most, usually less.
Drawing: Used to draw insanely much when I was younger and, as I have been told, my very early drawings were equivalent to pictures drawn by children several years older than me. I took extra drawing classes in school all the way up to high school and did well, but as things got more serious, my unavoidable tendency to judge my own work became more and more harsh. I became my own's worst critic and it went so far that in the end I could never really be proud of anything I had drawn, so I stopped around the age of ~18.
History: Always been very interrested in history, pretty much anything and everything concerning warfare. Read alot of roman history of course, but also the historical PoV's on religion (but not the actual religious scriptures themselves, only the effect of religion on the world).
Drinking: Used to be very much into drinking, clubbing, dancing, partying, dating etc when I was younger. Spent a good deal of my time between the ages 18-28 drunk. Loved it. Don't drink much now though, have replaced that unhealthy obsession for a new one.
Cooking/training: My new 'obsession' is cooking and working out. I cook my meals from ground up and choose my ingredients carefully; only organic and mostly vegetarian. I need to make up for the decadent decade of my youth if I am to live a fairly healthy life from here on and onwards. I smoked alot when younger(between 15-30), so it's an uphill battle to become healthy after that. Feeling better than ever now though, turning 35 soon and working out 3-5 times a week. Usually crossfit.
Movies/series: My interrest in movies and tv-shows increase at the cost of everything else, 'cept food and training. Nowadays if I choose between playing a game or watching a movie with my GF, I choose the latter.
Also, I have an RPG rule system half-way created and a whole stoyline/book in my head. I wonder if I will ever finish them?
Thanks for everyone who shared their passions in this thread. Interresing to read what you do and love.
Also, I have an RPG rule system half-way created and a whole stoyline/book in my head. I wonder if I will ever finish them?
Rtwp or something new? You're ready to make a game.
Something new, both the book and the ruleset. I have the setting, map, races etc and the major plot twist all figured out in my head, but no protagonist yet. Regarding the ruleset it's probably very weird and complicated but it is what I would like to have myself in a "realistic" fantasy setting. So for ie damage you weigh in the weight of the weapon for determining impact and the quality of the material (metal) for the penetration vs the armor protection; which can be two dimensions, inner and outer layer. So any character can weild ie a gambeson and a chainmail of various materials, where one inner padding is better vs ie crushing/blunt damage (padded) and one would be better vs piercing damage, or you could have inner paddings to take the force out of blunted damage and an outer layer of chainmail to brush up slashing/piercing damage etc. And that's just for damage, to score an actual hit there's another set of calculations for determining if the weapon actually connects to the hit-box. This means this ruleset will never be able to play in PnP, there's just to many calculations. There's no dice either, btw, damage is based on set variables.
@brus: Most of the work was done in grad school. Bear in mind this was a master's program, not a PhD program, which is why I had the time. PhD students don't have the luxury of hobbies. It's actually a federal crime for a PhD student to have a girlfriend, play games, cook meals, or sleep more than three hours a night.
The first drafts started on 5/9/12 and took a year and two months to write. As for the second drafts... I actually had to re-write the second book entirely to improve the realism (some events seemed to give the protagonist plot immunity), which meant all the subsequent books had to be re-written as well, a process which has so far taken a year and a half.
Re-writing the books meant the loss of hundreds of pages of text, and some of my favorite characters and plots and dialogues had to be completely abandoned. But it doesn't hurt to discard them. The second drafts are even better than the first.
I have no idea how long the current book is going to be, or if it's even going to have the same plot as I was planning. The way things are going, it looks like the first and second drafts are going to be two completely different stories from start to finish. There might even be eight books.
Reading, lot's of reading. I read or reread 1 or 2 works of fiction a week, mainly fantasy and military science fiction, and I usually have a non-fiction book going at a slower pace. Those are usually science or history with some home improvement manuals for good measure. But right now, my current non-fiction is the 5th edition player's handbook.
I'm also a reality show junkie, mostly the ones on Science, History and the home improvement networks.
My wife and I are slowly finishing our basement, when we're done there'll be a bedroom, bathroom, and rec room down there.
My main "other" hobby is my music collection. I have over 800 vinyl albums, 100 or so singles, nearly 1,000 CDs and several hundred digital download albums. I'm working my way through my collection, ripping them to high quality digital copies. I'm also inputting all available metadata to Musicbrainz and uploading hi-res images of the packaging to the Cover Art Archive. I call this "recreational data entry."
Comments
Still has to be done. A guy at the homeless shelter pointed out to me that you always start out at failure. You've got nowhere to go but up.
Good show, mate!
Drawing: Used to draw insanely much when I was younger and, as I have been told, my very early drawings were equivalent to pictures drawn by children several years older than me. I took extra drawing classes in school all the way up to high school and did well, but as things got more serious, my unavoidable tendency to judge my own work became more and more harsh. I became my own's worst critic and it went so far that in the end I could never really be proud of anything I had drawn, so I stopped around the age of ~18.
History: Always been very interrested in history, pretty much anything and everything concerning warfare. Read alot of roman history of course, but also the historical PoV's on religion (but not the actual religious scriptures themselves, only the effect of religion on the world).
Drinking: Used to be very much into drinking, clubbing, dancing, partying, dating etc when I was younger. Spent a good deal of my time between the ages 18-28 drunk. Loved it. Don't drink much now though, have replaced that unhealthy obsession for a new one.
Cooking/training: My new 'obsession' is cooking and working out. I cook my meals from ground up and choose my ingredients carefully; only organic and mostly vegetarian. I need to make up for the decadent decade of my youth if I am to live a fairly healthy life from here on and onwards. I smoked alot when younger(between 15-30), so it's an uphill battle to become healthy after that. Feeling better than ever now though, turning 35 soon and working out 3-5 times a week. Usually crossfit.
Movies/series: My interrest in movies and tv-shows increase at the cost of everything else, 'cept food and training. Nowadays if I choose between playing a game or watching a movie with my GF, I choose the latter.
Also, I have an RPG rule system half-way created and a whole stoyline/book in my head. I wonder if I will ever finish them?
Thanks for everyone who shared their passions in this thread. Interresing to read what you do and love.
Regarding the ruleset it's probably very weird and complicated but it is what I would like to have myself in a "realistic" fantasy setting. So for ie damage you weigh in the weight of the weapon for determining impact and the quality of the material (metal) for the penetration vs the armor protection; which can be two dimensions, inner and outer layer. So any character can weild ie a gambeson and a chainmail of various materials, where one inner padding is better vs ie crushing/blunt damage (padded) and one would be better vs piercing damage, or you could have inner paddings to take the force out of blunted damage and an outer layer of chainmail to brush up slashing/piercing damage etc. And that's just for damage, to score an actual hit there's another set of calculations for determining if the weapon actually connects to the hit-box. This means this ruleset will never be able to play in PnP, there's just to many calculations. There's no dice either, btw, damage is based on set variables.
The first drafts started on 5/9/12 and took a year and two months to write. As for the second drafts... I actually had to re-write the second book entirely to improve the realism (some events seemed to give the protagonist plot immunity), which meant all the subsequent books had to be re-written as well, a process which has so far taken a year and a half.
Re-writing the books meant the loss of hundreds of pages of text, and some of my favorite characters and plots and dialogues had to be completely abandoned. But it doesn't hurt to discard them. The second drafts are even better than the first.
I have no idea how long the current book is going to be, or if it's even going to have the same plot as I was planning. The way things are going, it looks like the first and second drafts are going to be two completely different stories from start to finish. There might even be eight books.
Reading, lot's of reading. I read or reread 1 or 2 works of fiction a week, mainly fantasy and military science fiction, and I usually have a non-fiction book going at a slower pace. Those are usually science or history with some home improvement manuals for good measure. But right now, my current non-fiction is the 5th edition player's handbook.
I'm also a reality show junkie, mostly the ones on Science, History and the home improvement networks.
My wife and I are slowly finishing our basement, when we're done there'll be a bedroom, bathroom, and rec room down there.
My main "other" hobby is my music collection. I have over 800 vinyl albums, 100 or so singles, nearly 1,000 CDs and several hundred digital download albums. I'm working my way through my collection, ripping them to high quality digital copies. I'm also inputting all available metadata to Musicbrainz and uploading hi-res images of the packaging to the Cover Art Archive. I call this "recreational data entry."