The Blog In Yellow

I feel like playing games but I'm going to try to keep writing. I feel the urge to do something, anything. I just finished up playing with my friend. I'm envous of him because he has a wife and kids and I have nothing. Well, no lover at least. I don't think I've ever been on a date. But that doesn't mean we couldn't be great friends. Maybe my life isn't going to see a woman but I still hope. This is making me depressed. Hanging out with this friend always makes me feel better. He's a better influence than my other friend who sleeps over. They're both good guys but the sleepover friend isn't as spiritually inclined. We played a game called Barony that he seems to like. It's a pixelated game where you go through dungeons. I got gang attacked (I almost said gang banged at his house) by a bunch of skeletons and died early on. It seems that were supposed to level up and find monsters to fight to get those stats up. It's a lot of fun, if we wer...

I think the moment things turned around for me was when I was in my third year of college. I had to take another writers course for my degree and figured it wouldn't be much of an issue. I'd get that C and move on. I got an A. In fact, that year, I made the dean's list. What changed? I don't know what changed in me but I understood the assignment. We were reading this book about how processed meat is made. The teacher who was an amateur writer himself, had us learn something about the world we lived in while we learned how to write better. It wasn't a creative writing class but it helped me understand that I wasn't the idiot I thought I was. After getting that C in my last writing class, I thought writing wasn't for me. What I didn't know was that writers get bad reviews and they have to attack it. Go after it day after day. It isn't something that just pops into your lap if you really want it. I learned to take control of my future and while I could...

I sent the email to myself about how Stephen King and Dan Simmons were wrong about me. I'm surprised that it htlped me a bit. I look at it every now and then to remind myself that they were wrong about me. Or should I say that the monster I made out of them. Now onto the heroes. This one is a mix because it's the writers that made me want to write. I'll have to go over all of them to get my pages in.  First is Harlan Ellison. If you've never seen him in interviews, he has this cantankerous attitude and a "I don't give a damn what you think" persona about him. He doesn't give a crap about what poeple think and he demands to be paid. "You have to pay the writer." There's this interview with him about how he was called by someone who wanted to interview him about the lawsuit he threw at James Cameron when Cameron made The Terminator. Ellison claimed that Cameron stole the concept from one of his short stories. I think it was the one about th...

I think I'll stop after this one. I've written a lot today and it's messing with my brain. No wonder writting takes so much out of you. It boggles the mind. But there are two people I want to nominate as my heroes for writing, my parents. I know that the Author's Way mentions how family can hinder your ambitions and I believe it. I wouldn't say my parents weren't supportive but they did have their doubts about me. I think they're a little over protective because I'm autistic but I'm probably reading that wrong. Maybe they just love me. My mom read my first story about RTF and it was a dozzie of a work. I think I lost it somewhere in my computer but it serves as the basis for my RTF universe. Later on, I would write my slime girl mini book and she would read that one as well. I sent the same copy to my dad and, being an English major, graded it. Both helped me in their own way and I'm grateful for that. It means a lot to have someone sit down and ...

 These are some of the questions my writing friend proposed to me 1. What was Abe like before the world fell apart—what qualities did he have that still peek through? I need a problem. The Mark of Cain should come as a solution to something that was happening in the world. Maybe a plague...maybe no. Maybe the mark could come out of no where and people wonder why it is happening. The grudged dead come back to life without an explanation. They call it a cruel miracle. Thats the best way to describe what happend to them. Maybe I don't need a problem but I want the event to happen just as something else was about to happen. Like a wave of water that puts out a firery tower. Before Abe tracked down people, he was a lowly private eye. He didn't make a lot of money but it was good work and it paid the bills. Most people used basic technology to find someone or track someone. When the mark came, it became important that trackers were used to find people with a grudge over th...

A few months ago I completed a game called Mouthwashing. It's an amazing game with a supreme narrative about things going from bad to worse. You are on a ship in space with a barebones crew transporting goods. The absolute irony and madness behind what you are carrying is in the title which only becomes funny when you realize that you're doomed. Your captain incapacitated, your "girlfriend" pregnant, and you at the helm of a doomed vessel. Somehow, someway, you have to fix this mess. This was one of the few games that made my mouth drop. The last game accomplish this was Soma, another fantastic game. But after reading the wiki about the game, I was interested to look at the source material. Mainly a couple of movies: Sunshine and Event Horizon. Sunshine was foreign to me but I had heard of Event Horizon. It's infamous or famous for being one of the last 90s horror scifi films. I'm honestly glad that I was playing a game while allowing occasional glances at the...

 My jaw aches. I was chewing a straw while playing a game called Palworld. I lost my items after falling into lava and after three attempts at getting them back, I gave up and turned off the penalty for losing your items upon death and grabbed three sets of hot clothing and a pair of paragliders. I killed my mood for writing but I'm going to try to get through this. My first writing hero is my writing partner whom I meet with every week online. We've never met in person but she's been such an uplifting force in my life. She encourages me and assures me that I've "got this." I don't know if I feel like I've got it but her encouragement keeps me going. Recently she gave me some questions to ask my character and story to help flesh it out which I'll write about either today or tomorrow. It's refreshing to have her because when I first reached out to her I told her I hoped that she would help me put some feet on the ground and get my rear in gear. ...

I've got a lot to write about today but I beat one of the monsters. Years ago I found an essay supposedly by Dan Simmons. I can't confirm that it's his work but it does offer good advice. One of which devastated me years ago. I misread the quote as "if you don't make it by the time you are thirty, you won't make it at all." The real quote says  " We all know there are youthful prodigies in mathematics. Indeed, by the age of 30, most true mathematicians are over the hill. If they haven't made their bones by then, they almost certainly never will." That quote haunted me for many years. That was over a decade ago and it still hurts a bit. But this is my mosnter, this one I made myself cobbled together with misunderstandings and fastened with the same fears and insecurities that tie me down. It's like the telephone game where one person speaks a word to antoher in a circle and round it goes until you end up with a new word or phrase. It's...

Second monster. I posted a story I wrote years ago about the running of the bulls called "Encierro." It's a special story to me because it was the first time I wrote like Stephen King describes as "fire coming out the end of a comet." It felt amazing, page after page of pure imagination. I thought I had something there. And then I post it online and I get two reviews that say that I need to work on my grammar and that my characters sounded flat. I was devastated. Yes, it was a first draft but one that I knew had potential. I took a bunch of photos from online and did no research on the real running of the bulls. I only knew that Hemmingway liked it. Later on I did a little more research to tighten up the story but most of it came from the well in my mind. I was so proud of it and to have it destroyed like this almost made me want to stop writing. Why didn't they see what I saw? I saw the hard work that went behind this story, the pure joy in creating somethi...

I'm not going to do much right now. I didn't watch the video because it's over three hours long. I need some time to watch it. And I'll be listening to most of it while I'm working so there's that issue. I was talking with my therapist and I noted that it has become easier to be easy on myself. All those "Doh!" moments have been handed over to God with an accompaning apology. I do act like a fool sometimes but it's good to know that I can move on from those things. Maybe I'm just in a good mood because of my medicine. I don't even feel the need to take a nap. I almost forgot what I was going to write about. The Artist's way book moentioned that I should imagine the person who gave me bad advice or a bad review. I'm also to write a letter to myself, which will be an email, encouraging me and telling off that other person. The problem is that there isn't anyone who gave me too bad of advice. I got a bad review once and the first w...

I'm proud of myself, I got a lot done yesterday. More than I had hoped for. I wrote a...I don't know what it is...of my Cain story. It's a breakdown of what happened before the story began so maybe a synopsis? I added more to the story which helped flesh it out. I can't believer I'm doing all this work for a short story. I should be doing more for my KIY story but I'm not going to push myself too far. I think I need to be more secure in myself to write more for that story. I wonder if this is how George Martin feels. He's been delaying the next book for years and it must be hard with all that pressure on him. But seriously, getting that summary done was a load off my shoulders. I also got more of Koudelka done. I'm just trying to finish what I started. It's just something I feel I need to do because I'm tired of not leaving games and projects half done. It feels good to say that I'm finished with something no matter how trivial.  Right now I...

I'm trying something different. I'm in the lobby at my housing complex to get away from all the distractions at my house. I'll be writing for a few minutes and then jumping back and forth between other tasks to get more stuff done. Maybe this will work, maybe not. We'll find out. I was walking with my mom today and we talked about my character results from an online test I took. It struck me that I wasn't listed as trustworthy. My folks explained that while I have great ambitions, I promise the moon and can't deliver. During our walk I was talking with my mom about this revelation. She said that it wasn't that I was lying, I promise too much. I realized that the same happens to me. I demand that I write as much as Stephen King in one day and I barely get a thousand words out while he's printing six pages a day. I barely read and he's reading several books in a week. King is a machine, there's no doubt about that. To get to that level may be diffi...

So for the sake of pages, I thought I would talk about Palworld and Koudelka and mention why I like Palworld so much. Then I'll finish with a few more pictures from Koudelka. Palworld is like Pokemon. You capture strange animals in the wild which art style doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the world, and instead of training them you use them to build stuff for you. There are pals that lay eggs which you can feed to your other pals which are busy making you more pal balls. You can send a bunch of pals off to a dungeon and have them grab supplies for you which helps with collecting loot. Then all this stuff feeds back into the base building aspect which admittedly doesn't have a lot of depth to it. I do wish that the developers would make more items for me to use to decorate and add more pals. As it stands, there is about a hundred and fifty pals that you can find, I've already found forty which means I'm a third of the way done with the game. There's lots to e...

The weather is getting to me. The cold and the dry air makes me depressed. My SAD is acting up with the turn of the seasons and it kills me. The good news is that I've got plenty with which to distract myself. Cold weather is the best time to read which I'll do after this. Looking online, a lot of people are worried about the Steam Machine might be more than originally thought. My hope is that it's on the low end of sex hundred. If it's more than that then this isn't a bargin anymore. I might have to reconsider. Not that I was giving it serious thought but I am jealous seeing my friends get one of these devices while I'm left in the cold. Being broke is awful but it may change soon. I've been lax lately on my pages but it was a nice break and now I feel like I'm going to give it another try. Who am I kidding? I'm just afraid of my own story. I know it won't come out right and even though I know what I want to do next. Writing is fear. If I can...

I'm going to have to restart writing these in the morning. Right now I just want to play some games and read some books. Today was better. Being with my folks helped out and speaking with my writing coach helped me too. It's hard to get back up after such a hit but I managed. I'm glad my folks understand me so well. It's good to have someone understand your pain, even when it feels like God doesn't. I don't get how David knew God well enough to know his heart and how God acted toward people. And David went through Hell several times in his life. It boggles my mind that he could say such things after being defeated over and over. Life feels like a series of defeats rather than victories. And you're usually too tired to accept the victories. You think it'll be a party but all you want is a nap. I think that's enough for now. I'm off to play. 

Today wasn't a good day. And I'm asking myself "Is that all it takes? One blow and you're down?" But part of me is saying "Yeah. I'm a glass canon." I got a call from my job searching coach and he said the same thing they all say "We don't know what to do with you." We're looking for a job that lets me use my skills as a researcher or a writer. No such jobs found yet. I wonder if they'll ever be found. I'm not declaring that they won't be found, I'm just complaining. I had three good days and if I hadn't had my medicine in me, I would have collapsed. I think I'd be back on the suicide area if I hadn't had my medicine. Is this a test? Then I tried to stay strong but I failed. I tried not to think about it but I didn't make it. I looked at my bills and I was behind on one. It took a hundred dollars out of my account. I was trying this month. Really trying to not go out to eat and not buy too many games....

I skipped the last four stories in The King in Yellow because they were romances instead of horror. The book that inspired the Necronomicon, the lynchpin of the Cthulhu universe, is an essential read. But the stories at the end were so boring and did not make any sense. There's a lot of mystery behind the book such as why it takes place in a dystopian United States and what the King represents. But I have a qustion, why does the book transition from horror to romance? One theory or mine is that the author was trying to work out some kind of issue in his head and this was therapy. It's also possible that he collected what stories he had into one book. I've seen posts that say that his publishers didn't think that four or five stories would be enough for one book so he threw in a few romance stories. It's possible that the romantic and horror stories have few or no connections. Like two books shoved into one.  I found this note on Reddit: The  transition  from  horror...

I don't want to write today but I'm so grateful that I have today. Maybe I'll write more later but yesterday was a perfect day. It was raining, I got to hang out with my family, and I got A LOT of writing done. Over two thousand words, almost three thousand in print. I got more of my Cain story written and I got some exercise. Overall, a good day. Today, not so much. I need to watch Community or something ot get my engines going. Right now, I feel lazy. Maybe it's the food I ate or maybe it's the weather. Probably both.  I've been watching the internet shread Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 to shreds and it feels nice. The series has been in decline for years with each release being worse and worse. Seeing the mighty fall is always an American thing isn't it? We yearn for the top to fall down because we're rebels at heart. We defy power and structures and think more about ourself than the group. It's a weird tradition. Or maybe I'm overthinking it.  I...

This is an exercise to find my blurts. Things from my censor or my inner critic that pop out when I self-affirm myself. I, John, am a brilliant and prolific writer.  I, John, am a brilliant and prolific writer. I, John, am a brilliant and prolific writer. I, John, am a brilliant and prolific writer. I, John, am a brilliant and prolific writer. I, John, am a brilliant and prolific writer. I, John, am a brilliant and prolific writer. I, John, am a brilliant and prolific writer. I, John, am a brilliant and prolific writer. I, John, am a brillinat and prolific writer.  The next step is to figure out where my blurts come from. That's easy. Ever since I was middle school I was in the wrong. I was always in the wrong. Teachers, friends, parents, everyone even those who loved me, told me I was wrong in some form or other. These blurts usually hit me when I'm at work. When I don't need them. They remind me that I'm not working on my dream which is to be a writer. I have to tell ...

There's a lot to talk about. First let's get the God stuff out of the way. I'm trying to write more positive so that I don't have to go back and read how miserable I am. For a few weeks I've been asking God to work on me, and He has, but the idea is co-labor, to work with God on something. This week, I asked God, "Hey God, let's work on me together." One of the thoughts that came to my head was Joseph in slavery. After being sold by his brothers, he worked to death and was imprisoned after being falsely accused. I was listening to Bill Johnson and he was talking about how Joseph could have worked for decades and never been the right hand man of the pharoh. And even thought I'm worried about almost turning forty and worry that I've never made connections and done enough training, God knows my desires and he has plans for me to grant them. I know God can make up for the lost time. So even though I don't have a lot going for me as far as I can...