Tag Archives: Jason H. Abbott

WIP-it Wednesday: June 21st, 2017

21 Wednesday Jun 2017

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Time for a new weekly writer’s roundup of my works-in-progress and those ready to read!

It’s been a packed week.

Leading up to it, my old cat became very sick and then passed away. And prior and post to that sad event I had bookended weekends that required me to work on my house and it’s grounds. All of this prevented me from putting as much effort as I wanted into preparing the sixteen hours of roleplaying games that I’ll be running at this year’s PortCon, which starts Thursday.

It shoved the majority of what needed to be done all into the last weekend before the con. Most of my fellow writers out there should know that means it was deadline and crunch time. I tapped my reserves and chugged caffeine like Popeye downs spinach. And, by gum, even though that last weekend wasn’t enough to get it all finished… I pounded out and completed the last two games this Monday and Tuesday!

Aside from printing the color handouts Thursday morning, the games are ready with a day to spare.

However, this victory came at the expense of the time I usually devote to maintaining my social media thoughtfully, and other stuff… like sleeping. ;-) I apologize if my presence has been lacking, or my posting slapdash. Starting next week, I hope to not only return to working on my novel, but also to getting the blog back on track and regular again.

As I write this, I’m exhausted. This was a lot of effort compressed into a small amount of time while I was also working and commuting to a full-time day-job. But now I’ve met this part of my responsibilities, and once my work is done today, I even have an evening to rest-up with before my vacation and the convention starts.

So I hope you can forgive me if I cut this short, and bid you adieu. I’m going to have fun over the next four days, and you’ll hear all about it next week. :-)

Alright, time for me to stop blogging and get back to writing some more fiction! a good night’s rest! Take care!

Goodbye, Old Friend

14 Wednesday Jun 2017

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Almost a week ago, I had to say goodbye to one of the best cats ever, Nomti.Longtime followers of the blog will remember this old cat getting mentioned now and again. He was a tough but loving kitty, often blunt and graceless, but also very genuine and sincere in his affections. He made a habit of soliciting pets, weaving between ankles and begging for the food humans were eating amid any social gathering my wife and I hosted. This and his gentle nature made him many friends, and rightfully so.

He was a beautiful, loving boy… And a better friend to me than many humans I’ve known.

Like any cat, he could be a shit sometimes. Notably, he had no sense of control when it came to food. He was like Garfield in his gluttony, and in his younger years there were actually several instances where he did get into our pasta while our backs were turned (including a lasagna once).He didn’t come to us as a kitten, instead we were graced to be his second home just as he turned 9. We adopted him from his prior owners because one of their family members had developed cat allergies. That was ironic, as we were specifically looking for a Siamese because my wife isn’t allergic to that breed while most other cats can make her very ill combined with her asthma.

They had kept him as an indoor/outdoor cat, and I don’t think they paid him much attention. They had little to say about the great personality we would later discover in him. He was also terribly overweight, at a whopping 26 pounds (almost 12 kg)! He was along bodied, long tailed cat… but he was so fat then he couldn’t lick his butt and keep himself properly clean.

We put him on a diet, gave him lots of play, and he slimmed down to 15 ponds within a year or so. But the excessive weight he bore for the first half of his life likely contributed to the diabetes that would emerge to plague him a few years later. For the most part, we were able to help him control this affliction by modifying and monitoring his diet.

My wife had wanted to add a cat to the household for her companionship while I was away and she was stuck at home underemployed. However, he gravitated to me pretty quickly as a lap cat and companion keeping me company over many long hours of writing. He would even help with editing…

Wesir

Siamese are a more social breed of cat than most. When Kim found full-time employment and the house was empty for longer periods of time, we noticed a sadder tone to his moods. We had been talking about adding another cat to remove his loneliness for months, when we encountered a much younger adult Siamese seeking adoption out of pure fate. We brought him home within hours and named him Wesir. The little guy had been found abandoned on the streets, and had lots of separation anxiety… We couldn’t coax a purr out of him, although he was a nice cat.

The pair warmed up to one another in a week. Nomti took Wesir under his wing and they became exceptionally close for adult male cats not from the same litter. They would sleep with and groom one another, with Wesir being very attentive to the aging cat and making sure his hygiene was acceptable. In exchange, we swear Nomti taught him how to purr.

Wesir comforting Nomti (in cone), June 2016.

Wesir definitely is my wife’s cat, and she is the center of his universe. Nomti was never so fawning with his affections for me, but there was a plain honesty to them. His long lap-sits. The late nights watching me write and then sleeping nearby in my study. He was an assuring, guarding presence always.

When our friend Jessica needed a place to stay while putting her life into order, we welcomed her as a boarder in our home. And Nomti was there for her too, joining her at bedtime every night with his aura of protection and providing a loving companionship she needed at a difficult time.

His heart knew few boundaries. Even on his worst days, there was never a moment he wouldn’t spare a purr to help my bad times be a little better.

Nomti’s last year wasn’t kind to him as he reached an age of seventeen. His heath failed during my long unemployment when our money was incredibly tight. He got an infected eye and lost his sight in it despite the investment of money we really couldn’t afford into his treatment.

He never fully recovered from that. He became frail, getting down to a bony six pounds as we struggled to keep him well. His remaining good eye got infected over the winter, and while we began daily eye-treatments of antibiotics that seemed to promote some recovery, eventually they began to worsen again.

He just couldn’t fight off the infections that beset him. His immune system was failing, and it cost him his eyesight. Somehow we held onto hope he’d get better, but as his last few months dragged on it was clear that he was neither enjoying his life or going to round a corner and get well again.

His final crisis was a massive mouth infection that happened so quickly, and caused such swelling, that we thought he had gotten stung while eating a bee or wasp while we were at work. It was a grim sight as he could hardly eat, and then he lost control of his bladder.

As I comforted him, weak in my arms but still rasping out a purr, I realized that I was hanging on to him for my benefit… not his. I didn’t want to let him go. I didn’t want to lose my friend. But the world had become something that only pained Nomti. He couldn’t do any of the things he loved anymore; he could only shiver in the kitchen. He purred only to say he loved us, not to say he loved what his life had come to.

I was doing him a disservice.

The vet and his staff were kind. They ran a few tests confirming his diabetes was out of control, and there were likely numerous other issues stacked on top of that. And they let us stay with him as they eased him from a world that now only pained him, and into a place beyond it.

He purred despite it all, surrounded by love right to the end, in our arms. Then he was gone.

Wesir is still looking for his older brother, crying and searching all the corners of the house for him.

Nomti was, and ever shall be, my friend. And the truest of cats. As word of his passing spread, so many have contacted us with remembrances about him… That speaks volumes about how special he was to so many. Jessica even crafted a touching memorial to her lost friend as she worked through her sadness:

Like a hero of old she placed him amid the stars, surrounding him with catnip and the popcorn he’d beg to snack on whenever there was some to be had. Remarkably, a few kernels always seemed to be accidentally dropped his way.

It’s been a hard week, and I’ve needed space and time to grieve. This will serve as my update this Wednesday, and you can expect some posts on Friday but not Thursday.

I’ll be back next week with a full WIP-it check-in just before PortCon starts.

Take care… and if you have a cat, give them a hug for me.

~Jason.

WIP-it Wednesday: June 7th, 2017

07 Wednesday Jun 2017

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Time for a new weekly writer’s roundup of my works-in-progress and those ready to read!

As I mentioned in my last update, the month of June in general will find me shifting my focus away from Vivian’s Last Cigarette for the next few weeks. Instead, I’m working on and finishing the RPG sessions I’ll be running for PortCon, which takes place from June 22nd to the 25th.

It is creative work, not unlike assembling ideas for a story outlines. But thereafter, crafting role-playing sessions and scenarios is different than settling down and writing fiction. Role-play is collaborative storytelling. Unlike a you-and-your-story situation, you need to leave a lot open in the scenario to allow the other people playing to craft the unfolding tale with you.

You’ve got to make your players active participants, because if they are instead passive observers the game isn’t going to be very fun. If folks want a passive entertainment experience, a good book, movie or something similar will whip the pants off of me standing around and acting out a story from start to finish for several hours.

Most RPG players are looking for that active experience. The key thing about RPG game mastering is to give it to them, but that can be harder than you think.

As a writer, I personally LOVE telling stories. I start thinking about characters and have a blast working out their backgrounds and personalities. Then I start envisioning story scenarios –Who’s going to do this and when, and how antagonist X will react and how events are impacted from there– This is a great strength for me to have as a writer, but as Game Master it’s a serious flaw: It makes it easy for me to have tons of preconceived assumptions and desires about how a game will play out, and how its players will act using the characters I have worked hard to craft and embellish for them.

As you can imagine, having a mindset like that doesn’t set-up an experience that is likely to be a satisfying role-playing for the players. With everything pre-plotted in my brain, they feel railroaded and like their choices and input doesn’t matter to the ultimate outcome of the game’s story.

Three out of the four games I ran at last year’s PortCon featured characters I’d spent many tens of hours envisioning and writing. I wrote over 40,000 words of material for the con, most of that for player handouts with detailed character rundowns. However, that work was a wasted effort because it was vastly ignored.

The games were still fun all the same, because I designed them as open-ended and without preconceived conclusions. I did that as a safeguard, being conscious of my plotting tendencies, and I’m so glad that I did. Doing that salvaged those situations quite well combined with a positive mindset.

The one game where I let the players generate their own characters with a quick system turned out to be the best. All I did for my part was run the rest off a few pages of essential notes and lots of improvisation. I’d done it that way only because I was running low on time and couldn’t finish what I had planned initially… but it taught me a valuable lesson.

Players generating their own characters is defiantly the best way to get them invested in in a game. It also prevents me from making assumptions about how the characters will act or react to events… because I have no idea who the characters will be. ;-)

The downside is that this can eat-up valuable time when you only have four hours to play. Depending on the game, character creation can be lengthy and complicated. Fortunately, I’m using the Five by Five rules system for all my games this year. It’s a simple, versatile and understandable system that can be taught with 5 – 10 minutes. In it, characters only consist of five “traits” and one “trouble trait” that’s used as a roleplay aid. I have found 5×5 perfectly suited to the “pick-up” style of play found at PortCon, where players of all skill levels might be found at my table.

However, even simple and quick systems can get bogged down if the players don’t know what they want to play. In addition, players often don’t have a good grasp before the game starts of what character traits will be fun and useful in the scenario. This can result in characters that don’t get to do much, like a scuba expert in a desert based adventure. It can also create unbalanced parties with a massive excess of ability in one area (making some challenges too easy), and a great or total deficit in another (making other challenges nigh-impossible).

So this year what I’ve done in all my games is to let the players select their characters from a pool of partially completed ones:

Each character has an illustration to give a player an at-a-glance impression of what they could be like. In addition, in most of the games I have 1 to 3 of the five character traits pre-selected as well. These pre-selected traits are useful to the scenario I’m going to run, thus ensuring that some basics needed for the game will be in the group of players.

Unchosen trait slots get to be selected by the player as electives, off a chart of options that is unique to each game. This allows some player customization, enforces setting flavor, and ensures trait usefulness. Each individual trait is also removed from the available selection pool as they are chosen, ensuring each character has a unique set of abilities.

The one exception to this is my Godzilla: Invasion of Monsters game. In that scenario, ALL of the character’s traits are electives chosen by the players, allowing total customization… from a variety of useful traits.

No specific background or roleplaying guidelines are presented for any characters in the games. I leave those for the players to dream up in play, and they get a head start on that by selecting a role-play related “trouble trait” from a list much as their other elective traits were chosen.

As a game master, my job is to keep the story moving, judge rules, describe events, and portray every character that isn’t controlled by a player. And I’ve found that as my players are given more freedom to tell and influence the story, I am freed as well. Instead of making the game “just so”, I instead can focus on my antagonists acting appropriately for their goals and knowledge. I improvise and let them react to the world the players are influencing. I can focus on making every member of my supporting cast of non-player characters being memorable, and simply having as much fun as the players are.

I’m a reformed, formerly bad, game master now. It just took me realizing that if I wanted to make a game “just so”… I needed to write it as a story instead. ;-)

Alright, time for me to stop blogging and get back to writing some more fiction! RPGs! Take care!

Mid-Week Muses: “A lonely footstep brought Paul Bunyan to California…”

07 Wednesday Jun 2017

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mwm_pngA weekly compilation of collected microfictions composed by yours truly. If your time is short, these are shorter!

He ran, reveling in
freedom so long denied
him. Sirens grew
distant in the night,
and its cold rain
was a baptism.

 
A lonely footstep
brought Paul Bunyan
to California. But
there he met the
giantess Sequoia, and
romance strode over
the land.


He laughed inside the
coffin. "I'm immortal,
you idiots! I won't
suffocate!"

Silence.

"Hello?"

Explosives collapsed
the mine shaft.


"You wished on the
mystery box, to meet
your future husband?"

"Yes."

He pointed to himself.
"And I appeared?"

"Yes," she smiled.


Snow White's first
night at dwarven
fight club was a
rough one.
Fortunately, Doc was
a fantastic cut-man.


Viv touched her tusked
lips, then gently raised
a finger to his. “I hope
these don’t tangle like
braces sucking face.”

 
"Of course Kurt brings
you on your first full
moon. How's it on all
fours, dear?"

The younger wolf wagged
her tail. "I like it!"


Hate put a bullet 
in him, love kept 
him fighting.

 

Copyright © 2017 by Jason H. Abbott, All Rights Reserved.

WIP-it Wednesday: May 31st, 2017

31 Wednesday May 2017

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Time for a new weekly writer’s roundup of my works-in-progress and those ready to read!

I didn’t write as much on Vivian’s Last Cigarette as I wanted to over the three-day weekend, but I still got the new chapter six from zero to almost 2,700 words. I’m really happy with how it is shaping-up.

The chapter opens in medias res, with a horde of skinheads hot on Viv and Gronk’s heels. I’ve wanted to write crazy foot-chase for a long time, and it was great to finally get to do one! As a kid that was bullied and chased more than once by large groups seeking to do me harm, I was able to channel some of that experience into the scenes. It was cathartic in a way. One of those moments of true magic in writing, when you can take something sad or painful from your past and make it end the way it should have.

In this case, that meant writing a great escape.

I wrote those orcs getting chased halfway across town. Through the woods, over backroads, into a middle-class neighborhood, across someone’s backyard, and finally into an apple orchard. Finally, Viv and Gronk reached a sanctuary… well, a kinda-sorta sanctuary, anyways.

They also got to bump heads with a couple of new minor antagonists: Oliver and his kid brother, Oi-Boy. Both are introduced in a few lines and paragraphs and without a lot of fanfare in chapter five, but in chapter six they come into their own.

Oliver is a thuggish sergeant in the local Hammerfist gang that’s caused so much trouble for our orcy protagonists from the start of the book. He’s the houndsman leading this pursuit, and is effective enough in that regard, but he’s not particularly colorful. In comparison, his thirteen-year old brother Oi-Boy is garishly colorful like a graffiti covered wall…  and was ridiculously fun to write! ;-)

Oi-Boy is more of a hanger-on with the gang and its scrappy mascot than a full member. I invented him as a simple filler mook with some catchy flair when I polished chapter five into a second draft. The image of him in my mind was very strong right off the bat though, and after I wrote his appearance it was clear I had a good character that shouldn’t be wasted.

I was fortunate enough to need his talents in chapter six to reignite the chase just when Viv and Gronk felt they were home free. He gave that part theme and direction, and I wrote the scene on the fly riffing on Oi-Boy’s strong characteristics as a guide. Because of that, I created a nice bridge to the later half of the chase. It also became a really funny bit that had me laughing out loud. There’s just something about a nigh-psychopathic skater brat in a Rat Bones t-shirt giving orcs a seriously hard time that’s comedy gold. ;-)

And no sooner have Viv and Gronk dealt with Oi-Boy, then none other than Brian Kane returns to block their escape with his 1982 Subaru BRAT…

Faced with such an intimidating vehicle, the action picks up and things get even more interesting from there. ;-)

All-in-all, chapter six seems to be off to a good start! The weekend found me doing other things too: I edited chapter five into a second draft, then sent it along with chapter four to my second reader, Lauren. And projects related to my blog-social media and the upcoming PortCon also needed and received attention.

Another thing that detracted from my available time to write was that the cover creation process for Viv’s started last Thursday. Seeing the cover art come together is super-exciting! I shared the rough sketches the artist sent me of the possible directions the cover could go in with my betas, and took stock of their opinions.

This was really helpful. As the author, what I find appealing in art based off my book is tainted by the intimate knowledge I have of the story. What a cover needs to do is grab the attention of someone that has no knowledge of the story altogether, and I can’t judge that fully with my own eyes. So my betas, most of whom haven’t read the story yet, really helped me make a choice that I’m confident in. Their opinions were quite lopsidedly in favor of one piece in particular, and I chose to go with that one. It was one that I liked as well, and I think it will be a fantastic cover!

The month of June in general will find me shifting my focus away from the novel for at least a few weeks. The reason for this will be to finish creating the RPG sessions I’ll be running for PortCon, which takes place from June 22nd to the 25th. That task could take several or all of my upcoming weekends leading up to the event. And as I have a guest visiting on the weekend before the convention, in truth I only have two full weekends to get that work done.

So expect my next few WIP-it Wednesdays to focus on my games for the con, like what I did last year. :-) As much as I want to finish the book additions, revisions, and editing… a break will likely do me some good, too. If things wrap-up faster than expected, you can bet that I’ll be squeezing in what work I can on Viv’s before the convention itself. But then there’ll be another break for four solid days of fun! :-D

Alright, time for me to stop blogging and get back to writing some more fiction! Take care!

WIP-it Wednesday: May 24th, 2017

24 Wednesday May 2017

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Time for a new weekly writer’s roundup of my works-in-progress and those ready to read!

My writing was interrupted by a Saturday that included a half-day of yardwork and a lawnmower that died on me. However, my inspiration never faltered. Even with an abbreviated amount of time to write this weekend, I had added 2,500 words to new chapter five of Vivian’s Last Cigarette by Sunday night.

Monday ended up being one of those rare weekdays where other projects didn’t crowd out my time to write on the novel. With my motivation in high gear by the time I got home from the day-job, a stiff dose of caffeine helped me add a thousand words to complete the chapter before midnight.

The first draft totals a little more than 4,100 words, and I got to end it on a great cliffhanger that wasn’t entirely dissimilar to this:

Overall, the chapter is quite character focused. Viv and Gronk get to have some fun at the start, a nice change of pace given events up to here, and the readers get to see their friendship develop a little more. Minor character Mike, introduced in the previous chapter, gets a touch of development too… although this is the last chapter he’s physically present in.

The big challenge for our protagonists this chapter comes in the form of a new character, Bri (Brian) Kane. He’s a local Hammerfist thug and member of the same gang that attacked Gronk and got the action rolling in chapter one. Although he wasn’t present in the inciting incident of the story, he’s fully aware of the event and serves a role to fill the reader in on how gang has reacted to it.

In monomythic terms, Bri is absolutely playing the archetype role of a Herald (specifically, of the Shadow) and the Trickster in this bit. Although not a physical threat to the orcs, he’s a crap-talking loud-mouth who is trying to taunt and goad them to violence with his anti-changeling vitriol. It’s a test that Gronk passes, but a trial that Viv fails. Her failure has several repercussions, one of which is very immediate and stinging for Gronk.

But, tested as they are, the pair’s bond strengthens for it. I got to illustrate that with some short, well-timed dialogue I’m rather proud of towards the end… And then the sh*t hits the fan.

I’ll be giving the chapter a read through and editing brush-up before handing it over to my first reader for feedback. Hopefully it will be in a second draft state by Friday or sooner so I can send it –along with the second draft of chapter four– over to reader two ahead of the long Memorial holiday weekend here in the United States.

I’m also going to crack my knuckles and try my hardest to write as much of chapter six as I can over the holiday. I have no other firm commitments, and it would be great to finish that draft and enter June on such a high note! But even if I don’t, the more work I can get done on the novel before I temporarily shift focus to finishing (and start crunch-time on) the RPG sessions for PortCon, the better. :-)

I’m really excited to start writing chapter six, too. I’ve been inspired to open it right where five leaves off: With a dozen or more skinheads hot on the heels of our intrepid (and fleeing) orcs. ;-) I’ve got this great idea for madcap chase that leads into the other scenes I have planned… And it all climaxes with the appearance of a majestic, one-horned animal that will tie the new chapters into the rest of the established book. Huzzah!

Alright, time for me to stop blogging and get back to writing some more fiction! Take care!