I've discovered what the bugs invading my house--the ones I've been calling "stink bugs"--really are. They're
Geonosians!
... nah, actually, they're
Western conifer seed bugs, Leptoglossus occidentalis. Apparently they've been having a banner year in New England, even though they're originally--as the name suggests--from the West Coast. Wikipedia tells me they've spread from there as far east as Maine and as far west as Japan.
I'd include a picture here, but looking at them gives me the heebie-jeebies, and I'd like to spare you that. Follow the link if you're interested.
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I picked up The Wise Man's Fear on audiobook. Forty-seven hours of solid entertainment. Yowza. So far, I'm actually enjoying it more than The Name of the Wind, judging by how often I want to keep listening when I've stopped the car. A lot of it is everyday life at the University stuff at this point, but I find that... surprisingly compelling?
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In other epic fantasy news,
ketsugami linked me this article, about
misogyny in The Wheel of Time. I stopped reading the series around book six, so I probably don't know what I'm talking about--but this person carefully shows how male villains in tWoT are defeated, but female villains are degraded and made to suffer.
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I was feeling unmotivated to work on Cracks for the two upcoming runs for a while, but I seem to have overcome that now. One of my biggest fears, I think, is that I will make the game worse instead of better. There's also the fact that I'm basically trying to run two different versions of the game in the next two months, since I have only been able to get 19 people for Dice Bubble, compared to a full cast (with three new characters) of 23 for Intercon. Which is... confusing, to say the least.
But... I spent some time re-reading the character sheets, which was more satisfying than I expected it would be. I think one of the greatest pleasures of being a writer is re-reading something you've written and finding it's quite good. Unfortunately it's a vain pleasure, that doesn't accomplish anything, but in this case it helped me to get some forward momentum. I also had some excellent praise from Mel on the sheet for one of the new character, which I'm embarrassed to admit also motivated me.
So I'm going to hunker down and work to finish the new sheets, and edit the old ones. Mel wrote Eniall, the new Dzurlord, and I still need to take an editing pass over that--but I was pleased with what I saw. I've about 90% through Orayn, the Jhereg Heir's sheet. I still haven't started on Megarrion, the new Tiassa writer's sheet.