It's off!
Finally, we're on the last stage of the immigration procedures. Or rather the second-to-last stage depending on how you measure these things, but all we have to do now (assuming no one requests an interview or more information) is wait. It's a long wait, granted, but it still feels good to have it out of our hands and have the possibility of living with my wife bumped up to a more perceivable future. With luck, I could be up there as early as next March. More likely it'll be next summer sometime.
In other Matt news, I got sick of waiting for George RR Martin's next book and have picked up the first two in Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series. I've just finished the first one (except for the epilogue) and I must say, though the shear number of characters is daunting at first (although the book does contain a dramatis personae list in the front which was extremely helpful) the book was really quite good. I'd recommend picking the series up if you're looking for a good fantasy series. It's length (7 books so far) does make me leery of Robert Jordan Syndrome, but with book 8 already having a release date and the author projecting the total at 10, I have hope that this one will be successfully completed.
This has got me thinking about NaNoWriMo again, and this year I thought I'd take the novel (hehe) step of preparing a bit ahead of time. The problem I'm having right now is coming up with names, both place and character. I've never been good at it, usually borrowing from obscure (to the American mind) real world places and names, but I worry that doing so will bring (potentially unwanted) connotations associated with the name's culture to whatever it's attached to. The other problem with random names is that they may seem too disassociated from each other, or be so unfamiliar as to give trouble sticking in people's minds. Any thoughts on this? How do you GMs out there come up with names for places and people for your campaigns?
In other Matt news, I got sick of waiting for George RR Martin's next book and have picked up the first two in Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series. I've just finished the first one (except for the epilogue) and I must say, though the shear number of characters is daunting at first (although the book does contain a dramatis personae list in the front which was extremely helpful) the book was really quite good. I'd recommend picking the series up if you're looking for a good fantasy series. It's length (7 books so far) does make me leery of Robert Jordan Syndrome, but with book 8 already having a release date and the author projecting the total at 10, I have hope that this one will be successfully completed.
This has got me thinking about NaNoWriMo again, and this year I thought I'd take the novel (hehe) step of preparing a bit ahead of time. The problem I'm having right now is coming up with names, both place and character. I've never been good at it, usually borrowing from obscure (to the American mind) real world places and names, but I worry that doing so will bring (potentially unwanted) connotations associated with the name's culture to whatever it's attached to. The other problem with random names is that they may seem too disassociated from each other, or be so unfamiliar as to give trouble sticking in people's minds. Any thoughts on this? How do you GMs out there come up with names for places and people for your campaigns?