This week
This week at lunch in a Filipino restaurant I’m not sure I want to visit again, Fleetwood told the story of what happened when Michael Chabon tried to join the Science Fiction Writers of America as a goodwill gesture to the genre. Over the phone, the secretary at SWFA wanted proof that Chabon was actually a writer, asking him to fax over a copy of his most recent book contract, otherwise she wouldn’t process his request. Bemused, Chabon hung up and talked with his publisher, who called SWFA and told them that the guy whose contracts they were asking to see was a Pulitzer winning writer and process the damn application, geez!
I didn’t read any Chabon this week, but I did pick up Dennis Lehane’s first novel, A Drink Before the War, and read it in a night, happily. Now I’m reading Sherman Alexie’s wonderful The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a book that’s only a tiny bit bittersweet for me because he used to sit next to my in-laws at Sonics basketball games and the time I could have been introduced to him and talked with him for a few moments I got shy, painful to admit given my tendency toward extreme extroversion, but shy it was, so I didn’t meet him when I had the chance.
This week in soccer we experienced a fine metaphor for life and striving. Behind by a goal in a game we had dominated, we carved a great breakaway only to hear a loud ‘CLACK’ and see the lights dim, dim, dim, shut off, the ref blew the whistle a moment before Julia, our right wing, could shoot. We were left knowing that we’d put up a good fight but that we just ran out of time, the system breaks down and the lights shut off early, thunk.
This week in D&D the lights also went off, early, in yet another wonderful DMing stunt by Mike Fehlauer. He’s running the Savage Tide, a version consciously updated to 4e by a cataclysmic change. Most of the characters played through the 3e version and now we’ve returned to the Isle of Dread in the midst of worldshaking/moon-exploding/gods-dying/editions-changing cataclysm. All the other characters know the 3e cosmology, the Great Wheel. My character, the dwarf invoker Stigander, has always known that the 3e cosmology was a simplification, the type of story you make up so that you can paint a children’s toy and explain things simply. Stigander has always known that the 4e cosmology is true, and now everyone else is seeing it too, and the meta-level kicks that joke up into the Truly Funny slot. When I said that the lights went off, I meant that when we finally pulled our battered ship into Farshore, around midnight, bright lights from the shore defenses blinded us, and Mike turned off all the lights in the room and arranged the battlemat, telling us to keep our eyes closed. I weenied out and snuck a peek, I wasn’t happy with the heavy sound of the miniatures he was putting on the battlemat. Oh. Not miniatures. Champagne glasses. Shut my eyes like a cooperative human and stop thinking. When Mike flipped the lights back on the citizens of Farshore greeted us as their returning heroes. And everything was wonderful, except maybe for the Xeph rogue whose girlfriend was on someone else’s arm, until the dragon turtle surfaced in the harbor wearing the hat our captain had recently discarded (bad memories) roaring something about tribute that was late. Cliffhanger endings! Such a fun campaign.
This week in the other form of D&D, the work week, I hacked at an outline for a new book and cleaned up pieces of three other books that are all nearly done, a very satisfying work week in the sense that all the earlier projects are coming off well, it’s just the current new outline can no longer be allowed to evade my knife and fork.
And this week at another lunch, a D&D brand manager commented that “Oh, the 25-year old was fantastic!” and he was talking about whiskey. And too many people at work seemed to be sick, but when Rich Baker was sick it was because he was exhausted after porting his furniture back into its proper places in his recently-flooded house. And I carried Player’s Handbook 2 around with me everywhere to read pieces of it I’d missed, to the point that my co-workers mocked me. Which, now that I think of it, isn’t exceptional.
Away from work, we drove to and from the Oregon Coast, went on lots of hikes with dogs, played a more-or-less new game design of mine for something like eight entirely enjoyable hours, and made a resolution not to buy Girl Scout Cookies from kids who are about to get their Learner’s Permits.
A quiet week on Lake Washington.