Up late talking games & writing? You're...

Games: Yes, I'm still playing Persona 3: FES... jeez, quit busting my chops. It shouldn't be much longer until I get to the answer in The Answer.

On a random side note, I finally scored one of the rare-ish PS2 games I’ve been after for a long time, Colosseum: Road to Freedom. I’ve never actually seen it in a store (new or used) but the premise of being a gladiator and trying to buy your way out of slavery through bloody combat intrigued me.

After having it at the top of my GameFly queue for the last several months, they finally sent it, I finally played it, and after a quick run-through, I decided it was worth an overpriced purchase on eBay. I probably won't get to it for a while, but if any of you have any impressions, drop me a line or leave a comment, and I'll be glad to hear them.

Writing: So after receiving a bunch of form-letter rejection slips, I finally got a human response from an agent in L.A. She turned me down politely, but had a few positive comments. Since she was the only person decent enough to actually say something about the book, I followed up and ask if she'd be interested in seeing a rewrite.

Her response was that the book didn't have enough action (keep in mind, she had only received the first 10 pages) and suggested that I write more like Laurell K. Hamilton, Jim Butcher, or JD Ward. No offense (seriously) to any of those authors, but although they sell a million-billion copies of their work I don't particularly like the kind of books they turn out. I guess I’m sort of glad that I don't write like them since I find it fairly painful to make it through even one paperback of theirs, let alone an entire series of the stuff… I can't imagine changing my style to mimic something so far removed from what I'm going for.

I guess this is how I'm supposed to be writing my book.

The hunt for an agent continues.

Random: The other day, my son and I were having a conversation on the phone and somehow or another, we got on the subject of building him a koi pond. He's really into fish and we were just sort of daydreaming out loud, so I figured it would be the sort of thing he'd jump at. Strangely enough, the first thing out of his mouth was that building a koi pond would be bad for the environment.

We went in circles for a little while as the wife and I explained that there was a very little possibility of a small outdoor pond harming the earth. I think he eventually got it, but it's interesting to note that environmental awareness (on-target or not) was at the forefront of my six-year old’s thinking. Obviously, kids these days are going to grow up with a different reality and will have to deal with issues that people of my generation didn't really think much about.

However, as much as I'm for conserving freshwater and not damaging the natural world, I hope that at some point the people planting these thoughts in my son’s head get around to some larger issues-- let's not talk about how quickly the water runs when he's brushing his teeth, and let's start talking about weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels, industrial pollution, and the problems inherent with global warming and the ozone layer.

Maybe his teacher will cover that next year.

Food: Mouths Full has been updated... get the scoop on our local taco truck here.