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

Writing: My apologies to you if you've clicked here a few times and been disappointed at the lack of updates. By way of explanation, I haven't posted to the blog in a while because I've been putting all my spare time towards wrapping up the final edits on my latest book.


I burnt a small amount of midnight oil last night (actually, it was probably more like 2AM oil) and pushed through to the end -- edits are now complete, and barring any unforeseen feedback from my test readers, I'm calling this thing done.

Massive thanks to everybody that's asked and expressed interest. Your support has been awesome and I am absolutely appreciative, but although I'd love to, I actually can't talk about any details at the moment. There are still a few pieces that need to fall into place, but things are looking good and I expect it to be published and available sometime on or around the end of this year.

More info to come as it becomes available, but for the moment, I will say that it feels pretty spectacular to put the wraps on another big project like this one.


Games: After finishing up the book, I completed another "big project" -- I rolled credits on Too Human (360) in preparation for this weekend's podcast recording.

I won't talk about it too much since that's going to be one of the main topics for the show, but I will say that it wasn't nearly the disaster I expected it to be. That's not to say that it was actually enjoyable, but there certainly were some positive things about it and I could see a lot of potential there.


All told, the game took me about nine hours to complete. Looking back on the experience from start to finish, I'd estimate that there is really only about 3, maybe 3 1/2 hours of decent content to be had. The rest is pure repetition, grinding and tedious. Although I personally got some value out of the game, I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Chalk this this one up as a critical learning experience.


Comics: A friend on Twitter recently recommended that I check out The Sword, published by Image and written/drawn by the Luna brothers. I picked up all four volumes (trade paperback) and handed them over to the wife while I was busy with other things. She devoured them and gave the series a solid thumbs-up.


Now that my plate has cleared up a bit, I was finally able to crack the first volume and it seems quite interesting so far. The story's about a handicapped girl who finds a special sword and comes into conflict with three people who are after it. These three murder her family which sets off a chain of events, and the story goes on from there.

I'm still quite early in the tale, but I'm liking what I'm seeing. One quick note, I will say that the level of gore caught me by surprise. Not that gore is a bad thing by any means, it was just… surprising.


I also recently finished up volume 5 of Preacher, from DC’s Vertigo imprint. Although I'm a big, big Garth Ennis fan, I actually hadn't started the series until recently. In a way, I'm glad that I waited because now I can read through it at my own pace instead of waiting for each issue month by month!


For those that aren't familiar, Preacher is about a man named Jesse Custer. He's got a spirit with the power of a god inside him, so he sets out to find *actual* God in order to kick his ass. Of course, the story is a lot more complicated than that and I certainly don't mean to do it a disservice, but that's basically it in a nutshell. Keeping Jesse company are his gun-for-hire girlfriend and an Irish vampire who’s got a serious disdain for vampiric tropes. Hilarity ensues.

It's raw, it's often brutal, and it's certainly shocking on occasion, but Ennis is a fantastic writer and there are very few comics out there quite like this one. If you tried and liked Wormwood (another of my faves) this’ll be right up your alley.