Tag: gaming

Black and white and read all over.

I noticed a certain common colouration in the books I had to hand:

Covers of /Lies and Ugliness/, /Bedlam/, /The Weird/, and /Breed/.

I’m cheating a bit with this picture, since both the hardback cover and the dustjacket of Breed are shown. (I took the dustjacket off because something about the paper just feels subtly repellant–some weird combination of sooty and greasy.)  On the flipside, I’m not including The Rivals of Frankenstein, which continues the black-white-red theme, so it all balances if anyone’s keeping score, which I sort of doubt.

Am mildly amused by this, especially since the other books I am reading, or have just finished, or have just started, have a black-and-white thing going for the covers.  (Apparently the subtraction of red takes you from horror to crime, who knew?  Although Bedlam is an exception to that.)

Not feeling well today; I’m hoping it’s just after-effects of the flu shot, since those should clear up more quickly than anything I might have actually caught.  Managed to get a little cleaning done, though, and get out of the house to pick up groceries and return library books.  (Mildly annoyed that one of the books I have on hold has been in transit for just over a week, now, and is still not at the local branch.  It’s a Lovecraft collection, so I suspect I could find the contents on Gutenberg, but I find I really prefer physical copies of anthologies and collections.  Screens and ereaders work best for single works, for me–novels or novellas or standalone short stories, any length is fine, just not several short stories.

Probably turning in early tonight; the nap after the vet’s was nice, but I’m still wiped.

Juggling duties.

Looking forward to the long weekend.  I wouldn’t say my time’s already booked, but I expect I know how most of it is going to go.  Hoping I can get a couple of hours in to sit down and write, and a chance to goof off and relax so I actually feel up to same.

(Running around an alien mothership without your faithful canine companion: totally relaxing.)

I need to reorganize my office again.  My London-and-Mythos shelf needs to become just a Mythos shelf; with the latest anthology, there’s no more room for them both.  Even if I relocate the London stuff, there’s only about another foot of space, but it’ll last for a bit.

Have work for at least a few months, which is nice, since I just found out that Pelgrane is putting out another sourcebook in the vein of The Dead White World. Mind, I’m not sure I would ever actually get to run anything; all the gamers I know aren’t local or wouldn’t be interested.  I wish gaming books were something you could get at the library; it seems like a waste to buy one and then not do anything with it.  They’re not like most books; they’re not just for reading.  More like recipe collections or knitting books.  Buying them and not doing anything with them is sad, and rather cluttered.

Oddly awake.

Yesterday I was up until four in the morning. And then I was up and functional by eight. Somehow I’m still not tired. Admittedly there was a nap in there, but…

One of the people I write with a fair bit of the time is doing NaNoWriMo. It’s rough going so far (mind, that doesn’t mean much yet), but she’s doing it. I, meanwhile, have written the hundred words of fiction in trip fragments this week.

I mean, it’s just been Hallowe’en; I practically feel guilty about not trying. It’s the time of year for (proper Lovecraft) ghouls and curiously meaningful scratches and shapes standing in the dark in the still of your room and just watching you.

You think.

You can’t see their eyes, after all.

(Oh yes, this is absolutely going to help me get to sleep. Because I needed a chaser after reading a third of the way through the House of Fear anthology. It’s a nice mix; part actual ghosts and part haunted houses (which are subtly different, but I fear I repeat myself), with a side order of the weird.)

Beginning to get sleepy, at least.  The nice thing about the phone is that I can post in my room and don’t get distracted by the joys of the internet or the horror of the Sierra Madre. Much easier to lie down and go to sleep if you don’t need to tear yourself away from a computer motor.

(That’s the Sierra Madre from Fallout: New Vegas – Dead Money. Which is a quite well-done little horror story set in a haunted house… one which both corrupts its victims and is inhabited by ghosts, now that I think of it.)

Tomorrow I’ll try and get my books sorted, I suppose. And maybe I’ll hear back about work. The estimated start date just keeps creeping forward; at this point I’d be surprised if anything happened before Monday.