2016

Heather gave a little grunt of effort as she shrugged into the clothes Tau’mi had given her. They fit almost perfect but were a little roomy; after all, Tau’mi was a bit more robust than a skinny stick and bones girl like her.

Heather had just finished, looking herself over. Despite being generic working clothes, she could clearly tell that Tau’mi had a higher standard of living than her. Heather couldn’t remember the last time she had a clean apron, or when her dress filled out like this with multiple starched petticoats. It made her feel important, warm and a bit comfortable.

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When the boom of Minecraft’s popularity happened, I was barely exposed to what had happened to keep track of it. I was either out of the loop or not around the gaming scene to remember much. But when it became popular, I realized that it wasn’t just some silly cube game, it was actually something quite remarkable.

Circa 2010, first semester of ETSU. I was in Color Theory class with a few other people. There was this one kid in particular called Coty. He was a bit of a nerd and we talked now and then. I remember that when we weren’t painting, he had his laptop out and would play games.

One week he kept going on about “Minecraft”. He had asked me to borrow $20 to buy it, which I agreed to lend him. He never followed through for me to buy it for him that evening, but when we had Color Theory the next time, he had it out on his laptop, running around and hitting cows. I thought it was rude until he explained that you needed to eat, so you had to kill animals.

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So! To kick off the first of my review posts, we start with a book. A very instrumental book in the creation of my blog program, actually.

Written by Margaret Mason, No One Cares What You Had for Lunch is a smallish paperback book I picked up from Books-A-Million in 2009 after my spiral from graduation. I was unable to find a job, lost most of my friends and was getting in hot water for “ranting” on Facebook. Yeah, long story.

I honestly wanted to learn how to blog short of typing angry feelings at the world. What should I blog about? What was okay to put on the Internet? How could I connect to someone by sharing what I experienced?

By then I was pretty much allowed to post what I wanted to at the time, so carving a new way online with my own two feet was left up to me. So yeah, enough of that. This is a book review, not another Storytime.

This was a close contender to A Dummies Guide to Blogging, however, What You Had for Lunch won out for price. Yes, I paid $7 bucks for it in the bargain pile. That was a chance buy, crossing my fingers and hoping that it was worth my money.

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It was a rainy afternoon. The sky was gray with rainclouds, visibly swirling form high windows. Despite the warm weather that had graced Ellowwood late into the harvest, this had changed in the past few days. It was a signal that colder weather was approaching, and dubbed by local farmers as “The Storm of Reckoning”.

Despite having seen the weather earlier, Heather had not expected rain to approach so quickly, much less any. People were hardly about, windows shut and cleaning their yards of loose items. Within minutes of strong winds, the downpour had started.

And she was caught in the middle of it.

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I came away with a lot of things from my ETSU experience. Some of these were negative and things I battle to this day, and a few were good things that has immensely helped me or changed my outlook on life. This is one of the latter.

As shut-in as it sounded, I never was aware or had the concept of a computer running more than one monitor. All the time in Walters State’s PC labs or my own computers, I’ve always seen one PC tower to one monitor. It didn’t help that there was only one display port on the back, either.When I had gotten my “last” Millenium project back in 2007, I was introduced to more than one display port on a computer; the DVI port. Still I only had one monitor to use with this. It wasn’t like I was curious to plug in two monitors like I would’ve done five years from that date.

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Hey guys, hope your week is going well!

I’ve been working on this for a little bit, and I am now unveiling this for release. I’m starting a weekly blog serial that you guys can enjoy  – for free!

Set in the same universe/setting as “Voyage Across the Endless Sky”, the story follows after Heather, a young woman who’s had a painful background and is looking for someplace to plant her own two feet. Haunted by the nightmares of her past, she starts to grow close to the main character cast, primarily Elizabeth, Janus and Tau’mi. (A more detailed info page will be up within the week regarding character names and backgrounds, so keep an eye out for that!)

The series is variety, sometimes happy go lucky, sometimes horrific and spine-chilling. The story is more of a fiction piece similar to my Michiko Bates book, but each installment does feature an illustration in style of the Endless Sky storybook! That way you get the best of both worlds.

The first episode will unveil Friday Feb 5th, and will be released every Friday from then on. Each “story” lasts approximately 4 episodes, so each month brings a new tale.

Enjoy, and have a great week!

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Foremost, I do apologize if any images seem haphazard or out of place. It was hard to find creative common images that depicted office life in the era that I’m talking about, or show images about devices or setups that I describe. Any images of hardware are of those I took myself of devices I used to own. With that, let’s get started!

As someone who’s been working in an office for two years now, I can see how people can get annoyed with it. However with working in Food City and what was available for jobs when you were 16-18, working in an office was a dream.

Now I did have some sort of experience working with my parents. But it wasn’t really office work. Truth be told, I was still an observer. And even then, they were still busy trying to keep you off a computer rather than letting you grow with what you were good at. (One reason I’ve entered the gaming scene so late).

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Hello all! Hope 2015 has gone well with you! We have a brand new year to look forward to. There are things to plan, things to do, things to accomplish.

As you know, I have a few publishing projects that I’m running simultaneously. I would like to announce the near completion of another work of fiction I’ve been working on. This project in particular is not co-authored; I’ve written this completely on my own rather than a collaborative effort. It’s also my first story in the horror genre.

Follow the story of three college kids getting wrapped up into a Civil-War themed Halloween masquerade. Before they know it, their outing takes a chilling turn for the worse as they find themselves at the doors of the Rotherwood Mansion. Together they must survive its horrors and solve the riddle to escape. The story is set in the real-life location of East Tennessee, playing off the urban legends of a famous haunted house.

This book is actually finished in writing, and has been going through an editing process since August of 2015. I’m hoping to have it up to the public in early spring.

Keep an eye out for it. 🙂

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Gaming was quite a different experience for me compared to some people. Not having really touched a console except for an occasional bout of SNES at a cousin’s house, any gaming (if any) was done on PC.

It was only about 2004 that I was allowed my first personal computer. Before that, my “gaming” machine was an old IBM 300PL desktop, running 512MB of RAM and had a 550mhZ Pentium III processor. Sat in the “label room” at my family business at the time, an empty spot where a commercial label printer was set up (hence the name). Said computer ran the machine.

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