There's a Game at the Print Shop

Above is the cover of Steal Away Jordan. I finished it yesterday, for the most part. I'm sure that after GenCon I'll get to work on the revisions and clarifications and the putting stuff in that I forgot. But for now, I have a very good looking GenCon edition. So now, in the next few weeks I'll finish up the Stone Baby Gameswebsite. Yay!

The sense of accomplishment I'm feeling right now is amazing. It's that same feeling I got when I handed in a research paper that I really got into when I was in college and in nursing school. The two I have in mind are my seminar paper for Medical Ethics in college and my research paper on the Nursing Considerations for the Patient with a Heroin Addiction. The presentation for Steal Away Jordan is much snazzier than those papers.

Best of all, the people who have read through it have given me great feedback, and I'm really pleased with how it came back. Yay again!

There's a Game in There Somewhere

I have this book on Nine Star Ki called The Ki: An Ancient Oracle for Modern Times. There are all these diagrams and worksheets to help you figure your Basic (aka Personal), Control (aka Character), and Tendency (aka Energetic) Numbers. Said worksheets remind me of character sheets! And the wheels start churning. Nine numbers, ten-sided dice (roll a 10, roll again). Flipping through the book, I just noticed there are actually "game sheets" where you figure out your relationship with other players--I mean relations, like family members, co-workers, lovers.

I've also been thinking about a game where time and characters shift in all directions according to the roll of the dice. Characters shift from player to player, time moves forward, backward, up and down. The whole premise is that there are endless points of view in one experience. After GenCon, I'll try to figure out a way to put Nine Star Ki and time and character shifting together to make another game.

I Brake for Living Things... Part 2

Salvador (aka "Sal) ca. 2004-July 19, 2007

Not even two weeks ago, James was hit by a car. Yesterday Sal cashed in his ninth life.

I had a really creepy dream last night where our late dog Kaya came into our bedroom and started licking Chris' and my faces. At first I was happy to see her and then I realized that she was there to take Sal. The details are sketchy now, but for some reason I cupped her face in my hands and it turned into this bloody fleshy mass that wouldn't go away. Yeah, it kinda looked like a placenta! I couldn't get it out of my hands. As the dream turned nightmare I did my "this is a dream and I can change what I want in it" trick. It didn't work. I got the lump of flesh off my hands, but couldn't make it go away. I woke up in a panic.

Kaya is truly living up to her role as a spiritual midwife through both death and life.

Coming soon from Stone Baby Games...

This is my draft cover for Steal Away Jordan. If Jupiter aligns with Mars then I should be totally done typing it all up by the end of next week and will commence with layout design. Jupiter probably won't align with Mars, and I'll be typing and doing layout design at the same time.

At some point there will also be a website, so bookmark Stone Baby Games now. Well, not now now, but soon now. There's nothing there yet. But there will be. Soon.

My mom left for Ghana yesterday (I didn't know she was going!!). She's going to bring me lots of fabric so I can play around with my new (to me) sewing machine. Speaking of fabric, Meg is doing this really cool thing for hardcover Dogs in the Vineyard books (and she used one of my character's dog coat--Sister Polly for a cover!)

I Brake for Living Things in the Road

Last week I saw a bear. That story will have to wait. I'm going to vent about the assholes who drive like maniacs on my street. In the three years that we've lived here, Chris has seen two dead cats, I've seen countless dead squirrels, we've both seen dead whistle pigs, Bea was hit by a car (she walked away with a few bumps and bruises), another child was hit by a car, Meg saw a car kill a chihuahua, and just today, someone hit our cat James with a car, and never bothered to stop.

James is okay. No broken bones, no internal bleeding, just a lacerated tongue and an enormous vet bill.

People use our street as a short cut to larger roads, and they act like they're on the fucking Autobahn, or they're being chased by a car eating monster, or something ridiculous like that. There's no excuse. The speed limit on our street is 20 mph. If you want to drive faster, don't drive down the side streets of small towns like ours! It's that easy. I'm inclined to sit on my porch and start throwing eggs or kombucha SCOBY's (because they have a mysterious flesh feel to them and I think that would get some one's attention) at the speed demons who pass, but that would probably get me in trouble. I've tried yelling at people to stop, and it only works for maybe 25% or the cars. I've thought about making pleasant and colorful signs that say things like "Welcome to our neighborhood", and "please drive slowly [you stupid asshole]", and "we love our children and pets and don't want their brains splattered on your windshield", and "If you hit one of our children or pets we will take your ass to court and sue you". I'm not confident those signs work. I might just start taking down license plate numbers and calling them in to the police. Actually, nagging the police is a common practice on our street. Not all of our neighbors are neighborly.

At any rate, if you live in Greenfield, and you drive down the side streets, beware. If I catch you speeding on my street it will not be pleasant.

I'm afraid that one of these days I might have to go to Bea and tell her that someone ran over her beloved cat. It was sad enough to tell her that we had to take James to the vet and we didn't know how badly she was hurt. She immediately burst into tears. It was heartbreaking.* So to the person who hit our cat and never stopped, fuck you, and consider yourself hexed.

*You may ask why do we let our cats outside. If we don't, they piss all over the house. They were indoor cats for two years.