THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Not much to report really.  Deadline is slowly approaching and, as always, we don’t seem to be in good shape.  Still, we’ll make it.  Like we usually do.

FAMILY

July 3rd was my little brother’s birthday.  He’s now 30 something or other, I don’t remember.  Didn’t actually manage to celebrate his birthday until Sunday.  Didn’t really see him till then either.  Saturday the 4th was fun. Especially for Munchkin.  We spent the day at a big party at an uncle’s house and Munchkin played and had fun like a crazy girl.  Dante spent a lot of time with me, although there was a long time when he finally realized that being with me was the dullest thing he could be doing and he went off to have some fun with his sister. Dancing is one of Munchkin’s passions and near the end of the night, she spent hours doing it.  Then the fireworks started at a school down the block. We all watched the fireworks from the backyard.  Dante sat on my lap and was wowed by them.  It was great. Munchkin almost cried after it was over because she wanted them to keep going.

The highlight for me was playing a game of Magic: The Gathering with some friends at the end of the night.  It was a good time because I think we really let the flavor of the game’s theme push our imaginations.  It was neat to pretend we were casting spells.  It was fun also because it was the first time they had played the game and they liked it. After they go used to the rules, when they pulled out cards they understood, they go very excited. It was neat to see the game start clicking with them.

WRITING

In other news, Alesha spent the weekend obsessively researching and writing another novel manuscript. She couldn’t stop writing.

We had gotten into a conversation about novels, and the fantasy genre that’s hitting it big right now, namely, the “Vampire Romance” genre.  The genre has been around for years and the guys on the Dragon Page Podcast where predicting the genre was going to be dead by the end of the year, and that was a year ago.  It has only gotten bigger (and a bit tired).  Alesha was wondering what the next big thing would be.  Obviously, it’s impossible to predict. I just told her that it would be “Wizard Romance” novels.  I’m thinking that people will start getting tired of vampires eventually and might be looking for something similar but just different enough (whether or not I’m right is a different story).  I was thinking of something more in the lines of Jim Butcher‘s Harry Dresden books (Dresden isn’t a “Wizard Romance” book though). It’s an urban Fantasy wizard book. I told her an idea I had about something under that genre that I was thinking of running as a role playing game but was too lazy to do the research for.  She liked the idea and started the research on the spot. By mid morning the next day, she had done enough research that she could start writing. By the end of the day she had an outline. While still researching, she had written up to chapter 2 by the end of the 4th of July.  She ran the outline through me on the way home on the 4th. I gave her my two cents and she’s still going strong on it.  We’ll see how it goes. I’ve read the first three pages of the story and the prose in it is far superior than the other manuscript she’s written.  She’s getting so much better, it’s amazing. This will be her third novel manuscript.

Since she’s done all the work, I think I can take all that work and run the role playing game now.  Mwaa ha haa!

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