Day of the- wait, what?

Oh my god, that was awesome! Did you see it? the Day of the Doctor, 50th anniversary special!
Wait... you didn't? But... but then you can't read this... which means there's no point in me writing it... Damnation! I was so set to write all about doctor who, but now I feel bad about the idea of spoiling it all for you.
Okay, fine, I'll talk about something else.

For the first time since I started doing nanowrimo I'm struggling. I don't know what it is. Whether its because I'm working, because I'm just not that into it anymore, or because every so often I get sad and can't write for a couple of days I don't know, but the fact remains I am not doing great.
As of this moment I am 3500 words behind.
Several times now I've considered quitting, several times I've looked at the gaping maw that is my catch up number (yesterday it was 8000) and I've said 'No. No I'm not going to do it. I'm done. I'm going to go play batman.'
But then I stop and look at myself and keep writing, because this is what I want to do with myself. This is how I want to spend my life; writing stories and entertaining people.
Making them laugh, making them cry, making them think they know what's up only to have something completely different throw them for a loop.

It's my dream to be a writer - no, I'm already a writer. It's my dream to be an Author and it occurs to me that I'm holding myself back.
From now on I will focus, I'll have days off and I'll enjoy myself, but becoming a published author is what I want, it's who I am so I'm going to stop blocking myself off because I'm scared it might not happen.

Thank you for your support.
Doctor-Outtakes-tube
-James

That time of year

So it's that time of year again where events converge upon one another. Nanowrimo and Extra Life exploding onto the scenes at the beginning of November.

http://nanowrimo.org/

As anyone who's been reading this blog for a significant period of time can attest Nanowrimo is the month long writing experiment 'national novel writing month' where people attempt to write a 50k word story in a month. Last year I got to 75k, and this year i'm aiming for 100k. Last year I wrote a science fiction fantasy spy novel set in the far future of my Hunter books. this year I'm going to be a little more conservative and try and write the sequel to book one of Hunter.
This will start on the first of November and end on the thirtieth, meaning that if I want to get to 100k I have to write at least 3334 words a day or 23334 words a week, its a feat that will stretch me, especially while simultaneously working and living my life, but I hope to achieve it.
I would be very interested in comments from anyone else trying to do the nanowrimo challenge.



http://www.extra-life.org

Extra life (again as some of you may know from reading last year, or other places) is a yearly twenty-four hour gaming event to raise money for childrens hospitals. Last year was my first encounter with Extra Life, I played Borderlands 2, Audiosurf and sleeping dogs. This year I hope to play Grand Theft Auto Online for the entire length, to see just how far I can get in a single play through.
Anyone wanting to join me is welcome to do so, just comment below.
Anyone wanting to do their part and donate, click here: Donate!

Tubage
- James

Speaking without saying

So the new Doctor who lead character 'The Doctor' has been cast. You would think that that would be the main crux of my blog post today, however I'm going ot shut up and say nothing. Partly because we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what he's gonna be like. We don't know anything and it would be foolish to comment on something we don't know anything about. But also because I have a 30 minute podcast on it coming out on Wednesday.

I'm not sure what else to talk about today, that was really the big thing in geek news and I'm covering it later in the week. I could write a blog post about doctor who in general, or about the previous doctors and what Peter Capaldi has to live up to, but I think I've spoken enough in the past about doctor who and my fan-girlish love of it so I don't really feel I need to say anything. It's a huge role to fill and I hope that he does well.

I could talk about how excited I am to get the next Dresden Files audiobook next month, or how I'm reading the Desden Files comic book series and I'm finding it all ridiculously entertaining, but there's not much to say and I've pretty much already said it.

Again I could talk about what I've been doing to get published lately, but theres only so many times you can say 'I'm editing' and have it be interesting. I have had 4 rejection letters back so far, which is a good thing right? the more rejections I get the more likely I am to be published... no? that's not how it works? But... shit.
I did just have someone else read it and they were thoroughly entertained, hanging on every word from start to finish. Admittedly that person was my mother and she's a crime fiction nerd.

Really this post is just a post for the sake of posting isn't it? Well that's probably not a good thing.
Quick, I need a positive message... something people can say was worth reading... um... um... Sexism is bad? Screw it, that will do.

Talk to you on Wednesday!

Unskippable-Tubage
- James

P.S. How fun was that? I wrote 6 paragraphs and didn't say a thing!

Thirty-Two of Fifty-two

TV Shows

Doctor Who

So Doctor who is awesome. It's one of (if not the) longest running sci-fi having started in 1963 and still going strong today. It had a hiatus - a long one for sure - but there were books, comics, radio plays and films to fill in the gap.


At it's heart Doctor who is a story about exploration. A story about wonder. Really it's about children. About how every child in the world gets into the little box and it's something they didn't expect, be it a boat a car or a time travellign space ship. Every one of us, when we were kids and we were handed our first card board box by our parents, the seemingly impossibly old and impossibly smart people in our lives, it could take us practically anywhere, sometimes even places we didn't want to go.


Doctor who takes us to so many places that it's unbelievable - literally, you have to suspend your disbelief - and we love every minute of it.
One of the most interesting things about it is it's main character, the Doctor. It's been the same character for fifty years, but eleven different actors, all with their own uniqueness. It's not like Bond, where they say it's the same person and don't remark on their appearance changing, they make it a part of the story. when the doctor is too badly injured to go on he changes every cell in his body and comes back as a completely knew person, character and all. From the serious stuffy first doctor of William Hartnell and the clearly insane but often equally serious eleventh doctor played by Matt smith to the charming and 'just want to have fun' tenth doctor of David Tennant and the selflessly hopeful fifth doctor played by Peter Davidson, they were all so different.


Another thing that's great about the show is the companions. popping in and out throughout the Doctor's span are a myriad of companions to help him through his long life. He has time lords, humans and even tin dogs running around with him.
Some of them fall in love with him, some of them learn to hate him, and others are just his really good friends. and honestly the ones that are just his close friends are the best. I dont really remember everything from doctors one to eight but nine, ten and eleven are fresh in my mind, and of them the best two companions are Captain Jack Harkness and Donna Noble.


Go watch it and tell me I'm wrong.



Anyway, go watch it, it's great (Christopher Eccleson's doctor, the ninth, is a good starting point, its where the hiatus ended.) Plus, for all you American girls out there; English accents.


Two-David-Tennant-Doctors-and-ones-naked. More-fun-is-never-to-be-had.
- James


P.S. so I missed 1 post last week and I game a bit of money to charity on the way to work today.
P.P.S. All the mobile links to the podcast were dead so I replaced them with the mobile website instead of just the file.

Twenty-Five of Fifty-Two

Music

Chameleon Circuit

Music, weird right? Who knew there could be geeky music out there? Well, I guess anyone with two working brain cells could have guessed, but a band specifically devoted to Doctor who? Yes ok, I'm pretty late to this particular party but come on, how could they not make it onto this list?

Chameleon Circuit, incase you couldnt guess from the previous paragraph, are a band that exclusively plays songs about Doctor Who. The Band consists ofyoutube musicians Alex Day, Charlie McDonnell, Ed Blann, Liam Dryden and Michael Aranda (formerly Chris Beattie was a member but left in 2009).

Their music ranges in styles, theres some poppy stuff, some rocky stuff and some more original stuff in there. The music is entirely centred around the British show 'Doctor Who', however the specific subject varies often, sometimes they write songs about season finales, sometimes about specific aspects of the show (i.e. the Tardis has it's own song entitled 'Type 40') they even have a song about the history of Gallifrey.

The music is fun, energetic, well writen (having no knowledge of music I admit that might be a lie, but I like it and so do far too many teenage girls who probably don't watch doctor who so I think it's a safe bet that they aren't all bad... or so I hope.).

I recomend giving them a listen if your a doctor who fan or not. And if your not I recomend becoming one.

The-song-that-got-me-addicted
- James
P.S. A song I love that never made it into their albulm

Fourteen of Fifty Two

Characters

The Tenth Doctor

I've watched a lot of different doctors in my time. Chris Eccleson, Matt Smith, Paul McGann, I even remember some episodes of Peter Davidson and Tom Baker, but in my long time as an englishman watching this paragon of british television I've never seen a Doctor I've loved as much as the tenth, David Tennent's Doctor.

So far the actor with the most episodes as the Doctor (though smith is catching up and will overtake him next season) since it's re-boot in 2005, David Tennant's doctor has been a more relatable character than his pre-reboot incarnations. While still much larger than life, David Tennent's doctor isn't ridiculous. He's a sad, lonely old man with a genius intellect, a few quirky habits and a very strict moral code.
While Tennants successor seems perfectly happy to let people die so long as he doesn't have to actually do it himself, the tenth doctor always did whatever he could to save the lives of those around him, even his enemies.
Tennant offered one of his arch nemises, Davros, to come onto his ship to safety, even though he knew he'd just try to kill him later. Even after killing his daughter, the Doctor allowed the man who shot her to live in order to start the world off the way it was supposed to be.

Tennant's Doctor was compassionate, warm, friendly, curious and brilliantly intelligent. He loved and respected all life and when he got angry it was just a little bit scary. Not the shouty anger of Matt Smith's doctor, Tenent's anger was cold, calm and calculated. He knew exactly what he needed to do and his anger didn't slow him down.

David Tennant was my doctor. David Tennant was the human doctor.

Youtube video; Harvey Walbanger

-James
P.S. I must get back in the swing of this. this post was marvelously pathetic.

Eight of Fifty-Two

So I was going to do a comparison review of the two MMOs Star Wars: The Old Republic and The Secret World, since they both came out roughly the same time, and I've been playing them both, but since I've completed TOR with 2 characters and not yet completed the first TSW main quest line with a single character I decided to hold off until I have done a bit more with TSW.
Suffice to say I really like both of them and I've never max levelled a character in any other MMO Evar!

But since comparing them without completing one would be unfair I will throw another Of 52 in your face.

Character
Captain Jack Harkness

Captain Jack Harkness, the 51st century man, first appeared on our screens back in 2005 in the Doctor Who episode 'The Empty Child.
He started out as a con man, trying to trick members of a time agency into buying an alien war ship, but it backfired when the 'war ship' turned out to be an ambulance filled with nanites that were transforming the population into inhuman monstrous weapons, based on the profile of one dead little boy.
Jack brightened up the episode with a menagerie of one liners and sexually inexplicit innuendos that we hadn't been getting from Rose and the Ninth Doctor.
At the conclusion of the two-part episode Jack lost his space ship trying to do the right thing, teleporting a missile on board and flying away. He was saved from the explosion by the doctor, at which point Jack become one of the Doctors faithful companions... for three episodes, at which point he is killed by a Dalek, brought back to life for all eternity by a time-vortex-addled Rose Tyler and promptly left behind to use his time agent issue vortex manipulator to travel back to the mid-19th century, where he waited until the BBC gave him his own TV show, Torchwood, set in modern day Cardiff.
The Torchwood series wasn't amazing, but it had Jack in, which brightened it a lot. He's funny, sarcastic and just a little bit cheeky, he made the series watchable, and the finale of season two - his back story, go watch - was really good.

The main reason I liked Jack, however, wasn't that he was a fun interesting character, funny but at the same time very sad, very old and very, very human - though he was all those things, and it's hard not to love him for them - I liked Jack because of his time with the doctor. He was half as smart as the doctor (which is still considerable), he worked with the doctor like a friend and ally not some little girl that the doctor carried around to show off to, but despite his relative seniority he still showed the doctor respect, reverence.
It's also the reason I hate River song. They've written her as his equal, but she's not as smart, she isn't as interesting and she just doesn't respect him. "Only the doctor can save us, but still I'm going to insult him, put him down and make people laugh at his expense along the way!"
Jack was useful, when they stormed the control room of Satellite five the doctor didn't tell him what to do, he just did it, he was the one who figured out that the laser guns were teleports, not the doctor - don't get me wrong the doctor could have, but he had other things going on. My point is that if it was Rose or Martha, or Amy or Rory, hell even Donna who was my favourite full time companion that had gone up there with him they would have just stood next to him and watched, not gone off, found the TARDIS and figured it all out.

If you haven't watched Doctor Who season 1 and 3 or the first three seasons of Torchwood I implore you to do so, because you're missing out.
Even if you only watch the episodes with Jack in you'll be doing yourself a favour.

Ok... This video (submitted by my friend Rix) is weird. Funny, but weird
- James

So...

So when I finished my work I figured that I'd have more time to post, I figured I'd be able to post every day without any stress, but I find myself lacking in things to actually talk about. Sure I've still got the of 52 section, but otherwise it's pretty hard to find things to talk about without, you know, going places and doing things.
And when I go places and do things I dont post cos I was out and couldn't!

It's all very difficult.

Today I thought I'd share with you the above grumblings and a recently finished map of the fantasy Kingdom of Galledar's capital city, once known as the 'Central Counties' later re-named Xelaren, however I'm not an artist and have yet to had one drawn, so instead I'll , um...

See, I've been doing a lot of writing for my fantasy detective novel and neglecting my editing. I'm enjoying Hunter, which I suppose is the important thing while I'm not hearing anything from the publishers and my unofficial editor is still going through my first book.
Still, I feel bad, like I'm supposed to be doing something and not doing it. Yes, the editing is the second book and not technically that important until I get a publishing deal, but I would still like to get it properly done- especially when you consider that my editing is less 'editing' and more 'writing it'.

As I've gone through the second book I've found a lot of half finished sections, a lot of sactions that were finished but needed more (I re-wrote a 20 page battle into 70 pages) and still more sections that just didn't seem to make sense the way it ended up.
I already know of at least 5 chapters that will need re-writing, another couple that will need major edits and another 2 that I just haven't ever written. At the time it felt like I'd be better off if I just carried on rather than dwelling on it, but now I wonder if that wasn't a bad decision. The editing shouldn't be quite so daunting as it feels.

Regardless I've just reached a section of TLC that was not in the first draft, I added the chapter to make it flow better (originally there was one chapter and It sort of montaged through training for a month making him stronger and more capable, but i felt it didn't work. Now I've broken up the chapter, lengthened it and added chapters between the sections that show characters elsewhere in the world. It would have helped if I hadn't brought all but 1 of the P.O.V. characters into the same place.) I'm not sure what to put in this chapter, I just know that if I want the book to flow well it needs to be there.

I'm fine, it's fine, we'll be fine. I'm gonna take a break from TLC until I get back from Norway and then try to finish editing before November because we all know what happens then.
...
...
...
We do all know what happens then right?
November?
Nanowrimo...
N... National Novel Writing Month...

You'll see.
VIDEO-tube
- James