All Hallow's Read and The End of a Different Story

For those of you not following along, All Hallow's Read is a tradition started by the amazing Neil Gaiman.  The premise is quite simple: The week of Hallowe'en or the night itself, you give someone a scary story.  It can be a book, a short story, or even just a story you tell them.  I think it's a wonderful idea, and I intend to celebrate this tradition, not only this year, but every year going forward.

Now, having only learned about it this year, I don't have a story of my own to give.  I have every intention of writing something in time for next year, you'll see it here on my blog when it's time.  This year however, I'm jumping right on Neil Gaiman's bandwagon and sharing his story.

You see, he's set up a charity fundraiser with Audible.com.  He's written and narrated a story called Click-Clack the Rattlebag which you can download for FREE by going to http://www.audible.com/ScareUs (or http://www.audible.co.uk/ScareUs if you're on the other side of the pond) and for every download money get's donated to a charity.

I've downloaded the story and it's fantastic.  It's only 10 minutes long, but in his magical way, Mr. Gaiman (can I call him Mr. Gaiman? It seems so presumptuous) has crafted something that actually gave me chills.  Simply put: Go get it!

As for my own writing, aside from going off on a tangent today and tracking down the Scrivener free trial, which I haven't yet started to use, I did actually get some writing done.

I put together a fairly strong chapter, and dropped a short bit of exposition, about three paragraphs, into an earlier chapter. I needed to fill in a small piece of mythology where it made sense to do so.  I may find somewhere better to put it, or a less expository method of weaving it into the story when I do my next editing pass, or the one after that, but it's good where it is for now.

I'm trying harder and harder to stop myself from going back and editing my previous chapters while I'm still not finished this revision.  Now that I'm onto the completely new rewrite of the Third Act I have to keep my writing hat on and leave the editing hat on its peg.  It's even more critical that I keep my forward momentum as I head into November and NaNoWriMo.

If you want to add me as a writing buddy, I'm using the username RedAntisocial, go right ahead put me on your list :)

On the personal side, I took another big step today.  The World of Warcraft account I've mentioned a few times was completely and officially cancelled today.  I haven't played since around March, only logging in once in a blue moon.  So today I logged in, handed off guild leadership to a trusted guild member who actually plays, and passed a bunch of gold and materials to my wife and the guild bank.  Then I signed out of the characters that I've spent so much time playing and closed the account.

I'm proud of doing that.  At the same time, I'm humbled a bit that such a simple and straightforward action made me proud.  I don't regret the time I spent playing the game.  I could have been writing, but at the same time, the people I played with are fantastic people.

We went through not only in-game stuff together, and the ups and downs of guild drama, but we went through real life stuff together too.  People getting together, getting married, having kids or people breaking up.  People going through the ups and downs of life, getting promotions and losing jobs.  Changing lifestyles and getting healthier, and in the case of one friend, losing a long battle with illness and passing away.

You can't go through all that with people, even if it is only their voice, or text, or photographs, and not feel connected to them.  It's a chapter of my life that's over, and I'm happy to have moved on, but I certainly don't regret it.  I hope I can keep in touch with as many of them as possible.  I've met very few of them in person, but I still consider many of them good friends.

If anyone reading my blog was in Dreamers on Alleria, thank you for the wonderful time.

- Grimm

P.S.  I definitely have a bad habit of double spacing after a period.  It's come to my attention multiple times that it IS a bad habit and I keep meaning to break it, but I haven't managed to yet.  Someday maybe.