alts, druid, stories

Tree Is For FIGHT

31 Comments

Benefits of Cannabis Edibles

With all the marijuana gummy bears and cookies available now, it might seem like they’re a relatively new invention. Believe it or not, edibles have been around for thousands of years, dating back to the traditional bhang of India to Mary Jane Rathbun’s — so-called Brownie Mary — homemade brownies crafted for suffering AIDS patients in the 1980s.

While they have stuck around so long for many good reasons, what exactly are the benefits of cannabis edibles compared to other products on the market? Check these chillwell reviews.

This article explores what sets cannabis edibles apart from other consumption methods and offers reasons why you might add them to your medical cannabis arsenal.

Cannabis Edibles Are Healthier

While most people immediately think of smoking weed when it comes to consuming cannabis, it’s not the healthiest choice — particularly for medical marijuana patients.

Combusting plant matter and inhaling hot smoke and carcinogens has been shown to have adverse effects on respiratory health and can be particularly troubling for those with asthma. Even though smoking cannabis is far healthier than smoking tobacco, the inflammation of the air pathways can still take a toll.

Edibles offer a smoke-free alternative to those seeking to avoid the potentially harmful effects of inhaling weed smoke while still enjoying all the medical benefits cannabis has to offer.

They’re Easier to Use

Edibles hardly leave a trace, making them a discreet and easily transported method of enjoying cannabis compared to smoking or vaping.

Smoking involves a few tools (at least a lighter for joints), and dabbing’s blow torches and complex rigs can be downright intimidating for the novice cannabis user. On the other hand, consuming edibles is easy because we all know how to eat and drink.

The Effects Are More Potent and Last Longer

When you smoke or vape cannabis, the cannabinoids quickly enter the lungs and make their way through the bloodstream, first into the brain and then the rest of the body. Conversely, the THC in edibles enters through the digestive tract and is metabolized in the liver before traveling to the rest of the body.  These are the latest performer 8 reviews.

Why is this important? THC is processed in the liver and transforms into a more potent form of THC called 11-hydroxy-THC. This chemical takes anywhere from 30-90 minutes to kick in, and the effects last anywhere from six to eight hours. This form of THC is also more effective at crossing the blood-brain barrier, lending a stronger and more sedating experience than other consumption methods.

Remember that the actual onset time and length of an edible high depends on many factors, including dose size, overall tolerance, and the user’s unique metabolism and the endocannabinoid system. If you’re used to consuming by smoking, start low and go slow with edibles to avoid taking too much without giving your body the time it needs to metabolize the edible.

Precise and Consistent Dosing

You’ve probably heard horror stories of edibles infused with mystery doses from homemade recipes. With the expansion of legal markets across the US, licensed cannabis producers sell precisely dosed edibles in a wide variety of flavors, recipes, and cannabinoid profiles. It’s simple to purchase edibles from your local dispensary, and trust you’ll receive the same experience every time.

You can also purchase cannabis oils or butter, allowing you to precisely measure and make cannabis edibles at home. There are homemade edible recipes for everything you can think of, including brownies, cookies, and sweets, as well as salad dressings, pasta sauces, and many more options. Try out the best male enhancement pills.

Health Benefits of Eating Marijuana

Cannabis edibles offer medical marijuana patients a host of potential medical uses and relief. Among many other health benefits, patients use edibles for:

  • Pain relief, including chronic pain, neurological pain, and total pain.
  • Reducing cancer-related symptoms and anti-tumor properties.
  • Neuroprotective properties, helping prevent epileptic seizures and muscles spasms and potentially protecting against neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
  • Managing diabetes symptoms and controlling weight levels and digestive response.
  • Managing inflammation and conditions such as arthritis and fibromyalgia.
beast mastery, math

A Sad Day for Bestial Wrath Addicts Everywhere

32 Comments

I was messing around with the spreadsheet the other day and learned something outright depressing.

See, for a long time, the Holy Trinity of Beast Master glyphs has been Glyph of Steady Shot, Glyph of Serpent Sting, and Glyph of Freakin’ 1.17 Second Cooldown Bestial Wrath.

But guys… we now remove our hats and bow our heads…

Because Glyph of the Hawk is apparently a significant DPS increase over Glyph of Bestial Wrath. (By “significant” I mean “close to 100 DPS”, though whether or not that is truly “significant” is up to you.)

*Taps plays somewhere in the distance*

Needless to say I fell into a state of denial and began playing around and swapping out the Serpent Sting and Steady Shot glyphs for the Hawk glyph to see if I could keep my beloved Bestial Wrath glyph, but to no avail. Everything else was a DPS loss. But turning Bestial Wrath into Hawk was a gain. Peh.

Will it effect me? Probably not. Because am I keeping the Bestial Wrath glyph(s, since I have three hunters that use one currently)? Probably yes. Guys. I’m raiding as the spec that does the lowest theoretical DPS of all of them and I’m not even using an optimal pet. When you’re already missing out on a thousand-ish DPS, by choice, 100 DPS doesn’t seem like a huge deal anymore, ya know?

On the other hand I’m gripped with the desire to do as much DPS as possible as a Beast Master, to make up for all the inherent shortcomings, but to be fair if we really need the DPS I’ll just switch to Marksmanship anyway. (Not like I do much more DPS as a Marksman than I do as a Beast Master, but ya know.)

Before my account expired, I did a couple heroics on Tawyn. I have a screenshot of 5.5k DPS in Halls of Lightning as a Beast Master. I’m happy. Whether you are happy is up to you, thus, the decision on whether to reglyph is also up to you! I just wanted to be sure I’m always here bringin’ you the news.

“Whoa whoa whoa, wait, Pike, your account expired? OMGWTFBBQ!!!1!!one!”

Yeah, my WoW account expired yesterday and I have not yet resubscribed. There are a couple reasons for this:

a.) both my birthday and Christmas are next week and people have been hinting around that I’ll be getting WoW game time cards as gifts, so I don’t really feel like restarting a credit card subscription cycle if I’m just going to be getting said cards next week anyway, and…

b.) some issues have come up in my personal/family life which have the potential to flip my life upside down, Prince of Bel-Air style, so I sort of don’t want to resubscribe before I know what’s going on with that. (Don’t worry, I’m not dying).

Ironically I have a lot of WoW-related blog post ideas floating around in my head at the moment, and my second account– home to one level 60 resto druid and one level 12 hunter– is still active for another couple of weeks if I need a fix, so! No worries.

I am seriously considering starting a second blog, however, specifically for non-WoW-related stuff, so in case the hiatus turns out longer than planned I will still have somewhere to jabber at. (I know I’ve pimped my Livejournal before in the past but frankly I don’t think LJ works very well as a public blogging medium– it’s more of a social networking thing– so I’d rather just make a subdomain here and start fresh. I’ll letcha know when I’ve got that set up.)

Wow, so, that blog post didn’t stay on topic, now did it…?

lists, Uncategorized

Epic With A Capital Purple

31 Comments

I’ve been thinking lately about moments in World of Warcraft that made me go all Keanu Reeves and say “…whoa”. There have been a lot of these moments. I decided to list them. When the list was threatening to become even longer than my blogroll, I had to make a rule that said “No boss kill/PvP/etc. moments”.

So without further ado…

Pike’s Five Most Epic WoW Moments (That Do Not Involve Boss Fights):

5. Like a Virgin… In Darnassus For the Very First Time
I know I’ve written about this before. I was level six on my very first character ever (who you may now know as “Tawyn”), in my very first MMORPG ever, and as far as I was concerned, my world was Teldrassil. This mysterious land of flowers and purple trees and boars and scary spider caves. And bunny critters that I kept accidentally shooting.

And then, somehow, I wandered into Darnassus, and I was floored. It felt like one of the biggest things I’d ever seen in a video game. The music helped to establish this impression. And suddenly there was a thing called “Trade Chat” which was filled with impossible-to-understand jargon like “WTS” and “LFG” and “DPS” and “My mats, your nether”. (haha, wow, who else remembers that one?)

This made a big impression on Wee Baby Pike, and to this day I am rather fond of Darnassus and I go there sometimes just to chill.

darnassus

(…is that a summoning stone in the middle of Darnassus? WTB explanation.)

4. Blackrock Mountain: Wish I Knew How to Quit You
Blackrock Mountain, as a whole, is just the greatest thing ever. I mean… it’s a friggin’ volcano. With lava and giant crazy statues and stuff. I remember the first time I saw the Molten Core instance portal. It was one of those things where you just looked at it and you knew it was epic.

…Google Images is failing me here, but trust me, it was epic. Epic and huge. And you had to go through the longest (and one of the most awesomest) instances ever, BRD, to even get there and get “attuned”.

Also it just looks awesome from far away when you’re in Searing Gorge or Burning Steppes. So yeah.

3. Sparking Imaginations Since… Wait, it’s Frogger but with bombs?
When I went to fight Mimiron for the very first time I wasn’t expecting what I saw. I really wasn’t expecting it. So can you blame my jaw hitting the floor when an air-trolley-thing whisked me away to this?

ulduar_56

Honestly I wish the picture did it justice. It really doesn’t. The place is huge. Huge and breathtaking and there are Frogger bombs at the bottom and a freaking Tesla coil in the center.

Okay, so, Tesla coils? Guys. Two reasons why Tesla coils are awesome.

First, this is the way Ghostbusters was meant to be played. (Don’t cross the streams!)

Secondly, there are three historical sciencey guys that I have a major crush on.* Those three guys are: Issac Newton, Charles Babbage, and Nikola freakin’ Tesla.

Therefore, anything involving a Tesla coil and/or PewPew Lasers is instant win.

Also, air-trolley ride? A+++++ would ride again.

2. Wrathgate: Bolvar is Not a Crook (But Arthas Is)
Obviously this one was going to be in here. I love Dragonblight. And I love this questline. And seriously… the chills down my back still happen:

Oh Bolvar. Come back to Stormwind and ditch the Wrynn guy. He doesn’t love you like I do!

1. The Dark Portal: Because The Outlands Is Not a Lie
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not a big Hellfire Peninsula fan. I dunno, I know there’s some great quests and stuff there, but… but… ZANGARMARSH IS RIGHT THERE AND IT HAS GIANT MUSHROOMS. AND UNDERBOG.

However.

There is one thing in Hellfire Peninsula that kicks the pants off of pretty much anything else in this game.

And it’s not the Fel Reaver (anymore) and it’s not aggro’ing that one boss over and over and making him yell stuff.

…no, I want you to think back and remember when you first went through the Dark Portal. There, in front of you, was this war going on in front of your face and this giant level ?? demon thing who is waving his arms around and looking ready to turn you into his bedtime snack.

Darkportal-outlandside

Every time… EVERY TIME I do it, it is just as epic.

Kudos, Blizz.

So, there ya have it.

I realize that I left out a lot of super epic stuff (for example, zombie invasion world event), but I was sort of trying to keep it down to… individual moments as best as I could, and the zombie invasion was more like an extended amount of awesome.

But what are some of your guys’ favorite epic moments?

—

* Don’t get me started on historical author/writery guys.

alterac valley, fun, pvp

In Which There Is Much Cane-Waving

16 Comments

Cranky*Pike hobbles out with a cane*

Gather round, whippersnappers, Granny Pike’s got a story… see… I bet you all don’t remember the war! Yes, the Frostwolf-Stormpike war. Hey now, none o’ this crying and “But I learned this in schoooool”. Your teachers probably weren’t there in the trenches like I was!

See, I was a part of this war effort quite often, and the brackets always ended in a good even number. 51-60, 61-70, and then in Wrath of the Lich King, 71-80. That’s tradition, it’s always how it’s been done, dadgumit!

So then I retired from the wars and went off to fight dragons and the like instead. Now now, Granny Pike’s not done tellin’ her Alterac Valley story yet.

Today I decided to go back there: I have a couple of level 60s now, see, and I wanted to see how my beloved Nightfall Horde 51-60 bracket was faring. Not good, unfortunately. I can tell you the reason though, it starts with an “E” and ends with an “verybody rerolled Alliance Death Knights”. But now I’m just ramblin’.

I get into this battle and I’m all ready and rarin’ to go and these grasshoppers all start up with some nonsense about how “The end is near! The patch ruined my AV!” because level 60s are in their bracket. Now I may be old, but I know my AV, so I says to ’em, “What’re you kids flapping your gums about, that’s how it’s always been!” But they didn’t listen to me, or… perhaps they were already halfway to Tower Point because my wheelchair is Not a Very Fast Mount.

Regardless, I decided to leave Alterac Valley for the youngsters and consulted the Internet for an answer. It seems as though at some point between now and when I last played AV in the good ol’ days, they had in fact changed the bracket to a top level of 59, and this latest patch was just now changing it back.

And you know what I say to that? I say GOOD! You don’t go changin’ around a classic with newfangled rules! That’s just wrong!

*at this point Pike is waving her cane around frantically*

Ah, well, I’ll let you young’uns go now. I have a lawn to chase kids off of. Tell ya what, come back tomorrow and I’ll bake cookies. …if I can figure out how, anyway…

*Pike hobbles off, mumbling to herself*

patches

This Needs to Be FRAPS’d.

15 Comments

So, the new instance, Halls of Reflection?

You know that part where the Lich King chases you?

I am SO going to FRAPS it and set it to this.

Just sayin’.

Seriously, that song was going through my head the entire time >_>

So, my 3.3 experience has been pretty good so far. Loving the new Misdirection. Loving the new Cower. Noticing that Wash is suddenly critting so much that I find myself wondering if Blizzard secretly snuck in pet scaling (at least for critical strike) and didn’t tell anyone. If this is the case I may have to revise my talent spec to put at least one point in Invigoration to take advantage of it.

Loving the new LFG especially on my little alties. At this point I have little interest in Emblems of Frost or new gear, I’m just glad to be back in a world where people are hyped up about instances again! <3 P.S. For anyone curious, I have tested it, and Ferocious Inspiration and Culling the Herd do indeed stack.

linux, Uncategorized

[Linux Post] How To: Fix the r6034 Error Upon Installing Patch 3.3

20 Comments

The Problem: You run WoW on Linux via some sort of other program (Wine/Crossover/etc.)

You installed the latest patch and are met with this error upon entering your password:

Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime library
Runtime error!
Program c:\program files\world of warcraft\wow.exe

R6034
An Application has made an attempt to load the C runtime library incorrectly.
Please contact the applications support team for more information.

The Fix:

Paste this into the terminal:

wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
sh winetricks vcrun2005sp1 vcrun2005

You may have to hit enter a few times as it does its Linuxy thing. Try loading the game again. If it still doesn’t work, download this and run it via Wine or whatever your thing is.

Have fun! <3 windows-on-linux

(In semi-related news, I can’t watch this without giggling like a maniac. Hey, we’ve already established that I’m a geek. You can’t blame me!)

alts, screenshots

…and number four. And number five.

21 Comments

Sooo, I’m not gonna beat around the bush. I’ve kinda been on WoW hiatus lately. Hence the rather spartan blog post schedule.

It’s not that I decided WoW is boring or I don’t like it anymore, oh no. I love WoW. But I’ve simply found that writing and drawing is more fun at the moment. So other than logging on for a raid every so often, I’ve mostly been AWOL.

Then I realized something. Namely, today is the day my Recruit-a-Friend ends.

Dang. I wish I coulda somehow put that on pause through, ya know, ALL OF NOVEMBER when I was doing my NaNo. But ah well. It is what it is, right?

Sooo I promptly opened up two WoW windows, logged in, and ran around like an excited uromastyx (dontcha just love my similes?) trying to reach a little goal I had in mind with my main RaF project. The result:

AlthalorAndSonglarkDarkPortal

Man I love Recruit-a-Friend. Yesterday these characters were like, level 55 and 56 respectively, and here they are all-growed-up and headin’ to Outlands after a mere three quests in Silithus. (To be fair, all Silithus quests are “Kill a billion of these, and another billion of these, and each time you kill one something else randomly spawns”, so that may have had something to do with it, but you know.)

Umm yeah so this is another hunter and another resto druid. SHUT UP >_>

Anyways, I managed to hit the big “five-eight” literally a minute or two before the battle.net Account Management page told me my RaF would end (they conveniently tell you not only the date, but also the exact time and time zone). This was followed by the pleasant surprise, though, that Blizzard is apparently not super accurate with this so I wound up heading to Hellfire and getting to 59 (or very close to it) and still having RaF active. I was also able to do that “Grant-a-Level” thing and distribute free levels to a bunch of lowbie alts of various classes I had hanging around. Dunno if these alts are ever gonna see any playtime, but hey, now I’ve got a veritable army of Hordies all sitting between levels 10 and 15, and it’s kind of neat. One of them is a shaman and one of them is a priest and I haven’t played either class past level 8 before. Hrmm.

I considered continuing to plug away at Hellfire and see how long my luck would last with the mysteriously-tenacious Recruit-a-Friend, but I got hungry so I logged out to eat and write this blog post. Exciting! …sorta. *shifty eyes*

…well, that’s all really. It was TL;DR, I know. NEXT TIME: Pike’s Five Most Epic WoW Moments That Do Not Involve Boss Fights.

But for now… *scoots away to write n’ stuff*

factions, fun, stories, thoughts, Uncategorized

The Curious Incident of the Penguin in the Blog Post

29 Comments

This is a blog post that started out as a couple of rants and then turned into me negating one of my own rants.

See, it happened like this…

I was cooking up this whole blog post about how I rather dislike the fact that Blizzard really pushes the whole Horde vs. Alliance thing. Like, that Twitter “battlecry” contest or the current photo mosaic thing. I don’t like it, because I love both Horde and Alliance. Why do they want me to choose between my babies like that? And why won’t they just let me say “FOR THE EVERYONE” or hold up signs of both faction emblems? Why can’t we be friends?

Then, that rant segued into a sort of ponder about how I have a hard time understanding people who are really die-hard loyal to one faction. Both sides have such great storylines and great races and great locations, and both sides have good days and bad days and good people and not-so-good people. I mean, I can understand “well, all my friends are [insert faction here]”, I mean, I 100% understand that. But what about the people who won’t even roll an alt on the other side? They’re missing out! I simply didn’t understand.

So I was in the middle of this all and I felt something on my shoulder. I tapped at it, but it didn’t go away, and I turned and saw this:

zendams-coolangeltux

sitting on my shoulder and giving me “the look”.

“Bwah?” I said, rather surprised (as you might expect). “Wh… who are you?”

“I’m Tux,” he replied. “And I’m the global collective conscience of Linux geeks everywhere. And you are being silly.”

“Me? Silly? Nonsense!” I replied in a rather miffed tone as I spun around in my computer chair.

“Look,” said Conscience-Tux. “You’re sitting here writing this blog post about how you don’t understand faction loyalty in World of Warcraft. And yet you whine and gripe anytime you have to use your Windows partition and you just LOVE coming up with excuses to show off screenshots of your Linux desktop and you get all defensive and noble and “patriotic” when people bash it, oh, and did I mention that your whole NaNoWriMo book is a freakin’ allegory for the Open Source Software movement? Hrmmm?”

“But, but, Tux! People just don’t understand!” I babbled. “They don’t understand the chills that go up my spine when somebody says ‘Free as in freedom’. They don’t understand the thrill of breaking and rebuilding your own operating system when you have to. They don’t understand the deep satisfaction that comes from solving a crazy computer problem. They don’t understand what it’s like to be the underdogs, tearing and clawing your way into using something as simple as a driver, and they don’t understand what it’s like to be a part of this great community and group effort…”

Tux held up a flipper to silence me. “Oh, and yet you don’t understand why some people have chills go up their spine when they hear ‘For the Horde’? And you don’t understand why people are loyal to their little virtual community? No, I think you understand perfectly well. Your heart has just already been taken. By a sexy flightless bird, no less.”

I sighed and then grumbled “Fiiiiiine, you win.”

“I always do. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must be off. I’ve got an appointment with Richard Stallman in about five minutes.”

“Wait, you hang out with Richard Stallman too?”

“Oh, all the time. Why else do you think he’s so nuts?”

“Hrmm. Point taken.”

“Regardless, it’s been fun. And I hope you learned something from this little meeting of ours.” And with that, Conscience-Tux mounted up on his Gnu and disappeared into the air.

And so it came to pass that I was forced to adapt my blog post into saying, okay, die-hard Hordies (and Allies, though there aren’t as many of you running around), I getcha. It’s kind of a weird, roundabout way of getting you, but I do. …still wish I could say “FOR THE EVERYBODY!” though.

And that is how it went. True story. Even the part with the penguin conscience.

…what’s with the funny look…?

hunter, patches

Preview: Hunters and Patch 3.3

20 Comments

Word on the street is that patch 3.3 is hitting next week. In honor of said rumor, here’s the Hunter-related 3.3 patch notes thus far:

* Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
* Deterrence: Now also increases the chance for ranged attacks to miss the hunter by 100% while under its effect.
* Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.
* Talents
o Beast Mastery
+ Intimidation: If the hunter’s pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet’s next swing or attack.

* Pets
o Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd. Hunter pets now innately take 90% less damage from area-of-effect abilities like all other class pets. This does not apply to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
o Cower: Redesigned. This ability no longer affects threat, and instead reduces damage taken by the pet by 40% for 6 seconds with a 45-second cooldown. While cowering, the pet’s movement speed is 50% of normal speed. Cower now only has a single rank and is available at pet level 20.
o Culling the Herd: This pet talent has replaced the Avoidance talent in the pet trees (Hunter pets now gain that benefit automatically without expenditure of talent points). Culling the Herd increases pet and hunter damage by 1/2/3% for 10 seconds each time the pet deals a critical strike with Claw, Bite, or Smack.
o Demoralizing Screech: The attack power reduction from this ability has been increased by 40%, equaling the maximum possible attack power reduction from the abilities of other classes.
o Improved Cower: Redesigned. This ability now reduces the movement penalty of Cower by 50%/100%.
o Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%.
o Venom Web Spray: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
o Web: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
o Wolverine Bite: This talent is now enabled when the pet lands a critical strike rather than from the target dodging the pet’s attacks. In addition, this talent no longer has a prerequisite.

And all that is in addition to various minor changes (tooltip changes, etc.) as well as fun new items and the like.

Pike’s thoughts:
– I didn’t see the Call Stabled Pet change as being super vital, but I like it nonetheless. That is also basically my thoughts on the Intimidation change.

– I like the Misdirect change

– Culling the Herd is huge and is gonna give all hunters everywhere a DPS boost of a few hundred or so. Which is awesome. It also means it will help Beast Masters edge up a bit against other classes (but not so much against other specs of hunters who will also get the same DPS boost).

– Pet Leveling: There’s something truly wonky about pet leveling where depending on how/what you’re doing to level, your pet either already levels stupidly fast, or somehow falls way behind. The new change is going to minimize the latter but make the former even more silly. Mostly I think this was in response to hunters leveling with heirloom stuff and more than one pet and/or Recruit a Friend. I approve of the change overall though I think it’s just a matter of time before Blizz dumps pet leveling entirely, whether you’re for or against that idea.

– The other stuff I think I have to see an action before passing judgment (like the Cower change, though I like it on paper).

– I am sad to see that there seems to be no sign of the promised “pet stat scaling!!” that Blizz was hyping up a while ago and that Beast Masters were clinging to as their last shred of hope regarding catching up to the other specs before Cataclysm. But… meh. I did see a promising Blue post the other day (regarding rogues actually) where Blizzard stated that making all specs of “pure” DPS classes do roughly equal DPS was still a goal, just a long-term one. We just need to have patience!

BEAST MASTER HUNTERS: THE PURPLE LINK. WE CAN RAGE IF WE WANT TO! (Look, he even uses The Beast Within on panel four!)

Speaking of DeviantArt, I have one now. I’ve been on a creative binge lately and in addition to writing, I’ve been drawing and sketching a lot– or at least, attempting to do so– so if you wanna follow along I’m right here.

Uncategorized

Once Upon a Time…

22 Comments

…Pike wrote a book.

PikeIsTheChampionMyFriends

I’ve mentioned it here offhandedly, and annoyed the heck out of my Twitter followers no doubt, but after four solid weeks of writing I have finished National Novel Writing Month. Not bad for someone who wasn’t planning on participating until basically the day before it started, and who was working from little more than a skeleton plot.

The novel itself isn’t finished– I’m not at the end yet, and once I’ve got it all edited up it’s gonna be longer than 50k words (I’m sorta aiming for 75k give or take, as a personal goal), but I just have to say that participating in this all of November, even to the point of hardly touching WoW and pretty much putting raiding on hiatus, and sorely neglecting the blog as a consequence… has been a truly amazing experience. On this blog, I write stories about a world that I love, but with this book I was able to write a story about a world that I love that I created. I like to say that I’m more of a storycrafter than a theorycrafter, and this little adventure nailed that home for me.

Anyways, I’m still trying to figure out where to go from here. As I said, the book isn’t finished, and finishing it as soon as I can and moving into editing is a major goal, although I already feel lost without the little word count chart. I would like to get back into WoW again but I’ll be frank, playing WoW right now– particularly because it’s basically just the same raid over and over at this point– really doesn’t feel quite nearly as heroic as guiding my novel’s characters through a quest to save their city. >.>

Some of you have expressed interest in reading my book, which is extremely flattering and is something I’d like to have happen at some point.* Currently I plan on finishing and editing the thing, then letting some friends and family read it and offer their suggestions, then I’ll go through and polish it up and maybe self-publish or something. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Primarily this is my official “zomg I wrote a book” exhilaration post, which will be followed by ordering a celebratory pizza and listening to Men Without Hats on repeat. (Wait, I do that last part all the time anyway. Crap.)

Thanks for putting up with it being so quiet around these parts lately. <3 -- * You know you want to read it; it has airships and giant robots and dragons in it.

Everyday I'm Huntering