Inspiration Through Music: Lisa: The Painful RPG

Some of you probably caught my Horror-FAVE Friday blog featuring Lisa: The Painful RPG and all the things about it that make it an outstanding game. I briefly touched on the music composed by the game’s creator, Austin Jorgensen, or as he prefers to call himself, Widdly 2 Diddly. There is a very eclectic mix of tunes in Lisa that call for more atmospheric, scene-setting pieces, as well as outright pumped up beats. Since the game contains a lot of RPG battles, there’s a fair amount of dubstep, hiphoppy, rap, and rock type pieces and even some that are a bit more undefinable. The premise of the game revolves around Brad, who is living in a post-apocalyptic land called Olathe with some of his childhood friends. All of the women and children of the world have vanished in something known as the Flash. Brad happens upon a baby girl who he names Buddy and takes it upon himself to raise her and protect her. When she’s taken from him, he vows to get her back using any means necessary. Thus begins his humorous, depressing, hopeful, and often depraved journey.

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Horror-FAVE Friday: Lisa: The Painful RPG

Imagine you live in a world where all of the women and children have ceased to exist, where the land is teeming with gangs of men, some depraved, some violent, others just trying to find a place to hide, and remember the world the way it used to be. This is the world of Olathe in Lisa: The Painful RPG, created by Dingaling Productions a.k.a. Austin Jorgensen. In the game, we follow the story of Brad Armstrong, a down on his luck ex-martial arts teacher who has survived in the post-apocalyptic land of Olathe alongside his childhood friends. One day, he comes across a baby lying on the ground, but not just any baby; a baby girl. Realizing the implications of finding the only girl left in their world (and trying to atone for a mournful event in his past that involves his loathsome father, Brad brings the girl home and raises her. Eventually, word gets out about Buddy (the girl’s name) and she is taken from Brad. He sets out to find her and therein begins the strange, beautiful, and often times, perverted story of his quest to find her.

Writer-Thoughts Thursday: Knowing When To Start Over

KNOWING WHEN TO START OVER…

Last night in an effort to sit down and finally make some headway with my current WIP, I plopped down in front of my word processor, brewed a nice pot of coffee, and opened up the story. It’s sitting at page 200 and in my mind, I’m about 2/3 of the way done with the novel. I had hopes of finishing it up by the middle of September and then allow it to sit so that I could come back with fresh eyes later. Except that I have now found myself stuck between a rock and a hard place with my protagonist. She’s injured, in confinement, and with very few (and I mean VERY few) options of escape. As I’ve plugged along, I’ve known that this was going to take lots and lots of revising and editing, that the story seemed off-kilter the way it was and could use tweaking. But I wanted to save it for when I’d actually completed the 2nd draft of the book. (The first draft was only fifty pages long and I’d decided to reinvent everything and start over).

Horror-FAIL Friday: My OLD Writing – Station Twelve Part 3

Horror-FAIL Friday’s My OLD Writing blog is a series which introduces stories I wrote when I was younger accompanied by realizations, comments, and general WTF observations that occur to me while I read these. Some of these stories I haven’t read in over ten years. The comments are provided in brackets within the text. I’ve also kept bad spelling and other grammatical errors so you have the full effect of how awful it was.

It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve posted anything on the Horror-FAIL Friday blog, so I wanted to get back into it this evening. We’ll be continuing with this awful story that I wrote in 7th grade about Jay, the secret agent, who is attempting to enjoy a skiing vacation in Vermont. Too bad Jay is having nightmares about somersaulting down the mountain like a total noob. He also brought along his gal pal, Alice, who seems to be way too enthusiastic about the whole affair. I’m also not entirely sure she knows he’s a secret agent. Let’s continue to follow their pathetic story, shall we?

DING DONG! The Witch is Bread Literary Cooking Adventure

Wake up, you sleepy-head! Rub your eyes! Get out of bed! Wake up; the Wicked Witch is BREAD!

That’s right. This week on Literary Cooking Adventures, we’re celebrating L. Frank Baum’s classic children’s book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by making some utterly impressive chocolate chunk zucchini bread! Yes, it is as beautiful and delicious as it sounds.

In this episode, I battle a rather bendy zucchini, a mandolin, converse with the furry cat munchkins, and straight up kill the Wicked Witch of the East. Boom. Dropped a couch on you, witch. Didn’t see that coming, did ya?!

I found the original recipe through Simple Bites. The recipe there is a little more in depth with making the bread whole wheat and using freshly ground spices. I cut corners where I felt I could and the zucchini bread still came out well and tasted amazing.

Interested in making this wonderful, magical zucchini bread for yourself? Follow the yellow brick road down to the instructions below.

Inspiration Through Music: City and Colour

So, this man is one of my favorite musicians. Ever. Ever since I discovered City and Colour a couple years ago, I’ve been playing his music non-stop. City and Colour is the recording name for ultra-talented musician Dallas Green who has had his hand in a few other projects as a singer-songwriter and guitarist. One of his more recent ventures is with singer-songwriter (and badass) P!nk with their duo, You + Me. City and Colour is a blend of soft pastel acoustic romance (“The Girl”), bright electric pop (“Thirst”), intense and fiery passion (“Woman”), and cool and dark folk (“Nowhere, Texas”). I’ve been listening to him a lot while working on the sequel to “Night Time, Dotted Line” as well as working on “The Wild Dark”. Both books, though vastly different, have been inspired in parts by City and Colour’s very diverse styling. I’m always a fan of someone who can and does branch out uniquely and successfully in their genre, someone who really tries not to write the same song over and over again. It’s the reason why City and Colour is one of my absolute favorites to listen to no matter what project I’m working on. Today, I’m going to share a few of City and Colour’s songs with you and write what I see when I listen to them. Enjoy!

Thigh Robot Literary Cooking Adventure

The three laws of robot cooking are as follows:
One: Do not spill water on self.
Two: Follow all instructions exactly.
Three: Do not cook more than two things at once unless it conflicts with law number 2.

I broke rule #3 back in May when I decided to do my Jurassic Park Cooking Adventure on the same day as my I, Robot Cooking Adventure.

It was later in the evening, the lighting wasn’t as good, my hair was crazy, and for some reason, I developed a lisp whenever trying to say anything with an ‘s’. However, the recipe for this Lemon Butter Chicken was pretty spectacular. It’s a little more involved than I had expected but in the end, it was a sight for sore eyes, especially after a full day of slaving over a hot stove.

I had meant to have a newly filmed Cooking Adventure up this week but unfortunately my schedule didn’t allow much time to film this past weekend. Fear not; I will have a few new ones up my sleeve for the coming weeks.

Interested in the recipe for this yummy winner chicken dinner? Shift and shuffle down the page to check it out. It’s made of stuff every robot (or human pretending to dance “the robot”) desires. The original and beautiful recipe is from Damn Delicious and yes, yes it was.

New England Authors Expo 2015 Recap

Just a short and sweet post about my latest appearance at the New England Authors Expo. The Expo happens annually at the Danversport Yacht Club in Danvers, MA. I attended last year and had a very fun time meeting other writers in my genre (as well as others) and exploring the town (and sometimes confusing roads) of Danvers. This year, the venue was a little different. There was a separate room set up as a sort of mini Comic-Con for horror, fantasy, and sci-fi authors to set up while the Ballroom upstairs was reserved for all other genres. While I managed to have a good afternoon and sold double of what I sold last year, the change in the venue and a little confusion about where the Garden Terrace was made it a little harder for patrons to find us. Be that as it may, the people I talked to were lots of fun and once again, I managed to meet several new faces and hopefully new friends in the New England writing world.

NE Authors Expo Recap coming tonight!

So, basically, last week was a bit crazy. And while I attempted to relax this weekend and take a short break, this was constantly recycling through my mind…

And my reaction was very akin to this…

Never-the-less, I feel guilty. It is a new week. I’ve relaxed and tonight I’ll have a blog up for the New England Authors Expo recap.

Until then,

KSilva