Author: Richard Parry

Breathing Life

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I remember playing video games back in the day. Sure, there were good experiences, lots of shinies — for the time — and new experiences to be uncovered.  One of those experiences was — excitement! — computers began to have the horsepower for decent sound.  Digitised voices, and then movies, made their way into video games. This was not good. Well, it wasn’t universally good.  You’d maybe get the intern on deck, doing God’s work at a developer, voicing a key role.  Or someone’s uncle, or child, or whatever.  These were the voices that started to get into games, and not all of it was sex and candy, you know?  As games got bigger, and turned into more robust products, we started to see some pretty impressive talent come to voice the stories we love.  Nolan North, of course.  His brother Read More …

Moar Evil

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I don’t think Night’s Fall has enough villains. So: today, I made some more.  I’m having fun with this, it’s not every day you get to exercise your supervillain fantasies. Book’s about 72,000 words long now, and I figure I’m … about 2/3 the way there.  Nothing like the last third being stocked with epic boss fights and witty dialogue.

Loot

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The slow decay of my physical form cannot be arrested by Earth technology. Usually this is an excellent opportunity to get some loot into my life; every birthday, I come up with a list of stuff to pad out my meagre earthly existence.  This year’s been funny though: with my recent bout of introspection and continuing evolution into intrisic vs. extrinsic rewards, I find that there’s little stuff I want.  Let’s not even get started on need. Don’t you worry.  I’ve risen to the challenge and come up with a few choice items, but what I’ve found is that the things I’m trending towards wanting are … less stuff.  The list of loot demands are trending towards things that provide experiences and nothing that looks like a consumer electronic or toy or widget. It reminds me a little of my Read More …

The Right Amount of Evil

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I’ve got a new villain. One of the tricks with making these damn things is they cutter up your mind, getting under your mental feet.  I don’t naturally think in evil ways — although I’m sure Hitler thought much the same thing — so trying to come up with vile, insideous things is not a natural act for me. Still, I’m getting with the programme. I spent today writing a scene with the villain of Night’s Fall, and it gets under my skin a little.  I hope you enjoy his end as much as I will.

I Forgive You

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I’m talking about you, Destiny. Taken King came out last night.  I’m now taking methamphetamines to be able to hit my life goals: Keep my job; Write a book; Play Destiny. Working okay so far! Also, I like Nolan North as the new Ghost.  Nothing against Dinklage, I mean he was good too — but it’s nice when you get awesome twice.

Introspection

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Having a honeymoon is awesome for many non-obvious reasons. One of those is having two weeks where, for the most part (those parts not engaged in vigorous activity) you do nothing but think.  I spent a lot of time thinking — about life, what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it.  Getting priorities straight. A curious thing occurred to me: my current job is kicking my ass.  It’s hard, it’s long, and this week is the first week I’ve not been on a fucking plane to a different city in over seven months.  I love the people I work with and the company I work for, but I feel jetlagged all the time.  Worse, I feel disconnected from the stuff that’s really important: my wife, my friends, our family.  So, working on changing that … I’ve started a dialogue inside the Read More …

Progress

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How goes progress on Night’s Fall? Well.  I guess we’re about half way?  Just thought I’d keep you updated — stuff is happening.  I’d like to get it done before Christmas, but I suspect that’s not a realistic goal, because my salaried work sucks my time out through my eyeballs.

You Are Probably Awesome

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People will lie to you. I caught up with an old work colleague and friend for a coffee yesterday.  She was in this situation where her work — where I used to work — is telling her a bunch of things.  Top of mind are: You are bad at your job, and Because of this, we’re going to demote you and pay you less money. Having worked for the very same place, and experiencing at least one of those things (constant negative feedback, which we’ll get to in a moment) and a partial on the other (due to contract, they couldn’t demote me, but they avoided raises when they were applied across rest of the team), I was a sympathetic ear.  I think I was also a useful ear, because I mentioned to her that: She is in fact good at Read More …

The Rock I’ve Been Under

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Ahem. You know when you’re meeting a friendly, and they ask you what has happened since April? So, that’s me. Turns out, things are kind of exciting from my end. I’m making good progress on Night’s Fall – it’s probably at about the 50% mark as of today.  And by 50%, I mean first draft, so don’t get too excited.  I know there’s a number of you — you know who you are — who keep asking me how that sequel is coming along. You might, therefore, be asking, “Richard, so.  Tell me.  Why no blog posts?”  It’s a little like this.  The new job is very exciting and has me working at a level that is rewarding, but it’s sucking free time out through my eyeballs.  Given a choice between blogging, and writing, I would rather write – it will give Read More …