...That's how I sell
both regular books and
ebooks off my site,
and setup other sites
as affiliates for me.
I’m proud to be sponsoring several events in Nanaimo, BC throughout November, and into December, for the international NaNoWriMo competition.
If you’re in the Nanaimo, BC area, please come out and join us for one of the events listed here, at Meetup.com.
We’d love to meet you!
I’ve recently started playing WOW for the first time, which makes me a pretty late bloomer as Gamers go. But it’s interesting what I’ve learned while playing.
For those of you not initiated, Warcraft is the world’s largest online game community, with roughly 11 million players worldwide. For a modest $15-ish dollars a month, you can create a fantasy character (or multiple characters) that allows you to run around a rather sophisticated world called Azeroth. With several continents and types of environments, Azeroth is a somewhat bronze-age style universe with an exciting array of weapons, magical people and places, and really great outfits. Players can interact with each other, even players that may live a great distance from you in the real world.
I’m still what’s considered a casual player. I play about 3-4 times a week for as much as a couple of hours at a time. If someone had asked me 6 months ago if I had a spare 6 hours a week, I would have laughed and stated a firm “no”. But since like most players, I typically log in sometime between 10pm and 4 am, it seems I’ve found the time.
I started playing as a sort of experiment, part of my self-challenge to try new things and test my brain’s ability to create new neuron pathways. I was surprised then I enjoyed it, and further surprised when I realized I was learning new things about myself as a writer and as a person, simply by playing the game. Such as…
I will never be a level 80 character. But, I’ve discovered I’m happy being a level 20. A person as competitive as myself should be anxious to ‘level up’, as they say. But really, the number next to my name is no longer important. I had no idea when I started now long it would take to become proficient at this game, because I had no previous gaming experience, and I had no idea how sophisticated gaming had become. Now, I see other level 1 characters standing in the street, their players presumably checking their maps or reading the manual, and I realize how much I’ve learned. But I know why I’m here – it’s to relax and enjoy the game, not the win or lose.
The little gauge that hovers over the head of my character tells me vital stats about myself and about others with whom I interact in the game. I need one of these in real life, but instead of how much life my character has left, it will rack up my calories consumed so far in a day. I need the secondary mana bar to track how much room I have left on my credit card. A little “duel” symbol will appear every time I’m wrestling my child into her school clothes, and a little “zzz” will appear anytime I’m tired and sit down for a quiet few minutes, so that no-one will bother me. Other people will have their names hover over their heads, so that I’m no longer embarrassed by not being able to remember names at networking events. In reality, I’m developing little tricks for myself to improve my self-organization and memory.
Sometimes, being aggressive and taking sides is OK. I’ve held back releasing a few essays and articles because I’m worried that my position on a less-popular side of the fence might not win friends and influence people. Instead, I now think it might be OK to be a little controversial, and not try to please everyone. Holding back makes for very boring blog posts.
Sometimes good and bad is not black and white. I have characters in both factions, and I play them approximately equally. They both have advantages and disadvantages. My primary Alliance (traditional good guys) character is a huntress, and my primary Horde (traditional bad guys) character is a Mage, which is a magician/priestess-type role. I’ve never encountered a character from either faction that didn’t play with honour. And being challenged to a duel by a massive and high-ranking Horde character is very flattering. Especially when it’s done politely. In my 3d world, I’m trying to be slower to judge, and to let myself be open to possibilities I had not previously considered.
I can’t believe who else plays this game. The genteel and very ladylike mother of one of my Authors surprised me by offering to help with a game problem that I posted on my FaceBook profile. Turns out she has multiple level 80 characters. Her son tells me, “Oh yeah – Mom’ll take you down.” Who knew?
The worst thing that can happen in WOW is that your character dies, usually by being killed by a non-player (automatic / game generated) character or beast that you’re supposedly out to kill. But really, all that happens is that you need to resurrect yourself, using magic or by running back to where your corpse is in the game. That’s it. For low-level characters, there isn’t even a penalty to be resurrected by the “graveyard spirit”. That’s it. You just keep playing. Often, you go back with greater knowledge of your enemy, and can then strike when he’s at his weakest, and win the challenge.
I’m an A-type personality, and a planner in my 3d life, and so I also am in-game. But, Azeroth is a large and complicated place. Sometimes I’m not where I think I am. Tracking my quests using a clear and simple system helps me stay on track for my goals. Since beginning to play, I’ve enlarged my white board in my office, and expanded my use of automatic self-organization tools and systems. It helps to be constantly checking my goals and my progress against them.
I’m not saying that playing online games is the solution to all things that ail, but so far, this experiment has been completely fascinating. I hope to continue this indefinitely, though, within certain rules, such as not playing before 8pm, and promising to never fling a frost spike at my husband if he challenges me to a duel.
Here’s the recipe for the carrot cake that I pictured on Twitter last week. So many of you have asked for this, so I’ll just post it here. What does this have to do with self-publishing, podcasting, writing, online marketing, or anything else that I write about? Once you taste it, you’ll understand.
With thanks to Joan Craven of Craven Communications, my very generous friend in Calgary.
Karrott’s Cake, originally from Enjoy: More Recipes from the Best of Bridge (the yellow one).
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup corn oil
3 eggs
1 + 1/2 cups flour
2 cups finely grated carrots (I actually put in closer to 3)
1/2 tsp salt
1 + 1/3 tsp baking soda (who wrote this crazy cookbook, anyway??!!??)
1 + 1/2 tsps cinnamon (I used the Poudre Douce from Victorian Epicure and put in a bit more than called for)
The “official” instructions:
Mix oil and sugar, beat well. Add eggs, one at a time and bet after each. Sift dry ingredients and add to egg mixture. Beat all together until well-blended. Fold in raw carrots. Bake one hour at 300~ in greased 9×13 pan.
What I actually did:
I wanted to set this up the night before so that I could throw it together in the AM, so I grated the carrots, and added them to a bowl with all of the other wet ingredients, excluding the sugar, which I put in the fridge overnight. I then put all the dry ingredients into a second bowl, and sifted them through a strainer as I added them. In the morning, I just added the dry to the wet, folded only as long as was necessary to get it wet, dumped it in a pyrex pan sprayed with pam, and went to take my morning shower. By the time I had dressed and made breakfast for our guests, it was time to remove it from the oven. I iced it with bought icing and nobody knew the difference. (Uh, well, at least they didn’t until now.)
Eat well = write well!
OK – this post has nothing to do with writing, publishing, eBooks, podcasting, social media, or marketing. But, this easy cake recipe is seriously good.
Years ago, my mother used to bake this cake every Easter. She would bake it in a pan shaped like a lamb, smother it in butter icing, and then pat coconut onto it to look like the lamb’s fur. My sister and I loved to pick off the jelly beans that she used for eyes, and my dad would eat the licorice nose. My mother recently gave me the pan, and now I use the pan to make “Kitty Cakes” for my own little girl.
This recipe exactly fills the lamb pan, which was designed to take a standard Betty Crocker cake mix. So, that must mean that this recipe will fit any of those specialty character or shaped pans put out by Wilton Cake products.
Jean’s Special Whipping Cream Cake
(Originally taken From Sphere Magazine March 1975)
1 cup chilled whipping cream
2 whole eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt- beat cream in chilled bowl until stiff
- in separate bowl, beat eggs and vanilla till light and fluffy
- fold egg mixture into cream
- fold in all remaining ingreds in turn
- pour into a greased bundt panBake at 350~ for 50-60 minutes. Cool cake in pan for 5 minutes, then invert onto wire rack to finish cooling.
To decorate a bundt-style cake, simply sprinkle w/ powdered sugar.
The beauty of this recipe is that it’s so good, you don’t need to ice it. I figure if I put the effort into a special homemade cake, I don’t have to bother with elaborate decorations. I have made this cake a lemon flavour by adding a tiny amount of artificial lemon flavour and yellow colour. It also tints nicely, because the cake is a nice clear white – not a yellow colour – so it can easily be made an attractive petal pink with just a dot of red food colour.
Have fun blowing out the candles!
