Slacking and Star Wars and Merry Christmas!

I've been slack this week in doing a blog post but I've been enjoying the Christmas holidays and taking a little break.  I also got into the early beta and then early release of Star Wars: The Old Republic and have spent way too much time playing it.  It is absolutely what Star War Galaxies should have been.  The writing is fantastic, the voice acting is great and every quest has at least one cutscene.  The graphics are beautiful and the gameplay seems mostly balanced but the jury is still out on that one.  Overall I think Bioware hit a homerun with it.  The best part is my family is playing and we are doing battles together!  Five out of six of us are playing.



I sent out copies of the manuscript to 4 alpha readers and have got one back with mostly good reviews.  I still need to work on Chapter One of all chapters.  I've worked and reworked that thing like an old upholstered chair.  I keep putting new material on the chair but somehow it doesn't work.  I've read in a few places to avoid a prologue but I think this story really needs one.  I've got critiques from multiple sources that the first chapter just doesn't provide enough background to understand what's going on at the beginning and without a lot of exposition I think a prologue will be the right answer.  I've plotted it out and I'm going to be working on it for the next couple of days.  I'll send it out and then make a few more hopefully minor revisions and it will be ready for Beta Readers!


Christmas eve is tomorrow and I still need to get a few more little items for my wife, but everything else is ready to go.  We are going to do a turkey this year.  That will be a first for us, we normally do ham or Norwegian meatballs.  We also have company at the house and it really makes the holiday special.  I hope you all have a Merry Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or whatever holiday you prefer.


Clear Ether!