Five, Five, Five Blogs in One!

I wrote this blog four times today. I knew for certain what I wanted to write and then I knew for certain that something else was more important / interesting / blog-worthy. Then I started filing blogs – save those for another day when I *should* blog but have nothing useful to say. How wrong is that? Like, how “worthy” are the blogs you read regularly? How “useful” are they? Aren’t blogs just supposed to be random, stream of conscious joy rides with a person you find mildly intriguing and/or bizarre?

So, instead of squirreling away my musings, here are four blogs summarized and condensed into fifty words or less and then a fifth blog, full length and blotted, about Marcia (hi, M!) my college roommate. Can’t wait to see what’s up with the M-Girl? Oh, baby, have I got a chip for you ;)

Holy Moly, Batgrrl! We’ve Got Prepped Decks
My publisher emailed. She wheeled and dealed. She threatened and charmed. She landed us a printer that will prep the decks. Watch out MTG. Here comes Mardi Gras!

Why Doesn’t “Gay Gamer” Mean Happy?
Why is it that when I post on a glbt forum I get pornographic PMs when all the glbt people I know are so freaking NOT like that? Why can’t one of my straight-laced, level-headed glbt friends run a glbt forum?

Flowers from Julie and Diane
“I don’t know how you feel, E.J., because I only have my mom and she’s never died. But I guess you’re feeling really bad and flowers won’t help. But my mom says we should send them anyway. I’m sorry your dad died.” Thank you, Julie.

Coffee with You
You drove twenty miles and pretended to need creamer. What I needed was your arms around me. To stand in silence. Rest my cheek against your hair. Thank you for always being exactly what you seem.

And now for the main attraction….

When Your College Roommate Comes Calling

Word is getting out. Friends of friends of friends are calling to offer their condolences. This is wearing on my mom. She says, “This is a never ending cycle. I am walking in to find him, still, again and again, over and over.” She cries silently, tears on her face unacknowledged, and unplugs the phone. She walks out of the kitchen and I know where she is going.

My father’s voice in my ear, “Take care of her.”

God, I love my mom.

She is so fierce. She is so lost. Her whole life was imagined in her mind before she was a teen ager. And then it went in a completely different direction. Sometimes, in the very early morning, I see her and she is still that girl. Not even quite a teen. Wondering. Wondering what happened.

My father said once to me, “I was your mother’s consolation prize.” I never knew what he meant really and I never asked. He loved her with every ounce of who he was. He never spoke a word against her. “She tries so hard,” he told me more than once when she and I butted heads.

I plugged the phone back in. I decided to take all the calls.

And they came.

And I said the same things, and told the same story, and it became me who walked in that morning with my father’s coffee. It was me who knew just by looking. It was me who set down the mug. Sat on the bed. And cried silently, endlessly. An hour going by. The silence thick in the room even as the house woke up with the sounds of breakfast and guests and family.

The mug sits on the dresser. The coffee is cold. I can’t take it away.

“I know what you’re feeling, E. I really do. Wow. I mean, my parents are still alive. Both of them. My dad is the one who called and told me. But I totally know what you must be going through right now.”

No, you don’t. You’re not even trying.

“So, are you still acting?”

Only right now. On the phone with you.

“It’s been so long. I can’t remember the last time we spoke.”

The day I found out you were ******* our drama professor.

“I always felt like you were so controlled. Like you had a secret. I wondered if maybe… you know?”

I don’t have any secrets, Marcia, because I’d be afraid some college roommate would blab them all over her pink MySpace blog.

“I’ve been following your blog when you write it. ‘Girl Geek.’ It’s really punky. You must have fun just going on like that.”

No comment. No, wait, I have one: When we were on the phone, I wish I’d had the presence of mind to tell you you’re an idiot.

“You must feel so betrayed. That’s what it’s like. But just because your dad died, he didn’t betray you, E.”

I know betrayal and I know Psychology 101. I took the same classes, Marcia. I wrote your damn paper on the stages of grief, which you seem to have forgotten. I know betrayal—intimately, socially, recently—and my father has nothing to do with it.

“And you’re angry. Of course. I mean, you’re hiding it, but you have anger in there.”

You’re right. I am angry. How’s this for showing it?

Do me a favor? Lose my number.

Grrr.

E.J.

Gaming for a Living

Posted on the Mardi Gras 3000 Forum athttp://www.mardigras3000.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=311#311
by my publisher Jennifer DiMarcoon
Thu Apr 12, 2007 12:31 am

>>Mardi Gras 3000 Employment

As Mardi Gras 3000 prepares for its national retail launch, we are organizing the project (and, by extension, E.J.’s career) and assigning managers. Managers will be hired from within our existing staff and from within the MG3K community. I’ve chosen to open this opportunity to the community here because it is of utmost importance to me that all managers be personally passionate about this first of E.J.’s games. I will not hire individuals driven by profit. We are an Equal Opportunity employer and I am blind to age and location as well. None of the positions need to be full-time and all of them can be handled remotely (you do not need to move to Washington State).

I’ll be accepting resumes and letters of intent through April 20, 2007. My decisions will be announced on April 23, 2007. Your resume should be tailored to why you are qualified for the position you desire. Your email should tell me specifically why you want the position, why you’ll be good at it, and how you will achieve the position’s goals. Some of the positions pay a set monthly stipend (marked #). Other positions pay a royalty based on sales (marked *).
The positions are:

*General Manager
All Angel games. Creation and implementation of marketing campaigns. Growth of the MG3K brand as well as introduction of supporting Angel brands.

#Production Manager
MG3K only. Design and layout of editions, packaging, displays, and all other support materials. Creation of materials required by other managers.

*CCG Manager
MG3K only. Creation and/organization of rules systems for Basic, Advanced and tournament play both online and offline. Creation and/organization of rules systems for boosters and other forthcoming products. Organization of tournament circuit. Officiating of rules and play variants. Creation of Player’s Handbook. Growth of player base.

*Online Manager
MG3K only. Design and implementation of an online versions of the game both Basic and Advanced. Design and implementation of mardigras3000.com and its subpages including but not limited to the On Tab Instant Store, Dance Floor, Gossip Booth, Expert’s Corner, Player Pages, and Rumble Room. Managing alliances with SecondLife and Kaneva. Funneling online orders to the correct channels. Management of subscriber database. Growth of subscriber base.

#Votary Manager
MG3K only. Admin to the forum and upkeep. Manage moderators. Design and implement campaigns to increase awareness of brand among teen and adult authors online and offline. Design and implement campaigns that specifically produce MG3K fiction. Manage authors of in-character blogs on Blogger and MySpace. Growth of forum membership and active author pool.

Any manager can envision and request materials from the Production Manager. The PM will clear all projects through me. I will supervise all managers. Managers will work directly with each other and E.J., as needed. Positions will be granted for a two month probation period and then reviewed. If progress has been successful, an annual employment contract will be issued.

Some of these positions are currently held by staff members. But these appointments are not official appointments. Staff should apply officially now. I will not roll positions over automatically. Open market hiring gives everyone the opportunity to really think about what they have to offer and what they want. As Gille Hawkins once send to me: “Security breeds complicacy.” I want only the best for MG3K and this is where it begins.

Thank you all for your time, your dedication and your interest.

Jennifer<<

Thank *you,* Jennifer, for being completely unwilling to give up. You march into the unknown with incredible courage and inspiration and I value that.

E.J.

Life and Death

My father, Poulon Angel, died on Easter morning. He was fifty-six.

There really aren't any words to describe how I feel so I suppose I still feel numb.

My father was my listening ear. He was the last and the gentlest to point out my mistakes. We would walk or drive for hours talking about religion, politics, love, fate. He was utterly unable to be judgmental of anyone. He never said a harsh, sarcastic or hurtful word. He was calm, especially when I was rattled. He never played the victim, never gave in to anger and never complained, even when being a dark-skinned, gentle man seemed to complicate his life. In his stillness, he never allowed my very intense, powerful mother to overpower him. They were equals and both of them knew it and celebrated it.

Without him, my mom and I sit now, sometimes for hours, and stare at each other. We don't know what to say. Sex? Boys? Girls? Dancing? Menstruation? Fear? I never talked to my mom about any of this. My father explained life to me with a certain careful matter of factness that never came with questions or platitudes. My mother was the one who threw my date out my bedroom window when I was sixteen.

I told my father once, "What if I never find a man as perfect as you are?" He laughed and said, "Then I suppose you'll have to find a woman." I always thought that was the most original response a father could give a daughter.

I will miss his dry sense of humor, his unwavering loyalty, his honesty and sincerity. I will miss our walks. I will miss our drives. I will miss that one person that never, no matter how wrong I was, found fault with me, or blamed me, or turned away from me.

I will miss him because he is my father but more so because he is my friend.

E.J.

Post 60

Do you like my original title? Since this is my sixtieth post, it fits, of course, but I was also going for that Hollywood/Pop TV feel--you know, "Studio 60" or just "300" or something. Like, maybe I should rename Mardi Gras 3000 to "3000" or "CCG #3000." I like that last idea because then it would be like I had 2999 other games.

Gotta tell you guys, if I had 2999 games, I might just take my royalty, you know? ;)

Work on the Second Generation of MG3K items won't begin until late April so right now I have a waiting time. It's actually really nice. Gille Hawkins has been named Managing Editor of MG3K Online and she's making (fast!) incredible changes to the system. She got a lot of feedback from the players (147 subscribers right now) and found numerous holes in our original expansion plans. One of the nice things about Gille: She a tech head that never makes you feel stupid. Gotta love that.

So...

What should I be doing now? I kept asking myself on Monday and Tuesday. I want to be fresh and positive when the MG3K work begins again. I want to be on the ball. I want to have crazy fast skills (that's what Jennifer told me I have to have). Solin said, "Do something else."

Ahh, yeah. Right. Something else. But what?

"Anything. But nothing about Mardi Gras 3000," she clarified.

Oh.

Hm.

Is that possible? I gave it a day. Today.

I have a new game. It's 9 PM. I started at 7 AM. And I have a new game. I'm breaking now to blog, eat chocolate, have a steak and some coffee, kiss my mom on the cheek, give Solin a hug, and retreat again to zip up a prototype on cardstock.

This... is... incredible. Baby, I am high. The kind of high that doesn't come from drugs or sex. The kind of high that lasts. The kind that makes you wanna pull a DiCaprio:

"I'm king of world!"

(Because "queen" of the world just doesn't cut it.)

E.J.

Hardcore Players

I know from my inbox that many of my blog subscribers are not MG3K players. Today’s blog is not for them. Here’s a little note for them (special): “Send chocolate.” ;)

For all of you MG3K players (which means you support me and my publisher by buying decks, cards, boards, etc.), this blog is all about the future of the game. The nitty gritty. The juice bits of news. So keep reading. You’ve earned an “in.” Oh. And, I love you more. So there.

Two weeks ago, the MG3K backer backed out for a sweet real estate deal. There has been some crummy stuff going on since then but nothing that held a candle to that. In the end, I’ll just have lots to whine out at www.FullofPigs.com on March 20 (you *know* I already ordered by hoodie). The truth of the matter is: Windstorm doesn’t usually fly with investors. Jennifer is a Virgo (control freak, fast thinker, smooth talker, smart cookie, tough as nails) and she pretty much doesn’t answer to anyone (except God). So losing Mr. Money wasn’t so much of a downer, I just would have appreciated a nice phone call from him instead of a cold email. But, hey, I’d rather have chocolate than flowers but who ever listens, right?

Because Mr. Money is all gone, Jennifer had to rethink what to do. I asked her (in my tiny, little girl voice) if she wanted to drop the game. She answered, “Don’t be an idiot and talk normally.” That snapped me out of it. She asked me to give her twenty-four hours to make a new game plan. One day later she called.

Here it is:

MG3K will grow over the next year to include a d20 rpg, a video game, a board game, an even better online version, an official, fully interactive website, and a card game (a one deck game, like Uno). Fiction feeds and published novels will be added to the line up. All of these supporting items will drive players toward the core game—the Mardi Gras 3000 Customizable/Collectable Card Game.

This is how Windstorm works: Create a body of supporting products around a core idea. It has kept them alive for 17+ years while dozens (literally) of other indie presses have folded. The plan for MG3K had been much simpler—publish the first wave of cards (the Limited Edition) and then, with the clout of Mr. Money and his money, pitch the game to a bigger, traditional game publisher. No way now.

I was honestly afraid that Jennifer would say, “I love you, sweetheart, but I’m a book publisher. I’m thirtysomething years old and I’ve been in this business 60 hours a week since I was sixteen. I don’t have any interest into morphing into a book and *game* press.” It’s an answered prayer that Jennifer sees every new hurdle as a new adventure. God bless her over-achiever soul.

None of the new MG3K items (with the exception of the online game—MG3K HSOL—which is now under the management of Gille Hawkins justonegrrlathotmaildotcom for more info) will launch until the Second Generation launches.

Second what?!

We’re now classifying products in the MG3K line in generations. Here's the definitions and when (and what) you should expect in the future:

First Generation products are what all of us have right now. A complete list is below. These products ship in 9 x 12 sheets. There have been three editions of the Starter Deck in the First Gen. The decks and boosters in the First Gen will sell out and then not be reprinted. The Challenge Boards, Standard Boards, Vinyl Board Cover, Boxes and Notebooks will stay in print in their current form. (Boxes will *not* be available through retail outlets.)

Second Generation products are what will be coming out in the summer of this year. This includes almost all of the First Gen products, repackaged with retail stores in mind. This means that the Starter Deck will be packaged smaller and will include a bound Player's Handbook. The dozen+ boosters will be grouped into "decks"—Terrapyre Expansion Deck, Celestial Expansion Deck, and the Universal Expansion Deck (inclusive cards). Expansion decks will come packaged with bound excerpts from MG3K fiction (cool!). Second Gen products will stay in print. See list way below. So, basically, the First Gen products will be boiled into concise decks.

Third Generation products will be packaged with retail stores in mind and will include all new products. This includes a series of Jump Boards, randomly packed boosters of Instants, themed Starter Decks, etc. A partial list of these products is way, way below.

I value Windstorm’s ability to be flexible. They are never rigid. They always seem to be able to morph and adapt. Don’t confuse this with weakness. Remember the adage of the best sword blade—it must have just the right amount of give.

FIRST GENERATION

Starter Decks
Starter Deck: First Edition (8x8: 76 cards and board)
Starter Deck: Second Edition (9 x 12: 110 cards)
Starter Deck: Third Edition (9x 12: 112 cards)

Celestial Boosters
Celestial Dreams Booster
Celestial Gold Booster
Celestial Royale Booster
Celestial Armor & Weapon Booster
Celestial Morph Booster
Celestial Flora Instant Card Booster
Celestial Single-Character Life Force Booster
Celestial Six-Character Life Force Booster

Terrapyre Boosters
Terrapyre MyPyre Booster
Terrapyre Visions Booster
Terrapyre Armor & Weapon Booster
Terrapyre's Companions Booster
Terrapyre Nightscape Booster
Terrapyre Prayers Instant Card Booster
Terrapyre Single-Character Life Force Booster
Terrapyre Six-Character Life Force Booster

Inclusive Boosters
Armor Booster
Skill Booster
Transportation Booster
Weapon Booster
Lair and Outpost Booster
Something Wicked Booster

Terrain Boosters
Terrain Booster: Road & Lava
Terrain Booster: Pines & Leaves
Terrain Booster: Snow
Terrain Booster: Rocks & Rubble
Terrain Booster: Grass, Soil & Swamp
Terrain Booster: Water Terrain & Bridge Instants
Terrain Booster: Water & Sand
Terrain Booster: Road & Oil
Terrain Booster: Roof Tops

Level Boosters
Level Combination Booster
Level One Booster
Level Two Booster
Level Three Booster
Level Four Booster
Level Five Booster
Level Six Booster

Expansions
Challenge Board: Brimstone
Challenge Board: Fast City

Boards
Clear Vinyl Board Cover
Purple Mist Board
Red Mist Board
Blue Mist Board
Green Mist Board
Pink Rays Board
Pink Graffiti Board

Boxes
Rock Trading Card Storage Box
Brick Trading Card Storage Box

Game Notebooks
Got Game? Game Notebook
Celestial Game Notebook
Terrapyre Game Notebook

SECOND GENERATION

Starter Deck: Fourth Edition
(5x7.5: 78 cards, player's handbook, and playing grid)

Celestial Expansion Deck
(5x7.5: 78 cards, bound excerpt from “Bloodlines”)
To include:
Celestial Dreams Character Booster
Celestial Gold Character Booster
Celestial Royale Character Booster
Celestial Armor & Weapon Booster
Celestial Morph Booster
Celestial Flora Instant Card Booster
Celestial Six-Character Life Force Booster

Terrapyre Expansion Deck
(5x7.5: 78 cards, bound excerpt from “Angelus”)
To include:
Terrapyre Edge Character Booster
Terrapyre Visions Character Booster
Terrapyre Armor & Weapon Booster
Terrapyre's Companions Booster
Terrapyre Nightscape Character Booster
Terrapyre Prayers Instant Card Booster
Terrapyre Six-Character Life Force Booster

Universal Expansion Deck
(5x7.5: 62 cards, bound excerpt from “TBA”)
To include:
Armor Booster
Skill Booster
Transportation Booster
Weapon Booster
Lair and Outpost Booster
Something Wicked Booster
Non-Player Character Booster
Prop Booster

Celestial Power Up Expansion Deck
(5x7.5: 180 cards)
To include:
Twelve Celestial Life Force Sets
Eighteen Level Card Sets

Terrapyre Power Up Expansion Deck
(5x7.5: 180 cards)
To include:
Twelve Terrapyre Life Force Sets
Eighteen Level Card Sets

Terrain Expansion Deck*
(5x7.5: TBA)
To include:
Road & Lava
Pines & Leaves
Snow
Rocks & Rubble
Grass, Soil & Swamp
Water Terrain & Bridge Instants
Water & Sand
Road & Oil
Roof Tops
4D Clover
Ice Tunnel & Snow
City Tunnel & Oil

*The Terrain Deck may be broken into several decks by theme.

THIRD GENERATION

Themed Starter Decks
TBA

Jump Boards
Junk Yard Dogs
Sewer Rats
Warehouse
Rumble!
Graveyard
Night Club
Arboretum

Challenge Boards
Deep Blue Sea Challenge Board
Space Station Challenge Board

Instant Boosters
Randomly packed groups of eight to twelve Instants. Booster type *may* be designated Terrapyre, Celestial and Universal... or they may not ;)

This is a lot of change and a lot of work, everyone. But I’m excited and hopeful and positive. Want to get more involved? Want to do layout, image selection, grouping, or...? Email me. I’m serious, okay?

E.J.

This Is Just to Say

I have finished
the cardamon
that was in
the cupboard

and which
you were probably
hiding
for guests

Forgive me
it was delicious
so wild
and so rich

in my
early morning
coffee
with your friend


E.J.

Tick Tock

Got a new pen today. So fine it allows me to write cursive when I’m printing, never picking up the pen, creating fine, interconnecting webs between each and every letter, word and line.

I am wasting breath to murmur that a keyboard will never replace this feeling, like another part of me, lost then found, the feeling of a new lover, companion, muse alight on my fingertips, resting in my hand. The possibilities are endless and she is beautiful.

There is a cup of coffee on my desk and a palette drying on the window seat. I last slept early Monday morning. I am thinking a lot. I am remembering.

I am wondering where you are.

I am glad you are near.

I am alone without you.

You are always within reach.

“If you stay so accessible you will never be respected.” Who told me that? It was in an email. A generic Hotmail account with a string of letters and numbers. I think it was spam. Randomly targeted cyber vomit.

If you could email Bill Gates or Donald Trump or George Bush and know that he’d read your message, what would you say?

It rained today, long and hard, and flooded my mind with thoughts of water. Bubble bathes, chi tea boiling, wet highways, drowning, baptism. I thought about the sterilization of humanity. The changing structure of everyday life.

I thought about falling in love. About spiritual responsibility. About whether or not the soul has memory before and beyond life here. I wondered why you once told me, filled with sorrow and in a dark car driving no where to see no one, that you didn’t believe in the soul.

I have more important things to do.

Like breathe. And sleep. Cook for a friend. Call my congressman.

And precisely because I have more important things to do, I will, instead, sit here and allow myself to be romanced by the simple, honest, satisfying movement of pen across paper. To be amazed by the truth that somewhere right now, in the darkness of this night, you are sleeping—or not—you who would do anything for me. You who seem God-sent. Because you see me fully and have turned me, like a marble, in your hand. I am just what I appear to be. I am who I say I am. I walk as I say I walk.

There is no luck. There is only Divine strategy.

Thank you. I love you.

I know.

E.J.

Ratbert

When I worked for a year as an intern for my now-publisher Windstorm Creative, one of the duties I pulled was "production." Imagine if you will the loud rumble of many giant machines, the scent of industrial adhesive and strong hydraulic lubricant. Imagine ear plugs and goggles, sweaty people crammed together and a break-neck pace. Now stop imagining and I'll tell you what it was really like:

I recently read on the B.G.D.F. (Board Game Designers Forum) that standard royalty is 5% on monies received. I get 15%. Actually, all Windstorm authors get 15%. Windstorm can do this because unlike what the drama-addicted idiots that run the supposed watchdog sites (read: sites where rejected authors get to complain and publicly get their mad on) insist, you don't have to have a freaking office in New York City to be a legit publisher. Founded in 1989, Windstorm didn't even have an office until 1999 and they've had regional and national bestsellers--books and games.

That office is beautiful but it's only 800 square feet. Literally surrounded--almost swallowed--by evergreens. Inside the ceiling towers at 20 feet and there's a cherry-wood catwalk across the back wall lined with books. The catwalk leads to storage on the left and the production room on the right. The central room is filled with soft, warm, auburn leather chairs and a couch around a heavy treasure chest-style table. A small green pellet stove warms the space... which includes two small white, silver spotted rabbits in a large enclosure. The room smells like pine and books and the antique typewriters that line another wall.

Go up the stairs to the catwalk and exit to the right. You're on a little landing now looking down the long production room. It's ten feet wide and twenty feet long. In houses a book binder the size of a small car, a general table, a hydraulic cutter with a 24 inch blade that 1.5 inch thick, a server, a laptop, and three massive printers. One person works in this room at a time. One person and one stereo. Cranked. The truth of the matter is, a shift on production is a cakewalk. A vacation. A dream come true job.

I can't tell you how many times, especially during my summer time there, that Jennifer (the *CEO* of the company!) flipped coin to see which one of us got to work production. Jennifer health isn't so good now, but back then she was in full-on boxing form and she's work for ten hours straight, bobbing to classic '80s and '90s rock and roll, in blue jeans and white tee, her braid bouncing against her back (when I watched her jealously from the landing). She still holds the records for the number of flawless books bound and trimmed in one day--602.

I was never so calm. I brought in a backpack full of CDs and wound up playing DJ for my ten hour shifts. I sang at the top of my lungs (because the machines *are* loud), played "drums" with metric rulers, and was known to time the cutter blade to the bass line.

One of my favorite things about the production room is that--day or night--the room is all windows and looks out on solid forest. Birch, pine, spruce, oaks. Raccoons. Deer. Bear. Greenmen. Jennifer's kids add to the wonderment because in the depth of these great woods is their homemade pirate ship play structure. Like little wild animals, those two play! "Argh!"

Production rules were very, very strict. You mess up a book? You pay for it at cost. Jennifer always said: "Work quickly and perfectly. I can do both; so can everyone else." She had no problems poking her head in and calling out, "Faster, E.J.! There's 500 more galleys waiting out here for you!"

Pinned to one of the windows, in the very bottom corner, was a "Dilbert" cartoon cut out from a newspaper. In it, Ratbert is sitting on the corner of a desk. The Pointy Haired Boss approaches. "In the short time you've worked in Quality Assurance, you've found a huge number of flaws in our prototype," says PHB to Ratbert. Ratbert smiles, "That's my job!"

PHB is furious, "You're destroying our schedule! We'll miss our deadlines. The entire project will fail and it's all your fault!"

"How is it my fault?" exclaims Ratbert.

PHB explains, "If a tree falls in the forest, and we've already sold the tree, does it have quality?"

"How many angels can dance on your head?" Ratbert counters.

This cartoon has been pasted to that window since the office was built in 1999. It shows so perfectly Windstorm's attitude: Print in small quantities, quickly and perfectly, because if, at any point, an error is found, it *will* be fixed. Jennifer would rather have a product delayed by months and have it be perfect, than have shoddy items with her company's name on them. Jennifer challenges us all to be Ratberts... and she's one mean Ratbert herself.

This year, she took it a step further. This year there will be an official Ratbert Award given to one staff member. To win it, you must not only catch a mistake but fix it. And *there* is the heart of my blog tonight :)

Jennifer calls it, "Errors without offers." This is the biggest sin at Windstorm. Find an error or problem but don't offer a realistic solution. At Windstorm, you not only have to be the perfect, positive, happy Ratbert but you also have to have the know-how, or know-who, to fix any problem you find. Oh! And you have to know the difference between a problem and a complaint. That was a big one for me. "A problem," Jennifer told me, through gritted teeth after realizing I'd wasted eight hours "fixing" something that, in truth, wasn't broken. "Is something that *more* than one person has."

I've been very lucky so have some pretty amazing Ratberts in my life. MG3K players and authors who find errors and fix them. Who point problems out politely and calmly and then talk with me about solutions, and offer of their time and knowledge. Gille, Launa, Chris, Lunah, Brianne, Cris, and, of course, Jennifer. "Mardi Gras 3000" is, after all, my *first* game. There is a learning curve. I'm far from perfect... no matter how good I look grooving to the music between the binder, the big silver file cabinets and the hydraulic cutter.

Thank you, Ratberts, for making my stomach drop every time I see an email from you. And I mean that in a good way... kind of ;)

E.J.

Gamer Grrl

When my publisher first asked me to create this blog, I wondered (aloud) what in the world I would write about. "Just write about your work day," I was told. "Testing die-rollers and new cards, trying out different sizes of packaging, reading countless articles by "industry professionals" who know pretty much nothing, nada, ziltch outside the cardboard box of the traditional, musty gaming industry that hit its ceiling so long ago that renaming "Park Place" makes the WSJ.

As all of you, my loyal, dedicated and tolerant readers know, I actually found quite a bit to talk about but little of it has had to do with the gaming industry and be, as a chick, in it. Mostly I write about what informs me, my games and my life as a designer. Mostly I try to talk with you as I would with a friend. Because, truth be told, not many friends will pay $16.99 plus shipping, plus boosters to hang with you. Most friends just ask for a freebie. Which makes all of you extra special... and worthy of more than thin, weak, pointless blogs about deciding whether or not the Starter Deck should ship with stack clips.

Okay. I know *some* of you want to hear about details like that but *most* of you don't. I mean, unless we're talking about the metallic green, pink and pink clips that are all shiny and punk and neo-black... then, really, how interesting can clips be? Unless, of course, they're holding up your twelve-card stack of Elijah and all her human companions and a bunch of modifiers and a Hummer. We can talk about *that* clip any time. It would be lavender. Duh.

Seriously, tonight I decided to write about gaming for once and for all. Specifically about the wonderland of Instants. Instant cards, in Mardi Gras 3000, make up the heart of Advanced Play. They elevate the game beyond the Basic Rules and shake everything up. According to how you play, hold, and stack your Instants makes and breaks your game.

Right now, on the market, are the first generation of Instants. Some Instants are only for Terrapyres. Some are only for Celestials. Some are inclusive (any character). The choices are pretty much balanced. But looming on the horizon is the second gen of Instants. A balance of all three types. What will they be? What will they do? How can they be powerful enough that players want to buy them but not so powerful that they are undefeatable?

Wait! Go back! First gen Instants. Are any of them useless? Any too strong? Do I see a recall or clarification in my future?

Baby, I need a bevy of writers in leather pants or Carnival masks telling me exactly what these elusive immortals need.

All during this brainstorming (which means while my brain storms around making a mess), I am haunted by the movement among the MG3K players: Luck or Learned? Some players say MG3K can be won on luck. Like, your four year old brother can whip your butt if he rolls high for movement and low for battle. Now this argument *almost* disappears in Advance Play but more on that later. Back to Basic Play...

So some complain about luck... after they've been unlucky a few times. And I worry, you know? I don't want the game to be all about luck. But now, about six months into the release of the game, I'm starting to get some very aggressive messages from "expert players." These are players who literally play several games a day. I mean, like they've played 1000 or 2000 games, seriously. Some of these players are undefeated. Does that mean they're very, very, very lucky?

Pip Anderson, winner of the "All Girls Tournament" (www.windstormcreative.com/angel/tournaments.htm) and a current front-runner in the March HSOL online tournament (www.mardigras3000.com), is undefeated and insists that this has to do with how you set the board and the paths you make and don't make for fast movement. She talks to me about finding the pathways in a preset boards, and looking for traps. She talks about how being aggressive is never a negative thing when you're playing a peer. She has a move for every possible die roll and every possibly moment. Good roll? Great. Bad roll? There are no bad rolls.

So...

Who do I ask about Instants? What kind of player do I cater to? Hardcore players like Pip? Casual players who feel that Instants remove/reduce the luck factor? Hm. These are questions that are fabulous to ponder with your ultra-cool mom and her childhood girlfriend over mocha ice cream. They are also perfect questions to impress a buff, closet-gamer red-head at a rave. But even though both these situation conversations (sit cons) are pleasant and fun, they don't answer the real question:

How am I going to create forty new Instants in thirty days?

Failure, darling, is not an option.

E.J.

Where Have You Been (All My Life)

It wasn’t supposed to be a date.

That said, when a certain kind of man (the kind that owns ten or eighty d20) sits across a small table from a certain kind of woman (the kind that knows what to do with ten or eighty d20), for ten hours, with nary a break, three pots of Turkish coffee, two six-packs of Coke, three pounds of beef jerky with cumin and a plate of hand-rolled dolmati with rice, yogurt and Greek olives, *things* might just happen.

Like long (in this case, one-sided) wistful gazes. Like leading questions. Like proposals of cohabitation.

But what if, like the song, you’re a grrl who just wants to have fun—and probably not the kind of fun that the song implies but rather the kind of fun that involves cards, dice and strategic thinking? What if your idea of fun is playing fourteen games of Mardi Gras 3000? What if, despite your penchant for raves and motorcycles, you don’t drug, drink or have casual sex?

I’ll tell you what, my friend: You get called a “geek” by a geek ;)

We weren’t alone on this “date,” of course. And this delightful, self-described “scrawny gamer guy” was a long-time family friend (though one I had never, personally, met before). We talked constantly while we played MG3K and he liked to pepper his sentences with phrases like, “seriously, anything I say that you like, just use it, take it, it’s yours—no credit to me, okay?” This kind of annoyed me and I told him so. He laughed and popped another Coke.

My mother, the forever elegant (and possibly immortal) Pahmela Angel, she of almost-undefeated Celestial fame, kept flitting in and out of the kitchen (where we were) on the cordless with Gamer Guy’s mom, no doubt. I never heard what she said but it was probably like this, “No, no, Doris, they don’t seem to be getting along in *that* way. Yes, I am starting to wonder if she even likes boys. I mean, she seems to like them well enough when she plays online games, you know? Yes, you’re right, maybe I should take her motorcycle away.”

That day and evening, as we played game after game, we talked about taking over the world with MG3K. Creating versions of MG3K in every single genre known to God and man and woman. Board game? Got it. Diceless, MTG-like play? Yep. Tabletop game with figures? All over it. Online Flash play? RPG OGL rules? Virtual world? Daily fiction feeds? Clothing lines? Jewelry? Virtual pets? Yes. You bet. Absolutely.

Nothing was fully fleshed out or even beyond white, skinny bones but it sure got me thinking BIG. And he only put his hand on my thigh once. For .0045 of a second. I have never heard a grown man say “Uncle!” so quickly.

The evening would actually have ended pretty well if it weren’t for my easel. Remember how I paint? Those nice commissions and stuff? Well, even when my parents decided to join me in Washington, I reminded them that the house was still *mine*--that means I can leave my stuff where I want it. And I want my easels kind of... well... everywhere.

Gamer Guy tripped. It was a twisted mess of skinny pine and, well, my skinny guest. We wound up at Harrison Hospital (in Silverdale because I like him more than to take him to HH Bremerton). From the screaming, Mom and I assumed it was broken but it was just a sprain (“Bad sprain!” I’m reminded, when I run this blog by Mr. Guy). What a night.

Oh. By the way. The final score was 10 to 4. My favor. Is that what they call “insult on top of injury”? ;)

E.J.

Gather No Moss

I used to be so laid back my parents thought I was on drugs. Okay. My father never thought I was on drugs but my mother wondered if I was an alien or adopted or somehow contained genes that had nothing to do with her.

My father ran a small, fine furniture store. First he worked under the owner--a huge man with a very white face and a very red nose--then he bought the business and worked under the wealthy people who bought his wares. I cannot count the times my parents would have heated discussions about that store--my mother insisting that my father did not deserve to be trod upon and my father repeated endlessly, "But the customer is always right, Pahmela."

My parents were not laid back (nor are they laid back now). They weren't reclined in anyway, actually. They were talkers and doers. They didn't roll with anything. Yes, like good Christians they accepted everything but they settled for nothing they could change with hard work. Even if it was an enormous amount of hard work. "God does for those who do for themselves," my mother was proud of coining, usually followed by, "Now, go (fill in the blank with anything near impossible), E.J.!"

I was the kid who got bullied at school and shrugged it off. The bullies would stop because my unaffected stare bothered them. I was the teen that dated casually, didn't really mind getting "dumped" or lied to. Hey. No big. A shrug. I diffused any high drama around me. No one ever told me to chill out... I was already carrying ice cubes.

With this ultra calm (hey! who said apathy?!) came an interesting bedfellow. I trusted people. Everyone. I was never suspicious. I was never hesitant. If I was invited to a party by a stranger (and you know I love to dance), I went. Alone. I never gave it a second thought. Want my cell number? Cool. Wanna meet up and go for burgers? Heck, why not?

What happened?

Life happened.

Those of you who know me now--through work or gaming or raving--know that I am so far from laid back I may have a steel rod tied to my spine. Yeah, I can still go dancing. I even still occasionally date--when I'm not buy dancing, or working, or painting--but the world looks differently to me now. It's still as exciting and delightfully dangerous and full of good and/or challenging surprises, but it's also full of ugly tidbits in the most unexpected places. These tidbits are never tasty and they always have teeth.

Who is to blame if a long time friend gives your phone number to a new friend who puts down her cell phone and a guys picks it up and gets your number and runs it through the reverse-directory and finds your house, where you live alone, without an alarm or a gun or a dog, and knocks on the door and introduces himself and you smile and he hits you and the next thing you know you're waking up on the floor and all your stupid valuables are intact but you aren't?

I believe that Camille Paglia would say I'm to blame. I've tried hard but I can't really disagree.

I start to see life through my mother's eyes. I start to see, yeah, you roll with it just the same (or you die) but you don't have to be *okay* with it. You don't have to just nod and shrug off every load of carpe diem that culture, fate, life, whatever throws at you. It is so freaking okay to get angry.

And you know what? If you think I'm only talking about women and rape and other issues like that, that have become so common they're powerless, toothless cliches (and that's the real danger, by the way), you're mistaken. I'm talking about so much more. I'm talking about the twentysomething man beaten down by his over-bearing girlfriend until not only is he completely emasculated but a nonhuman. I'm talking about the thirtysomething anyone working at a job that means nothing to them but bills getting paid with all hope and expectations tied entirely around what stranger wins another humiliating round in a reality TV show. I'm talking about the companymen and women who get a pink slip after forty years of service; the ignored and silenced parents of autistic children told again and again that their instincts are bogus because they aren't supported by the leading scientific research, and I'm talking about every other small, medium or large injustice that we've all told ourselves is okay, just part of life, not a big thing.

When is it okay to get angry?

Even Christ got angry.

My publisher has this cool Rabbit Atrium. A walk-in deal where you can check out these beautiful rabbits all running loose and very happy. Then some loose dog comes and kills them all. I told you all this tale before.

The State of Washington is taking the owner of the dog to court. Meanwhile, my publisher's mailbox is getting blown up and egged and tagged. Because *they* (my publisher) are the good people, right? They are the ones following the law. Paying their taxes. Playing by the rules. While their mail carrier and their neighbors say nasty things about them (to their faces and behind their backs). That kind of garbage wears on a good person. Heck, it wears on any person.

So what is the healthy way to get angry?

Don't tell me to mediate or connect with my inner infant or something. Talk to me about Christ flipping tables over and work me down from there. Talk to me about the sheer aggression I can channel into an eight- by twelve-foot canvas. Talk to me about taking back not the night (love the night) but my own darn life. Step off the road to no where and stop, sit your butt down, and ask yourself what is my impassioned path? What am I supposed to be doing? Who will it effect? How will I feel with myself when it's all done?

The rolling stone gathers no moss. Nothing clings to the rolling stone. It knows how to move forward. And it also knows how to find the right path, crush obstacles, remain insanely strong and listen to nothing that and no one who tells it to stop, slow down, that can't be done, there's just no way.

My bedtime prayer: Jesus, going into this month, when our financial backer for the project has pulled for a bigger fish, when sweet Jennifer has sworn her loyalty until the end, when my father is MIA, when the bills--mortgage, property tax, income tax--are looming, when detractors and naysayers bite at my supporters, let me roll on strong and sure, like a stone. Even if I move slowly, allow me to move. Allow my path to be clear.

With you... all of you... all things are possible.

E.J.

Do You Still Love Me?

Nervously, the twentysomething in the blue jeans and black combat boots steps out onto the dark stage. She never did sleep with a nightlight, but this stage is *dark.* She tucks in her white tee-shirt. Across the chest, in black typewriter print, the shirt reads "GamerGrrl" and now she wonders if she should have worn the black shirt with the words "For Their Own Redemption. To Save Their World." You just never know...

Suddenly, she's struck with a cold, bright light. That type of pale, white spotlight that they never use in theatre because it makes everyone look like a corpse (even brown grrls like this actress).

She clears her throat. Her voice is kind of deep like her mom's. (Should that be "like her dad's"?)

"There's no excuse," she begins, at first looking down. "Really there isn't." She's silent for a moment and then she frowns, shuffle-kicks one boot at nothing, and looks up, directly out over the darkness engulfing the rows and rows of chairs. "I was busy, yeah. I was swamped, sure. But you're right, I abandoned you. I left you hanging. I didn't tell you anything, you know? I just... well... disappeared into myself. Did my own thing."

Her hands come up out of the depths of her pockets and find their way to her hips. "No, I didn't get hooked up or have some fling or sink into a depression or some other asinine reason for ditching your fanbase and your friends. I just fell into my work and I didn't, you know, come out. For a while. For two months. And some extra days." Her eyes dart to the side for a moment. "Not that I was counting... or anything."

She looks down again. Then mumbles something. Then says it again more clearly, "I still don't have a Chia Pet."

And she walks off stage.

Only her very dear and loyal readers will know what the heck she's talking about.

"I'm back..."

E.J.

Respond to this or other posts in "Gamer Grrl in Small Doses" at:
http://www.mardigras3000.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2

Celebrity Isn’t Everything, Mrs. Angel

My mother comes home. I pour her a cup of black coffee with cinnamon and nutmeg, and perch on the back of the couch while she shakes rain out of her short, silky hair and shrugs out of her tailored leather jacket. She’s wearing chocolate brown slacks and a russet cashmere sweater.

Perched in my hole-ridden jeans and white tank top splattered with blue and green paint, it must amaze her that an elegant woman such as herself could ever have wound up with a ragamuffin daughter.

“Did dinner go well?” I ask her, as she takes her coffee and reaches out to tuck a black, stray strand of hair back into my braid.

“Not quite,” she answers, but she’s smiling at me. “I always love cooking for Jennifer and Cris. Helping out. But sometimes I tire of your fan club.”

I laugh. “Who?”

My mother shrugs and sits down on the couch, slipping off her boots and stretching her long legs (how did I wind up only 5’3”?!) along the cream-colored cushions. “Oh, a college student who wants an internship. Cris kept asking about his communication skills and he kept talking about Mardi Gras.”

“Guess that’s his answer,” I chuckle.

“Jennifer mentioned that I was your mother–obviously my singular claim to fame–”

“And your cooking, and beauty, and theological brilliance, and crazy skills as a CCG player, and—”

“I’ve already completed my Christmas shopping, darling. Your Wii is already wrapped.”

I zip it.

She continues, “He just had to know everything about you. What college. What degree. Your birthday. Your cell phone number—”

“Mom!”

“—What raves you’ve attended. What ferry you take. What color your motorcycle is.”

“Mom!!”

She winks at me. I glare.

She squeezes my hand gently. “Sweetheart, very few people under the age of forty, or outside the realm of celebrity, are going to understand your desire for privacy. Drawing a dozen or even a hundred authors and designers into Mardi Gras isn’t going to stop people from wanting to meet *you.*”

I narrow my eyes. “You didn’t...”

She smirks. “What?”

I groan and collapse along the back of the couch. I can just imagine her growing more and more annoyed by the would-be intern’s rapid fire questions I’ve forbidden her to answer until, finally, in desperation to save her sanity, she plays her only trump card. The picture of me in her wallet.

When I was four.

At Halloween.

Dressed as a teddy bear.

A...

Pink...

Teddy bear.

“Come on, sweetheart,” she stands and pats my head in a way that I know I’m right. “I’ll beat you at a few rounds of Mardi Gras.”

Insult on top of injury. She's one mean mother.

E.J.

Ticket to Fly

Standing, at midnight, at the window overlooking the ink black Puget Sound, I imagine I am you, a world away from America, I close my eyes and grow five inches taller, more than twenty years older.

You speak proudly of your home, built by you and your mother when you were eight. No electricity but running water, which was rare in the area. You speak confidently of your path in life, Shepherd Lauriat, an impassioned road that you walk with God. You speak gently of your love for my mother, unshaken, unbroken, a constant for almost half a century. You are without doubt, worry or shame. Your God has no room for shame.

Solin? If I buy your plane ticket, will you bring your God to America?

I’m not sure who is killing us faster: The foreign extremists who hate us for our “opulent liberalism” or the native extremists who feel the same way. One set of terrorists take our lives. The other set takes our God. Without God, we are desolate and alone.

In the spring of 2005, when the first crocuses pushed into the cold, fresh air, a friend of mine attempted suicide. He left a note behind for God. He grieved. He was so sorry. But he could no longer live a lie. Alone in the world, no family, no partner, few friends, he had devoted his time to scripture, to art, to writing. His God, seen only through a mirror darkly, was a God of shame. Of fighting every thought, impulse and emotion. And at twenty-one years old, after eight years of actively fighting himself, Jared had had enough of shame. It would be better, he thought, to end his life, than to disappoint his God.

You wouldn’t disappoint Solin’s God, Jared. It was Solin’s God who sent Jay and Mike, then strangers, twenty year old Mormons on their mission, to your door that day, to glimpse you through the window, break the glass and call 911. It was Solin’s God who blessed you with Jay, still in your life to this day, and for forever.

When you bow your head in prayer, He is already there; He has been waiting for you all day. And shame isn’t in His vocabulary.

Happy first anniversary, my friends. God bless.

E.J.

Musing on the Divine

From: Christian Bloggers
To: ejangel@windstormcreative.com
Cc: Christian Bloggers
Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2006 5:08 AM
Subject: Invitation to Join Christian Bloggers

Dear blog author:

We recently came across your site, ejangel.blogspot.com, while searching for fellow Christian bloggers.

A small group of us have started a new site called Christian Bloggers. Our prayer and intent is to bring Christians closer together, and make a positive contribution to the Internet community. While many of us have different "theologies," we all share one true savior.

Would you be interested in joining Christian Bloggers? Please take a few minutes to have a look at what we are trying to do, and if you are interested, there is a sign up page to get the ball rolling. We would greatly appreciate your support in this endeavor.

May God Bless you and your blogging efforts. We look forward to hearing from you.

Craig Cantin
Christian Bloggers
info@christian-bloggers.com
www.chritian-bloggers.com

Okay. I admit it. I almost deleted this message. The truth of the matter is, I thought it was spam at first glance... and at second glance.

I *want* to believe the best about people. I *want* to accept first and doubt only after cause. But, to be honest, in this day and age, that can be hard sometimes. A lot of times. I was about to delete the message as spam when I gave it another chance and a quick read. I found myself frowning and squinting my eyes. Hm. Christian, huh? What *kind* of Christian? I surfed on over to their website.

Interestingly enough, it wasn’t the site itself that really grabbed me. They’re new and their mission is admirable, but the thing that grabbed me were the ads. I know. Strange, right? Who really pays attention to those little text banners at the top of a webpage? Ads are just a necessary evil, right? But the three ads at the top of the site that night amazed me. One was for Christian outreach to teens. The other two were for GLBT Christian groups. Now the site is not a teen site or a GLBT site, but when they wrote in their email to me that they bring all "theologies” together, it obviously wasn’t lip service.

Once again, I find myself shaking my fist at mankind (and bowing my head for answers) over the corruption of God and Christianity as a whole by hate-mongering, hypocritical fanatics. Their God is not my God. I’m not even entirely certain that their God exists.

Admittedly, in terms of religion, I’m not much one for “hey, whatever works for you is cool.” I think there are a lot of spiritual paths that are hugely, massively detrimental to the mental health of the practitioners and, in some cases, even to the lives of nonbelievers, I’m pretty much all for deconstruction and recruitment. However, if someone tells me they’re down with turn the other cheek, righteous anger, impassioned path, and the ten commandants, I can abide.

That leaves a *lot* open. Wide open for individuals to talk *directly* to God. To ask him their own hard questions. To search themselves, with His guidance, for what is right for them, the world, their children.

And I’m not just talking about some great websites where GLBT Christians can feel at home. I have never brought questions of my own sexuality to God. I’m cool with my sexuality. But I have brought *my* hard questions to God. My hard questions might be someone else’s givens. Things that might seem petty to someone else. In the way that I think it’s ridiculous that if two women fall in love and stay together to raise a family in a safe, positive, monogamous relationship they’re going to hell.

I think about God quite a bit during these times. But I suppose my blog keeps turning to things Divine because of the season. My father will be in Armenia through New Year’s helping build homes in the town where my parents grew up. Usually, my family goes together to celebrate Christmas but my parents were concerned about travel safety. They went back and forth between who would go to help and who would stay. My mother, in particular, was torn. She waits all year to visit, I think. But in the end, through some reasoning that wasn’t shared with me, Dad went and Mom is stuck with me :)

Having the family split during this normally family-focused time has me thoughtful. It makes me wonder why loved ones so often wind up far part. It makes me wonder why the world is so big. Does God look down and say, “Why do my people scatter?” Or does He smile and say, “I made them such a big world. It certainly took them long enough to invent the telephone and the Internet so they could finally keep in touch!”

E.J.

Thankful to Forget

Excerpted from the “Mardi Gras 3000 Sourcebook” (which is a free download from www.windstormcreative.com/fandom/mg3ksb.htm):

“Though I’ve lived in America since I was four, I was born near Kapan, Armenia, and while I was a small child, my parents traveled quite a bit. My earliest memories aren’t of the anticipation of the night before Christmas or pony rides at a birthday party but of walking, on hot summer nights on cobblestone streets in Josefov, hand-in-hand with my father, or riding a massive roan-colored horse, my back to my mother’s chest, across what seemed an endless expanse of deep green plains spotted with snow-white stones. It never seemed like we had much money but we had family every where we went. Looking back on those times now, I understand why nothing has seemed to hold my interest for long until game design (which is in itself an “endless expanse”).

“Another early remembrance was of a great clock with many overlapping faces, brilliant colors, arcane symbols and multiple hands which, in my twenty-plus year old memory, seemed to move with incredible and erratic speed. Someone told me it was a “celestial” clock but it wasn’t one of my parents as they never could place where I would have seen such a marvel.

“The Mardi Gras 3000 Terrapyres were formed first in my mind when I began thinking about the MG3K universe and I knew that their opposing race needed to be as ethereal as Terrapyres are grounded. The other race needed to be mysterious, maybe even a little bit scary. I immediately thought of that clock and the word Celestial stuck. But I kept coming back to the clock. Where had I seen it? Who had been with me? Why didn’t my parents remember it? It really haunted me.

“Eventually, what human memory couldn’t supply me, the Internet did: Constructed in 1410 by the clockmaker Mikulas of Kadan in collaboration with Jan Ondrejuv, professor of mathematics and astronomy, the Astronomical Clock is part of the Old Town Hall building in Prague. A wonderful detail of the clock’s face became the image for one of the Celestials’ Outpost cards.”

I have seen these few paragraphs reprinted on no less than a dozen websites. I’m not sure why this glimpse into the flashpoint of the Celestials is so popular but I do know that inspiration can come at any time.

As children we see and hear so many things. What do we remember? My mother once shared with me a moment when I was very young (about two) when she was holding me on her lap and singing to me while we sat and looked out at the vastness of an unbroken sea. She started to cry, silently, tears running down her face and into my hair. She realized that this moment, which to her was so powerful and important, wouldn’t be remembered by her toddler daughter. I was too young.

And I don’t remember the actual event. I only remember being seventeen and her sharing the story with me. I remember the way her voice cracked and she looked away. I remember the image she painted in my mind with the unconditional love and the pure desire and sorrow in her voice.

Or maybe....

Maybe we remember everything. Maybe that day, in my mother’s arms, before the endless sea, on a shore far from home, in a country where we didn’t speak the language, maybe that moment shaped, indelibly, who I am today. Maybe feeling safe in her embrace, maybe knowing the beauty of her singing voice, left a mark not on my memory but on my person, my whole, my soul.

I’ve read that what occurs in the first five years of life shape everything of what a person will be. I’m not sure I believe that entirely as I’ve known so many people who faced such unspeakable hardships when they were very small yet have risen above and beyond that past (though perhaps they were strengthened by it). But what if we are formed by the events that come before we can hold them in our memory? What if, like lines of code, those unremembered moments build our program and create the algorithms that everything else, everything that comes later, that is remembered and achieved, is analyzed with and ruled by? What if who we are is made of not what we remember but what we have “forgotten”?

If you knew it was true, would you draw your infant son into your lap more often? Lay on your belly in the cold grass with your three-year-old and count the ants? Would you turn off the TV and gaze into your child’s eyes, memorize your moment together, even as that moment is making him the man he will grow to be?

The sweetest parts of my life, I suppose, are the parts I have forgotten. And I’d have it no other way.

E.J.

Oh, Heck...

I need to be careful what I blog. First I tell my secrets to the surfing world (instead of to a Chia Pet), then I scare a very loyal MG3K player! I will now post for the record: I do not swear.

At the end of my blog on 11/29, I joked about getting so mad about copyright infringement that I swear. Late last night, I got a very sincere and disappointed email from Julie C. in Los Angeles, California. Julie is an "avid MG3K player" and a "dedicated reader" of my blog, and she was dismayed to read that I swear.

Mind you, Julie, I don’t much mind others swearing, to be really honest, but I don’t myself. I have been known to say “freaking” (as in “This coffee is freaking incredible.”) and “flying fig” (as in “What in the flying fig were you thinking buying that plaid couch?”), but I’m just not a traditional swearing type of grrl. Sorry for my joke.

And, by the way, Julie, I’ve covered some kinda heavy-hitting stuff in my blog, especially for an eleven-year-old. Is your Mom cool with you tuning in? Whatever your answer, thanks for having the conviction to write me about the swearing issue. Keep sharing your opinions. I hear you.

E.J.

Saying Two Things at Once

I draw rain drops in silver Sharpie
Across my window
The glass is ice against my fingertips
my cheek
The world is quiet here
Until you call

Until you call
My world is quiet


I scrawled that bit of verse in the margins of a cluttered notebook page five years ago. I was writing about God. How when our minds our quiet, that's when He speaks to us. That's when we receive answers, courage, peace.

I often find myself seeking that quiet space to discover what I need. But I also come back to those lines when I find myself in love or involved in a passionate friendship or an intense project. There is a type of stillness in the world unless I'm with that other person or working on that project. But when engaged everything is motion, music, motivation. I become, just as when God speaks to me, fully alive.

Cris DiMarco, my publisher's Senior Editor, is also an author. Actually, that's a requirement at Windstorm (IDP's parent company) -- that all staff be published authors and/or published artists. Cool. Primarily, Cris writes science fiction and fantasy but a few years ago she published two volumes of erotica. Reviewers adored the books ("1001 Nights Exotica" and "1002 Nights Exotica") and they even got picked up by Book of the Month Club. The stories are smart and sexy, interesting, emotionally charged, and almost all of them are true. One of the collections even included a sweet, romantic story about expecting the birth of her first child. "Thinking person's erotica," wrote one reviewer. "As beautiful as they are steamy."

The stories all have unique twists. One of the few poems (selected by Cris but written by her partner) reads:

Obsession

I stared at you for days
intently
possessively.
You belonged to me.
You... you were already mine.
I stood at my window
saw the sunlight spotlight you
the spring wind set you trembling
rain turn you translucent.
I knew you were waiting for me
even when you knew nothing.

The day I made my move
there were others around.
I had my pick
but I wanted you.
You weren't perfect.
You had your scars.
But you were glorious,
your texture, your bearing, your life.

And you were not
as I had expected

beyond my reach.

Years before songs like "(You're) Beautiful" (with its nonsensical lyrics), I loved this poem of longing and desire. I loved it because I knew it could be speaking of so many people, things, ideas. In the back of each of Cris' erotica collections, there's this incredible section called "The Stories Behind the Stories" that provides backstory for each selection. You can imagine my delight when I read that Cris' partner had written that poem, in all sincerity, about... a leaf. An eighteen inch big leaf maple leaf.

I guess size does matter ;)

E.J.

P.S. The poem quoted above, written by Jennifer DiMarco, is part of a copyrighted work by Cris DiMarco called "1002 Nights Exotica" published by Windstorm Creative. I'm not a lazy punk. I took the time and asked permission to use it. I was granted permission by Mari Garcia, head of Windstorm's legal department. If you'd like to reprint the poem, then you need to email Ms. Garcia at mgarcia at windstormcreative dot com. Just finding a poem, image or story on the Internet doesn't place it in the public domain -- no matter what your buddies or your uncle or the dude at the computer store tell you. Don't be a punk, okay?And don't get me going on file-sharing, bootleg rare cards and copyright infringement. I'm already on probation with God (see yesterday's blog) and He hates it when I start swearing.

Proof that God Reads Blogs

11-25-06: I blog that it never snows here.

11-26-06: I wake up to three inches of winter wonderland.

Moral: Don’t blog smack about the weather. God doesn’t appreciate it.

E.J.

Drug Culture

I haven’t hidden my attitude about drugs and alcohol. I don’t drink. I don’t drug. Includes cigarettes. Doesn’t include coffee. But despite my strong feelings on the subject of substance abuse, in America especially “drug chic” is seen as a legitimate fashion statement. Street smart. Savvy to the underground. Able to make things happen, get things done. Good fighter. Persuasive hustler. Leather jacket, engineer boots, bling on the fingers, neck and ears. If you fit the bill, don’t be surprised when a stranger propositions you with a little sampler as you’re sitting at your favorite club sipping Cherry Coke with your mother-of-two, Christian publisher.

So this problem (not really a problem) cropped up on the MG3K forum (which is a happening place full of wit, banter and hard questions about gender, sex, war and religion... as well as hilarious escapisms like Chocolate Wolf Morphing). Where do you put your freaking cards when you aren’t playing?

Hardcore players keep their cards in the traditional plastic protective sheets (oh, yes, darlin’, they fit... I ain’t that stupid) while others, like little ole me, keep theirs in small index card boxes, separated with the nifty cardboard slips that come with those things. But whatever the solution, it isn’t provided in the Starter Deck. I got to thinking about that and I, well, didn’t like it.

Enter my publisher (again).

Me: Jennifer? Hey, here’s the deal: Sorry to hassle you in the middle of Thanksgiving and everything but I really want the Starter Deck to ship with a box.

Jennifer: The deck is packaged flat.

Me: Yay, I know. Is that going to be a problem?

Jennifer: Have you been drinking?

Me: Of course not! (Pause.) Can we do it?

Jennifer: Anthony (the MyPyre booster designer) designed a gable box to be sold separately. It’ll carry cards. It has a nice little handle.

Me: I don’t like gable boxes.

Jennifer: Why not?

Me: They remind me of Happy Meals.

Jennifer: When were you to tell me this?

Me: I just did.

Jennifer: (Pause.) Okay. If you don’t like gable boxes then what do you like?

Me: Coffee. Chocolate. Brown eyes. That little flowered number you wear to conventions—

Jennifer: E.J....

Me: I want two boxes. One box the shape of a perfect cube with a built in Kamon-ori lid that folds seamlessly. I want a stone pattern on this cube and it’ll be called a Rock. The second one is the size and shape of two Rocks side-by-side. This one is patterned like a brick. It can hold two stacks of cards. Same built in Kamon-ori lid. It’ll be called a Brick. One would be in the Starter Deck. Unassembled. Easy to slap together with just a bit of tape. Cool?

Jennifer: (Long pause.) You want me to create a box called a Brick?

Me: Uh-huh. A brick of cards.

Jennifer: A brick of cards. (Pause.) Like a brick of marijuana?

Me: But it’s a brick of cards.

(No answer.)

Me: Or a rock of cards.

(No answer.)

Me: Please?

Jennifer: I love it.

And so, working with a independent publisher willing to bend the rules, reshape culture and stir up trouble once again pays off. Watch out world.

E.J.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Wind? No problem. Snow? Barely ever. Earthquakes? Once every twenty years or so and just not that bad, you know? But rain? Well, about 100 inches a year. You’d think we’d be used to it. But we drive like idiots, sliding all over the place and into everything (including each other). Streets flood. Fill dirt turns into roiling mud and tumbles its way down hills and into houses. Oh, and our sunken broadband cables? They short circuit. Or become water-logged. Or whatever the heck it is that makes me lose Internet every single time we get any substantial rain!

When my Internet goes bye-bye I feel like I’m missing my favorite TV show. I feel like I’ve lost my cell phone and I’m missing calls. Lots of them.

I try to project, when I’m away from the MG3K forum, that I’m living an exciting life with multiple projects and twenty-hour days full of design work, marketing decisions and painting $2400 paintings on the side. But... in reality... I was just sitting at home waiting for the drowned rat workers to tear up my drive way and fix my freaking cables.

E.J.

P.S. OK, I did take the time to work on boosters, boxes and paintings... but, mostly, I just offered to the rats coffee. To make them work faster.

Temporary Insanity

Whow.

Do I need to buy a diary or what? Geez. If I drank I’d wonder what I was drinking when I blogged last night. Man. Should I get a cat or a Venus Fly Trap or something? Or maybe like a freaking Chia Pet to tell my naughty little secrets to. Gracious. I’m starting to feel like an unscripted (melo)drama on The CW or, worse yet, MTV.

OK. Today I will blog a little tamer, yes?

Topic? Uh. Well. Um. Oh yeah! Topic... Christmas cookies.

Hmm hmm. Golly gee. Aren’t Christmas cookies so tasty? Yum! I love mine with a mug of hot soy eggnog... with a few shots of espresso. Yes, sir-ee. Nothing like a great big plate of all-American, heavily frosted, amply sprinkled Christmas cookies. Good, decent, morally up-standing Christmas cookies. I could blog for years about them there Christmas cookies.

’Nuf said. Must now go and crawl into a hole.

E.J.

(P.S. Dear “BobbyB,” you have now won the “Best Darn Fan Mail” award. Quoth Mr. B in my inbox this morning: “Ms. Angel, We’re big fans of yours out here in Jersey. We love Mardi Gras 3000 and we especially love your “In the Rain” blog entry. Do you hear that sound? That is the sound of a cold shower running. For my wife.”)

In the Rain with You

I’m painting into the night. Passionate about a piece I’m doing for a friend far away. She asked me for a self-portrait but I’ve turned it on its ear, slice and dicing an 8 x 10, collaging in feather for wings.

I love twelve dollars easels. Cheap and spindly, they do the job, shuddering with each stroke and job of my brush. My sparring partners, they bend and weave like willows, taking my assaults with nerve; they’ve never dropped a canvas or gone down for the count.

There are four easels, twelve spindly legs, set up tonight, each painting in a different stage of assembly: some wet, some taped, others still pinned with blue prints. The windows are open. The room smells like pine trees, maple leaves, salt water and rain. The wood floor is cold beneath my feet. I started out in Levis, crew socks and a green flannel shirt, but it wasn’t long before I stripped down to black boxers and a white tank.

Around midnight, you braided my hair.

You asked to come watch me paint -- from primed canvas to art – and I found I couldn’t say “no.” Don’t think I ever would with you. You arrived without fanfare or words. Just a tired smile, your eyes set in dark circles.

I didn’t ask your prognosis. You’ve stumped Western doctors. They make up fairytales and write articles about your maladies. You are thinner.

I paint. You watch me as much as you watch my canvases. It reminds me of when we use to box. You unnerved me, your denim eyes, after-thought of a smile. Like you had a secret. Like you knew something about mortality that the rest of us had forgotten. I had such a crush on you.

Still do.

The wood floor is cold beneath my bare knees as I kneel down to add detail to rendered feathers. The rain is pounding on the sky lights, gusting in the windows. I groan and you laugh as the wind tumbles wet brushes off a stool, dabs of gray. blue, white, black, repeating across the floor.

You stand up from the window seat, the only closed window, and you take my hand. We’re almost of an age but your skin feels like rice paper, delicate and impossibly soft. You lead me outside onto the deck.

It is pitch black except for the rain drops reflecting, flashes of gold, the lights from inside. You raise your face to the rain and my heart rises to my throat.

You blink and smile. Paint is splattered across my face, arms and chest. You rub at a smudge of green on my shoulder, a close encounter with a tipping palette. “You’re so rough,” you half tease me.

I’m shaking my head “no” so hard that my untied braid is unweaving. “Not rough,” I insist. “Just bold.”

But I don’t kiss you.

In that perfect moment. In that heartbeat between rain drops and wind. I could have. But I didn’t.

But I should have.

E.J.

Virtual Friendship

Despite my addiction to clubbing, I’m actually not a very social person. (Why are you laughing, Micki?) I prefer to be alone even when I’m dating someone. I like to ride alone because I’ve never really gotten the hang of a rider (though, okay, it does have its advantages.. wink, wink) and I ride just to ride not to go someone. The speed and power is what I’m looking for. Riding a motorcycle through dark streets makes me feel like I’m part of the city. Like a living part of a complicated machine.

I like to paint alone. I went through my “I need a model” stage in college. It was, um, fun. But I got that wild streak out of my system. Now I want to alone with my palette, my canvas and my nifty little Lyra mp3 player. I want to fall into stroke and color.

Working on games is probably the only different arena. I like to chart it out alone but I really enjoy (okay, live for) hashing out ideas with other people interested in the idea. The Mardi Gras 3000 forum members have been amazing for this. I really do think that they find holes in ideas I never would have caught as well as enrich ideas and flesh them out. Think about it all: I talk to LoneLobos (Chris), AreaneCreator (Launa), Brianne (um, Brianne) and Alison at Night, Angelus, MasterDonny and everyone else and, off-line, they talk with their room mates, teachers, partners, parents, doctors, etc. and we wind up with a body of knowledge and ideas that is vast and varied. I know I’ve talked about this type of co-op idea building before, but I really do love it.

But there’s another aspect to these type of online “elantionships” (as Jennifer coined for me). I find that I’m more willing to write something very honest and maybe not too upbeat or even pretty to an online friend than I am to a pal sitting across the table from me. I am more willing to discuss a honest and perhaps embarrassing issue online. I’m more willing to confess an idea or feeling that might be silly. I’m more relaxed, more at ease, less defensive.

Now, Psychology class wasn’t that long ago and I know very well that the Internet provides a type of anonymity that a table and a cup of coffee just doesn’t allow. I understand that it is easier to post something on a blog or forum than to look someone in the eye and tell them. There is a safe detachment involved with an online community.

I don’t think one type of friendship should or can replace the other but I do think that online friendships are valid. An additional way for us to connect with each other. And I’m not talking about one-time wonder chat rooms. I’m talking about reoccurring forums or the like where members keep a single identity and relationships build day after day.

In the fifteen minutes it takes me to make a cup of coffee and a bagel, I can post two hundred words about space/time, cultural clash or the Ascension of Christ. I can get my brain juggling thoughts and ideas that will be flashpoints for the rest of my creative day. In fifteen minutes on the phone, I can say, “Hey. How are you? How was work?” and get a similarly limited response.

The world is changing. I can consider myself close friends with someone I’ve never met in person. Someone I’ve never spoken to on the phone. What someone looks like means very little to me. What (and how) they’re thinking means a lot more. I’m not a nomadic tribesman who needs to pick her companions according to physical brawn and mating prowess ;) Which is a darn good thing since online gender is always suspect!

E.J.

Eye of the Beholder

Lately my palette has pulled me away from my computer. I’ve been commissioned to do a set of paintings (gotta pay the bills, my friends) and my attention has been on the initial sketches, color selection and canvas size. I haven’t really painted much since I moved to the Pacific Northwest and only with these commissions was I finally prodded to find a decent local supplier of raw canvas and other consumables (I eat brushes).

After being spoiled by Windstorm for these past several months, being able to call the shots, it has been odd to have clients again. “The customer is always right” adage only goes so far when a customer commissions a piece of artwork but I do want clients to feel like they get the color tones, size and shape they want. Yes, ultimately, the image I create is from my mind and utilizes my style but it needs to be able to fit in the client’s living room, bedroom, etc.

It usually happens like this:

A person sees one of my pieces in a gallery or in someone’s home. My (old) email address is burned into the back of the frame. When someone writes me, it forwards to my new address.

The potential client writes and tells me what type of image they’re looking for (“forest scene,” “mountain landscape,” “portrait”) and I tell them whether or not I have something like that in my existing portfolio. I also discuss the difference between a print and an original.

If the client isn’t interested in anything in my portfolio and wants an original (almost always true), I tell them what my package and price includes, which is:

Written tutorial about how to find where in your house your painting will live.

Based on that placement, colors, tone, size and shape are then chosen. A written tutorial also guides this process.

Based on colors, size and shape, I offer a price, which is nonnegotiable. The painting will be unframed. 50% of the price is due up front, and 50% is due upon completion. All forms of payment are accepted.

Upon receipt of the first payment, sketches are created for the client (usually about ten). We discuss, in-depth, the sketches. Sometimes the client sends photos for me to work with. (I haven’t worked with “live” subjects since I was painting nudes back in college.)

I then purchase my supplies (canvas, frame, paints), stretch and prime my canvas and begin to paint. It usually takes me three to four days if I work for two four-hour stretches each day. Most of the time I wind up working much, much longer days and finishing sooner. I don’t like to leave a piece once I begin because I feel like when I come back everything can change – anything from temperature to consistency to more emotional aspects like my ability to clearly envision where I’m going and where I want to add more depth.

Losing myself painting is like going clubbing for me. The way I love to give everything over to music and movement is how I feel about letting everything fall away to the stroke of the brush. I don’t always feel that I’m in control of exactly what I paint (perhaps a better painter would be) and that adventure of faith is exciting and magical.

Interestingly, of the four pieces I’m doing write now (not at the same time), two are naturalist pieces (a combination of a child and a bird, and a blue moon rising), and two are religious pieces (the Rapture, and the Ascension). I’ve never done religious pieces before and these have real fascinating back stories. I began with the child/bird (now completed) and have only done sketches for the others. I’ll do the blue moon next (which uses paints and layered collage techniques) because I’m nervous about the others... excited but nervous. Neither of the religious pieces include Christ as I might see him. One is based on a dream the client had and another is based on photographs of the client’s son. I have butterflies just thinking about them.

It feels good to be painting again. I wasted a few pre-stretched canvases warming up. It was fun. Knowing the first few pieces would be garbage. Knowing that my father would snatch them for his own and proclaim them beautiful the way all good fathers do from the first finger painting on.

I liked over-hearing a new family friend say to my mother, “Pahmela, just to be honest, I see what E.J. is doing and I just don’t see what all the fuss is about. She isn’t really very good.”

My mother was silent and I couldn’t see her face from where I was (hiding) in the hallway. She could have gone on and on about how art is in the eye of the beholder. That what one person finds life-changing, another finds base. But eventually she only hummed and said, “Just wait, Tam. You’ll see.”

A week later I was done with my warm up and had begun a small piece for myself (my transition from warm ups to working for clients). Mom made a point to invite Tam for dinner. After flan for dessert, and a speedy clean up, I excused myself to paint. “Oh, show us what you’re doing now, darling,” mom demurred. “Now that you’re done warming up, sweetheart.”

By the end of the evening, the painting was done and tucked into the back of Tam’s Saab and I was two hundred dollars richer ;) I suppose I owe mom a cut off the top?

E.J.

Rant and Rave

A Mardi Gras 3000 Forum member ("Rune") introduced a "rant thread." This universal given for online forums, I came to learn a rant thread is a place to complain, to whine and to basically share with each other that life can suck for all of us at one time or another. We're never alone in temporary misery. Strangely, the rant thread is a lot of fun to read. I wish I were better at the ranting itself but, hey, we all have our limitations.

I do have something that has been bothering me. One of those things that I keep coming back to. Two years ago (oh, E.J., let it *go,* grrl!) I helped friends raise money, clothes and other every day items for a family we'd been told needed a little help. There was a baby monitor, shirts, pants, toys, books and two hundred dollars. The four care packages were huge and cost eighty dollars to ship. After many months (now two years), no card or call of thanks ever came.

Now, I'm one of those geeky chicks that actually listened in school and I know better than to expect a few care packages to soothe the sting of hard times. The emotional economics of poverty don't allow much room for positive expression. But I don't think apathy is the culprit this time.

I came to know through bizarre circumstances that the reason no card or call ever occurred is because the packages truly weren't appreciated. As a matter of fact, they were rifled through and then thrown out, the cash going completely unnoticed.

I drove from friend to friend gathering items for these care packages. I remember my publisher's kids donating toys they adored and my mechanic handing over an incredible flannel work coat. It was nice stuff, given with kindness. But it wasn't new. And because it wasn't new, it was seen as insulting.

What kind of world is that? Where is the intrinsic flaw in the human character that causes a family in need to throw out a board game because the shrink wrap is gone or a shirt with a button loose?

As a quintessential "starving artist" (which means I joyfully pinch my pennies and hustle my butt every month to pay my bills without getting a straight job) I have no problem buying shirt and jeans and coffee mugs, all thrice-used, for ten cents a piece at a thrift store. It allows me to support my coffee and flowers habit. Every time I set foot into St. Vinny's I'm benefiting from somebody else cleaning out their closet.

Sometimes I'm afraid in this throw away society that we've accidentally packed our common sense and our sense of humility off to the dump. Without ever even considering to recycle/reuse.

E.J.

Let the Game Continue

When you’re walking in the woods, in the dark, funny things can happen. You can walk into trees, you can fall in holes, you can trip over a raccoon. None of these things happened to me but only because I was very lucky.

The game space (the same central area of the property) includes a stream (very cold), a forty-foot embankment (pocked with mini-caves and woven with roots), and many, many copses of trees surrounding small patches of moss and wild grasses just big enough to swing a Gladius and just small enough to force fighters with longer swords to pull some blows.

To be honest, I have to confess that the main game space is lit in an eerie way. More than a hundred large flashlights are tucked into root systems and hanging from overhead boughs. The effect never ceases to impress me as spooky. The contrast of black shadows and white pools of light make for interesting moments.

Normally, there are five or six teams that group up, but today, with the special Mardi Gras 3000 theme, we have an incredible division – Terrapyres against Celestials all the way – with the scattered elves and spies aligning with the Celestials (I guess all the leather, piercings and studded belts scared the fantasy creatures away).

My once-a-year constant companion, tonight called Faith, has fallen into the role as leader, which works pretty well since in the “real world” she’s military. She used to keeping people organized, even our wild, hyped up team of twenty-six Terrapyres. The Celestials can climb and they’re really enjoying pegging us with stinging paintballs from treetop perches. They’ve also gained the embankment which we’re pretty sure they have the chest (and the Grail) up there.

Most the Terrapyres are armed with fists and swords (hardwood) with a few rubber-dart crossbows. There isn’t a paint gun among us and this is really proving to suck. But we’ve making our way toward the embankment now, taking on sentries as we go. There’s no “death” in our game. If you want to take someone out of the game you have to capture them. This is accomplished by managing to disarm a character and slip a felt bracelet over their wrist. The bracelet is attachment to a string. The string is attached to another bracelet which is worn by the captor. Captives can escape but often don’t. Over the years, captives have been nicknamed “pets.”

“Come along, my pet,” croons Marco, a willowy Terrapyre man, to his burly Celestial captive, their blue bracelets linked with a green string. The Celestial could easily pick Marco up and run into the woods with him, but unarmed, and surrounded by more than twenty Terrapyres, Mr. Ethereal has decided that getting group-tackled into the cold dark dirt just isn’t worth it. Three other Celestial pets agree and walk along without much trouble (except occasional grumbles and cryptic but hollow threats).

We face the embankment rises before us. We stop in the shadows. The Celestial pets start calling out to their companions telling them all our supposed weaknesses like our weapon count and which of us can’t dodge a paintball worth a fig. They neglect to give them a head count but knowing that our full game compliment is forty it shouldn’t be hard for the Celestials on the mound to figure it out.

We knock the pets down and sit on them. Silence.

Faith steps out of the shadows into the pool of light made by a dozen or so flashlights shining from above. She puts her hands on her hips. “Your friends are full of bluster, which isn’t surprising with the way you fools dress. We’ve taken out all your sentries. We’re armed with their guns. We live in this world and we’re used to pain so we have no problem with a frontal assault. Keep the coins. Just throw down the Grail and we’re gone.”

There’s utter silence then a huge commotion from the Celestials on the mound. They’re arguing among themselves and yelling various and contradicting things down to Faith.

“Crazy woman!”

“Don’t make us laugh!”

“Give her the damned Grail!”

“Bring it on, Pyre!”

Faith just stands there. Then, a quiet falls over the Celestials again. After a moment, the small Celestial I saw at the West entry point comes to the edge of the embankment. “We’ll give you the Grail, Terrapyre. We’ll keep the treasure,” she pauses and you can almost hear the smile in her smooth voice. “But you have to give us the gamer girl.”

This time it’s the Terrapyre turn to bust out with shouts from the shadows.

“Dream on!”

“No deal!”

“Out of line, freaks!”

Faith’s voice shouts over the others, “Not going to happen. We don’t—”

I step forward into the light. Faith turns to me. I strip off my biker jacket and push the left sleeve my cream-colored cable sweater up to the elbow, baring my wrist. “Whose getting a pet?” I smile as sweetly as I can.

There’s a very un-Celestial-like whoop from the embankment and masked creepies start swarming down, shouting their victory, throwing insults into the shadows behind me and Faith, paint guns and other weapons hanging limp at their waists or over their shoulders.

“Where the Grail?” Faith demands as they get closer to us and she steps in front of me.

“In good time,” says the Celestial leader with a smirk, already reaching for her captive bracelet. “In good—”

There’s a shout from the top of the embankment. Six Terrapyres have gained the summit by circling in from behind, just as Faith planned. Three of them are holding the chest high and another is clutching the Grail. There is laughter met with profanity.

“In His time, Celestial, not yours,” Faith smiles and sweeps the legs out from under the Celestial leader as I draw my sword and smack another back. The rest of our team rushes from the shadows and the Celestials are pinned against the slope as we fight, disarm, and find ourselves with an awful lot of pets.

Next year it will probably be back to dragons and elves and fey and spies, but this year the games were quite literally a dream come true.

Thank you, friends. And thank you, once again, to every one who has helped make Mardi Gras 3000 possible.

E.J.

Live! Tonight

Once a year, I join a long-time group of forty (forty including me) men and women for a night time live-gaming adventure. If you’ve never done one of these before, let me tell you, they're worth it. This particular group was formed in the late ’90s and banded together to buy a twenty acre parcel of utterly undevelopable land on the Olympic Peninsula (Washington State). We have a newsgroup that isn’t very active and a couple of us have unrelated blogs. Over the years a few (less than five) members have left the group and been replaced. All members equally pay the annual property taxes (less than $100 each) and pay into an annual “treasure trove” of $5000.

That’s the technical part. Here’s the kick-butt part:

Once a year, usually on Halloween, forty twentysomethings and thirtysomethings, leave the real world behind and come together in the pitch black icy night to achieve a goal. Players are fully in character from underwear to crossbows, and profiles (500 to 5000 words) of each character have been sent ahead of time through the newsgroup. Characters cross time and space. There are dwarfs, elves, World War I soldiers. There are werewolves, spies, aliens and even a dragon. Characters can change year to year but most of them remain the same. There are four entry points to the property and everyone is randomly assigned to one.

This year, at a spit before 10 PM on Halloween night, a Terrapyre roared up the badly overgrown dirt trail to the West entry point.

She killed her bike among a few others (beside a Soccer-mom type minivan and a few sedans). She climbed off her Kawasaki and lifted off her helmet, shaking long dark brown hair out over the shoulders of her black leather biker jacket with the bright white cross painted on the back. By the light of twenty or thirty oil-fueled torches, she knows she’s being watched. But the other adventurers starting at the West entry point aren’t necessarily her traveling campaigns. Some will be her enemies tonight.

Her black leather hightops replace her usual engineer boots. The Nikes are better for running and climbing as well as front kicks to the chest and leg sweeps. Black leather chaps over blue Levi jeans. Black leather gloves, fingerless, padded across the knuckles. With tangible excitement in her belly and her chest, she lifts her sheathed Roman-style 21 inch short sword (steel hilt, blade of fine black hardwood lacquered a million times) and slings it over her shoulder to hang at her waist, positioned for quick draw. Buckled to each thigh: four heavy rubber throwing knifes (steel core). Her skills as a kick boxer give her the advantage she needs against the plethora of board swords (34 to 42 inches) that will be wielded tonight.

She tries hard but can’t wipe away her smile.

The goal is clear. Find the Holy Grail (which happens to be in a hidden chest filled with five thousand golden Sacagaweas). The Holy Grail isn't the usual goal but a special one congratulating a long-time member of the troop. As she takes in the other West entry adventurers she sees some familiar elves and a spy, but mostly she sees Terrapyres. Punk. Goth. Rockers. Spiked hair. Lots of piercings. Way more attitude than should be legal.

“You ready, Baby?” asks one Terrapyre woman, dark brown skin, black hair in dreads. Perfect cleavage (brr!) cradling a gorgeous diamond cross. Her tell-tale blue eye liner gives away her namesake, Faith.

Hands are grasped. “You know it, Darling.” They’ve fought together before but never in these incarnations. They see each other only once a year but consider themselves best of friends.

Then, minutes before the 10 PM start time (tracked by the single pocket watch dangling from the West-most torch) an old, black, beat up SUV tears in. Everyone expects Terrapyres to pile out with hoorahs and high-fives. No deal. After a pregnant pause, five coifed Celestials waft out of the vehicle. They are ethereal. Their automatic Eclipse and Tippman paintball guns look like they’ll hurt.

A few of the gathered Terrapyres guffaw.

Mistake.

The smallest Celestial (maybe 5 foot, slender, dressed in deep purple, billowy pants, a long-sleeved indigo shirt, and a black mask slashed with red and gold held on by straps hidden by a real-life mass of fiery auburn hair) stares at the laughing Terrapyres. Then she/he lifts one hand and points at them, two fingers outstretched. Silently. The other Celestials turn and look. They nod.

It is ten o’clock. The game is on.

To be continued...

E.J.