What Am I…?

It’s been a while since I shared what I’ve been playing/watching/doing/etc, so I thought I’d take a moment to do a “What am I…?” post.

First off, a different kind of category:

What am I trying out?

If you’re one of my readers who actually comes directly to the blog instead of reading posts through the WordPress Reader, you’ll have noticed that the blog looks different. I was getting a little bored with the old theme so I thought I’d try something new, although I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. I like it, but there are a few things that annoy me. One annoyance is that my banner doesn’t stretch the length of the page…it starts at the “o” in “No”, and ends halfway through the little search bubble, and that kind of drives me nuts. It’s not my banner either…if I resize the theme forces it to crop to this length. What’s up with that? Another annoyance is that you have to hit a button to see my menu options, and I feel like not being able to immediately see those options will stop people from checking them out. There are a few other annoyances as well, but they’re mostly silly things that would only bother me so I won’t take up your time. The point? I’m not sure I’m going to keep it, but I thought I’d ask what you guys think first. Keep or go back to the old theme?

What am I playing?

Right now I’m in the midst of two different video games on two different systems. The first is one that I got for Christmas: Marvel Universe in Peril for the Playstation Vita. It’s a Lego game, and though they don’t really have any challenge to them at all I love the Lego games, so it’s been lots of fun. You get to unlock a plethora of Marvel characters, and they each have super-moves that you can purchase with your bits. There’s not a great deal more I can say because most of the Lego games are pretty cookie-cutter, but if you’re a fan of Lego games and Marvel stuff you’ll probably enjoy this game a lot.

The other game I’ve been playing is The Last of Us Remastered for Playstation 4. My husband had been bugging me to play this game since he first finished playing the PS3 version, and then we picked up the PS4 version and he practically begged me to play it before I return out West for work, so I’ve been picking it up over the past couple of weeks. I definitely have to admit that it has an awesome storyline, and if you’ve got any heart in you at all you’ll totally want to cry during the opening scenes at least. Oh, and it’s also a pretty good game, for sure. There are lots of weapons and distraction devices, a variety of enemies – both live and otherwise – and a pretty good sneak mechanic that allows you to dispatch enemies without alerting other ones. All in all, it’s definitely a game that you want to add to your list if you’re looking for things to play.

What am I watching?

For the past couple of weeks I have been obsessed with Castle. You may recognize this as a show that is not exactly new. My husband and I stumbled across an episode or two a while back and he picked up six seasons of it for me, but I never really got around to watching any of it until recently. Then when I started I couldn’t stop. As I am writing this I have just finished the second-to-last episode of the second season, which means that I’ve watched 32 hour-long episodes in the past two-to-three weeks. Yeah, I’m loving it. If you’re the kind of person who can’t suspend disbelief you probably wouldn’t be able to enjoy this show (a writer is given permission to follow around homicide cops on cases? come on…), but if you’re the kind of person who likes murder, mystery, twists and turns, and a little bit of good old fashioned goofiness, this might be a show for you. Also, I absolutely love Nathan Fillion. ❤

What am I writing?

Unfortunately I cannot share what I’ve been reading, because I haven’t been reading…I’ve been too busy with other stuff I want or need to do. But I have, of course, been writing. So what exactly am I writing these days? Well, I believe I mentioned it before, but I’ve been working on the first book in what I expect to be a four-book series that I’m tentatively calling, The Other World.

Proof!

It is a total rewrite and re-imagining of a story that I’ve been working on since my third year of college. The original story was quite poorly written and not nearly fleshed out enough, but I’d been nearing a possible ending point when I realized that the entire thing would work better as four smaller books. That way I could focus more on particular moments in the plot-line without stretching the overall book out into something unmanageable. Right now I’m nearing the end of the first (new) draft of book one, and I’m already quite pleased. I have several thoughts in my head for things that I want to change or fix during draft two, but I expect it to actually go fairly well. Hopefully I’ll be able to find a little time each day to work on it while I’m out West. I actually can’t wait to get to work on book two!

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So that’s my life at the moment. How about you guys? What have you been watching/reading/playing/etc?