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Reviews - A Touch of Evil
by Lee Valentine

A Touch of Evil cover

A Touch of Evil

Published by Flying Frog Productions
Designed by Jason C. Hill
2-8 players

I'm a fan of Flying Frog Production's zombie game Last Night on Earth which I have previously reviewed here. So, I was eager to try out the Frog's latest creation, A Touch of Evil (ATOE), designer Jason C. Hill's second major release. ATOE is a board game for 2-8 players, ages 12 and up. It's a Gothic horror-style game set in the fictional Colonial era American village of Shadowbrook. If you think of the Washington Irving tale "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (and, in particular the Tim Burton film Sleepy Hollow) then you are on the right track.

In ATOE, each player takes on the role of a monster hunter or investigator who is new to Shadowbrook and has come to investigate a series of untimely deaths and strange events. The characters each have a couple of special abilities unique to them, and like a simplified role-playing game, each features four attribute scores: Spirit (representing a character's ability to interact with the spirit world and stand up to supernatural fears), Cunning (representing problem solving and guile), Combat (representing a character's skill in ranged and melee combat), and Honor (representing a character's social status and his courage when facing most earthly fears). While characters do not officially start out with equipment of any kind, some of the attribute scores and special abilities obviously represent items, animals, allies, etc. which are intrinsic to the character and which cannot be readily removed from the character during game play.

Game Overview
The game is played on a board which represents a figure-eight-shaped map of the main roads and sites in Shadowbrook. At the center of the figure-eight is the village center and town hall. Town hall is the space where most characters start play.

At its heart, ATOE is a game of exploration and combat where characters travel the board using a d6-based roll-and-move mechanic. Characters interact with the spaces that they land on. There are three basic types of spaces in the game: empty road spaces, village center spaces which allow a player to draw an Event card and then optionally use a special power on the board, and four other sites of interest: the Manor, the Windmill, the Abandoned Keep, and the Olde Woods. Each of these four sites has a customized deck of items and allies that characters can collect, and frequent encounters which will test a character's mettle.

Characters travel around the board trying to gather items and allies that may be useful in their investigation or to aid them in their final Showdown with "the Villain". There are four Villains that come with the game: the Vampire, the Scarecrow, the Werewolf, and the Spectral Horseman (read "headless horseman"). Each Villain has a variety of special abilities which will harass the characters throughout the game or, more commonly, which serve to give them special powers in combats with the characters. Each Villain is strongly themed. For example, the Scarecrow is an evil, animated construct with the power to control swarms and flocks of creatures, including locust swarms and murders of crows. His goal is to take over Shadowbrook by turning it into the Colonial era equivalent of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. A fifth villain, the Delion Dryad, was released online as a free PDF web extra for fans.

Each Villain is served by a customized set of Minions who will harry our intrepid monster hunters throughout the course of the game. For instance, when the Spectral Horseman is not out collecting heads and the souls of the fallen, ghostly soldiers and spectral hell hounds haunt Shadowbrook. When a character encounters most types of minions, combat immediately ensues. Like an RPG, ATOE has a basic task resolution mechanic used to make attribute rolls and to engage in combats. ATOE uses a d6-based dice pool system, where a number of dice equal to a given attribute score (usually Combat in hand-to-hand combat) plus any modifiers is rolled. Different challenges have different difficulties, but typically the target number is 5, and so every 5 or 6 rolled is one success (in an attribute test) or a hit (in combat).

Characters have a number of hit points, or Wounds, that they can sustain in the game before they are knocked out (generally 2-4 before adding items and enhancements). When a character has taken his full allotment of Wounds, he is knocked out and sent to town hall to recuperate, skipping the rest of his turn (which usually means he doesn't encounter the underlying board space the minion was protecting). Combat is very dangerous in ATOE, because there is typically no defensive roll. If your Combat score including enhancements is eight and you are facing a Combat three Minion, he will damage you just as readily as if your Combat score was a 1. Some characters can shrug off wounds, but most can't and eventually need to be healed at the village's doctor's office. Thankfully, though, our heroes are never killed in combat, only KO'd for part of a turn, so all the players that started the game will finish the game playing the same characters (unlike the more grisly Last Night on Earth, where characters are so much fodder and players are sometimes forced to draft a new character to continue play).

When characters aren't busy collecting items and allies they are busy picking up leads and collecting points of Investigation. Investigation is the common currency of the game. It is used to pay for a variety of in-game effects and also doubles as money to buy items from the store at the village's Blacksmith shop. Many cards and in-game effects leave Investigation tokens on the board to be collected by any character that lands on the Investigation and can make a successful Spirit or Cunning check. Investigation is also commonly handed out in many of the encounters at the sites of interest in the four corners of the board. Finally, Heroes gain Investigation from killing off Minions of the Villain. If a player accumulates enough Investigation his character may acquire a musket with silver bullets (for the Combat specialists in the game) or items like the "Tools of Science" which allow a character to use his Cunning score in fights instead of his Combat score. I like this latter option, as it allows for nominally non-combatants like Johnny Depp's inspector character in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow.

The game revolves around a series of growing investigations, combats, and attempts to "buff up" one's character. Eventually a player is ready to have his character enter a Showdown with the villain. To start the Showdown a player must first purchase a Lair card from the Lair deck; an Investigation cost is paid and one is drawn at random. The Lair deck is an assortment of cards featuring all the named locations on the board. Each Lair card also provides special rules that will concern the Showdown and a fixed cost in Investigation that must be paid to start the Showdown (this cost is in addition to the cost to purchase the Lair card itself). Lair cards have a variable cost to draw them. Early in the game, the cost is typically 12, far too high for characters to initially afford. Late in the game, the Investigation cost to purchase a Lair goes all the way down to one point. Purchase your Lair, go to the space listed on the Lair cost, pay the fixed Showdown cost listed on your Lair card, and prepare to fight. Did I mention that you should pray a little too? Why? While the game has a cooperative mode of play, the default mode of play is competitive. This competition does not come in the form of players thieving from each other or fighting each other's Heroes. Instead, many of the Event cards that can be collected in the town center and some outlying roads spaces on the board allow players to buff up the villain, allow the villain to escape (canceling the showdown), or force the hero to drop a much needed item at an inopportune moment.

While your fellow players are out to get you in the competitive game mode, your hero may find some Showdown help from the Town Elders. At the beginning of the game six cards representing prominent town elders are dealt to the table, and each is dealt a Secrets card. You can bring up to two Town Elders to the Showdown with you, and they will grant you special powers in the Showdown if you win them over. But be careful and pay some Investigation early in the game to snoop on the Secrets of those Town Elders because some of them may actually be Evil Elders, either slavish servants of the Villain or in control of the Villain himself. Special rules allow your fellow players to force the Evil Elders to unmask themselves and join the Villain during the Showdown. As if fighting the Villain alone wasn't bad enough, now he has help.

The tension and pressure in the game are kept up through a time limit, established by a combination of two mechanisms in the game: the Mystery deck and the Shadow Track. At the end of each Game Round (one turn for each player), a card is drawn from the Mystery deck. Typically this will generate effects which kill a town elder, put a minion on the board, buff the villain permanently, or create an environmental condition which will haze the players for the remainder of the game. Commonly, the Mystery deck will also generate effects which move the Shadow Track toward Darkness. The Shadow Track starts at 20 and when it is driven to 0, metaphysical Darkness has fallen over the town and the Villain wins the day. In the competitive mode of play there is little difference for the Heroes, other than the cost to purchase Lair cards, whether the Shadow Track is on 20 or 1. In the cooperative game, the Villain gets increasingly more powerful as the Shadow Track heads toward Darkness. In my experience, the Shadow Track makes the game last 60 minutes to 2.5 hours.

The rulebook itself is a gorgeous glossy, full-color 28-page saddle-stitched booklet. It's close to 8.5" x 11". If I have anything really negative to say about the game, it is the rulebook's structure and content, not its look and feel. In spite of the game having basic and advanced rules, cooperative and competitive rules, and a team play variant, there was no table of contents and, more importantly, no topical index. Given that the rulebook's organization occasionally leaves something to be desired, a detailed index would have been greatly appreciated. While the rulebook might lead you to believe otherwise, the game is easy to pick up and runs well with even one rules-familiar individual to handle the minutiae, particularly in cooperative play. Also, the game designer was not particularly tight on the wordings on some cards and even left an important rule or two out of the rulebook. This meant that I spent time online searching for an FAQ file and asking questions in a forum before I could handle all the nuances of the game - I didn't need to do this just to get the game up and running, but I had to do this to learn about less commonly occurring card interactions. ATOE is easy to house rule, so this may be less of a concern for non-rules lawyers than it was for me. Thankfully, designer Jason C. Hill maintains a strong online presence so I usually get my questions answered quickly.

I wasn't always impressed with the organization of the rulebook, but there's a lot of meat in here, including a variety of ways to play depending on the audience and number of players. While primarily intended as a competitive game, a small variety of additional rules and a simple chart turn this game into a solid cooperative game. While the rules don't mention it, one player can easily pilot two characters and play the game solo as well. Unfortunately, some of the rules additions for cooperative play do not scale well, and so the cooperative game is probably best played with 2, or at most 3, players. In competitive play I think the game could easily handle 4 players without bogging down, as the game moves along at a fairly good clip, pausing only for the occasional combat. For the game to really effectively handle 5 to 8 players, the game includes rules for team play. Teammates cooperate with each other but compete against opposing teams. I liked this variety of options to handle different numbers of players. The game also features some optional Showdown rules to increase the game's difficulty level, allowing for a lot of replay value.

The game's rules include both a basic and advanced mode of play. Primarily the differences are that in the basic mode the Villain has fewer special abilities, there are fewer types of Minions, the kinds of Minions are simplified, picking up Investigation of the board requires no attribute check in the basic game, and a few cards and effects are removed from play. While you might need the basic mode to introduce non-gamers to ATOE, my non-gaming wife dove right into the advanced game with me, without reading the rulebook, and she only had a little difficulty. Given that my wife, as a non-gamer geek, doesn't like overly-complicated games and likes ATOE, I think this speaks volumes about the overall playa

Comparisons to Arkham Horror
Readers familiar with the Fantasy Flight Games board game Arkham Horror will probably suspect based on the review thus far that much of this game is a clone of Arkham Horror. Mechanically the two are cousins, but ATOE is not a copy of Arkham Horror with the serial numbers filed off. ATOE is faster and lighter to play. I have found that if one player knows the rules for ATOE the game can easily be played in co-op mode with a couple of beginners to show them the ropes and teach them the rules on the fly. This is much more doable with ATOE than with Arkham Horror. ATOE also features cards with less text per card and often larger font sizes than Arkham Horror, making the game flow more quickly.

Creative use of artwork on cards helps to identify them after multiple plays, allowing ATOE to be played with minimal reading of cards after you get enough games under your belt. While both Arkham Horror and ATOE attempt to create a story with a strong theme, the narratives that come out of ATOE are far more coherent and have a specific cast of characters. Arkham Horror achieves that level of narrative success only with some of its smaller themed expansions.

A major difference between Arkham Horror and ATOE is the way Minions are handled. In Arkham Horror there is a huge array of random monsters that can pop up, generally wholly unrelated to the extra-dimensional world they wandered out of. They go in a big cup and are draw randomly. Their combat abilities are listed as tiny symbols on the back of the counter in a small font. In ATOE there is a specific set of themed Minion counters that are associated with the villain. You set these to one side of the table (for later use) and roll on a chart that lists both the Minion counter to put on the board and that Minion's combat statistics. While some may feel that the chart lookup is "old school", as a person with some visual impairment I felt it was much easier to read and interpret a chart (printed at about 8.5" x 5.5") that can be passed around the table than it is to scrutinize the backs of tiny counters. Also, given that the Minion encounters are less diverse and more narratively themed in ATOE, it's much easier to memorize the combat stats of the monsters in ATOE for a single session than it is in Arkham Horror.

Finally, having played Arkham Horror a couple of times, I was turned off by the lack of interesting choices that I had available to me. Frequently the strategy was obvious. When playing ATOE I feel that my decisions are more important and they are not always obvious, particularly in competitive play where timing given plays really matters a lot. This is not to say that either Arkham Horror or ATOE have enormous strategic depth. Rather I would say that Jason C. Hill, ATOE's designer, does much of what Arkham Horror intends to do (other than feature a Cthulhu Mythos theme), and does it better than Arkham does, at a lower price point, and with a game board and components that won't demand the vast table real estate that Arkham Horror demands. Arkham Horror is better in one way - it scales a bit better in cooperative play up to a larger number of players. However, as ATOE is primarily a competitive game, and has a variety of ways to play with different numbers of players, I don't think this was a serious detraction for me.

Components and Packaging
Flying Frog's games feature high quality components. ATOE is no different, with thick cards, thick counters, and glossy color printing. Unlike Last Night on Earth which had many plastic zombie miniatures, here monsters are primarily represented by high end counters and only the Heroes rate plastic miniature figures. As with Last Night on Earth, the many cards in this game each feature a nice piece of color photography of actors in genre-appropriate costumes. Some of the same actors from Last Night on Earth take on new characters in this game. There are illustrations mixed in as well, particularly on those counters featuring some of the Minions. The mix of illustration and photography in the same game was not particularly a distraction as the color palette was comparable and the photos are already heavily "Photoshopped". Some cards even combine both photos and illustrations. A lot of the photos and costumes do give the product a grade B movie feel, particularly the shots of the Nosferatu-esque Vampire. However, I didn't feel that the style for the most part detracted from the product, and I expected the style used because I own Last Night on Earth. The grade B horror theme is something of a key element of Flying Frog's trade dress at this point.

There were a few problems with the components. As with Last Night on Earth, the cards felt initially like they were shrink wrapped too soon after receiving their press coats and tended to stick together. This required me to individually hand separate cards one-by-one to play the first time and that took quite a while. However, once hand-separated, the cards looked great and shuffled reasonably well. While the production quality was high, quality control was an issue, and I had 5 or 6 factory damaged cards that I had to ask for replacements for. Once I found the right email address at Flying Frog I got quick service on replacements, much to their credit. The trim size of the replacement cards I received was very slightly different than the originals - not enough to mark them, but just enough so that I can feel the difference when I shuffle the cards.

The real star of the show here is the board itself. The board is a bit small and can become crowded with counters, but I think this is a worthy tradeoff to keep down on the table real estate it takes to play a game like this. The board looks gorgeous, is quite functional, and is trivial to navigate and memorize. It is a quad-fold board with a black gloss black. The face of the board features a golden parchment colored undertone with black ink on top. The level of detail of the board is astounding, and each area of it gets a lot of attention to detail, down to individual blades of grass, small animals, trees, and buildings.

The packaging was attractive, but had a few problems. I had the game shipped to me (I got it as a birthday present from my wife). The box lid didn't seem to take transit will, and showed up with some damage, although that may be more attributable to the shipper than to Flying Frog. One of my major complaints about the game was the size of the box - it just wasn't large enough to reasonably contain the game after I punched it out. There are hundreds of components in the game, many of them counters, and so the game counters practically beg to be separated out and stored in gripseal bags. I have a supply of those luckily, because none were supplied with the game. Once bagged, the game no longer fit back in the box well; the lid no longer closes down fully. I have purchased a 16 card promotional expansion for the game, and after purchasing even that tiny expansion the cards no longer wholly fit inside the card wells in the box. The box exterior is full color with samples of the game art on the front and sides of the box, with pictures of actual components. I think this box does a good job of selling itself and included all the relevant information I was looking for.

As with Last Night on Earth, this game features a themed soundtrack on CD to play in the background while you are playing the game. While the production values weren't exceedingly high on the CD, and while much of the instrumentals were synthesized, it was a nice addition. While there were some overly techno elements to some of the music, in general the soundtrack is a better match for this game than the one the same composer, Mary Beth Magallanes, produced for Last Night on Earth. Some of the choral vocals on here were quite spooky. While I wouldn't give the music a solid "A" overall, I'll give it an "A" for effort. Since I don't normally expect a CD of music in my games, this didn't detract from the game experience and could add to the experience for some gamers. Unfortunately the box was small enough that I had to pull the CD out to fit my bagged components back in the box.

As a point of fun trivia, take note of the Flying Frog logo on the packaging. The standard Flying Frog mascot has bird wings. The Flying Frog from Last Night on Earth was zombified. This time he has vampire bat wings.

I had some concerns about the size of the packaging, and particularly the clarity and completeness of the rules governing uncommon situations. However, in terms of replay value (including the obvious solo play option that goes unmentioned in the rules), I give this game very high marks. The theme is deepest in the cooperative mode of play due to the increased number of Minions on the board, and an ever-strengthening Villain.

Theme aside, as a pure game, three to five player competitive play is where the game really shines. There are limited in-game resources on the board and in the town store at the Blacksmith's shop, so in competitive play players will have to balance out "buffing up" their characters to the max with getting in on a Showdown before the competition does.

I have really enjoyed the games I have played of ATOE. Since I have gotten this game it has been in extremely heavy rotation, and the components have held up nicely. I like the fact that, unlike other story-oriented board games of its ilk, ATOE uses a CCG-style decoration of one unique picture per card that really acts as a great mnemonic aid while playing. Since I have some visual impairment, this makes it much easier to play than some other board games in my collection.

As a gamer with a non-gamer spouse, I am happy to say that this definitely passes the "will the wife play it with me" test. I've also had a good time playing this game solo in spite of it having less strategic depth as a solo game than something like Pandemic.

A Touch of Evil is the right game for a lot of different situations. If you somehow play this game to death and are looking for something more, the board even features a Crossroads space at the edge of the board to attach the upcoming Something Wicked expansion set. I like this game enough that I will definitely be picking up that expansion. I already have purchased the 14 card mini-expansion The Madness, and I will review that soon.

I hope you'll give ATOE a chance. I really enjoy the game. Compared to other narrative horror board games like Betrayal at House on the Hill and Arkham Horror, I think this simply has more replay value for less work, decreasing the play time and increasing my overall enjoyment of the game. For now, it's time to take a break from gaming to go rent and watch Sleepy Hollow again.

For Retailers
Given that Colonial Gothic has less of a built in draw to gamers than flesh-eating zombies, I don't expect A Touch of Evil to be the hot seller that Last Night on Earth was nationwide, but I think it will sell well enough. Flying Frog Productions does a great job of promoting their products online and at conventions. Some of their convention appearances even feature the costumed actors from the game.

If you run demos make sure that the person running the demo is fully familiar with the rules and, ideally, that he runs full-length games. During any given five minute span of this game there's some flavor, but not always a lot of tension. The true experience of the narrative flavor and tension that ATOE provides comes from playing the full-length game. To do a short demo, break out the components (or do a back-of-the-box demo) and talk about the overall game play. The components will really sell this game, so ideally keep a demo copy on hand.

It's easy to pitch this game. It's got a solid, interesting theme and a good look. If you handsell this to Arkham Horror fans, ATOE may not replace their mainstay Arkham game, but they might buy this game and put it into rotation in their gaming group to mix things up. Certainly pitch this to your customers who bought Last Night on Earth; while the games are very different from each other, love for the Flying Frog may help sell a few copies of this game as well.

Lee's ratings:
Overall: B+
Gameplay: A- (lots of ways to play, solid replay value, nice overall experience)
Rules Clarity: B (good for most things, but lacking on less common rules questions, really could use an index for first time players)
Rules Complexity: Mid-weight (particularly in co-op mode playable by one experienced player helping out a small group of novices)
Component Quality: A- (fantastic components with a few that needed replacing from the publisher)
Packaging: B- (insufficient bags, a box that's too small for bagged components)
Retailer Saleability: B (B+ if handsold to Arkham Horror and Last Night on Earth enthusiasts)

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And Now: Editing

Under normal circumstances, I'd never leave a book on the shelf for almost two months after finishing the first draft.  I just wouldn't.

This isn't a work ethic thing; it would drive me nuts thinking about the book and not doing something about it.

The second I finished this most recent novel -- sorry, the title's still a wee bit up in the air -- I wanted to jump into editing.  Like, I was hungry to do it.  But I didn't.

Instead, I moved.

Then it was Christmas.

Then I was on vacation.

Now, some new, silly thing may be happening, but fuck it, I'm done waiting.  So, I've got my manuscript, I've got my laptop, and I've got my pad for jotting down notes.  The desk is clear and the room is mine.

Tonight: editing on the unnamed book begins.

A Brief Update

Okay, July, 2015 to November, 2016.

99,000 words.

First draft . . . done.

Now the real work begins.  Man, that took a long damned time.

Single-Tasking in a Multi-Tasking World

I'm going to come off sounding like an old fart here, but I think people are getting really bad at focusing on one thing at a time.

I think we're getting really bad at single-tasking.

I think we can't help but dig our phones out of our pockets while waiting to cross the street, order dinner, get into an elevator, etc., etc., etc.

And I would like to propose a counter-argument.  I would like to suggest boredom.

Boredom is great.  Boredom is valuable.  Filling every moment of your day with input doesn't leave a lot of room for output.

I set myself some dedicated time very day (well, every night) for nothing but output, but let me tell you: it's still a struggle.  Someday, someone's going to write a great study about the effect of constant stimulus on the human brain and people are going to get all wide-eyed to learn that -- hey -- it's not very good for you.

Well, maybe it is.  I'd bet that Layla will be able to multi-task like a mofo (she kind of already can).  If science worked out a way to de-age me to, say, twenty years old, and keep me that way for a couple hundred years, I bet the "kids" would be able to spot me coming from a mile away.

I'd be so slow by comparison.

But that's okay.  What made me think about this -- well, what made me think about this tonight; single- versus multi-tasking is actually something I think about quite a lot -- was helping get Layla 2.8 to fall asleep tonight.

She doesn't like bedtime.  Woah.  A two-year-old who doesn't want to go to bed.  Stop the presses.

Tonight's bedtime adventure involved me sitting next to her bed, not moving, not leaving, just waiting, being as silent as I could, while she settled in.  "Don't go," she told me, so how could I?

I had about fifteen minutes to just sit there, in the dark, doing almost nothing (Jessy was there, too, and she was doing the lion's share of the work).

So I let my mind wander.

And, as these things happen, I had an idea.

Ask a writer where they get their ideas and, dollars-to-donuts, they'll lie to you.  That's not because we don't like you; it's because people are almost always disappointed with the answer.

Tonight's idea was a doozy.  Sorry, A Doozy.  Yup, caps and all.  I won't go into it yet -- this is the seed of a story that will likely change 900% between now and writing -- but from a practical level, this was a fully-formed story idea that hatched, all on its own, as I sat there in the dark.

I tend to think of things in terms of being a writer.  I don't know how, for instance, an illustrator or a painter might deal with a situation like that.  I imagine they could hold the notion of the idea until they found somewhere to scribble and sketch, but maybe I'm wrong.  I figure actors train themselves to hold onto ideas until they can try them on someone.  Ditto comedians, directors, photographers . . . you get the idea.

As a writer, that fifteen minutes of blank time is very valuable.  It's treasure, especially in our non-stop world.  I make a concerted effort to not check my phone constantly (and often fail) precisely because I try to cultivate a mindscape open to single- and not multi-tasking.  I want to focus on a single thing at a time.

It's easier said than done, let me tell you, but when I pull it off, it's great.  I could probably spend the next few hours brainstorming for the book(s) this idea will turn into.  Yeah.  That's great.  I won't -- I'm knee-deep in something else, plus I like letting new, big ideas sit for a little while before I go hog wild on them.

Is there a point here?  I don't know.  Certainly, it's not my intention to get all preachy, you kids who need to get off my lawn, and I would never, ever, every presume to tell another writer how they should approach their work (right now I'm digging silence, but for the next thing it could be thrash metal or opera or showtunes or white noise), but I also think a little nudge is useful from time to time.

So: leave your phone in the other room.  Turn off your internet.  Give yourself a dark room or a blank page and make that your world for a little while.  If you find something magical there, tell it I said hi.

I'm writing a book.

That might seem obvious -- what do I do but write books? -- but sometimes it's nice to, you know, put that down in writing.

I'm writing a book.

I think it's going well.  Certainly I'm enjoying myself, something I'd say is integral to the long process of writing a book.  I mean, if you're not enjoying yourself, why do it?

The money?  Meh.  There are better, easier ways to make a buck.

The story?  Hell yeah.  This is another one that, like The Seven Markets, I had germinating inside me for a long, long, long time, but was never quite able to crack.  Then, one night, I did.

(I used to blog a lot, like every night, when working on something.  I haven't been doing that.  I'd like to try doing it again, so apologies while I get myself back up to speed.)

Finding that thing, that word, that idea, that image, that helps "crack" the story or move forward with the night's work, always makes me feel dumb.  That's because the solution almost always seems very obvious.

You know, in retrospect.

With Markets it was changing the protagonist from a young man to a young woman.  The original story there was very different from what I ended up actually writing.

With this story -- the title is somewhat in question, and I'd hate to refer to it by name and then have the name change, but let's just call it "the 2015 book" -- the "thing" was even simpler.

And once I found it the whole story clicked into place.  Like, in less than a second I went from, boy, I'd love to figure out how to tell that story to, shit, I wish I could type faster.

Now, I don't actually wish I could type faster.  The act of sitting down every night to write is another integral part of storytelling.  Every night I learn different things about my characters, their world, and their stories.  It's only by taking my time and plodding, a word at a time, through their stories, that I find these things out.

That's wonderful.  It's also humbling.  I never realize how much I know about these people until I, well, realize how much I know about them.  One character, for example, has an affection for "old, silly words".  I only learned this when he began using them.  Even cooler: I only learned the words he'd use as he used them.  If I'd tried to make a list it would have been pitiful.  Writing him, however, the frigging words come on their own.

That's magic right there.  It ain't easy and it takes a lot of time, but there's no other word for it but magic.

The Habit of Failing

As much as this blog is about anything, it's about writing.

And, as much as it's about writing, it's about my belief that one of the keys to writing is building the habit of writing.  Which is to say, no matter how much you want to write, no matter how great the stories are inside your head, if you don't tell them -- in this case, writing them down or typing them up -- then you're not writing.

I spent a good number of years doing just that.  Socking away stories and promising myself I'd write tomorrow, or over the weekend.

For the past two years, however, I discovered something new.  I'd finished The Seven Markets, edited it, and published it, mostly just to see if I could do it and how that would feel.  Protip: I could and it felt great.

With Markets in the can -- as they say in the movie biz and do not say, so far as I'm aware, in the writing biz -- I went on to the next thing.  Oh, and my wife had a baby.  I've already written about how that went (babies take a lot of time and headspace), but lately I've been thinking about the new thing I found, trying write and help raise a small person.

Which is to say: calling myself a writer, wanting to write, making the time to write, and just . . . being too tired to string words together into sentences, sentences together into paragraphs, etc., etc.

In other words, I'd built the habit or writing, but without meaning to, I was also building another habit.  The habit of failing.

Pre-Layla, my standard was a thousand words in a night.  Most nights I wrote more, some I wrote less, but the "goal" was a thousand words.

I started off The King's Glamour, and things were rolling nicely.  I was cranking out my thousand words, two thousand words, and everything was great.

Then work got crazy.  Then parenting became less about helping maybe change a diaper and more about, say, rocking the baby to sleep for an hour.  Two hours.  You know the drill.

Suddenly I'd sit down to write at midnight or one in the morning -- remember, the habit of writing was strong, and I was dedicated to at least making a go of it no matter how late the hour -- and decide I should be happy with two hundred words.  One hundred words.  Fifty words.  Some notes about what I wish I'd written, and what I'd promise myself I'd return to write tomorrow night.

And slowly, as these things do, that became my habit.  Suddenly I was happy to get a hundred words.  More, I'd write a hundred words and that would feel like what I expected of myself.  I forged ahead on the book, writing, deleting, writing, deleting (Markets is about 85,000 words and I probably threw out close to 400,000 words by actual count, for instance, including fully one-quarter of the book going from first draft to second draft), telling myself so long as I was writing, I was doing things right.

But I'd built myself a bad, new habit.  I'd gotten used to failing.  Worse, I began expecting to fail.

When I finished the third draft of Glamour, instead of doing my usual thing and sitting on the manuscript for a while, then diving back in to edit it, I decided to jump right into something new.  "Something new" has been going nicely, but early on I discovered I had to unlearn some bad habits.

I couldn't be "good enough" anymore.  I had to kick some ass.

Ass-kicking needed to be the default.  The habit I needed to build now wasn't doing "good enough".  I needed to psych myself up for a thousand words.  Two thousand words.  I had to be hungry again, not satisfied for the scraps from my own table.

Is This Thing On?

I read somewhere that blogging is dead.

People post on Instagram.  They post to Tumblr.  They don't post at all -- what do you need more than Twitter's 140 characters to get your point across, really?

Me?  I took fifteen months off from blogging because, well, because I did.

Herein: excuses.

It took me three months to write the first draft of The Seven Markets.  This was fantastic, at the time, but it was crap for managing internal expectations (let's please ignore the three-to-six months of editing which followed and the probably-ten-years of tossing the story around prior to actually typing it up).

Prior to that I participated in National Novel Writing Months and, three years in a row, knocked out more than 50,000 words in thirty days.

Seems laughable, in retrospect.

All of this is by way of sharing that, for the past, oh, two years, I've been working on the same book.

That book is still not done.

Wait!  It's . . . doneish.  The fourth draft is done, and (hopefully) with it the bulk of the actual writing.  I've still got to take one, last, "big" pass at the book, but from a practical standpoint, the grunt work is done.

This book is called The King's Glamour.  It's my follow-up to Markets and it continues Ellie's story beyond that book's pages.

Writing a sequel is hard.  Lord, is it hard.  Firstly because, hey, if you did your job the first time, your character's already had an arc, right?  They've undergone some character development and hopefully come out the other end in something resembling a different place.

Now you have to pick them up and give them a new arc.  A satisfying arc.  One that builds on the first one but without invalidating it.  One that shows their continued growth as a person without, you know, just turning it all into mush.

So, that's fun.

Plus, there's the "most interesting story" rule.  That's the one where the story you're telling should be the most interesting story that occurs in a character's life.  If it isn't, what's the damned point in telling the story?

I think I found a good story to tell for Ellie.  I think it continues her arc in a natural fashion (natural for Ellie, at least), and I think it informs nicely on the character and her world.  Ellie's had an interesting life, to date, and the events of this book certainly pile it on.

Raising a kid is not easy.  Running a company is not easy.  Both are terribly time-consuming -- and even when you're not actively parenting or actively working, your brain is spending processor cycles fussing over whether your kid will sleep through the night, whether anyone's going to tell you what the hell's going on this week, etc., etc.

In other words: I've been busy the past two years.  Yeah.

But listen: no one cares about your stress, right?  No one wants to hear that you had a rough time.  Everyone's stressed.  Everyone's busy.  So please take it as writ that I'm not asking for sympathy.

This is just me providing context.  For example . . .

My normal goal when working is to knock out 1,000 words in a night.  That's not a hard-and-fast rule, but it's a goal.  It's a reasonable goal, and as I can sort of count on an at least an hour a night, once upon a time it was an achievable goal.

Writing this book, I've been lucky to get a hundred words a night.  No guff.

It's better now.

Work is still crazy, but after two years of constant white-noise, the white-noise has sort of become the norm.  Work is crazy, but it's a more manageable crazy.  Or maybe I'm just used to it -- there are bad days, bad nights, bad weeks, but overall, things . . . are.

Being a dad is still the hardest, easiest, most rewarding, most chaotic thing I've ever done.  Right now, for instance, I'm typing this with a video baby monitor next to my MacBook; I'm watching Layla 2.3 thrash a bit in bed, hoping she won't wake up (poor kid had a busy week and she needs the sleep).

The point being, life happened, life continues to happen, but the chaos has become the norm, which means things are . . . normal.

A little more than a year ago, without really mentioning it or making a big fuss, I stopped blogging.  I stopped a bunch of things; I needed the time and the headspace for writing.  But I promised myself that when I finished this draft of Glamour I would get back to it.  Didn't think it would take this long, but what can you do?

A promise is a promise.

There's been stuff I wanted to blog about.  I told myself if I went back to posting nightly word-counts, that might get my numbers up.  I saw at least a dozen movies I would have enjoyed writing about.  I read at least two dozen books I would have loved writing about.

But a promise is a promise.  But now the draft is done.  And I'm going to be blogging again.

For whatever that's worth.

Nominally, I'll be blogging about this book and the next one.  Probably some other stuff, too.  I'll be cross-posting the pertinent, writerish stuff to Write Every Day, a Tumblr page I created for the express purpose of encouraging writers to build the good habit of writing (wait for it) every day.

Because that's what it's all about, at the end of the day.  Because even when the edges of my vision were filled with static this past year and I could barely put two words together, I still sat down every night I could and gave it a shot.  That's the magic there; it might take forever, but so long as you don't quit, eventually you come to the finish line.

Cat Poop and Stephen King

One of the best things about stories is the way their worm their way into our minds and then pop their little heads up at odd moments to surprise us with unexpected visits.

An example: in 2013 I listened to Stephen King's classic novel The Shining.  I listened to it in the car.  I listened to it in the train.  I listened to it at the gym.

I listened to it while changing the cat litter.

I also listened to his follow up, Doctor Sleep in, you know, similar circumstances.

Now, whenever I'm "scooping the poop", I can't help but think of Danny Torrance.

Sad but true.  As if the poor guy didn't have enough stacked up against him, right?

I will spare you an image to go along with this post.  Also, I will refrain from telling you that sometimes our cat -- who is delightful in every way -- likes to leave her poop sticking straight up, almost as if she's claiming the litter box for Spain.

Looper, And Why Characters Need to Make Dumb Mistakes

Looper is a movie about time-travel.  In some ways, it's a master-class on science fiction storytelling, and I have some thoughts, both about the movie, and about the deeper implications Looper might have for aspiring writers and the characters they create.

Spoilers below.  Ye be warned.  But first, here's the trailer:

So, the central premise of Looper is that it's the near future, and while time travel hasn't been invented yet, it will be some time in the next thirty years.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Joe, the "Looper" of the movie's title.

What's a looper?

A looper is an assassin.  Basically, criminals from the future send their targets back to the past to be killed.  The "loop" in looper refers to the fact that, at a certain point, to protect the criminal organization, they're going to send your future self back in time for you to kill, thus "closing the loop".  Once your loop is closed, you've got about thirty years to live it up before time catches up to you.

Which is a cool premise for a movie, but really, when you think about it, kind of dumb from a planning standpoint.

Now, the real story of Looper is not that Joe's future self, "Old Joe" is sent back in time, overpowers Joe, and then fights for his life.  That's what the trailer wants you to think.

The real story is that, when the bad guys come to collect Old Joe and send him back in time to be killed, one of them shoots Old Joe's wife.  Old Joe then kills all the criminals and sends himself back in time.  Why?  Because he's got a clue to the true identity -- in the past -- of the Rainmaker, sort of the kingpin of crime in the future, and the guy responsible for all this.  Old Joe figures if he can kill the Rainmaker, he can rewrite time and save his wife.

So, right there: not a great plan.  Great movie, lousy plan.

Old Joe figures the Rainmaker is one of three kids, born on the same day at the same hospital.  So he goes about Sarah Conoring them one by one.  His younger self hooks up with Sara and Cid, one of the three future Rainmakers.  Hilarity ensues, Joe ends up killing himself to save Sara and Cid from Old Joe.

As I wrote above, there are some problems with this.  But the interesting thing is this: the problems are not with the movie, but with the decisions the characters make.  To wit: within the internal logic of the movie, all this makes sense, but the actual use of time travel to kill people -- allegedly the future tech is so good it's impossible to hide bodies -- which is what precipitates the entire story, well, that's really dumb.

Let's see:

  1. If you're the Rainmaker and you've gone to great pains to preserve the truth of your identity and origins, why send people back in time to when you were a vulnerable child?  Why not send them back to, say, the Cretaceous to be squashed by something massive and reptilian?
  2. Or, forget all that.  People always forget that a time machine is also a teleportation device.  Because the planet is constantly spinning and moving through space.  If you traveled a day into the past without moving in space, you'd come out in the cold vacuum of space.
  3. Doesn't that seem like a safer way to kill people?  No middle-men to deal with, none of that.  Just send someone a week or a month or a hundred years into the past.  Easy peasy.
  4. Or, teleport them into the sun.  No body disposal there.

Now, if we're talking story here, of course my points are crap.  Maybe the Rainmaker knows a looper was responsible for making him the man he became, but not which looper, so he set up this whole, intricate system in order to (hopefully) bring about his own creation.  Or something.

But the point -- and the reason I felt compelled to write about this -- is that ultimately it doesn't matter.  The point is that this is how the Rainmaker and his goons have chosen to use time travel to dispose of their enemies.  The point is that, while you or I, sitting in our cushy chair watching the fireworks, might realize, "Hey, there's a better, cleaner, safer way to do this," these are the dumb decisions the characters have chosen to make.

Which can be rough for a writer.

Which is terribly important for a writer.

As a storyteller, I have a roadmap for how the story is supposed to go.  A rough roadmap.  When I'm writing, a lot of that is seeing how my characters react to certain situations.  And while I might know the "best" way out of a particular mess, that doesn't mean that they know that solution, or even that they'd use it.

Sometimes this is for better storytelling.  Much more often, however, it's because doing things this way as opposed to that way, letting my characters tell me how they'd approach a problem, gives a truer resolution than trying to shoehorn things into a neat, tidy, little box.

Characters want.  And their desires will often override common sense.  Or, they'll have a certain way they do things.  Even if that way is dumb, even if they're strolling right past the optimal choice in favor of the dumb, counterproductive choice, if that choice is true, that's the right way to do things.

Makes the story more interesting, too.

The King's Glamour -- Third Draft Whatnow?

And now it's time for a long-overdue update on the writing of The King's Glamour , the follow-up to, and second book in The Seven Markets  series:

After about a year of work and numerous revisions, the book is now . . . 20,000 words long.

Wait, what?   20,000 words?  Is it just me or is this book getting shorter somehow?

Well, it's not really  20,000 words long.  But that's how far I am into the third draft revision here.  Which is to say, I stopped in my revisions to rejigger some stuff about that far into the story.

Each book a writer writes is different from the one before it.  You learn how to write a book as you're writing it.  Beautiful Handcrafted Animals  is an ongoing process I hope to complete sometime early in 2014.  The Seven Markets was quick and fast, mainly because I'd lived with the story in my head for more than a decade.

The King's Glamour ?  It's been a ride.  Firstly because I never envisioned Markets as anything but a standalone story.  Then I realized I wanted to read more about Ellie.  Then I realized I had a cool idea for her.  And then . . .

Well, now I'm knee-deep in the third draft.  All things going according to plan -- ha ha -- this should be the final "big writing" draft of the project.  Once this is complete, it should be line edits, tweaks, beta readers, and then off to my editor.

Then I can get to work on something else.

I'll try to write some more about this process.  And I'll keep you updated as things progress.  Fingers crossed, I'm hoping to put Glamour in your hands sometime in the first half of 2014.  I hope y'all enjoy reading it as much as I'm enjoying writing it.

Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy died today.  He was 66 years old.

He might not seem like a likely influence for a writer like me, but I'm here to tell you that he was.  Kind of a big influence, actually.

First Read

I first read Clancy's The Hunt for Red October flying out to Wisconsin as a college freshman.  I flew out to school alone, with little more than a backpack and a suitcase (I've told many people how I arrived at my dorm without a pillow, believing in some odd way that they'd have pillows for us).

I started reading Red October in the terminal waiting to board.  I read most of the way on the plane -- this was in 1991, and e-books were little more than a twinkle in some science fiction writers' eyes.

I got to my room, realized just how dumb I was, pillow-wise, and after heading down to search for a store where I could buy one, resumed reading.

This was a hell of a book.  I'd read military thrillers before.  Clive Cussler was big with my father, and he and I would devour Dirk Pitt's adventures, but Tom Clancy was a new one for me.

I sat reading on my unmade bed, leaning against my brand new pillow (which I still have somewhere), and might well have spent my entire first night at school in that fashion if one of my neighbors hadn't come knocking on my door.  There was a party happening in the suite on the corner, would I like to come?

I didn't give it much thought -- the book would still be there in the morning -- and that party led pretty directly to meeting a good number of people I spent the next four years being friends with.

And -- listen -- I'm not going to tell you I spent the whole night pining away for that book.  Because I didn't.  And just like that I'd made some new friends, which led to some more new friends.  I finished Red October  a day or two later -- fully engrossed while I was reading it -- but that's not what stuck with me.

It's the first book I read heading out into the world as a burgeoning adult.  That it's a great book is somehow secondary; that book brought me to college.

Second Read

I picked up Red October again last year.  This was during the editing of The Seven Markets  and I grabbed it for the Kindle, thinking it might be nice to revisit the book.  I might have watched the movie a month or so before; I can't remember exactly.

Here's what I do remember:

There's a sequence of events in the book where Clancy describes what the Russian sailors, evacuating their submarine, would now go through after being rescued by an American ship.   Their interrogations.  The offers to remain in the US, if they liked.  The hardships they'd face upon returning to the (then) Soviet Union.

Was this detail necessary to the story?  Not in the least.  But the details really stuck with me.  They struck a cord in my mind about another book I'd been tossing around in my head (and which I'm hoping to begin working on in 2014), Painted Ocean.

Ocean is nothing like a book Clancy would have written, but I'll still owe him a debt.  A lot of my main character was created as I considered what those Russian submariners would go through before they found themselves settled and on dry land again.

I can't explain it more than that because, right now, this moment, my main character, Simon Cole, only exists in my head and in the notes I've written about him.  But when I do get to tell his story, some of his DNA is going to come from Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October, and that bit he wrote about the Russian sailors and the hardships they would now face.

Thank you, Tom.  Thank you and good sailing.

Re-Reading Salem's Lot

One of the best reading experiences in my life was re-reading Stephen King's Salem's Lot  several years ago.

Re-reading it, yes.

The first time I read Salem's Lot , I sort of knew what the story was about.  This is a thing that happens to me -- I suspect it happens to a lot of writers.  I'd passively picked up information on the book, partially from reading articles and interviews, partially from King's book, Danse Macabre , which I'd read earlier that year.  I may have seen the made-for-TV movie; I'm not entirely sure.

That first read, I didn't enjoy the book.  It felt flat for me.  Still, a bad King book is still better than a whole lot of other stuff that's out there, so while it didn't light me up, I wasn't angry at the book or anything.

A couple years went by.

I decided to read it again.

And this time, I forced myself to un-know, to ignore, all the stuff I knew about the story.

And, ho boy, I loved it.  Salem's Lot  remains one of my favorite books to this day.  it's bot bits of stuff he'd put into other books later on.  Look closely and you can see The Dark Half  in the character Ben Mears.  The shopkeepers, Barlow and Strake will remind you of Leland Gaunt from Needful Things .   I spotted shadows of these and a dozen other books during that read.

 Salem's Lot  was King's second published book.  It was tremendous, for me, seeing all these hints of his work to come as I read.

Also, it's a great book.  By making myself forget the different characters' fates -- who lives, who dies, who's the good guy, who's the bad guy -- I discovered the great book I'd somehow missed on my first pass.

Why am I bringing this up?  Well, I had a nice moment earlier today while considering where I was going to pick up Ellie's adventures tonight.  I realized there was a lot more going on with her story than I'd originally thought.  That's cool.  Second drafts are for fixing things, but then you write the third draft, the fourth, etc., etc.

Ellie's an interesting character to me because, in The Seven Markets , we never really see the real Ellie.  She spends so much of the book being pulled this way and that, victim of so many exterior stresses, that our image of what sort of woman she is becomes hopelessly muddied.  A lot of the writing of The King's Glamour has been figuring out who my main character is.  I won't say it's a unique problem to have, but it's certainly an interesting one.  I'd have thought that, by the second book, I'd have a pretty good idea who she was.

I didn't.  I still don't.

But I just learned a whole lot more.  It's stuff that was always there, only I was so busy knowing the stuff I thought I knew I didn't take the time to see the stuff hiding in plain sight.

New Seven Markets Review

The Seven Markets has been out almost a year, but I still see reviews coming in now and again.  This one falls into the category of "I'm not usually into this  sort of book, but in spite of that . . ."

I get a lot of those.

It's from   Their Indie Ebook Roundup #6.  Here's an excerpt:

But the story that Hoffman spins here is just so unique and fantastic that I just could not put it down. I seriously recommend this book to anyone who likes a good fantasy story and doesn’t mind a little science fiction sneaking in, too.

And, just because I can't resist, here's what came immediately after:

If any book on this list is worth checking out this one is it.

Which is quite nice.

Kill The Wabbit

Writers!  You've been here.  You've lived this.

You're writing a scene.  You know what it's going to be.  You're happy (enough) with it.  Could it be more?  Sure.  But you're content  with what you've got.  Maybe you're planning to come back in the next draft and spice things up a bit.  Add a little fireworks to the mix, that sort of thing.

Then, without meaning to, you start daydreaming about Elmer Fudd.  And you ask yourself, "what would Bugs Bunny do?"

And, just like that, you've gone from content to awesome

New Site?

Argh.  Yeah.  And it's under construction.  Which is to say, I have to write some stuff and tidy up some stuff and get some (great looking) stuff from my designer.

Well, the old site was broken.  The old designers put it together but their programmers were, to use a nice word, less than competent.  They left a pile of security holes open in WordPress and, when my friend Chris was nice enough to fix them, most of the site's functionality broke.

What sort of functionality?  Well, the old site still showed The King's Glamour  as coming out in the Spring of 2013.  Nope.  And Beautiful Handcrafted Animals in the Winter of 2013.  Not at all.

I couldn't change graphics or update, well, pretty much anything but the blog.  So it goes.

So: new site.  This one's hosted, it's not powered by WordPress, which is a fine tool, but it's sort of like browsing the internet on Internet Explorer.  It's what people write hacks and viruses for.  Hopefully this should be more stable.

And, now that we're up and running, and I can write a blog post without having to actually log into the site (and risk an errant backspace deleting my post) I'm hoping to be posting more.  Glamour is rounding home (honest) and then I'm getting into the Animals revisions I've been champing at the bit to do all year.

Babies take up a lot of time.  I think I might have mentioned that at some point.

Anyhoo, new site.  I'll be playing around and adding content and such -- books I hope to be working on next year and the year after, for example -- and we'll see just what the site can do.

Welcome (again)!

That's Called a Streak

I wrote a thousand words last night. I wrote a thousand words the night before.

Aaaand, the night before that, if memory serves (the thing about having a five-month-old in the house is time kind of gets fuzzy).

This is a marked improvement over the previous state of affairs.  Which is to say, I was writing, and it was fine, but it was a trickle rather than a flow.  Two hundred words in a night?  That was A-OK.  Two hundred words was a gift.

But this?  Much better.  The two hundred, three hundred word nights, they were fine -- emphasis on the word fine -- but in my lucid moments I couldn't help but do the math.  How much more of this book is there to write?  How long is it going to take at this rate?

Not that there's a rush, of course.  It's always better to be right than to be quick.

But this?  Three thousand words in three nights?  Much better.  I mean, it's actually slow for where I am with The King's Glamour -- at this point in the story I'd typically be cranking out two or three thousand words a night -- a minimum of ten thousand to fifteen thousand words a week.

Why so slow?

Dunno.  I could try and blame the baby, but that's hardly fair.  Layla's a dream; though I will say my arms get exhausted from holding her, carrying her, playing with her.  She is one strong baby.

Work?  Sure, why not?  But I mostly put that stuff out of my mind when I'm writing.

No, I think the blame -- if I'm going to use the word -- is on my head.  Mine and the story I'm writing.

Firstly, sequels are hard.  It's the kind of thing you don't think about.  Shouldn't this be easier?  The characters are all there, right?  You've already been through the ringer with them once.  What could be so bad?

Well, sometimes characters want to do their own stuff.  The Ellie in this book is pretty different from any Ellies we've seen before.  That said, she's still the same person, and integrating the new with the old is tricky business.

The setting, too.  World building is fun, but the world of Fall has been evolving almost constantly as I've been writing this book.  Little things, big things, things which need thinking about.  Which means there have been nights where I've written a paragraph, then realized there was something about Fall I needed to think about.  So I'd write two thousand words of notes, then a second paragraph, then collapse into bed.

A good problem to have, but still: time consuming.

And here's the thing: I'm not doing anything differently.  Oh, I'll turn on Freedom right when I sit down, I'll leave my iPad upstairs, force myself to work instead of that thing I think all writers do called preparing to work.

Still, I'm in the home stretch with this book.  And things could grind to a halt tonight, or tomorrow night, but I feel like I might have finally turned a corner.  The world, she be built.  Ish.  There'll be refinements -- I've been wanting to find out what sort of home one of the characters lives in and what's up with his family for months now -- but it seems like the ground rules are laid, the mysteries are all teased, now it's time to bring everything together.

Layla's First Holiday Weekend

This past weekend was, as the title of this post may imply, Layla's first holiday weekend. Well, since Father's Day.  Maybe I should have added on "At Home", but I think it scans better without that.  Can't even edit myself.  So it goes.

Anyway.  It was her first long holiday weekend at home.  Once upon a time, before we had a baby, we'd have spent such a holiday weekend lounging in and by the pool, drinking beer, barbecuing, and visiting with friends.

How'd we spend this long holiday weekend?

Lounging in and by the pool, drinking (somewhat less) beer, barbecuing, and visiting with friends.

So, pretty much business as usual.

I even got a good amount of work on The King's Glamour, and will hopefully move on to Chapter Twelve in the next night or so, though that was more after hours stuff.  Once the girls went to sleep and all that.

Here's something: Layla loves going into the pool.  Oh, she was tentative at first: I dipped her toes into the water and she shot me a concerned look.  I smiled and assured her everything was fine, and -- glunk! -- in she went.  Happy as a clam.  Or an otter.  Or some sort of water-based animal known for being cheery.

She splashes around, kicks her feet, and is constantly trying to dunk her face into the water.  Seriously.  I worked as a lifeguard when I was younger (I should insert a "much" in there, I suppose), and one of the ways we made extra money was to give swimming lessons to kids.  I cannot remember any kid swimming for the first time being so eager to submerge herself as my ridiculous, amazing daughter.

Partly I think it's our not indicating to her that there's anything to be concerned with.  At least some of it's got to be genetics.  I've always been at home on and in the water, and if she gets to enjoy boats and swimming as much as I have during my life, that'd be a grand, glorious thing.

What else?  I burned the bratwurst but they were still tasty.  And writing, which is a great thing.  I had one of those moments, messing around with notes, where one of the supporting character's stories just opened before me like a rose.  This is a person who was never supposed to be as present as they've been, and I already had cool plans for them, but now their story is moving up a notch.  And their interaction with Ellie should be much more interesting for all that, too.

Up above, I wrote this past weekend was "business as usual".  That's a thing parents do so they don't scare their skittish friends and relations away from having kids.  "Sure, we still do all that stuff," you'll say, or try to say.  Sometimes it's even true.

What's the truth?  The truth is this was way better with Layla along for the ride.  Hopping in the pool used to be this relaxing, lazy sort of thing we did.  Now it's exciting and crazy and amazingly fun.  I'm not talking about going down the water slide on your face kind of fun.  It's little things you'd never consider.

Here: I was holding her and splashing around and my face was getting hot.  So I dunked under -- holding her up -- and I could feel her wriggling around up top.  My first thought was she was freaking out, terrified I'd vanished or been gobbled up from below.  That's me bringing my I'm-in-a-swimming-pool-and-what-if-there's-a-shark phobia because imagination.

For Layla, however, it was an adventure!  She was giggling like crazy!  Laughing up a storm!  Exclamation point!

That's what having kids does.  Yeah, there's stuff you might not do for a while -- we haven't been to the movies at all this summer -- but you also see little things in BIG ways now.  Like dunking under water or swinging around splashing.  Seeing that stuff through new eyes forces you to see it new, too.

This blog is about writing, so the lesson should be something like "always try to see the world as if you're seeing it for the first time".  But I think that'd be cheap if I went there, so I won't.

Kid loves the pool.

Write Every Day: Stolen Moments

From a purely theoretical sense, I sit down to write every night from ten o'clock to about one in the morning.  "Theoretical" is the most important word in that sentence. What does my writing schedule look like in practice?  Well, it varies.

Some nights I pull myself together and at ten-oh-one I'm in front of the keyboard.  Other nights . . . less so.

Write Every Day

Write Every Day

So I get it.  And I try to do my best.  And I try to be flexible and not get too grumpy when stuff gets in the way of my ten o'clock call.

But sometimes I know I'm not going to be getting any writing done.  Maybe my day-job was particularly rough that day and my mind is wiped.  Maybe I'm feeling under the weather.  Maybe Layla needs me more than I need to be writing -- and let's be clear: at those times, it's not even a contest.

The baby comes first.  Jessy comes first.

Writing is important, but it's a distant second to my family.

It happens.  And when the smoke clears and it's eleven-thirty or midnight, maybe I don't get to write that night.  It's okay -- I believe I've talked about how a big part of this Write Every Day stuff is resolving yourself to the impossibility of it.

Some days you're just not going to get to write.  It happens.  But if writing is the norm and not the exception, well, then you're doing it right.

But there's another answer, too.

As I wrote above, ten o'clock is my writing time.  But it's not my only writing time.  Ten o'clock is my scheduled writing time.  I think that's important, essential even, in building the good habit of writing.  After all, it's only too easy to procrastinate and rationalize and lose another day.

So, while I think it's important to schedule your time, I also think it's important not to be married to your scheduled writing time.  If ten o'clock at night was the only time I could write, if the sun being up kept me from sneaking into my worlds of make believe, I'd be really hamstrung.

Because sometimes I'm not going to be able to write at ten o'clock at night.  I'm just not.  No one is, not really.

So here's what you do: steal moments throughout the day.

Maybe it's ten minutes jotting down an idea you had while waiting for the train.  Maybe it's propping up your iPad and working through some notes or a scene during your morning commute (I have a Bluetooth keyboard for my iPad for just this).  Maybe it's an hour in the afternoon when everything and everyone else seems to have briefly vanished from the world.

The trick is to keep an eye out.  The trick is, again, to make writing your default.  So, if you're traveling and you've got an hour to kill in the hotel room, don't flip through the hotel's crappy cable channels hoping to find something worth watching on. (Protip: you won't.  There's almost never anything on that's better than writing.)

Don't fall into the habit of telling yourself if you can't get a solid three or four hour window to write in it's not worth trying.  It is worth trying.  Even one sentence, if it's the right sentence, is worth the trouble.  Just one word is worth the trouble.  It's always worth the trouble.

Some writers will carry a little notebook around with them wherever they go.  I haven't found this to work for me, less because I'm bad about taking notes and more because -- as previously noted -- I can't actually read my own handwriting.  Doubly so when I'm writing in a hurry about something I'm excited about.

So I keep an iPad with me pretty much 24-7.  Each book I've got active or on the back burner has its own little notebook on my iPad.  The notes sync in realtime to my other devices and desktop.  So if I have an idea for something while I'm out and about, it's waiting for me when I get to my computer.

Whatever you use, however, the point is this: write.  Be ready to write.  Create the habit of stealing those little moments whenever you can.  Maybe it's as simple as falling into daydreaming while waiting for the bus instead of whipping out your phone to check sports scores.  Maybe it's as simple as visualizing where you left off, and asking yourself where you're going next.

So many of the best bits of story have come from moments like that.  I'll thinking I'm getting ready to write a particular type of scene, but then my mind will wander and I'll realize I actually want to write it this way instead.

You might be grabbing a half-hour in the middle of the afternoon.  Or two minutes waiting for a meeting to begin.  The point is not to write off those snippets of time just because they're so small.

The point is to keep yourself open and ready.  It's vital to schedule your writing time -- that's the best way to build up the habit -- but it's just as vital to let the words come to you.

Be on your guard, be alert, and be ready.  Some of your best stuff will sneak up on you.

If you let it.

Clarion Write-a-Thon is Live!

About two weeks ago I posted about the Clarion Write-a-Thon and that I was aiming to use it to goose myself along in finishing up The King's Glamour (while simultaneously using the finishing of Glamour to try and raise some money for the Write-a-Thon). Well, it started yesterday.  Yessir.  I checked my page and saw I've already got a $50.00 donation up . . . which is nice.  Also, I'm going to bust this old friend out:

Because that should be a fun way to keep you updated (though it'd be nice if the site could sort out how to center-justify graphics, no?)

So: click on through to my Write-a-Thon Profile, and make a donation, why don't you?  You can also pledge by the word, but as I warned earlier: I will be meeting and probably exceeding my goal of 20,000 words, about the minimum necessary to finish the second draft of this book; it's entirely possible I'll end up writing 30,000 or 40,000 more words -- so DON'T pledge by the word unless you're prepared to, um, well, discover you're on the hook for a big bunch of money.

Or, hell, pledge by the word.  It's a good cause.  I just don't want you getting your butt kicked at the end of this, you know?

Check Out My Crappy View

I think I mentioned that I was in Madison, Wisconsin last weekend, no? One of the awesome things about our trip was our hotel.  We stayed at the Hilton, Monona Terrace, one of the two hotels suggested by our friends in their wedding invitations.  We wanted a slightly larger room so Layla would have some floor space to play around on, and ended up with an amazing view, from the twelfth floor (there were also at least a dozen amazing restaurants within two or three blocks of the hotel).

I have some pics!

Madison's capital building.

Madison's capital building.

Madison's capitol building's design is heavily based on the capitol in Washington, DC.  If memory serves, city zoning prohibits anyone from building anything within the city taller than the capitol.  When I was in college, every now and again I'd meet someone out at the bars who'd either tried to or planned to attempt to climb that sucker.  Always seemed awfully round to me.

And, just for fun, I decided to mess around with the iPhone's panorama functionality.  Here's the wiiiiiiide view:

Madison's capital building -- panorama.

Madison's capital building -- panorama.

If you check out the upper-right hand corner, you can see Lake Mendota, one of the two lakes which shape Madison, which is on an isthmus of land (also the lake our friends live on).  Funny story: the first time I drew the curtains, I happened to be standing with the capitol building blocked, so all I saw was the street and a couple utility trucks down below.  "Hurm, crappy view," I said.  "Are you nuts?" Jessy said.  Then I stepped around the curtains.  Me = stupid.

Here's a shot out the other window.  Again, using the panorama function to streeeeeetch things out:

Madison's Lake Monona.

Madison's Lake Monona.

Nice, huh?  Madison really is a beautiful place.  A lot of my college friends like to go on about how much the city's changed since we graduated.  I'll agree there's a lot of new stuff, a lot of buildings that have been renovated, a lot of things I don't recognize.  But it was still Madison to me.  Still there, just a little bigger, a little busier, a little shinier than when I was there.

Write Every Day: Automated Vacuum Cleaner Robots

I'm going to sort of skip forward in the narration. I'm going to assume that you, oh intrepid writer looking for a boost, a nudge, a poke, a wiggle, are good with committing to building the good habit of writing.

"I want to write," you say.  "But I don't know what to write."

Okie dokie.  I can help with that too.

Write Every Day Logo

Write Every Day Logo

Maybe you're staring at that blank screen with no idea where to begin.  Maybe you've got a great idea for a story, only you've also got a great idea for another story.  Or twenty another stories.  Which one to write now?  Which idea to go for?

Or maybe it's (shudder) writer's block.  Maybe you're dying to write but you don't have a single good idea to mess around with.

Stop it.  Seriously.

Let's take these in reverse order:

It's sort of like that line from The Usual Suspects: "I don't believe in writer's block, but I'm afraid of it."  Yeah.

Do you have writer's block?  Maybe.  I mean, anyone can get stuck.  It's been my experience, though, that what most folks call writer's block is more like one of those little automated vacuum cleaner robots getting jammed in between the wall, the couch, the coffee table and the edge of the rug.  How'd it get in there?  Doesn't seem possible, but there's no way it's getting out on its own.

So, what do you do?  You go over, you pick it up, and you carry it to another, probably open, area to get back to work.

You see where I'm going with this, right?

If you get stuck -- blocked -- the first thing to do is take Douglas Adams' advice and Don't Panic.  It's going to be okay.

Then look at why you're stuck.  Maybe you've written yourself into a corner.  In my case, it's almost always that I've let the story get away from me.  I had an idea where I wanted the story to go and I was wrong.  I can pound my head on a bit of story, trying to figure out why it's not working.  Almost always the answer is to go back, see if I can spot where things went off the rails, and get things running again.

So: pick yourself up and get a fresh start.

If you're in the middle of something, go back like I just wrote and see if you can spot where things started going pear-shaped.  Un-pear-shape things.  This can be as simple as deleting a scene that -- in retrospect, of course -- not only doesn't work, but seems, tonally, completely different from the book you're writing.  It can be as difficult as -- I'm looking at you, The King's Glamour -- rolling over to the second draft when you're more than 2/3 of the way "done" with the first draft.

Hey, it happens.

Don't be like that little robot, backing up half an inch, then zipping forward into the wall again.  Over and over again.  Pick yourself up, take things from a new perspective, and get back to work.  Might take more than one try -- sometimes those robots just rush right back into the corner -- but give yourself permission to get past it and you just might.

(I realize I'm sort of vastly simplifying the crushing pain of writer's block here, and that for some people it can be a very real and horrible thing.  Therefore, please accept my apologies if taking a fresh look at things doesn't do the trick.)

This one's easy: pick one.

Any one.  Doesn't matter which one.  Doesn't have to be your big, giant, marketable idea and it doesn't have to be a little, scrawny, whining-in-the-corner-in-pain idea.  Just an idea.  Write about it.  See where it takes you.  Don't worry; you can write about something else when you're done.

I used to have this problem.  Maybe I still do.  As I'm finishing The King's Glamour, I'm also taking notes and outlining for (check this out): The Prince's Revenge, Painted Ocean, Lions Together Are Called a Pride, From Beyond the Grave, Verrazano Narrows,several additional books and stories inwhat I'm tentatively calling The Marketverse, including a follow-up series of books once Ellie's adventures are done(ish), and a good half-dozen short stories.  I'm also organizing notes for my rewrites and revisions on Beautiful Handcrafted Animals, which I wanted to release this spring, but am holding off on because my editor and I had a freaking killer idea for how to make the book a thousand times more awesome.

How do I manage it all?  Easy: I focus on one thing at a time.  Even when I don't want to focus on one thing at a time, I make myself do it.  So, I'll be at the gym thinking about Painted Ocean, and I'll jot down some notes, but when I get home it's all The King's Glamour all the time.  Painted Ocean, your time will come soon enough.

This one's easy, too: begin at the beginning.

Oh, but finding the beginning?  That's tough.

Here's what I'll do when I'm starting something new, trying to figure out how to begin.  "Something new" being defined as "a new story, a new book, a new chapter, a new section, a new paragraph".

(1) I'll try to start cold.  This works about half of the time.  With The Seven Markets it worked a lot.  With Glamour, less so.  I wish I could tell you there's some rhyme or reason, but there isn't.  Anyway, try to jump in cold.

(2) Try again.

(3) Try a third time.  It's okay.

(4) After three or ten or thirty times, when it just seems like you can't get into the zone, stop.  Open a new document in whatever program you're using (Scrivener is particularly good for this, as you can put all this stuff in one place for safe-keeping).

(5) Start typing.  I'll begin all these documents with "Okay".  It acts as a sort of mnemonic device for me, telling me that's where I'm going.  I'll free associate, I'll take notes, I'll ask myself questions.  "What's the point of this section?"  "Why does this section need to be in the book?"  "Can I do without this section?"  "What's the most important thing that has to happen next?"

(6) Eventually, stuff'll start to happen.  For me -- and I'm sort of an old hat with this technique -- it can be pretty quick.  I'll realize I was going left when I needed to be going right.  I was focusing on the wrong character.  I was so amused by a clever notion I'd caught (beware cleverness in all its forms) that my characters weren't being true to themselves.

(7) Basically, let the right path reveal itself.

And it will.  Well, it should.  I mean, it's possible you're so far down the rabbit hole you need to get a Medivac copter to come in and airlift you to safety.  But even that should become obvious as you're plugging away.

I'll have nights where I'll write a 2,000 word notes document to get one line of text.  Totally worth it.  As a nice ancillary bonus, I'll usually get ten or fifteen other things about the story I wasn't thinking about brought into sharper focus.

Well, yeah.  Yes.

The point of Write Every Day is to get you writing every day.  Part of that is to help build the good habit of writing.  Part of that is just to produce.  Part of that is to see the ways regular writing is more than just plugging away, head down, nose to the keyboard, at whatever it is you're writing.

Can you get stuck?  Absolutely.  Should you let yourself stay stuck?  Hell no.

A lot of people (we call them non-writers) believe the hardest part of writing is having a great idea to write about.  "I've got this great idea for a story," they'll say, perhaps offering to hand said great idea off to you, the actual writer.  You do the writing and they'll share the money (ha: money).  How generous.

But ideas aren't your problem, are they?  Ideas you've got.  But how to translate that great or okay or not so great or bleh idea into an actual story?  That's the real trick isn't it?  That's the work.

So: let yourself do the work.  Don't be discouraged if the door onto the page seems jammed shut.  Kick it, hit it, pick the lock, sneak around and check for a back door.  Because it's there.  If you're committed to writing, if you're dedicated to it, it'll be there.  Look hard enough and you'll find it.

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text:
EISENHUTH, WILLIAM L. (BILLY) - Stark County, Ohio | WILLIAM L. (BILLY) EISENHUTH - Ohio Gravestone Photos

William L. (Billy) EISENHUTH

Westlawn -- Canton -- Canton Twp. Cemetery
Stark County,

William Eisenhuth

Contributed on 2/3/08 by westljohn
Email This Contributor

Record #: 49967

Thank you for visiting the Ohio Gravestone Photo Project

On this site you can upload gravestone photos, locate ancestors and perform genealogy research. If you have a relative buried in Ohio, we encourage you to upload a digital image using our Submit a Photo page. Contributing to this geneology archive helps family historians and genealogy researchers locate their relatives and complete their family tree.

Submitted: 2/3/08 • Approved: 2/3/08 • Last Updated: 8/13/15 • R49967-G0-S3

Other GPP Projects  |  Contact Us  |  Terms of Use  |  Site Map  |  Admin Login


text:
BUTCHER, LUELLA - Gallia County, Ohio | LUELLA BUTCHER - Ohio Gravestone Photos

Gravel Hill -- Cheshire Twp. Cemetery
Gallia County,

Luella Butcher
Aug 25, 1861 - Oct 12, 1948
Daughter of: David & Rachael McCarty Coughenour
Wife of: James Lincoln Butcher

Contributed on 5/3/09 by WAAnderson
Email This Contributor

Record #: 92702

Thank you for visiting the Ohio Gravestone Photo Project

On this site you can upload gravestone photos, locate ancestors and perform genealogy research. If you have a relative buried in Ohio, we encourage you to upload a digital image using our Submit a Photo page. Contributing to this geneology archive helps family historians and genealogy researchers locate their relatives and complete their family tree.

Submitted: 5/3/09 • Approved: 5/3/09 • Last Updated: 8/13/15 • R92702-G92702-S3

Other GPP Projects  |  Contact Us  |  Terms of Use  |  Site Map  |  Admin Login


text:
Meet Park Kyungri a Member of Nine Muses

Park Kyungri

Park Kyungri Biography

  1. Kyungri was born on July 5, 1990.
  2. She was born in Busan, South Korea.
  3. Her height is 170cm.
  4. Kyungri is the the lead vocalist of the Nine Muses.
  5. She attended and graduated from Dae Myung Girls High School.
  6. Her star sign is the cancer.
  7. She has an older sister.
  8. She likes Ddeokbeokki and Patbingsu
  9. Kyungri likes the color red
  10. She is ambidextrous, which means that she as skilled with her left hand as she is with her right hand.
  11. She is very good with the skipping rope
  12. Park Kyungri used to be a backup dancer for a couple of Kpop idols, including Lee Jung and Chae Yeon.
  13. Her name in Korean is 박경리

Instagram: @gyeongree
Twitter: @ICE_Gang

A photo posted by 박경리 (@gyeongree) on

Kyungri Fashion and Style

A photo posted by 박경리 (@gyeongree) on

Coming Soon

1000 lucky Chinese fans met Nine Muses.

Nine Muses Documentary on Netflix.

This is the place where you can find out when and where Park Kyungri is on tour or is holding fan events.

There are no events scheduled in your area.

Please check back for updates.

Albums and Extended Plays

  • Sweet Rendezvous
  • Lets have a party
  • Dolls
  • Wild
  • Prima Donna
  • Drama
  • Nine Muses S/S Edition
  • Lost (till the night is over)

  • No Playboy
  • Ladies
  • Figaro
  • News
  • Ticket
  • Dolls
  • Wild
  • Gun
  • Glue
  • Drama
  • Hurt Locker
  • Sleepless Night

Nine Muses

Nine Muses – Sleepless

Nine Muses – Hurt Locker

That will round up our Park Kyungri profile. What do you think about it? What is your favourite song from the Nine Muses?

22 super lovely phrases you can tell your OPPA to show him how much you love him.

Signup now and receive an email once I publish new content.

I will never give away, trade or sell your email address. You can unsubscribe at any time.


text:
Facebook Blocks Zuckerberg Action Figure, JTLYK.

Sorry, male-doll enthusiasts, but Facebook’s lawyers are not sharing (which, QED, is caring) the Mark Zuckerberg action figure, a lifelike, seven-inch future Winklevi voodoo instrument.

Yesterday producers of the short-lived doll, Made in China Gadgets, posted an email they claim was “from a Beijing law firm representing Facebook.Inc.” According to the toy makers, “[t]he law firm has informed us that the Poking Inventor action figure has not consented to the use of Facebook’s copyrights and trademarks, and at the same time, using Mr. Mark Zuckerberg’s portraiture for commercial purpose.”

The doll:

Here’s a close-up. The head sculpt is unique and supports some good detail. First, the full head of light brown curly hair is stunning, the paint job is perfect. The great detail work in the face shows his intense green eyes and freckles.

The blue jeans looks very real!

Here’s the fun part. The figurine comes with two small rectangular small acrylic plates measuring 2 X 5cm and you can attach the plate into his right hand.

To make the figure even more fun to play with, three speech bubble cards are bundled with the figurine. You get a marker (not included) and write whatever you want on the speech bubbles.

Source: www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/03/grappling-with-the-cancellation-of-the-mark-zuckerberg-action-figure.html


text:
Home|News & Media|Articles

OHSAA Boys Basketball State Tournament Information

March 19, 2017
News Release – Ohio High School Athletic Association
Commissioner Daniel B. Ross, Ph.D.
For Immediate Release – March 19, 2017
Contact – Tim Stried, Director of Communications, tstried@ohsaa.org
OHSAA Boys Basketball State Tournament Information
Pairings, tickets and media coverage for the 95th Annual OHSAA State Tournament
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The pairings and schedule for the 95th Annual Ohio High School Athletic Association Boys Basketball State Tournament were finalized Sunday by the OHSAA. The state tournament tips off Thursday morning at the Jerome Schottenstein Center at The Ohio State University.
State Tournament TV, Streaming and Radio Coverage
Spectrum Sports is the official television partner of the OHSAA and will televise the boys basketball state championship games live Saturday. In addition, all 12 games will be streamed live at http://www.myspectrumsports.com/ for Spectrum subscribers.
The OHSAA Radio Network will broadcast every game of the state tournament. Details are posted at: http://ohsaa.org/news/radio - which includes the link to listen to every game. Stations can contact Tim Stried for information about affiliate options.
Boys Basketball Media Teleconference
The OHSAA will host a media teleconference Monday featuring the head coaches of the boys basketball teams that have advanced to the state tournament. The teleconference begins at 10:00 a.m., with each coach having a 10-minute session. Please contact Tim Stried for the schedule and call-in details.
2017 Boys Basketball State Tournament Pairings
Home Team Listed First. Rankings are from Associated Press Final State Poll.
All games played at the Jerome Schottenstein Center, Columbus, Ohio.
Division II
No. 8 Wauseon (26-1) vs. Cols. Eastmoor Academy (22-6), Thursday at 10:45 a.m.
No. 11 Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary (23-5) vs. No. 2 Trotwood-Madison (26-2), Thursday at 2:00 p.m.
State Final: Saturday at 10:45 a.m.
Division IV
Delphos St. John’s (21-4) vs. Cle. Hts. Lutheran East (18-9), Thursday at 5:15 p.m.
Columbus Wellington (21-7) vs. Lima Perry (24-3), Thursday at 8:30 p.m.
State Final: Saturday at 2:00 p.m.
Division III
No. 8 Cle. Villa Angela-St. Joseph (21-6) vs. No. 4 Proctorville Fairland (25-1), Friday at 10:45 a.m.
No. 10 Cin. Roger Bacon (24-4) vs. Archbold (22-5), Friday at 2:00 p.m.
State Final: Saturday at 5:15 p.m.
Division I
No. 2 Pickerington Central (26-2) vs. No. 1 Cin. Archbishop Moeller (27-0), Friday at 5:15 p.m.
Lakewood St. Edward (23-5) vs. No. 4 Massillon Jackson (26-2), Friday at 8:30 p.m.
State Final: Saturday at 8:30 p.m.
Boys Basketball State Tournament Tickets
Ticket information for the OHSAA’s state tournaments at the Schottenstein Center is posted at http://www.ohsaa.org/TheSchott - which includes all-session and single-session tickets, special group ticket offers and information about suites and RV parking.
Tickets are available online at Ticketmaster.com, Search OHSAA, at the Schottenstein Center ticket office, and at the 16 state tournament qualifying schools. Tickets available include single-session and all-session ticket books (12 games) in the Entry Level, Club Level, Terrace Level and in the Center Court Club. Single-session ticket prices are $15 each for the Entry and Club Levels and $12 for the Terrace Level. All-session ticket books are $144 for the Entry and Club Levels or $120 for the Terrace Level. The limited quantity Center Court Club tickets, which cost $498 per book, are located very close to the court and also give fans the opportunity to remain in the arena between games in a special hospitality area.
Two special “Four Pack” ticket offers are also available. The first special is for “Championship Saturday” that includes a ticket to each of the four championship games in the Terrace Level for $36. The second special includes four tickets together in the Terrace Level for any of the 12 games for $36 (a savings of $3 per ticket).
Schottenstein Center Suites and RV Parking Available
Fans interested in watching the state tournaments from a suite inside the Schottenstein Center can contact Justin Doyle at doyle.106@osu.edu for pricing and availability. Overnight RV parking will be available for $25 per day in the Buckeye Lots north of the Schottenstein Center.
Boys Basketball State Tournament Coverage
State Tournament Media Credentials
Media are asked to apply for credentials using forms and information posted at: http://www.ohsaa.org/news/credentials
### OHSAA ###