I wanted to mention a few books I’ve read the past few weeks that I think are worth noting.

I collected quite a number of comics from ComiCon because me knowledge of that area of literature is woefully ignorant. I’ve read a few in my very spare time and wanted to mention them.

First, Scott Pilgrim was recommended to me by Joss Whedon himself, so I totally put that on the top of the stack. And I’ve already ordered all the rest of the series, it’s so great! Short description: “Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year-old guy living in the big city with his gay roommate, just trying to make his way in this crazy world.” It’s cool to have such a hip, regular-world venue and have it be so incredibly interesting. The characters are so engaging. I look forward to eating up all the rest of the series very quickly.

Next, I met the “Looking for Group” guys in their booth at Comicon and they traded my their lovely hardback for a signed headshot. Nice trade! I had read this comic before online, so to get a nice hardback copy to peruse (Nice, thick, luscious paper, oh and the comic is awesome too, hehe). If you’re a gamer or a WOW player, definitely check out their site. I’m partial to them because they have an actual page called “Codex”, thus they know where that name came from, rather than making “Kotex” jokes.

I have more comics to go through from Comicon, so stay tuned for more stuff I’ve glommed onto.

Other books: I also got a preview copy of the forthcoming novel “I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER”!!!!!

The testament to the power of LOL Cats is that any visitor I’ve have over in the last week who has seen the book, promptly squeals and then reads EVERY PAGE SLOWLY and giggles to themselves in the corner. It’s weird and creepy and fantastic. I read this book with my boyfriend together before bedtime. I might do it again tonight. When this book comes out I will be buying many copies and spreading the gospel of Kitteh Talk. Thanks for the preview!

Next, I finished the GREAT Duology “Hunter’s Oath” and “Hunter’s Death” by Michelle West. I love this author, she writes under the name Michelle Sagara too, her “Cast” series has a new one coming out at the end of the month and I’ve pre-ordered it for months. That series is more urban-fantasy-romancey, but this duology is thick, complicated Epic Fantasy at its finest. There are a lot of characters, and sometimes the lore gets a little heavy, but I really enjoyed the world and the plot twists. I will be reading the other books she has in this world focusing on one of the characters.

Last but never least, my blog readers know I’m crazy about Lisa Shearin’s Magic Lost, Trouble Found series. If you like adventure, romance, girl fighting action, a great sense of humor, definitely pick up this series. However, you know that I haven’t been a huge fan of the cover art. (I believe I referred to it as vaginal pink or something insulting, and Lisa commented and I was ashamed, haha). Well, the cover art for book #3 is out and….

YES! No pink in sight! Raine is finally bad-assed like she is in the book! She’s wearing leather, she has skinny thighs! She’s carrying a dagger, and her ears are attractive and pointy. I love orange, my favorite color, so I can’t tell you HOW EXCITED I AM ABOUT THIS BOOK! Finally it doesn’t scream 12 year old girl. It says there will be fighting and magic and sexy hunk elves and goblins galore. Yumz.

So Lisa and Lisa’s cover art maker, I salute you. I only ache inside I have to wait until next year to read this. Where can I pre-order?!!

I just realized this morning that I hadn’t updated in a while.  The reason being, I haven’t had a chance to breathe in a while! :)  Ever since we got back from Seattle, it’s been non-stop pre-production for Season 2 Guild.  We are STILL unfunded, have a few prospects, but we are going ahead on low-budget for now, seeing how things shake out in the next week or so.  I didn’t want to put the PayPal button up for donations on the off-chance we got a sponsor on board in the next few weeks and then had to give back the money, etc.  It’s all a big waiting game in this web video business :)  The only thing I have control of is actually getting the scripts done and shooting, and that’s what we’ve done!  Mantra:  Don’t wait for other people to make things happen.

Anyway, if you follow The Guild website you’ll know that the cast will be at Blizzcon Oct 10th and 11th, we’re thrilled to participate!  We will be doing a panel and previewing Season 2 exclusively, so it’s exciting all around.

Also, they’ve posted a few preview clips of my episode of House on Fox’s webpage. I’m in clips #1 and #4, definitely was hired for my awesome looks for this episode (haha).  Hugh Laurie was so amazing to work with, I can’t wait to watch the whole episode.  It’s next Tuesday the 23rd, so set your Tivos!  If you want, you don’t have to

Anyway, back to coordinating crew and finishing scripts and working on website stuff and emails!  I’ve read a lot of books in the last few weeks, only thing that’s kept me sane is bedtime reading, so I’m looking forward to a chance to review some stuff!

Oh also, evidently I’m in Geek Monthly this month, WOOT!  Sarah Kuhn, the writer of that article, also has a cool .pdf Geek Zine called “Alert Nerd” that has a blurb on me on page 18 too about my early gaming habits.  Cool!

Just got back from Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. In my small Convention experience, the last 3 days have topped all! We were crazy busy the whole convention, I didn’t get to participate in the many cool things going on which kinda sucked because there were so many awesome things on the schedule. I only got my hands briefly on the Warhammer demo and that’s it as far as games went.  On a show note though, it was SPECTACULAR! We had a huge demand for the DVD, especially during signing times.  Seeing a line formed for me and Zaboo down the length of the hall was so exciting! At the same time, we introduced a lot of gamers to our show, which was a huge boost for us, because PAX attendees are people who would like our show.  I gave out Bookmarks generously :)  Friday night we screened the show in front of 250 people I believe, they even had to turn people away. (I couldn’t believe that!)  Seeing The Guild episodes back to back in front of a live audience was such a thrilling experience because we’d never done it before.  Part of me couldn’t believe the crowd actually laughed in places I wanted them to when I wrote it!   It was phenomenal!  We’ll have an audio of the Q and A after the screening posted on The Guild site as soon as we get it.  All in all, the trip really helped the show and it was wonderful to meet fans in person.

A few highlights for me:

I can’t rave enough about the staff at PAX. The Enforcers, the VIP escorts, were pretty much the nicest most helpful volunteers I’d ever met. We were privileged to be working with Macca, Matt, Mari, Mojo, Klayton, Biran, Jason and especially our man Nels. You guys saved our butt so many times over, and we love you for it! Thanks especially to Gabe and Tycho, Penny Arcade creators, gurus and all around luscious human men. Tycho was especially nice and groomed me, something I’ve been waiting for since they posted this comic.   I’m not as frightened as I look.  It was an expert brushing.

Also, I was Bad Horse’d!  What an experience! During one of the signing sessions I was handed a letter and asked to stand in front of the booth. As I opened it, well…this happened:

Couldn’t have been more floored in my  life!  It was a total treat and surprise!  The Chorus was kind enough to pose for a picture with me later.   They said they were going to do it to a bunch more people at the Con, can’t wait until that video is uploaded as well!

Another treat was meeting Edgar Garcia, my co-opted webmaster of The Guild and this site :)  He helps me out so much, and getting to hang out, have him help us with the booth, it was so fun!  He also made that creepy shirt he’s wearing there.  I laughed so much when I saw it!  Sandeep was amused, but less so, HA!! :)  He gave me a shirt for myself, I haven’t worn it yet, but I promised him that I would upload a picture soon :)  Jamie Chambers, another champion volunteer of The Guild who has sold The Guild DVD and screened it at Gencon and Dragoncon, also made me a kick ass shirt, so I have so modelling to do in the near future!!!

And last but not least…well, if a musician you kind of are a fangirl of suddenly emailed you out of the blue and asked you to sing on stage with him, what would you do?   MMm, same thing I did when Joss emailed me and asked me to do “Horrible.”  Yes please!

Jonathan Coulton, brilliant singer-songwriter, hero to geeks and musicians everywhere, asked me the week before PAX to sing “Still Alive”, the song from the end of “Portal”.  Coincidentally I had just played the song at a Rock Band party the week before, so the universe was trying to tell me something.  I was pretty nervous because I’d never sung on stage live with a mic, it was quite a learning experience.  But the minute I walked out on stage, 3000 people or so cheered and instantly I knew why people become rock stars!  I had so much fun, the crowd basically sang along with me, and standing next to JoCo was a thrill beyond compare.  I can’t claim to have done justice to the song (one of my faves), and in fact performing with a monitor and a mic was totally new to me.  It’s on my list to have that skill set prepared for the next time someone cool asks me to sing ;)  Still, this was an amazing experience. Here’s video:

Couldn’t have been more spectacular!  Hmm, now I want to join a band…lol.

I’ve decided to turn the phrase “stressed beyond belief” to “coping with a wealth of opportunities”.  That sounds so much more positive and lovely! :)  I haven’t had time to blog in a few weeks, time has passed so fast it’s unimaginable that I just took that trip to New Media Expo and now I’m packing my bags for PAX in Seattle!  So crazy! Seeing a Twitter by Jenwriter tonight about how she was looking forward to a blog entry by me was what spurred me to write, so thanks Jen!  I can’t guarantee quality, but I can deliver quantity ONE BLOG ENTRY!

I have been totally overwhelmed this past week.  So overwhelmed I haven’t even had a chance to TOUCH a video game, gasp!  Not only did I have to juggle an unexpected commercial job (shooting from 7pm to 7am for two days in a row!) but I’ve been scrambling  to get Guild Season 2 jump started.  It was an executive decision by me and my producer Kim Evey to start planning to shoot at least a few episodes by end of September.  I looked at the calendar a few weeks ago and was like, “It’s been WAY too long, I’m not waiting anymore. We have to shoot!”  And with that, we started getting ready for pre-production.  We have been waiting all summer to meet the right funding partner to enable us to shoot and pay people.  Unfortunately, people are slow to let go of their money, haha.  Not to say we haven’t gotten offers, but none of them has felt right to me yet.  The New Media landscape is so crazy right now, and every deal is different and has it’s advantages and disadvantages.  Kim and I decided a while ago to try and retain the rights to our show, and that has definitely ruled out some avenues of funding, but we know the right opportunity will present itself in time, we just have to keep plugging away.  We still have a few interesting possibilities looming on the horizon, but now we’re working with a set goal to shoot in September no matter what and it makes me feel so empowered to have that line drawn in the sand.   The lesson I’ve learning the last year or so is that waiting on other people to solve my problems is never going to accomplish anything and I just had to remind myself of that to get the ball rolling.

Not having the script totally done has been the main stress because it takes me long uninterrupted blocks of time to write.  I’m also developing a script with Machinima.com at the same time that is also fun, but another time-block-requirerer.  The challenge for me is somehow letting emails and other correspondence  go rather than automatically responding and spending 3-4 hours a day on messaging, which has been the case the past 3 weeks or so.   Video Game Addict => Email addict anyone?

I saw an interesting article on Tim Street’s Blog the other day about Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV.  He has a clever way of dealing with emails:  He send people a link to this video:

I love it because he’s so polite and he obviously cares that people take time out to contact him but he simply can’t respond very quickly and he wants people to know that.  I don’t get nearly as much mail as him, but to make time to finish this script AND get everything else done in my life, ruthless triage must be done, at least for the next 4 weeks.  I missed a dear friend’s baby shower due to Comicon and utter chaos, and it was kind of a wake-up call.  I think I may be copying Senor Vaynerchuk!

I’m proud to say that the effort to delegate is now a goal of mine for the next month.  We put a post on the Guild website last week asking for volunteers for the show and had to take it down again the next day due to the overwhelming response!  All THOSE emails have ironically taken a lot of hours to deal with and respond to, haha, but now we have a great group of people we know we can call on to help us, and as for set PA’s:  We could staff a Michael Bay film with the # of volunteers on the list!!!  Thank you all who offered their time and services, it means so much to us.

Anyway, enough whining about how hard my life is!  I’m leaving tomorrow for Seattle, and if you’re at Penny Arcade Expo please stop by and meet me and Zaboo and Kim Evey my producing partner!  We’ll be selling and signing DVDs and screening the first season of The Guild on the big screen, yay!!  Check out The Guild site for details on signings and the Friday night screening!

I leave you with an interview I did with Pop17.  It was quite fun and was done at New Media Expo!