Not that anyone asked, but since I’m taking a few days to cool down between finishing the rough draft of The Living Throne and starting the edits, I thought I’d give a glimpse at what I do when I’m not slaving over prose.

It’s not exactly exciting, but it’s kind of relevant and I get to show off some of my favorite things, so shush.

At any given moment, my desktop looks kinda like this:

I no longer seem capable of doing just one thing at a time.  No, I have to have a movie or YouTube video on in the background (and I follow a whole bunch of youtube gamers, especially horror ones), plus some kind of game of my own to semi-concentrate on, plus my work just in case I get a sudden spark of inspiration — or yet another uncomfortable feeling that informs me that something needs to be edited.

I play things in windowed mode, if at all possible, because I’ve gotten to the point in my MMORPG-playing life that it’s all autopilot now.  I used to raid in EverQuest, and World of Warcraft, and …did I raid in Vanguard or just adventure? oh and in EverQuest 2, but I had to retire from punching things vigorously in the face because I did it so much that I gave myself carpal tunnel issues.  I’m using a wrist brace right now, but mostly to keep something between my wrist and the desk edge — my setup isn’t very ergonomic but I have a comfy chair and the need to put my feet up on things anyway, so ergonomic was never going to work for me.

So I don’t raid anymore.  And I’ve nearly maxed out all my characters in my current game, EQ2 — though they recently raised the cap from 90 to 95, which I’ll never bother to reach, so I’m a bit sad that I’ll leave it while not maxed out.  I have problems with perfectionism sometimes, but I’m trying to let it go.

This isn’t all fun and games, though.  I tend to replicate my novel characters everywhere I go, and EQ2 is no exception.

In fact, these buggers follow me everywhere I go, giving their commentary on my life.  What would Darilan do in this situation?  Probably stab someone.  What would Enkhaelen do?  You don’t want to know.

I’ve played other members of the cast in various other games where they seemed to work better.  I had Ilshenrir in Vanguard, and Lark in World of Warcraft, et cetera et cetera, but since I don’t play those anymore, I have a lack of screenshots.

However, I have Aion’s character generator, which I use entirely too much!  I’m a little bit artistic, but as I’m a dilettante at everything but prose-writing, my artistic skills have significantly atrophied over the years.  I’m not very good at drawing my people, even though I know exactly how they look, dangit!

So with any MMO that happens to have a good character generator, I tend to spend most of my time recreating every single person in every single book…rather than actually playing, or doing something more productive.  And my cover artist D. D. Phillips has been kind enough to turn some of those generated characters into actual portraits, that I can actually use going forward.

So naturally I use those portraits to entertain myself.

The quotes are from the text, but don’t take any of the alignments as canon.  I wanted to fill all the spaces even though half of the D&D alignment test results were coming up Lawful Good — which doesn’t sound right either, because if the core group was a D&D adventuring party, their motto would be ‘Escape in the chaos!’

Goddamn pack of idiots.

But they can’t help it, because they’re a reflection of me, and even when I’m not playing a game I can create one of them in, I end up doing the same things anyway.

Getting a bit overzealous in Don’t Starve.

What would Enkhaelen do, indeed.