Author: Laura Highcove

NaNo and beyond

Laura Highcove

Once again I have managed to be NaNotorious.

It was harder this year, for sure, since I had a full time job. Week three was the worst, I really wanted to just give up and get on with…well not doing this. But I managed to stick it out. Once again the book is not finished. I think I’m further through the book than the halfway of last year, but once again, we’ll see how that goes. I, of course, celebrated by starting work on my other book, The Trickster.

That being said, we’re less than a week away from Wow’s Cataclysm launch which will consume my soul for at least a month before I come up for air. Looking forward to the days off if nothing else. Though with the time, I really should get the ‘credits’ thing done to try and encourage other people to make their own so I can get that done before Cata launches.

There’s also the pesky issue of my lost SoulSilver game, and with it all of the Pokemon I have collected over the past, roughly three years. I have reached the last gym of the Diamond version of the game (which I hate as a game, but made better by sending over eggs from my husband’s Heart Gold game for a familiar team) and am playing with getting White when it comes out in March. However last night I looked over the pictures of the pokemon from Gen V and am sadly (but expectantly) disappointed by the horrible designs in most every respect. Most of my problem being that a lot of the pokemon don’t *look* like pokemon. The style seems incorrect. The starters are fine along with a few random pokes, but even the legendary dragons don’t really fit the style of pokemon designs I’m used to. I still desperately cling to the original 151 with some passion, with only tiny cracks for some pokemon from the later releases. By the time they hit Diamond’s pokemon, I was thoroughly disgusted, and think I hold no love for any of those pokemon (I’d have to check to be positive.)

So what is the point of going into Gen V? The possibility of at least good gameplay. I did not dislike Diamond only because of the unfamiliar, unimagined pokemon, but because the gameplay itself was terrible as they took a Game Boy game and spent five minutes making it DS compatible. (I also didn’t like it because of the storyline. While Team Galactic was cool for once again having a PLAN, the idea of being able to put the world’s creator in a ball in my pocket really pushes past even the suspension of disbelief one must have for being able to put something the size of Onix in a ball in my pocket.) SoulSilver was everything that I could possibly want in a game. All of the pokemon. A huge world. Fabulous gameplay and an actual (fabulous) use of the ds screen. In my mind they improved the game in almost every way. (Even the pokewalker was so cool.) So I’m hoping that Black and White will be worth it. If not, I suppose I’ll get another SoulSilver game at some point and complete my Gen IV collection and be happy with that.

Holidays

Laura Highcove

I think I should be able to say Merry Christmas without fear of persecution. Sure, radio stations, and TV stations, and TV programs, stick with Happy Holidays as they generally represent a number of people with a number of religious beliefs, but *I* have my own religious belief, and that is in Chritsmas.

I don’t believe that wishing someone a Merry Christmas is offensive. It’s not me shoving my religion down your throat. It’s me saying this is my religion, I wish you well. I would not be offended to be wished a Happy Hanukkah or a Happy Kwanzaa (Kwanzaa isn’t even a religious holiday…). It just seems these days that people are so scared to offend people because there are some idiots out there who go out of their way to be offended by everything they possibly can.

Lololololololololololololol

Laura Highcove

I’ve always wanted to server spam. Like always, and I finally got to. 😀

So our trip down Lich King Heroic started long long ago, in a galaxy where Halion did not exist. Then we took like three months off and downed the stupid pink dragon. Yeah Koi, that was fun. >.> BUT THEN we came back to the Lich King and promptly began having attendance issues. YAY! Many nights we had anywhere from 20 to 24 people in the raid. It was frustrating, but the reason we’ve stayed together as a guild for over three…four…? however many years now is because Koi is the most stubborn person in the world. (Case in point, this version of word press hasn’t been updated since we got this website…)

In a last ditch attempt to down Lich King before Cataclysm, we appointed Levo…iknorite? as recruiting officer. Lo and behold he worked some sort of magic and we managed to pull in three new initiates which pulled us up to the standard 25 man raid. We went into raiding that night and not only got to p3 for the first time, but got the boss to 22% with two minutes left on the enrage timer before we just ran out of living people.

And then you can guess what happened. We had a record number of people on Friday night. We stumbled around the boss for a few attempts, and then in the one attempt where some really crazy stuff happened, we managed to turn it into a kill. Many that kill vid that I get around to doing in December after NaNoWriMo is over is going to be great!

Edit: So we of course celebrated as soon as we all died, but Koi in his insight and wisdom was like “omg gais, wut if the server crashes?” And we all laughed, and we got our achievements, and I passed out all the loot, and Koi was about to call rolls on Invincible when…the server actually crashed. We came back in to a soft reset instance with valk’yr and no Lich King body with Invincible still on it. qq

So we rolled and got double 100s, out of which Azshane, our resident shirly aussie came out on top. And she got to hope that our tickets to the GMs would prove fruitful in receiving Invincible. Oddly enough, I got a response by the next day. iknorite? Asking who everything was going to go to, and I went into ZG thinking it would take a while for a GM to get back to me. Nope. He popped in while I was killing the tiger boss and said Invincible was in the mailbox for Azzy and I got the two worthless tokens for the 10 they are worth. He also clarified the problem with the servers.

And Azzy finally got out of her own ZG run to come show us the much improved Invincible model.

I saw a full rainbow

Laura Highcove

NaNoWriMo has started and it’s going okay except for the one hiccup where I thought my only file of my story got corrupted, and yesterday’s late raid which made me so tired that I’m napping instead of writing. But then I should’ve have any trouble catching up this weekend. Of course I need to get ahead since next weekend I have to go family visiting.

Blah, it’s so cold out today. About time to pull out the heavy layers so as to stay warm in the barn. All the horses are getting frisky in the cold and of course there’s the lazy sleepy feeling cold weather brings in general.

And tonight should be our Heroic Lich King kill assuming we get the numbers. Hopefully with how well we did last night, people will be excited and come tonight as well.

Done with this

Laura Highcove

With NaNoWriMo on the horizon and my need to actually make some money, I’m just going to have to officially call this quits. It’s a shame, but I doubt I’m disappointing anyone anyway. Well except myself. Gonna keep writing, just not posting it here.

Discouraged

Laura Highcove

I’m feeling rather discouraged, for all my advertising and such it seems like I’ve had almost no visitors and it’s hard to even tell if any of them stuck around past their first visit. And while I don’t write for an audience, that is the main reason that I bother to post anything online, otherwise it would be much easier to just leave everything on my computer until the end of time.

But then it probably comes back to my one main fault in that I never do quite enough to actually be good at something. Maybe I didn’t advertise enough, maybe my story stinks, maybe I’m expecting too much.

Chapter 5.2

Laura Highcove

Canopus absorbed as much as he could through the next few fights, a task all the easier without Kyanosa’s random, loud comments. Actually the arena slowly emptied as the fights continued. By the time the last fight rolled around, there was barely anyone left in the stands.
“And now the last fight of the first round.” David said with as much enthusiasm as he had before the first fight. “Reykin Jones versus Ambyr Tenbrook.”
Reykin was an anthro kangaroo with light brown fur. She was wearing loose and flowing clothing, and wore a pair of punching daggers. Ambyr walked up with a smile. Canopus’ gaze lingered on her for longer than normal. Her red hair was cut short at her ears, framing a pretty face. Her outfit consisted of a sleeveless white and sky blue dress, and a pair of white boots that went up to mid shin. In her hand she held a foot long stick, which glittered slightly in the sun.

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Chapter 5.1

Laura Highcove

“Welcome back,” David said exactly 30 minutes later. “Let’s get this tournament back underway. First fight in the second half, Valorie Sterling versus Travis Dulean.”

“Oh, keep an eye on this fight. Valorie is another advisor and she’s pretty strong.” Dirk commented.

Canopus nodded. Valorie was reasonably attractive, with chestnut brown hair that fell halfway down her back. She had a sky blue baby doll tee shirt and long white pants. Her shoes matcher her shirt, and she carried a wooden quarterstaff in her hand.

It was quickly apparent that she wasn’t using the extent of her power, but the battle against a scythe wielding half sheol. She still seemed to win easily, blowing kisses to the crowd before leaving the arena.

Nothing much of interest happened through the next few fights until Josh’s name was called. He headed down to the arena, opposite Julia Sur, a woman with fox ears and tail.

Kaye could tell he was slightly distracted by her outfit, which was pretty revealing. It consisted of a purple tank top with only one strap, and some short jean shorts.

David looked from Josh to Julia. “Everybody ready?” Both combatants nodded. “Then fight!”

Julia grinned. “Good,” she bounded across the arena, pulling a fireball in-between her hands, and firing it toward Josh. Josh dodged to the side; his hand instinctively going for his knife, which he quickly remembered was no longer on his belt. By the time he realized it, Julia had reached him, and was throwing a strong punch toward his face.
Josh bent over backward as the blow flew right over him. As expected, Julia was thrown off balance by the lack of resistance she was expecting. He righted himself and spun around, slamming his foot into her back, hoping to throw her even further off balance. The fox girl caught herself easily.

Josh backed off slightly as Julia turned back around. She looked him over quickly, then reached into her pocket and withdrew a hammer that could not possibly have fit in her pocket. Josh jumped back as she swung it at him. This is crazy, where did that hammer come from?

She swung at him several more times, but each time he was able to dodge away. Unfortunately the fight wasn’t going anywhere. If I can hit her stomach, she’ll drop that hammer, and then she’ll be wide open for another attack. Josh continued to dodge as she swung, until after a particularly strong uppercut, he saw a clear path to her stomach. He darted in, slamming his fist into her stomach, and Julia dropped the hammer, but not the way Josh had expected. She dropped the hammer straight down onto the middle of his back, and the teen slammed into the ground.

Before he could get up, he felt a hand grip his arm, and another grab his leg, and he was picked up into the air, swung around twice, and tossed out of the arena.

Josh hit the ground hard, and rolled several times. When he opened his eyes again there was a medic standing over him. He healed the wounds, and then helped the teen to his feet. Julia was waving to the crowd as David announced the next three fights.