New Story

Laura Highcove

New name. New story. Still haven’t decided on an update day. Either Sunday or Monday as those are the days I have the most ‘free’ time. And yes, updates once a week.
Since this web story is all text, you have to remember that you get a lot more story with each post. If I was to update two or three times a week with the size posts I have planned, this story wouldn’t even last a half a year.

While I suppose that’s good if you’re really enjoying it, I certainly don’t want to rush things. Plus an easier update schedule is better for me.

On the flip side there are still a few things around the site that are not quite done yet. The bar on the right is one of those. I also have the character pictures drawn (just not colored) so those will be up pretty soon as well.

So I hope you come back and see how the story and the site progress.

Death-nomorewhispercauseshesdead

Laura Highcove

So everyone was all like, ‘Why are we skipping Lady Deathwhisper? She’s at the beginning of the instance, she should be easy.’ Well this is why, cause she’s like…not easy. Two weeks of wipes, including an entire night when we couldn’t get past phase 1! It made me cry.

But then last night we must have finally proced and all of our attempts got us closer and closer until we finally slapped her down. Then we got crappy loot. /sad

Tori in Spring

Laura Highcove

So when I first got my horse, Tori, she was extremely underweight. Her previous owner was going to have a baby by the end of the month and apparently feeding the horse had fallen a bit by the wayside. Well now that she’s in Deb’s barn, she’s been getting plenty of food to put weight on all the right places and she’s really starting to look great again. I’ve also just started framing her, and this is maybe a week in on that.



Stories told again

Laura Highcove

One of the things that always kept me from wanting to ever think about getting any of my stories published was always that I thought I wasn’t original enough for it. All of my stories’ plots are typical. They’ve been done before. Well after seeing Avatar I had a revelation. ALL the stories have been done before. I mean I knew it, but this movie really made me realize it.

I mean Avatar’s basic story is “guy and girl meet and guy is lying to her but eventually comes to love her but she finds out and he has to prove himself”.

The point is that good writers can take those basic stories that we’ve all heard before and give new life to them. They can take the characters in these predictable plots and make unpredictable things happen to them. So while Demonslayer may be typical “woman gathers a group to fight against the forces of evil”, I would hope that I have embellished the characters and the world enough that the story is still worthwhile.

And then there is the ‘500 Kingdoms’ series by Mercades Lackey (The first book is The Fairy Godmother) where she actually gives a reason why the same stories are told again and again. I just had to mention this since I was breaching this topic.

My…horse?

Laura Highcove

So ever since I was a kid, I wanted a horse. When I was in high school I was able to pay for lessons for maybe a two year period. I loved the time there and I even planned on going to college for equestrian studies. That fell though and I went to college for computer science, but I digress.

For a long time, one of my life goals was to eventually have a horse. For some reason I always assumed I would have to have a yard big enough for the horse to live, and have my own little barn. I think because the cost of boarding a horse seemed so daunting. While in college that dream drifted away.

It wasn’t until we moved back to Blacksburg that I even got back into horses. The miracles that led me to a job at Advantage Ranch then seemed to continue into getting me my own horse.

One of the riders at the barn, Rachel, has always been very nice and expains things that I still have not yet learned about horses. When I found out how much a made, show worthy stock horse would cost, I knew I’d never be able to afford it. She suggested that maybe I get a foal and raise it, which would spread out the costs instead of a lump sum.

So I started, not very seriously, looking for a foal on dreamhorse.com. I found some cute ones, as I really didn’t know what else to look for at the time, but I shied away from ever actually going to Deb and saying “Would you find me a horse?” Mostly I was unwilling to get a horse for myself while I was not bringing anything monetarily to the household.

Eventually I found a pretty colt, almost leopard, for a decent price and the ad had up four generations of his genealogy. I thought there might be some decent breeding in there (I mean if they bothered to post it) so I sent it to Deb.

She brought me in to talk about it, and while that colt ended up being nothing special at all, I happened to be in the office when in the process of looking for a horse for another client, her contact mentioned a mare that was for sale. Her owner was having a baby and selling her. Her sire was All Hands on Zip, a rather prestigious stallion that is also the sire of Rachel’s mare, Ella.

The price was the top of my price range, but still within it, so I asked for more information over the next few days. She ended up being a ridiculously colored 10-year old who had been shown and even earned some points (meaning she placed) in events in which I was interested.

Matthew eventually agreed to the purchase, and it ended up that Deb’s brother was going to Florida (where she lived) on a business trip, so even getting her home ended up being much cheaper than it could have been.

Deb was impressed with her when she saw her, the vet exam went fabulously and a week ago, Tori arrived home.

And on top of all of the things that fell into place to bring this mare home to me, Deb has offered to teach me to teach beginner lessons so that I can even have a little bit of an income. It won’t be much, but it will be actual money. And in working there I am paying off her board and for my lessons so except for the fact that it’s freaking 20 degrees every day, I am entirely happy with my life.

Pictures:

Pictures from her old mommy:
Riding
All the color

Picture once she arrived:
Bad lighting

She is not used to the cold:
Cold

The Night Sky…and stuff

Laura Highcove

I dunno what it is, people act like they don’t know when OOB has accomplished things unless I put a screenshot here. Crazy people! Can you not just read my mind!?

So yeah, back on the 22 of December, we downed Algalon in 25 man. Here’s a killshot…kinda? Other people are all crowding into the picture. They’re just jealous. I’m just glad I got my title.

And since it’s a Tuesday and I can’t log onto my account in order to take a screenshot of my Algalon achievement I am now stuck waiting for the servers to come back up so I am going to ramble a bit. You may stop reading if you’re bored.

So right now there’s really nothing to work on with all the progression cleared until the servers come back up today. As such most of the guilds on the server have been going back to the old progression content, ie: Yogg+0.

Now I hate this fight, as is most “end boss of instance”‘s wont, it’s an amazingly complex, innovative, and fun fight that 70% of the raid just can’t seem to get. Take away all the “buffs” and it’s just one big mess. But then since Blizzard has given us nothing else to do, we’re all facerolling through the tentacle monster. However, at least it’s something to do rather than canceling raids because we’ve already gotten our Ashen Verdict rep for the week. Told you I was going to ramble. Look forward to actual progression killshots in another two months after Arthas is finally unlocked.

Well some servers are back up, just not Kael’thas yet.

Win!

My Writing

Laura Highcove

So after Nanowrimo, I’ve really been trying to clean up how I write. Trying to put some sort of order to it (I love order) so that I can once again get that feeling of accomplishment as I had after winning Nanowrimo. To do that, I feel like I want to get some of my more ‘complete’ stories, ie, ones with a semblence of an actual ending, to a posting quality. Not publish quality, but a point at which I’m perfectly happy to have people read.

In order to do this, I first must have the rough draft, which I do for the stories I’m looking at. That would be the first draft. The second draft, which I’m planning on starting soon is where I add in the scenes and ideas that got left out of the first draft, such that everything I want to be in the story is then there, even if it’s ugly. The stage after that will be grammar, spelling, and tweaking everything to the best I can make it. After that, the fourth draft which I hope to reach one day will be when I post the story and look for feedback on the story and any mistakes that manage to still be in the story after the first three drafts.

But if Nanowrimo has taught me anything, it’s that I need a deadline to get anything done. As such the story I have picked is Shifting Winds and I will have the second draft done by the end of January. That’s my deadline and I will hold myself to it.

The only problem I see with this is that the ending is weak. I know it is, and so I have to figure out how I can fix that, but I have other scenes to add and stuff to change while I think about it. It should be good.