Thunder & Lightning, Very Very Frightening

Today was all about the work. I’ve been working away at the script for the anthology, and for once I have a title. I’m loathe to say what it is here since I don’t want to give away too much at such an early stage, but it’s nice to know that that’s one less Usual Concern sitting on my shoulder as the story comes together.

I have to admit, it’s nice to be working on a script like this. It’s in my comfort zone, that being lots of dialog and fairly adult themes and situations, not in the naked sense, so much as in the “this is the kind of thing kids would find boring” sense. Well, unless they’re particularly thoughtful, poetic children. I’m still very much into writing and finishing Lost In Loveless but this being my first attempt at a children’s novel, it’s not as easy or “reflexive” for me to get the story out as it is for something like this.

Also, the Wife managed to have that most rare of experiences, watching an actual bolt of lightning hit a tree. She happened to be standing right at the window, watching a torrential rain storm that seemingly came out of nowhere (that is if you don’t follow weather reports, the way we don’t) when an actual, Zeus-like bolt of lightning descended from the angry heavens and struck a tree just across the street. The tree actually exploded into sparks and then a vast chunk of the tree fell away from the main structure and buried a couple of cars that were parked directly underneath. The fire department and police were called up, yellow tape was set around the perimeter, a blockade was set up to keep cars from using the street and even a CityTV news van pulled up to get some shots, presumably for Film At Eleven. We watched all this on and off from the window and it was quite fascinating.

And lastly, this won’t do much good for people that don’t have a special subscription called “Insider” but my very first North American video game based gig will–according to the editor I’ve been working with–go live on IGN as of tomorrow. It’s no big deal now to say that this first interview is with adventure game developer Ragnar Tornquist whose games I have mentioned in glowing terms here in the past, and whose blog has a link here as well. For those of you that do subscribe to IGN Insider, it’s a pretty comprehensive look at how he got his start in the industry as well as his thoughts on adventure gaming in particular and gaming in general. The editor over at IGN seemed pretty happy with it, so I guess it’s a safe bet now that I might get more work out of them, which would be very cool.

But for now, at least I can say I did it. I’ll have my article up on one of the biggest, most heavily referenced game-based websites on the planet. At the very least, that means I don’t suck.