I don’t know how late I am exactly on this topic, since I only noticed it today on the Niltoy forums. In any case, for those of you who knew this e-zine as well as for those who had never heard of it, Deep Magic is closing down after August 31st, and in the process, they’ve made all their previous issues free for download. It’s sad news—I didn’t knew this website, I admit it, but now that I’ve heard of it and had a peek, it seemed pretty interesting. The magazines contained articles, short stories, interviews of both famous and non-famous writers, and even an ongoing novel, from what I could see just now.

Current and previous issues are available here.

Y Tags: deep+magic | download | e-zine

[Since I haven’t been posting much lately—that’s the least we can say, hmmm?—here’s a little “fan-fiction” story. It’s nothing original in itself, and far from being my best, but it kept me writing in English all the same.

For the information, it’s set in the Warcraft universe, more precisely after WC III: Frozen Throne (I happen to like this world somehow, even though it’s quite a simple and basic one). The human kingdoms of the North have been plagued by a strange disease called “the Scourge”, turning them into mindless undead drones, and only a small fraction of them, the Forsaken, has been able to return to their “sanity” – while still remaining undead, that is. Of course, normal humans now consider them all enemies. As for Brill, it’s a Forsaken-controlled village.]

We’re in summer, and I’ve started thinking again of potential story plots for the upcoming NaNoWriMo – since I’m going back to college, in a big city, and to study English on top of it, I’d like to do it again this year and lure some other students into the craze. We have nice places in the university areas to do collective writing sessions, really.

Well. Going back to NaNo means haunting the forums as well, and there I found myself posting a blurb about character names…

Does any of you have any noticeable naming patterns? Not in one novel only, but across your novels in general? And, pushing further, would such a pattern apply to other areas than novels/short stories ones (in roleplaying games, for instance)?

Time for another update, but not a happy one, I’m afraid.

One day, I’ll learn. Oh, yes, I swear it: one day, I’ll learn to make backups more regularly when it comes to my “unachieved” data, instead of stupidly dwelling in that odd pefectionism of mine that causes me to burn a CD/DVD only when I can fill it “for good”. Too bad if I end up with trash CDs, or CDs made unreadable by too much rewriting: from now on, I really need to change a couple things regarding all of this.

One of my hard disks has died two weeks ago. The big one, of course, where I stored all my unachieved designs, drawings and writings, and where I used to park the footage for my videos, during those periods I was into video editing. It had warned me, poor thing, through very disturbing noises, but what I didn’t know was that it’d die in my arms on the very moment I’d start performing the needed backup, after the mandatory realization of “uh-oh, this time it seems really sick”. Aye, Murphy rules this world. Nevertheless, for once, I’d have liked a little less chaos in what is called my existence.

To tell about my disgust is the least I can do. I don’t care much for the video footage, since I can extract it again, but the unachieved and now lost artworks are daggers repeatedly thrusted in my ego. Yes, yes, I had backups. Alright. Dating back to several weeks or even several months ago. What pains me in particular is the loss of the edited version of my NaNovel (given how I loved editing it, I won’t do THIS again soon * sighs *), the latest version of the Wall of Silence (the few changes in it, I can rewrite and am doing so, though), and the previous attempts for the latter story. No matter how many times I try to persuade myself that it’s a fresh start, without these leashes hindering my Inner Editor, this is still a blow dealt directly to my heart.

Not everything is lost: we’re trying to resurrect the HDD, for long enough, at least, to perform a hard copy… However, I prefer not nurture too many illusions here—the fall would only be harder.

Ah, yes. One day, I’ll learn…

Y Tags: reflections | writing

I cannot believe that it took me so long to post here again! Somehow, my mind had managed to convince itself that it had been only a couple weeks. It’s just like me to think “I’ll post an update later on today, when I have more time to think it through”, and to… just forget. Rotten memory of mine, as I was telling a friend not so long ago.

Therefore, I’m not coming up with some witful post about writing today, but with this simple update that got delayed for faaaaar too long. I sincerely apologize to those of you who worried. There was nothing to worry about, but of course, no news-good news isn’t that accurate when it comes to the world of Internet, where it’s so easy to lose track of someone and never see this person again. I should know of this by now. Someday, I swear I’ll learn!

What’s up, one might ask?