In general, with this kind of thing, you're interested in what I'm saying, and who I am comes secondary to that. However, when starting something of a blog-like descriptor, especially one in this age, I think it's important to start a conversation with you all, the readers. To that end, I'm going to tell you a little about myself, where I'm coming from, and hopefully, some of you will shout back – leave a comment or something along those lines. Tell me a little about yourself.
My name is Andrew. I am 22. I'm a recent graduate from college with a degree in being unemployable. I would like to go into professional book publishing, ideally in a publishing house that is friendly towards genre fiction like fantasy and science fiction. I read avidly. I like to argue and debate about things that other people find trivial and inconsequential.
I play World of Warcraft. I am a member of Zodiac Braves on Khadgar-US. We are a 10-man progression guild with two raiding teams. I also do some non-competitive PvP on the side. I play a Death Knight named Tarial. I am currently specced Unholy for DPS and Blood for Tanking. My raid team is about to begin attempts on The Lich King on Heroic difficulty.
I play Starcraft 2, as Protoss. I am currently at the bottom of my Diamond Ladder, and have recently been lacking the motivation to ladder a significant amount. I should probably get on that at some point soon.
I'm a writer in the process of writing a dozen or so novels. I'm way too spastic to stick with one until the end, but I am working nontheless. I write on a collaborative fantasy fiction forum named Dae Luin, where I play a character named Sadrach. I also edit novels when they are given to me by friends (not often enough), and happily read and give excessive amounts of comments that are good and well reasoned, but often poorly received. (Writers have fragile egos. Your mileage may vary! If you're interested in me reading something of your own, shoot me an email.) I am currently getting ready for National Novel Writing Month (November first! Mark your calenders!)
I am a Game Master for a (pseudo) weekly gaming group. We play DnD usually, but recently have taken up the Dresden Files RPG for it's awesome story based system. I may post some notes from our campaign here, because it's uproariously good fun and deserves to be shared. Plus, it'll help me plan out next week's session a bit better.
I enjoy board games from Risk to Chess to Settlers of Catan. I also play Magic: The Gathering, and prefer casual, draft, and sealed deck play. Constructed always seems, to me, like way too much of a money sync to be worth the effort. I am happily looking forward to the release of Scars of Mirrodin in a few weeks.
This is my no means an exhaustive list. I also watch a good bit of television. (Am currently marathoning through Angel on some friends recommendation, and just finished Season 3.) I'm excited for the new season start in a week or so. I listen to a lot of music, ranging from Disney Pop to Rap.
I self-identify as a nerd. Many don't like the label. Others have arguments about nerd vs geek and all other such manner of things. I don't really care. I find that it's a succinct way to describe a lot of the kinds of things that I am interested in, and contextual baggage be damned. If someone if going to judge me based on that, I doubt that I would want to associate with them anyway – no big loss.
I plan to use this blog, writing something every day, or every other day. The topics will be varied, but hopefully will all be something you're all interested in reading about. Depending on how I feel, I may post more often, but never less than every other day. (Yell at me if I am slacking. Seriously. I will slack, and I need people to be on-my-ass about it.) Ultimately, I think we can have a good conversation here.
If any of you want to contact me for any reason, either just to talk, or to discuss something inparticular. Even if you just want to suggest something for me to write about, my email is andrewrula at gmail.com.
Enjoy the day.
~Andrew
I'm one of those who objects to the use of the term "nerd" in general (as well as "geek") but I know I'm fighting a losing battle. Regardless of this, I am looking forward to reading what you have to say.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, have you heard about The Mongoliad? It's a new fiction project from Neal Stephenson and other authors that's part serialized novel and part online community. It's a historical novel (or possibly alternate history? It's hard to tell at this point) that focuses heavily on accurate and detailed medieval comabt.
Beyond the initial preview it costs money to subscribe, but a year is less expensive than your average hardcover novel and what's there now (the first two chapters) is really good. It's at mongoliad.com, but if you do decide to subscribe please let me know so you can do it through my referral link, which will give me a free month.
Also: I hope you plan to post about the Star Wars Expanded Universe.