Author: Luke M.

Luke Matthews is a writer, board gamer, beer drinker, and all-around geek. He currently lives in the Seattle area with his wife, two cats, and two German wirehaired pointers.
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Review: Sheltered #1

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sheltered_1_coverSHELTERED #1, $2.99, Image Comics
Writer: Ed Brisson
Artist: Johnnie Christmas
Colorist: Shari Chankhamma

Fiction is full of post-apocalyptic tales. As a species humanity is obsessed with its own extinction, developing hypothesis after hypothesis dealing with how it might happen. Natural disasters, economic collapse, civil unrest, climate change, or even zombies and giant monsters. Most people are content to live their lives with the apocalypse firmly rooted in their entertainment. Some, however, obsess over how to survive not if, but when, an apocalypse happens.

That’s the basic premise upon which Sheltered is built. A community of doomsday “preppers” has begun assembling an isolationist community in the wilderness, avoiding the entanglements of normal civilization while gearing up for its inevitable fall. While the adults in Safe Haven busy about preparing for possibilities, a group of teenagers know that the inevitable is just over the horizon.

The story centers around Victoria and Lucas, two teenage kids being raised in the tension and anxiety of the Safe Haven prepper community. They each have their own, wildly different take on their situation: Lucas, fully indoctrinated into the pre-apocalyptic mentality, has plans of his own that even his parents aren’t aware of. Victoria, a somewhat new addition, just wants to be a normal kid, but it doesn’t look like she’ll get her wish.

Ed Brisson (www.edbrisson.com), whose previous writing credits include his self-published noir series Murder Book as well as the critically acclaimed Image miniseries Comeback, succeeds at brewing the same sort of tension in Sheltered as he does with his crime stories, but with a different kind of paranoia. Like his noir, the first issue of Sheltered doesn’t give you a black-and-white portrait of who the good guys and bad guys are, instead presenting glimpses of each character’s personality and putting them into a situation that lets the reader begin to develop their own opinions (which I’m sure will be yanked out from under us later).

Relative newcomer Johnnie Christmas (www.jxmas.com) renders Safe Haven with beautifully minimalist lines, and his work with camera angles and shadows really draws the reader into the mounting menace as the issue moves forward. Characters are unique and easily identified, and his facial expressions – which always toe the “cartoony” line but never step over or feel out of place – are especially potent. Christmas’s art is well supported by Shari Chankhamma’s (www.sharii.com) sometimes unorthodox colors, whose palette and design compliment the action at every turn and really help the sense of both isolation and outright cold.

I’m an unabashed fan of Ed Brisson’s work on Comeback, and the first issue of Sheltered engenders the same sort of anticipation as Comeback’s opening issue. Adding to the mix is Brisson’s research of real-life prepper communities, which gives the paranoid state of Safe Haven just enough wackiness to be interesting, but grounding it in the real world in a very creepy way.

I’m in for the haul with Sheltered. I’m looking forward to see where Lucas’s plans lead the group, how Victoria’s personality will tie into it all, and to find out what happens when the rest of humanity falls apart and all we’re left with are the wackadoos.

Check out our interview with Ed Brisson and Johnnie Christmas in episode 47 of the Trade Secrets Podcast HERE

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The Name of My Insecurity

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Today, I did something I haven’t done in a very long time: completely lost myself in a book.

It’s an interesting thing. My wife and I are both pretty voracious readers, especially since we got Kindles (I’ve got another post in mind about that subject). I read a lot, but lately I haven’t been so deeply ensconced in a book that I feel I have to finish it. I have specific times of day that I read, and it happens like clockwork every evening. It’s been a long time – probably a couple of years ago when I was reading The Dark Tower books – that I was truly driven by a book.

tnotwLast Thursday I started reading The Name Of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It’s a fantasy series that Rothfuss – only a couple of years older than me – took seven years to write, if the anecdotes are to be believed. It took another five for the sequel, the second book in a proposed trilogy, to come out. The book plays with a lot of the tropes of fantasy by setting up a story-within-a-story. It flips between first- and third-person perspective, the third-person narrative taking place in “present day” (in the in-book world) and the first-person parts being told by one of the characters as a chronicle of his life.

At first, I was taken aback by the switch in narrative style. It’s a hard switch to justify, but Rothfuss handles it with brilliant grace. I was drawn into Kvothe’s story more deeply than I have been engrossed in a book in a long time. As I said, I began reading it last Thursday and only kept it confined to my “normal” reading times. Over the first four days I covered about the first third of the book. Last night, I began reading at 7pm and put the book down when I was fighting to stay awake at 1am. I began reading it again at 8:30 this morning, and was so lost in it that I was startled by my wife coming home at 3:30. I finished the book shortly thereafter.

I’m not writing this blog post as a straight-up review of Rothfuss’s book, but I am going to say that it’s one of my favorite fantasy series in a very long time. I’ve started several new series recently, including The Colfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman, The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie, and soon the Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham. The Name of the Wind is far and away the best I’ve read so far.

The last few series – especially trilogies – that I’ve read have not turned out well for me. I can’t say much about the Colfire trilogy; The first book actually got on my nerves to a large degree, and I started reading the second more out of sad hopefulness than any real desire. It didn’t turn out well. The Knife Of Never Letting Go was one of the best first books I’d read in a long time, only to have the rest of the series just fall apart piece by piece until I was actually angry at how it ended. And don’t get me started on The Hunger Games.

Now, I’m worried. The Name Of The Wind ranks amongst the best fantasy I’ve read, but my track record with novel series’ leaves me anxious rather than excited. There is hope that it will fulfill the promise of it’s beginnings, but that hope is terribly tinged with desperation… What if it turns out like The Hunger Games? I’ll have to put that notion aside for now and focus on the positives, and hope that Rothfuss can pull through for me.

The other part of this book that’s rough for me is that I’m a writer. Well, a budding one, anyway. Rothfuss’s prose is so well constructed that he makes the simple seem eloquent. As I read his sentences, I think to myself “I know all of these words!” Then Rothfuss arranges them into groupings that simultaneously inspire to new heights as a writer and despair at the thought of ever putting words down for other people to read.

As I finished The Name Of The Wind, I look back on my own manuscript. I’m close to finishing my second draft. I spent months writing the first one, carefully organizing the jumble of Legos that were my notes and constructing a fancy, but flawed, diorama. As I pore over the words, I find bits out of place or poorly constructed, tear them down, and rebuild. The diorama starts coming together in a way that makes you forget about the little round nubs with LEGO etched in their tops.

Then Rothfuss comes in with a 15-foot-tall flawless recreation of Notre Dame, with minifigs in the appropriate places for all of the reliefs, and suddenly my diorama goes back to looking like a semi-organized pile of kid’s toys. So although I absolutley adored this book, I’m now questioning every paragraph of my own. I mean, how come I know all the same words, but can’t seem to get them into the same configurations? Rothfuss’s prose is the kind I aspire to with my own writing: clear, concise, and understandable, and simultaneously thrilling, engrossing, and evocative.

But I guess this is one of the perils of being a writer. There will always be a better writer out there than me (probably tens of thousands, actually), and every time I read their books I’m going to have this same internal struggle.

Maybe this is good, though. I can’t go around thinking I’m good at this shit.

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My Shifting Opinion of Las Vegas

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On Memorial Day I left for a road trip that lasted nine days. Before leaving, I made big claims about writing blog posts or doing a video blog of the trip, and all of that fell apart in the face of long drives, other obligations, and, well… Vegas. I wrote a few notes while I was gone, though, so I’m going to try to piece together the trip in a few blog posts now that I’m back.

In late 2003 I learned how to play poker. The game changed my life in no small way, as I wrote about in My Journey With Poker. The natural progression, of course, was a desire to finally see Las Vegas. Prior to playing poker I had little interest because I wasn’t a gambler. I don’t play craps or roulette, I don’t like other table games like Blackjack and Pai Gow, and I absolutely can’t stand slots. Vegas had the same vague appeal it has for almost anyone looking to get away and see the opulence of it all, but poker put it in a new light.

It took me a few years to get there; my first trip to Vegas was in 2008, when my wife took me for my 30th birthday. We went with another couple and had a great time doing every touristy thing we could think of. We walked everywhere, and visited every casino from the Mandalay Bay to the Stratosphere. To this day, the only strip casino I haven’t at least walked through is the Palms.

Being in Vegas for the first time was an awesome experience. The places that were legitimately nice – the Bellagio & the Wynn, for example – were beautiful and elegant. The fake re-creation places like the Venetian and the Paris were fun to behold and, to some degree, laugh at. The over-the-top cheeseball places like the Luxor and Treasure Island were hilarious, and the rest of the strip was… well, at least I didn’t catch anything.

We took a trip to Fremont Street for a night and had a great time. The Fremont Street Experience is kinda cool for what it is, and seeing the places that gave Vegas its start was definitely worthwhile. For me, the best part was stopping in to Binions (even though it’s not called that anymore) to see the WSOP Hall of Fame. That is, after all, where it all began.

We walked and walked and walked, visited Hofbrauhaus for some awesome German beer and food, and went to Delmonico for one of the best steaks I’ve ever had in my life. It was a great birthday trip, and I couldn’t have asked for a better experience out of Vegas. Coming away from that trip I still looked at the city through rose-colored glasses, tinged by the excitement of everyone else I knew who loved going to Vegas. I couldn’t wait to get back.

My second trip came a few year’s later via a lucky opportunity. My wife’s work was sending her there for an event, and if I could get myself there I could stay in her hotel room, so I jumped at the chance. We stayed in downtown Vegas – for one day in the Plaza and three days in the Las Vegas Club – so we were able to see a lot more of Fremont street. I played poker at the Golden Nugget and the Venetian during the day and hung out with Christina at night.

The first thing I noticed on my second time around was the weather. Our first trip had been in February, so it was in the 70’s and overcast most of the time. That kind of weather suits me just fine, having grown up in the Pacific Northwest and being a lover of rain and clouds. This trip was in July, and the first time I came out of my hotel at 10am it was already 90 degrees, on a day that would top out at 103. That kind of weather, if I might be so bold, can eat a whole bag of dicks.

Wandering around Vegas this second time was a very different experience. Having been there before and seeing almost everything on the strip and in downtown, a lot of the veneer of the place had worn off. Once you get a chance to see past much of the distraction that Vegas is built around, you start seeing the underlying structure. And holy hell, that structure could use a good cleaning, and perhaps a strong disinfectant.

I had a similar experience going there my 3rd time, when my wife and I stopped there for a couple of days to go to the Classic Gaming Convention as part of another trip. The CGC was actually pretty pathetic, and that trip was short, but I was there with my wife again which always makes Vegas better.

The beauty of being in Vegas with my wife, though, is that we both enjoy making fun of stupid shit. So wandering around the casinos and seeing some of the terrible things that they do to attract people is really fun with her around. We have similar tastes in food and entertainment, so going out for some beers or getting an awesome steak are great experiences with her, and we would fill the time in between with sarcastic humor.

This last time in Vegas I went by myself. I was lucky enough to meet up with a friend from my home poker group while I was there, but he wasn’t playing in the WSOP and he wasn’t there the whole time I was. I did spend a lot of time my last two days there alone. And it’s possible that being there alone has a lot to do with how my opinion of the place has shifted.

Driving to Vegas is definitely something I’ll never do again. I drove down via I-15 from Utah and out the opposite way through Barstow & Bakersfield, and it’s one of the worst drives I’ve ever undertaken. It really adds punctuation to Reuben’s quote from Ocean’s Eleven “I’m sure you can make it out of the casino. Of course, lest we forget, once you’re out the front door, you’re still in the middle of the fucking desert!” Never, ever again.

Wandering around the city alone – or even with my friend – gave me some time to really notice the Vegas around me. The artifice of the place really got to me this time, for some reason. Having traveled to Paris last summer, seeing the fake Eiffel Tower at the Paris Las Vegas really struck me as more stupid than funny this time. Before, it was just a kind of neat replica building. This time, it felt almost like an affront to the real thing (which is how I believe real New Yorkers must feel, to a much more acute degree, walking through New York New York).

Packed on top of the artifice of the buildings was the pervasive artifice of the people. I saw more women in little tiny dresses and four-inch heels than I can count, and not a single one of them looked like they wanted to be dressed that way. And the vast majority of the guys who were out in slacks and a tie looked pissed that they couldn’t get into Tao wearing cargo shorts and a wife beater. You should win a jackpot in that city if you can find a single person with a smile on their face who isn’t either drunk or part of the hospitality industry.

Above all else, the thing that got to me this time was the smell. There are very few places on the strip that don’t smell either like a) boiling asphalt, b) cigarette smoke, or c) raw sewage. And if one of those smells doesn’t get you, it’s likely you’ll get a nice whiff of someone’s sweaty armpits, or the bleachy chlorine smell of the Bellagio’s fountains. Inside the buildings you can get away from most of the smells as long as you’re nowhere near a casino floor, and even then it probably smells like cleaning agents or cheap air freshener.

I’m very taken aback by how much Vegas as a place bothered me this time. I already knew that the activities available to me were limited. When I left the poker table each day, instead of feeling like there were a world of possibilities in the town, I felt… stranded. Between the heat and the people and the smell and the fakeness of it all, I just wanted to be anywhere else. And, when I think about it deeper, the only thing Vegas has to offer me is poker tables and tournaments – which is awesome – but when I’m away from a poker room I just want to be back in my living room.

It’s hard for me to justify going to a place where I’m forced to distract myself from it in order to enjoy myself. There is a chance that I might be convinced to go back someday and give it another shot, and perhaps making the trip with friends or my wife again could be enough to make it worthwhile. I would definitely go back to play in the WSOP – if I can ever pull together a buy-in – but I’d do the trip much differently. For now, though, I think I’m just done with Vegas.

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My WSOP Experience

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On Memorial Day I left for a road trip that lasted nine days. Before leaving, I made big claims about writing blog posts or doing a video blog of the trip, and all of that fell apart in the face of long drives, other obligations, and, well… Vegas. I wrote a few notes while I was gone, though, so I’m going to try to piece together the trip in a few blog posts now that I’m back.

This post is for all the poker players out there. There’s a lot of talk of poker play, so there’s also a lot of poker jargon.

The trip centered around my shot at playing in the World Series of Poker. For those of you not familiar, the WSOP is the largest and most famous poker tournament series in the world, comprising almost 60 events across just about every poker game imaginable. Buy-ins range from $1,000 for the smallest events, to $10,000 for the Main Event, to as much as $50,000 for the Player’s Championship and $111,111 for the Big One for One Drop charity event.

wsop_receipts

I played in two smaller events, a $1,000 No-Limit Hold ‘Em event and the $1,500 “Millionaire Maker”, a No-Limit Hold ‘Em tourney where the WSOP was guaranteeing at least $1,000,000 for first place regardless of the number of entrants.

I’ll get this out of the way right at the start: my performance in the series was… less than stellar. I busted in level 6 of the 1k event and level 5 of the Millionaire Maker. Oddly enough, even though I lasted over an hour longer in the 1k, I feel much better about my play in the Millionaire Maker. I guess I’m doing a good job of not being “results oriented”.

The WSOP takes place every year at the Rio, a giant slightly-off-strip casino. The casino floor in the Rio isn’t anything special – it’s just like every other large casino in Vegas – but it’s the convention space they use for the WSOP that make it spectacular. Several large ballrooms are taken over and filled with poker tables, and the atmosphere is absolutely awesome. The main room used for the larger events is called the Amazon Room, and I (unfortunately) never got to play in there. My events both took place in Brasilia, a slightly smaller but still spectacular space that held over 100 poker tables. Most of the events we were playing 9-handed, so the room had over 1,000 players at any given time.

There was a shuttle directly from my hotel to the Rio every day, which drops off on the back-side of the Rio casino floor near the buffet. Coming into the Rio from this entrance, you’d never know that the largest poker tournament in the world was going on. No banners, almost no signs, and no indication of a major event. I had to wind my way through the casino floor until I found the hallway leading to the convention space before I even saw a sign indicating the event. Very strange.

I won’t spend any time talking about the registration line. It was a line. I registered on Wednesday night and my first event was at 11am the next day.

The 1k No-Limit Hold ‘Em events at the WSOP are, for lack of a more endearing term, newbie events. The structure of the WSOP events is very good, but the 1k events only start with 3,000 chips, so there’s not a lot of room to move. Early aggression and/or a good run of cards are necessary to stay in play. The rate at which players bust out in these tournaments was staggering to see. Day 1 started with around 160 tables. By the time I busted – about 6 hours in – over half of those tables were empty.

I started at a fairly weak table with several older, very passive players. For the first several levels I was able to chip myself up to about 6k before the first break (at the end of two 1-hour long levels), but then ran a small bluff into a player who’d flopped a set and dropped back down to 4.4k. I lost a few more hands and dropped to just over the 3k starting stack in level 4, but then doubled through another player when my pocket 7’s held up against his A-J.

My best play of the tourney was in level 4. Blinds were at 50/100 and I was on the button with K♠ 7♠. Two players limped and I limped behind, the small blind folded and the big blind checked. The flop came 4♣ 7♥ Q♣, giving me middle pair, and when everyone checked I bet 300 into a 450 pot. One of the early position limpers called, everyone else folded. With a preflop limp and a check call like this, I put him on suited connectors that either also hit the 7 or were calling with the flush draw, or a low to middle pair. I was sure he’d have bet out on the flop had he hit the Queen or a set, so the check-call looked like he was fishing.

The turn came the K♦, giving me a solid two pair. The other player checked to me and I bet out 650. He started to reach for chips and hesitated, then looked back at his cards and counted out a call. I was pretty positive that my two pair was good at this point. The river was the J♣, an absolutely terrible card for me that completes both the club flush draw and possible high straight draws. I could easily see this player having a hand like A♣ 7♣, so this river card slowed me down and I checked. And I watched.

The other guy immediately dumped a 1,000 chip bet into play without looking at his cards or waiting. I know math players out there will hate to hear me say this, but it just felt fucking fishy, like he’d decided on his line on the last street and just followed through without thought. Something about the way his demeanor changed told me that he probably hadn’t hit a flush and my read told me there’s no way he hit a straight. I thought that two pair might be a possibility, but I couldn’t put him on a two pair that beat mine. I stared at him for a couple of minutes and the combination of my read and my feeling about his demeanor told me I had him beat, so I called. He turned over pocket 5’s, and I took down over a 3k pot. I got a “Wow. Good call.” from another player at the table while I was raking my chips.

I hovered at around 7k for a bit, and then had a very lucky hand where I’d called a preflop raise on the button with K♣ Q♦ and the flop came 9♠ 10♥ J♠. The big blind open-shoved for about 3.2k, and another player in the hand tanked for about 4 minutes, then called all in for about 2.7k, and I snap called both of them (of course). The big blind had A♠ 2♠ for a flush draw, and the other guy had A♦ 9♥ for just bottom pair. I faded the flush draw and was up to almost 14k in chips.

At this point in the tourney, I probably could have floated all the way through day 1. Average chipstack at this point was still down around 6k, and the blinds had just gone up to 100/200, so I was sitting on 70 big blinds, which is monstrous for a tournament like this. I played a little bit of big stack poker in the 100/200 level, stealing the blinds a few times and keeping myself level.

Then my table broke and everything went to hell. When I first analyzed my play in this tourney, I was torn on whether my play at the new table was good. Upon reflection I know it was not. I made one very major mistake: I didn’t spend enough time figuring out my new table’s dynamic before making a couple of big moves that led to my elimination. The first was overplaying middle pair and a flush draw when I had A♦ J♦ and flopped K♦ J♣ 4♦. I put far too many chips into the pot against a player who had flopped a King and turned a Queen for two pair, and I never hit my flush. That hand drained me of over 5,500 chips and left me with just over 7k.

My last hand of the tournament was just a dumb call. I’d spent three laps getting garbage hands until I was dealt pocket 9’s in the big blind. Blinds were 100/200 with a 25 ante, and 5 players limped before me, including the small blind. I raised to 1,100 and everyone folded around to the small blind, who re-raised me all-in. I thought about it for a while and somehow convinced myself to call, and he turned over pocket Jacks. I didn’t hit, and I was out of my first WSOP tourney.

My play after my table broke was pretty much atrocious. I had the opportunity and breathing room to just wait it out and get a better read on my table, and float into day two with a healthy chipstack to start the 200/400 level, and I pissed it all away. Not my finest moment, and it’s one that’ll bother me for a long time to come.

The following Saturday I played in the Millionaire Maker. I wish I had some stories to tell about that one, but my only story is a complete and utter lack of cards. When I got pocket pairs I was forced to fold. When I got pocket Aces once I got no callers, and none of my other hands hit. I just couldn’t put anything together at all until I was forced to go all-in with A♠ Q♠. Luckily I got called by Q-J offsuit and my hand held up, doubling me up to about 3k. I hovered for a little while longer but was bleeding, and was down to 2600 during the 100/200 level. 5 players limped before me, I looked down at A-Q suited again and shoved all-in, and the first limper called me with pocket Queens. To put the nail in the coffin he spiked the case Queen on the flop, taking away even my Ace as an out.

Even after busting both of my WSOP tourneys, I still think it was a stellar experience. The atmosphere around the tournament rooms was electric, and I really had fun playing in them. It might be my only chance to ever play in the WSOP and I can’t say I’m not disappointed in my performance, but it was worth it for the experience of playing in the crown jewel of poker tournaments. If I ever get the chance, I’d definitely play in it again, but for now I’ll have to treat this as my one shot that didn’t quite get there.

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WSOP Road Trip: Day 1

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I’ll start this off with an apology: If this post isn’t up to snuff, it’s because I drove 500 miles on roughly 3 1/2 hours of sleep. And I’m still up. I know I said I’d be doing a video blog of this trip, but I’m not sure whether that’s going to come together, so I’ll stick with normal blog posts for now.

Today marked the beginning of my road trip to the World Series Of Poker in Las Vegas. This will be the first – and I’m treating it as the only – year I’ll be able to play in any WSOP events. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me and I’m extremely blessed that I get to take advantage of it.

Blessed insomuch as I’m married to the most amazing woman who ever walked the earth, and who’s been extremely supportive of my trip to the WSOP to try my hand at my first major poker tournament(s). Without her, I would never be able to do this, and I can’t possibly thank her enough.

The first leg of the journey was a drive from Seattle to Boise. It’s a drive I’ve done probably a dozen times in my life, and it never gets better. This is, however, the first time I’ve done the drive alone, and the entire trip was in varying degrees of rain. I’m not gonna lie: it was a pretty shitty drive.

The road from Seattle to Ellensburg isn’t so bad, but eastern Washington is a big yellow-brown blasted wasteland. There’s a brief respite in northeastern Oregon, and then right back to brown, flat roads. I’ve never been a fan of this drive, but it’s a necessary evil.

I’ve never spent any time in Boise, and this is no exception. I’m only spending about 4 hours here awake, but I have to say that I’m pleasantly surprised by the downtown area. It’s well kept and clean, and it looks like it’s being well developed with a lot of small businesses, boutique shops, and good food. It’s nicer than I expected.

It also helps that I got to have dinner with Jordan, a friend of mine from my Nintendo testing days. I haven’t seen Jordan in several years, so I was glad to have the opportunity to hang out for a bit. Good friends, good beer, and good food are a great way to cap off an otherwise kind of crappy driving day, and I have Jordan to thank:

jordan

Tomorrow, I’m headed to Salt Lake City to meet a couple of people I only know on Twitter. I’ll fire up another post in the aftermath of that meeting.

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I’m Bad At Blogging

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See, I’m bad at this.

It’s been over a month since I blogged last, and part of that is due to a narrowed focus in my life overall. A few weeks ago I found that my attention was beginning to wander, into something extremely goofy: I decided that I wanted to build a poker table with hole-cameras and create a setup that allowed me to film some of my home poker games. The intent was to create a show that I could toss up on YouTube.

I became temporarily obsessed. For at least a full week, the idea was in every waking moment of thought for me. The research I put into the possibility was staggering. Every day I’d spend time searching forums, reading up on cameras, working out a budget, checking into editing and card-display software, and trying to figure out how my house would be laid out to accommodate it. I even went so far as to buy a video camera to test its functions – which is actually what snapped me out of the obsession.

I had set up this video camera in my poker room and let it film, trying to gauge its quality and the length of time it could record. While I was watching the video, something in my brain snapped me back to reality. I don’t fucking have time for this! was the revelation I finally came to. I barely had time to do the things already on my plate, including finishing my fucking novel (or: “the whole reason I quit my job”), much less add something else as work-intensive as producing, editing, and publishing and amateur poker show.

After my brief bout with insanity I decided to figure out what the important tasks in my life were and narrow the field. I cut out a lot of chaff, and I refocused myself to four broad categories: my book, my house, my podcasts, and poker. If it doesn’t fall into one of these categories, I can’t justify focusing on it – and I completely forgot about my blog.

My book is the clear priority. The text is finished and I’m on to revisions now. I have a copy-editor friend who offered to do an editing pass on it for me, and I need to get the second draft done before I send it off to him. Prior to this renewed focus I wasn’t concentrating on the book hardly at all, and I realized just how fucking nuts that was. The book is the life.

My house is roughly equal priority, and mostly just includes doing chores. That was the deal, right? I’m able to leave my day job to concentrate on my writing as long as I’m willing to take on the vast majority of the housework, since my wife will now be the family breadwinner. In addition to the daily tasks, we are remodeling one room and re-arranging the house layout, so there’s a lot of work to be done there and it all needs to be finished rather quickly.

My podcasts are important to me, even though they don’t provide any real income or benefit. One of them – After The Fact – is ending after almost four years, and I want it to go out with a bang. The other – Trade Secrets – will be my new ongoing focus. I have more fun preparing for and recording Trade Secrets than I do with most other things in my life. It’s one of the greatest crews of people I’ve ever worked with, and our conversations are insanely fun.

If you’ve read my blog before you understand the position of poker in my life. Focusing on it is something I was lacking for a while, and it was beginning to show in my results. I’d been on a several week long losing streak that had begun to shake my confidence. That was unacceptable – especially right now – because I’m about to go compete in a couple of events at the World Series of Poker. Once I drew poker back into my crosshairs, my performance turned around and I’ve started getting that confidence back.

Everything else – at least from a “work” perspective – is of less importance. I’ll do my best to still fire a blog post up more often than every five weeks. During my trip to Vegas for the WSOP I’ll be blogging regularly and even posting some video blogs, but those will be primarily poker-focused. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep it up once I get back.

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Production Delays

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Hey everyone, Luke here.

As I’m sure you’ve figured out, there have been some delays over the last few weeks getting our shows put together. After The Fact listeners have been waiting well over a month for a new episode, primarily because it’s been difficult putting together a crew for the show the last few weeks. Eddie’s back from his work trip, so we should be getting back on track over the next couple of weeks to get the show out to you. I’ll be posting episode 72 tomorrow, and we’re working on getting the recording for episode 73 and beyond scheduled out.

The delay in Trade Secrets is entirely my fault. We have had episode 43 in the can for over a week and a half and it’s been nothing but my scheduling problems and scatterbrain that have prevented it from getting posted. I’m going to try and have it out tomorrow, as well, but it will be no later than Wednesday.

I sincerely apologize for all the delays. We’re working to get back on track right away. Thank you for your patience. As always, please don’t hesitate to contact us on Twitter or Facebook, or e-mail us at afterthefact@geekerific.com or tradesecrets@geekerific.com if you have any questions or comments you want aired on the show. You send it, we’ll read it.

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Everything Needs An Ending

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I’ve had several conversations on my comic book podcast, Trade Secrets, about continuity in long-running comic books and how “mainstream” books differ from creator-owned works. It became very apparent to me this week, when I realized that my subscription list at my comic shop contains only a single Big 2 comic book: Rick Remender’s Captain America.

I grew up on comic books, but I never really grew up on the Marvel or DC lexicon like many kids did. I’m not sure what it was that kept my interests away from them, but they just never grabbed me like other books. Before I started getting comics of my own I’d read my brother’s books, which consisted mostly of Vigilante and ElfQuest. When I started buying my own stuff it was related to my favorite cartoons, so my first comics were Transformers and G.I. Joe.

When the ’90’s rolled around and Image was born, I was all about the first few comics they made. I was a humongous Spawn fan, and I really enjoyed The Savage Dragon. I had collected some of the lesser (at the time) Marvel books like X-Factor, but Marvel’s premier books and DC’s stuff just weren’t my thing. Over time, I even began to drop my favorite Image books, because I kept losing interest. Stories dragged on and on and there was never any resolution to anything. Everything was a cliffhanger, and for every plot thread that closed, two opened.

When I look at my current habits in consuming all kinds of media – be it books, television, movies, or comic books – I realized how much I want endings. I don’t want to be indefinitely strung along by a character’s plight. People don’t live forever, and when I see that Peter Parker is still in his mid-thirties after 60 years of comics, or that Bruce Wayne is still the same grumpy, mid-40’s playboy he was in, well, the mid ’40’s, I just lose interest. No matter how good an individual story might be involving those characters, they’re never going to end. I’m never going to get any kind of closure.

I don’t generally watch TV shows that are still running anymore (and I’ll limit this statement to dramas, because sitcoms don’t really count). I have become reluctant to go to a movie that I know is part of a series that won’t be finished for years (a perfect example: I haven’t seen The Hobbit yet, and I probably won’t watch any of that series in theaters). I won’t start a book series unless I know there’s a definitive end to it, which is why I haven’t started The Song of Ice and Fire yet.

I no longer collect comic books from the Big 2, because I know that no matter how much I love a story or a creative team, that story is never going to be the end of the story, and the creative team will be shuffled around at some point.

Marvel NOW! was the first time in a long time that I was excited by mainstream Marvel titles. The creative teams were astounding and it looked like they were going to give a fresh take on some of their tried-and-true heroes. I picked up Uncanny Avengers, Avengers, and Captain America, and quickly realized that I got caught up in the hype and may have made a mistake. I dropped Uncanny Avengers pretty fast, and this last week dropped Avengers. I’m going to stick with Captain America for a little while because it reminds me heavily of Remender’s Fear Agent (one of my all time favorite books) and it’s effectively an “elseworlds” or “what if” title that will hopefully come to a reasonable conclusion.

But that’s just it: Although Marvel NOW! and DC’s New 52 represented new beginnings for these long-running franchises, they still don’t represent any kind of ending. There is no promise of self-contained stories. There is still no permanent death for characters. No meaningful aging, and rarely any lasting growth. There will never be any closure.

And I can’t stand the thought of that. Continuing stories with characters that I love are great, but I want even the longest ones to END at some point. I need to know that there is a denouement, and that I’ll get some satisfaction that my favorite character’s actions were actually meaningful. They don’t have to be heroic or even happy, but without an ending, nothing has any meaning. There’s no arc It’s just a series of false heartbeats in an eternal flatline, and while the first few might represent some semblance of hope, eventually cynicism sets in and there’s no longer any reason to care.

So now, if I don’t have at least a decent inkling that an ending is coming, I won’t partake until something is already over. I don’t watch ongoing TV shows until they’ve ended anymore (with Supernatural being the one exception right now). I don’t start book series unless I know how many books the author intends. I generally don’t watch movies that I know don’t have some semblance of a wrap-up. And I don’t collect ongoing comics anymore.

I’ve fallen in love with independent and creator-owned comics of late. When people look back on the best comics ever made, most will shout to the stars about books like Preacher and Y: The Last Man and 100 Bullets. All books which are great because they’re self contained. They’re stories – not just ongoing background noise. I’m not saying that there haven’t been phenomenal stories told within the pages of Batman or X-Men or Captain America. But the longer a series runs and the more creative teams are given access and input, eventually those older stories get twisted, ignored, or outright shit on.

When I know a book has an ending, I’m all over it. My favorite books right now are maxi-series like The Sixth Gun and The Massive and Fatale and Locke & Key. These are series that have the best of both worlds: long runs that allow for spectacular development, and a definitive arc that comes to a real conclusion.

It’s possible that I’ll become invested in these stories only to find out that the author is incapable of developing an ending that lives up to their ideas (which is my typical experience with Brian K. Vaughn). But I’m willing to take that risk, because – even in that terrible instance – at least it will be over. And maybe once each one of these stories is finished, I’ll look forward to more work from those creators, because they will show me that they’re capable of telling interesting stories.

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Just Google It.

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“There’s no such thing as a dumb question.”

The phrase above is meant to teach kids that asking is better than not asking because – at worst – you’ll learn something new. That’s how I was raised. As an adult, this axiom still holds true, except that what I’ve been learning is that people are assholes.

Lately, I’ve been encountering the Google effect when asking questions, especially in any online forum or social media. Someone mentions something I’ve never heard of and when I ask what it is, I get the online equivalent of a scrunchy-faced scoff. Apparently, the advent of ubiquitous online information and search engines means that no human being ever has to answer a simple fucking question anymore, and people who ask them without hitting up Google first are lazy, incompetent assholes. It’s the modern day equivalent of the schoolyard taunt “Go look it up!”.

It keeps getting worse. The more I try to engage people, the more flak I get for not looking shit up first. The problem is that if I Googled everything I ever saw in social media and never asked a question, I’d never directly interact with anyone. Twitter has been called the “place where everyone talks and no one listens”, and it’s now becoming the place where no one wants to listen. I’m just gonna whip my shit out there and expect you to know. You don’t know what I’m talking about? Go fucking Google it, asshole.

For the first time recently I was linked to a website called “Let Me Google That For You”, where the whole idea is given a snotty twist. It probably takes more effort to create a LMGTFY link than it would to just answer the fucking question in the first place, but people have now been given an engine with which to be douchekits to question-askers rather than simply engage them politely.

I like asking questions. I enjoy hearing people’s answers, especially about things they love that I might not know about. Listening to people’s slant on the information they dole out helps me to learn more about them from how they talk about the things they feel strongly about. Questions drive conversation. But as time goes on, people seem to want conversation less and less, and rather only want to commiserate with like-minded people who already know.

Is answering a simple question really that hard? Have we become so hopelessly inured to the ubiquity of online information that we can’t be bothered by someone wanting to hear our own answers, our own viewpoints? How does anyone pass along knowledge of the things they love to people who don’t know about them anymore? Isn’t that part of the point of social media?

I guess not. It’s the place where everyone shouts into the abyss. The place where, for want of as simple answer, several people I once followed lost me as a follower or an online “friend” because they couldn’t be bothered. When I ask a question and get a snarky “Google it” type response just remember: I’m not the one being the dick.

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Device-Specific Ecosystems Are JUST FINE

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I read a few different “bookish” blogs, and have been getting into the world of prose publishing more and more lately for obvious reasons. I mentioned in one of me previous posts how I’ve seen a lot of people in the traditional book world talking about their transition to eBooks.

A recurring theme of these conversations centers around the major e-Reader makers and their DRM. Many people complain that e-Books available on Kindle, iBooks, and Nook are tethered to those devices, citing that you never had to worry about where you could read a book before eBooks. The book-reading community, as it were, seems to believe that eBooks should be an open platform, and available anywhere, all the time.

First off, I think the term DRM is slightly misused here. Most of the time, “DRM” (Digital Rights Managment) is used to describe the bits of code a company embeds in a particular file to prevent it from being copied (pirated). In the case of eBook readers, it’s less about piracy and more about file format: Each eReader has it’s own proprietary format that ties a piece of content to that particular type of device. The idea being that purchasing a book on Kindle ties you to that device and thus, into Amazon’s ecosystem, is apparently the Devil’s work in the eyes of many readers. My perspective as a geek and gamer places this practice under a wildly different lens.

I grew up playing console video games. My first console was a Nintendo Entertainment System and over the intervening 25+ years I’ve owned almost every major video game console. Having been a staunch Nintendo fan for many years – a stand that has now shifted to Playstation – the idea of “console wars” is ingrained in my childhood. There have always been two or three major console manufacturers vying for real estate in the video game landscape, each with their own proprietary format and exclusive titles.

And that’s never been a problem. If you wanted to play a Mario game, you owned a Nintendo. Same with Sonic & Sega. In the modern era, Playstation has Uncharted and Killzone, Xbox has Halo and Gears of War. I can’t plug a Playstation disc into an XBox. I can’t use a Wii U gamepad on my Playstation. Not only are these divisions expected, but accepted.

So why isn’t the same mentality true of eBooks?

We live in a world where hardware technology does not support itself. It’s too expensive to develop and manufacture, so hardware makers are forced to find other avenues of profit in order to make their devices successful. Console manufacturers don’t make money on their machines – Sony is a great example of this, having only recently started turning a profit on PS3 hardware after spending 7 years selling it at a loss – they make money on licensing fees and software sales.

Amazon loses money on Kindles, Barnes & Noble loses money on Nooks. Even Apple doesn’t turn a profit on iPads. These companies make all of their money – and fund the development of better hardware – by making it as convenient as possible for the owners of their hardware to stay within their own ecosystem and not venture outward. Every Kindle book sale funnels 30% (or more) into Amazon’s coffers. Without that money – if everyone were able to buy their eBooks elsewhere and read them on any device – the Kindle ceases to exist.

So why is that a problem? The major eBook hardware manufacturers have their own exclusive titles, but the vast majority of eBooks are “multiplatform” – either available in a universal format like ePub or PDF, or are simply released in multiple formats for the different hardwares. This is virtually the exact same model that has been used by the video game industry ever since hardware competition generated the tagline “Genesis Does What NintenDon’t”.

Once the digital publishing world settles down, it will no longer be an issue: It makes ZERO sense for a 3rd Party publisher – be them a behemoth like Harper Collins or a self-published author – to limit their exposure by sticking to a single platform without a major exclusivity contract that pays them hefty licensing fees. The vast majority of books will filter out to all platforms, just like video games from major publishers like EA and Ubisoft do.

I’m sure that the big eBook manufacturers will continue to have their own exclusive titles – especially in light of Amazon starting their own publishing house(s) – but the idea that hardware exclusivity is some sort of demon seed that’s destroying the integrity of eBook publishing is… well, it’s old fashioned and silly. Bookish folk who are just now encountering the notion of hardware exclusivity need to realize that this is not a new idea, nor is it a problem.

Besides, books have a huge advantage in this scenario: If all I have is a Playstation and a game isn’t available there, there’s no way for me to just buy the game in a standalone package and play it anyway. If a book isn’t available on your e-reader of choice, you can go buy a physical copy and still read it, legitimately, without any problems.