myJaxonIf we don’t go crazy once in a while, we’ll all go crazy. - Hawkeye

I love books. If you haven’t figured that out yet, then you obviously haven’t been over to Literary Escapism.

Whatever your tastes, I could probably give you a good recommendation. For instance, if you’re into the whole erotica paranormal genre, then you should probably check out Cheyenne McCray’s Magic series (Forbidden Magic). For the historical fiction people, Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series (Outlander) is completely breathtaking (I actually can’t wait to get my hands on these books so I go straight for the hardcovers). For those fantasy buffs out there, Maria Snyder’s Study series (Poison Study) is quickly becoming one of my all time favorites. Another good novel is Wicked by Gregory Maguire and his other twisted fairy tales (although I’m still getting to them, so take this with a grain of salt). I used to read a lot of romance, so I could tell you to pick up a Nora Roberts book, she’s good for a contemporary romance, but if you want a really good historical romance, then I would check our either Amanda Quick (Lake & March series - Slightly Shady) or Jane Feather (Matchmaking - The Bachelor List or Kiss - Widow’s Kiss). They both tend to lean away from the whole simpering female, yet strong character, roles and have more of an independent woman in the lead. If you’re looking for something quick and funny, then the Stephanie Plum series (One for the Dough) by Janet Evanovich is a good bet.

However, when it comes to urban fantasy or just straight paranormal, I have a huge list of authors that I’ve come to love. They don’t all gravitate around the same idea of what vampires, witches, fae, shapeshifters, etc. should be like, so each story has their own unique qualities. I’ll be honest, I’ve actually come across a lot that I like, but I don’t consider all of them to be “buy worthy”. Mainly because I am on a fixed income and I can’t buy them all. So I generally take the ones that I can’t live without before buying the ones I simply like. I the books I can’t live without are as follows…

Because the list is a little long, I’m only going to include the title to the first novel in each series, but I’ll show how many books there are. If there’s a plus sign after the number, that means there are more books planned or being released soon.

Vampires & Werewolves:

• Anita Blake by Laurell K Hamilton - Guilty Pleasures (18+)
• Black Dagger Brotherhood by JR Ward - Dark Lover (6+)
• Cassandra Palmer by Karen Chance - Touch the Dark (3+)
• Dark-Hunters by Sherrilyn Kenyon - Fantasy Lover (11+)
• Kitty Norville by Carrie Vaughn - Kitty and the Midnight Hour (4+)
• Mercedes Thompson by Patricia Briggs - Moon Called (4+)
• Night Huntress by Jeaniene Frost - Halfway to the Grave (2+)
• Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong - Bitten (8+)
• Psy-Changeling by Nalini Singh - Slave to Sensation (4+)
• Riley Jensen by Keri Arthur - Full Moon Rising (6+)
• Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris - Dead Until Dark (8+)
• Werecat by Rachel Vincent - Stray (2+)

Demons, Fae, & Magic

• Aisling Grey by Katie MacAlister - Fire Me Up (4)
• Kate Daniels by Ilona Andrews - Magic Bites (2+)
• Meredith Gentry by LK Hamilton - A Kiss of Shadows (6+)
• Morgan Kingsey by Jenna Black - The Devil Inside (1+)
• Nightwalkers by Jacquelyn Frank- Jacob (4+)
• Rachel Morgan by Kim Harrison - Dead Witch Walking (6+)
• Silver Dragons by Katie MacAlister - Playing with Fire (1+)

It’s that time of the week…more weekly geeks. This weeks theme is to talk about other forms of storytelling that we’re interested in. There are a ton of different forms: TV shows, movies, music, narrative poetry, or fanfiction. However, I’m not sure how to approach this topic. I can think of three forms that I love, aside from reading…TV, Movies, & RPGs. The last one is probably the most unusual, but it’s probably one of the best ones in my opinion. Let me start with the first one.

With television, you basically get an ongoing novel. Instead of reading about a characters life and their society, you get to see it visually. I am a visual person and I also try to give my novels a 3D image in my head. Plus, you’re not given everything up front. You watch each hero/heroine grow and you’re not allowed to skip to the end of the story to see what happens. You can’t, it hasn’t been written/shown yet. Not that I would ever do that, of course, but it can add more suspense and empathy to a story when you’re not sure what is going to happen and you see what the characters are going through.

The same can be said for movies, but on a much shorter scale. Instead of watching ones life, you’re watching an event in that persons life. Look at the Indiana Jones series (since it’s on everyone’s mind), each movie shows the events it took Indy to find the lost artifact. We don’t really know what is going on in his life, but we still becoming invested in him because we want to see how he gets out of the hidden traps and other obstacles that are thrown in his path. By being able to see the character and their surroundings, we don’t have to concentrate as much on the descriptive so we can become entrenched in the story.

Another form of storytelling, RPGs, allow you to become entrenched in a story on a more intimate scale than any other form. There is a set story line you must follow, yet you are in control of how the character navigates it. For instance, if you take Final Fantasy X (since I know it so well), Tidus is lost in Spira and is trying to get back to Zanarkand. That’s his objective, that’s what his story is about, at the beginning. During his travels, he meets new characters and grows as a character and you’re with him through it all. While this can be said of novels as well, the difference is that you become more emotional involved in his failures and successes because he becomes your character.

Take Warcraft as another example, there you’re giving a character to do as you will. You’re set down in his native environment, but you have tasks that are a part of a story line to complete. You can chose to do the tasks or go off and do a completely different adventure. The story is there, but how it’s told becomes your responsibility. You’re not writing the story, but the way you proceed through the story can be different from someone else’s. How you react to the fights, how you fight, what you wear, it’s all yours and nobody is telling you that it’s wrong because there is no right or wrong. Your version is unique and completely yours. However, if you don’t want to take command of it, there is a set linear arc that you can follow. You’re given a choice and that’s something far different than what you get out of novels.

Another RPG that gives a reader even more choices is Dungeons and Dragons. I’m not a player myself, but my husband is and I would watch him prepare for each new campaign, imagining new monsters to fight and new circumstances so his friends would have fun adventuring. There are a ton of books out there that can help you set up a campaign, but they don’t create the story for you. You’re the author and you (and your friends) get to decide how the characters will interact with other NPCs, how they try to get past goblins and other obstacles. At the same time, you can also find books that set up an adventure for you. They give you the tasks that need to be completed, the monsters to face, the places you’ll need to go, but you’re still in charge of your character. The story is never finished because you could do something the book doesn’t take into consideration. You can’t anticipate another character move because you’re not controlling that character. My husband’s old DnD group had this problem a lot. They also loved to throw in something off the wall just to have the fun of fixing it. Sometimes it was intentional and sometimes it was a result of something they did. Either way, they ended up having fun while still going through a story.

To some, RPGs may not be considered a form of storytelling, but I think they can be. At the least, they are a loose form of storytelling. I’m interested though, what do you think? Can RPGs be considered a story or are they more fun and games than anything else?

If you didn’t see it this morning, my glasses broke - snapped at the frame. Without my glasses, I am pretty much blind and I could make out things, but everything was blurry. Thankfully, Jesse had an appointment with the podiatrist, so he was still in Rochester Hills instead of at work. Jesse, being the supportive husband that he is, took the day off of work and stayed home to help me. Afterall, you try and keep up with a 15 month old when you can’t see anything.

I ended up making a 12pm appointment with the eye doctor at Lens Crafters and by 4pm I had a new set of glasses ready for me. I actually had them picked out awhile ago when Jesse and I were pricing out glasses at the mall; I only had two requirements - titanium and durable. Being allergic to nickel can suck when there is only a small supply of titanium eyewear, but we were able to find some that also included the Luxotica Memorize frames (this means Ian can yank on them and they’ll bend with him).

The new glasses are nice, but it’s going to take a little longer than usual to get used to them. Normally, I’ll get a littler vertigo feeling when I first put them on, but it generally goes away within the first few minutes. However, since I was without my glasses for the better part of the day, my eyes had to readjust and it’s been 90 minutes and my eyes are not going as crazy as they were. I also learned something interesting when I picked them up. Both my eyes have an astigmatism. The consultant said this could also affect how well my eyes adjust to the new glasses.

So I now have new glasses. So far they are kind of nice and I even got sunglass clips for them. Now I’ll have shades in the sun.

It finally happened…my glasses broke. They’ve been in sad repair for quite some time now, and we were going to get them replaced once we received our tax rebate check, but I don’t think we can wait anymore. Even now, I’m writing this completely by muscle memory as I can’t make out ll
It finally happened…my glasses broke. They’ve been in sad repair for quite some time now, and we were going to get them replaced once we received our tax rebate check, but I don’t think we can wait too much longer.  As it is, I’m typing this from muscle memory since I can’t make out the words as they scroll across the screen.

While the glasses are over three years old, they weren’t doing too bad until Ian got his hands on them.  He was an infant and grabbing new things was how he learned.  Unfortunately, he still hasn’t gotten it through his head that my glasses are MINE and not HIS.  While  he wasn’t the one who napped him, he did help with the problem.  I was messing with the frames because they weren’t feeling right and viola…off comes to bow.

Heaven help me…I’ll be with a toddler all day and barely able to see.

Ian freaked out Jesse and I yesterday. If you have been reading Ian’s site, then you’re aware that we’ve started a new sleep method; if you haven’t been, we’ve started putting Ian to bed using the Ferber Method (which is Cry It Out) to get him to go to sleep. Well, we laid him down about noon yesterday, and he didn’t like that, and he was sleeping by 12:30ish. About 1pm, I sent Jesse in to open the bedroom door so Ian could let us know when he was up. It was a simple thing to do…crack open the door enough so Ian could stick his hand out and open the door. What Jesse wasn’t expecting to find was a locked door. Ian had locked himself in the bedroom and we didn’t even know it could lock. There is nothing on the outside doorknob to indicate that it could even lock, so we had no way of getting into the room. Ian was still sleeping, so we were able to freak out about it on our own. We called Emergency Maintanence and they called us back pretty quickly. They talked with Jesse on the phone, trying to give us different ideas on how to get the door open until the guy could get here. Thankfully, we were able to get the door open, unfortunately, Ian had woken up 3-5 minutes before that. Either way, we got him out and they are suppose to show up this afternoon to change the lock so it doesn’t happen again.

In other things, I was watching the Colbert Report this afternoon and I saw them talking about an article from the BBC. They are talking about how a study found that computer keyboards can actually be dirtier than someone’s toilet.

Out of 33 keyboards swabbed, four were regarded as a potential health hazard and one harboured five times more germs than one of the office’s toilet seats.

Sadly, I can actually believe it too. I know my old keyboards could be quite…interesting.