Even when I am at home, my mind maintains this need to explore. If I am not doing it through my writing, I am reading books. Whether I am looking over the Misty Mountains, or strolling through King’s Landing, or fleeing down the streets of Adrilankha, I always feel this need to travel far and wide, drinking in as much sights and culture as I can. I sort of touched on this in a previous entry.
I am, I suppose, restless. It is a surprising quality for an introvert, for whom hell might look strangely like a small, cramped nightclub where I’ll be forced to say “Hi” to an unknown number of people for absolutely no reason at all. I mean, I like curling up beside a good book like any one else, but of course my criteria of a “good book” usually involves multi-faction wars, decapitations, yelling, and endless, feel-good speeches (usually about stabbing somebody).
I recognize that having such interests for a person who likes to portray an extremely quiet, unassuming personality could be terrifying, at times.
But I digress. My point is, this desire for exploration sometimes results in me dragging my family on such excursions as this rainy day hike, where we would just walk into the mist, humming the theme song from Disney’s Robin Hood and The Edge of Night while drinking in the wonderful scent of rain-soaked forest. I think my family enjoys it–at least, they say they do.
My other outlet is video games. Maybe it is strange for a 29-year-old mother of two to admit it (of course, in today’s world, maybe it isn’t), but I’m crazy about RPGs. Most of these provide fodder for my writing. Some of my favourites include the Dragon Age and Elder Scroll games. I also enjoyed World of Warcraft (where I played as a male orc between the years 2006-2011), Dark Souls (for a time, until I got sick of getting killed), and Shadow of Mordor. To an epic fantasy lover, these games are like crack. They not only satisfy the desire for both exploration and massive-scale storytelling, but they give me a lot of ideas for my own stories, especially during long travelling or fight scenes. I can play them for hours at a time–my husband loves to tell the story of the time he left for work and came back and I haven’t moved from the couch. I don’t remember when exactly that story occurred, but I am really hoping it was before I became a mother.
It at least happened when I only had the one.
I also used to really dig JRPGs. I might have mentioned before how The Agartes Epilogues was patterned after a JRPG, which is why the first novel’s structure is a little bit weaker than the rest of the stories…I had to have parties and random encounters. My absolute favourites were the Suikoden games (particularly Suikoden II) and of course, the Final Fantasies (I even played Final Fantasy X-2, although I am not proud of it). Unfortunately, as I got older, the appeal of the games died down. There’s only so much angst and hairspray one can take…
I also love fantasy RTS games, having started with the original Warcraft games way back when I was a kid. Lately, I’ve been playing Stronghold HD (I played it a decade ago and now redoing it on Very Hard mode). The fact that I enjoy the carnage so much probably doesn’t bode well for my characters…
Do you like sarcasm, drama, and lots of talking before sword fights? Do you sometimes wish your epic fantasy had more feelings? Then please support my hungry brood and give The Agartes Epilogues a try! It’s like a soap opera with dragons!
