Last night, I hit level 50 on City of Heroes with Wild Phoenix as did Brian’s Black Cniht.

Two things hit me really hard when I hit the top level:

1. I did not get the same sense of accomplishment I have from other games.
2. My love for the Character made me start wondering about the current state of intellectual property laws.

Sense of Accomplishment

While I love City of Heroes, my attachment is more to the character than too the game.  The amount of detail I was allowed to build into my toon connected me to the imagery and back story I associated with the character separate from the storyline and setting of the game.

At first, I thought this was a byproduct of the games setting.  It is not based on any of the major comic series that I was in love with an wanted to explore.  I never really fell in love with the setting.

What City of Heroes offers is an elaborate character that is continually customizable.  When I reached 50, I did not run around testing my toon, I quit the game to create another character…  I am not sure if this is a weakness or strength in the game and only time will tell.

Intellectual Property…

Now the writer in me is faced by with a dilemma.  I have fallen in love with character, and am tempted to write about him, but then the question arose: Who Owns the Intellectual Property?

I understand that they would own the exact image of the toon, because they own that IP, but what about the general appearance.  Since I chose the colors and general motif so as long as I do not copy the toon, then I should be ok.

What about the powers?  I chose the power sets, and in any story, they would not be limited to the set available in the game, but their would be similarities.  This is the point that I think is blurriest.

Cryptic would have no rights over the back story I created for the character, it does not tie into their story at all.

I am going to continue by obsession with the character, and may work on it as my NaNo project this year.  It just gave me pause and made me think.  I am curious if you think I am overly paranoid or if there is actually an issue here.

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Oh, this makes me want to be working on Blackwood Abbey… One story at a time Eric, One at a time.

ectoplasmosis » Steam Nomads

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For a while now I have been looking for a good way express the Steampunk aesthetic, but the words have failed me, which is a hard thing for me to admit. I am rarely at a loss for words, but this current wave of retro- and paleo-futurism has inspired me.

As I continue working on Fate’s Harrow and Phara-un, I have been trying to incorporate as much as can into the tales. I am happy to say that I have found a project that will allow me to explore the limits of steampunk and beyond.

As the images keep rolling in, my imagination becomes more inflamed by these bazaar cross pollination. I am hunting for the limits of cross genre fiction, and as yet, I don’t think I have found them.

Hopefully, you will enjoy the fruits of these experiments in baroque imagery. I cannot wait to share with you the new tales.

(for more on these images see Steam Fashion 1, 2, & 3)

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My work on Blackwood Abbey and the Lord of the Hunt continues at full speed, but the rigors of the new characters and setting are taking a bit of a toll on me. Often I stop to think about how things work in this new world, then struggle to visualize it for the story to move forward. This is always the struggle when I start a new books with people and places I have never written about before. I will get past the hurdle, but I find myself longing for the magic again.

On top of everything else, I have not been sleeping as well as I should. I am tired… This is both a blessing and a curse. It does make it harder to concentrate on the story at hand, but it does make it easier to slip into that near daydream state where I can watch the characters and type furiously to capture what they are saying and doing.

Well, the Abbey calls, I hope to do another video blog later today.

(from my Amazon Connect Blog)

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I have been reading one blog post over and over again lately. In Neil Gaiman’s Journal, he wrote a wonderful post called “Why write?” celebrating the moment the story comes to life for a writer.

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising (“but of course that’s why he was doing that, and that means that…”) and it’s magic and wonderful and strange (Neil Gaiman’s Journal).

Since I have been struggling with a very uncooperative story that hooked me but refused to reveal to me any of its secrets, it used Neil’s epiphany as inspiration. I know that moment, but it often hard to get to. I struggled on. I begged each character to reveal something to me about themselves. I wandered through the lonely wastes of Abbey grounds, knowing full well that everything that lived there was hiding from me. Every now and then something would move out of the corner of my eye, but it was gone before I could see what it was.

Then yesterday at about this time one of my characters sat next to me and opened up about is life:

drinking a yummy Pinot grigio, listening to Cradle of Filth, and writing a bio for a vampire. Life is good right now (my twitter)

I don’t know if it was the research, the Pinot grigio, the music or what it was, but for the first time on Blackwood Abbey, I had that feeling, it made sense. Not all of it, but I could see the world a little clearer. We walked together, this vampire and I for most of the night. He told me his life story, and in so doing, shared with me the world that he lives in.

Pessimism is strong in me, so I did not accept this as a break through. I assumed that the adrenalin from the Tornado warning had mixed with the wine in some unreplicatable convergence, but I was wrong. Today, three more denizens of the Abbey have come to me to share their stories. I can see the world, and the story clearly. I hope the others will come to me tomorrow.

I have felt the magic Neil captured so well. I can only hope that my talents are up to par to wield and maintain the magic that has begun to flow through me.

(from my Amazon Connect Blog)

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It is official, I am a/the Municipal Liaison for South East Missouri for National Novel Writing Month for this year! I hope I do a good job with all these new responsibilities. I think I am the only one in SEMO, but I am not 100% on that. We have announced our events on Facebook and Good Reads, and as soon as they get the calendar up on the site, I will add them to the Official NaNoWriMo site.

I am really looking forward to NaNo this year, but I am tossed up about which story I am doing this year. This happens to me every year. Soon the story will make itself clear. Even though I have been wanting to write a fantasy story, space opera is rising up in me again. Only time will tell who will win.

See you all in the furry of NaNo.

(from my HQ Blog)

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I have a story, a fantasy based murder mystery. I love the story, but need a setting. I am lost in possible worlds, and I am trying to sift through them all.

Originally it was going to be a contemporary fantasy, but now I really want it to be in a secondary world… I might try a crosshatch, but I am not sure if it will work.

The problem is with my imagination. I am having a hard time limiting the setting to what is believable to happen on earth in the present day and age. The real problem is that I really want to write a fantasy steampunk tale.

This foray outside of my usual space opera is exciting, but is creating a lot of fear in me. I have not tried to write fantasy since I was in high school. I am taking some time to develop a steampunk world and see where it goes. The idea of pure fantasy excites me.

(from my Amazon Connect Blog)

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October is coming, and it is nearly time for me write another novel. After sifting through all the stories in my back file, I have decided to go forward with an Urban Fantasy/Steampunk setting that takes place on earth in the present day. I have already started building maps and creating characters to fill out the world of Blackwood Abbey, but one thing eludes me: THE PLOT.

Don’t get me wrong, I have hundreds of ideas for a story, but I think they are all quite mundane, run of the mill Urban Fantasy or Steampunk stories. I really want to do something different, or at the very least, unexpected.

When I wrote Liquid Sky, the idea of a Wuxia (martial arts fantasy) set within a Space Opera really excited me. I am looking for a similar cross-genre or extra-genre plot to bring something fresh and new to a style that I love.

Hopefully, I will have a story soon, but I will be thinking out loud at Blackwood Abbey.com. It is an interesting new world that is coming to light.

(from my Amazon.com Blog)

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