Sorry, everyone. I’m on the last leg of making sure Foil of the Gods for release next week. So I am leaving the floor to you guys this morning. I’ll try to come back with a post this afternoon. In the meantime, don’t make too much of a mess here. Recommendations for posts will be very welcome. Also, for those of you console gamers out there, a quick question. I have played Horizon Zero Dawn on PC and loved it. Everything from the imagery to the story to actually having a game worth the money paid made it worthwhile. Horizon Forbidden West looks great but has not been ported to the PC yet and might not be for years. If you’ve played it, is it worth investing in a PS4 or PS5 and, if so, what other games would you recommend? Keep in mind I am mainly a solo player although I do break out into multiplayer for The Division 1 and 2.
And, btw, if you doubt that this final push has my mind stuck only on the book, I posted the above on my blog instead of here. Head, meet desk.
Until later.
Mad Genius Club 
Good luck on the release push. Always seems like there 101 last minute details on getting anything released.
Just realized last night, I think I’ve passed the emotional and narrative peak of the whole arc I’ve been working on. It feels weird. There’s still stuff that has to happen, but the key character change has happened, and it feels like everything after this is just how that ends up resolving the main problems. But it’s a strange feeling.
Is that something most writers run into?
***wanders in***
Hmm. hardwood parquet . . . I’ll never get time to pull it up, let alone install it at home. I’ll pass.
More or less my response. I have too many flooring projects in my own home.
Mad Genius Club was how I found out about GooglePlay’s “auto-narrated” (machine voice) audiobooks. This led to me creating an auto-narrated version of Marrying a Monster. Here’s a few thoughts:
-I wanted a mellow-sounding, female voice who could pronounce the invented words in the Jaiya series without sounding silly. I settled for the latter two, using the “British English, female” voice, Anya. Anya has kind of a brisk, cut-glass quality, like a female Peter Cushing or a more elegant version of Sylvie from the Loki series. No “older female British” voice, similar in pitch and tone to the more mellow “older female American” option, is available.
-Because of the Farsi-Sanskrit influence on the Jaiyan vocabulary, I tested the Indian auto-narration options briefly. The Indian voices seem to be optimized for actual texts in Hindi, and although their tone and pitch were attractive to listen to, they read English text with a very pronounced accent. I assume the Spanish voices are similar but did not test them.
-Both Amazon and Findaway Voices (audiobook aggregator and companion to Draft2Digital) appear to ban machine-voice audiobooks, so if you try to import an auto-narrated book to those platforms, you’re taking your career in your hands.
-too early to see much in the way of sales for this first guinea pig, besides, I’m not actively promoting the Jaiya metaseries right now.
Having fun with jumping from story to story because I can’t stick to one. . . .
always a sign of stress.
I’m nominally on team xbox, so don’t take this as gospel.
I think that game is only on the PS5. And the last I heard, PS5s were generally unavailable. (As is the XBox Series X.)
I don’t think you’re trying to justify the cost of a console for a single game, though, so if you’re looking to save a couple bills and get the XBox Series S which is actually available (the lower graphics resolution simply isn’t visible at normal TV viewing distances, despite the claims of tech cultists), I can recommend a few titles. (And since I think you’d get a month or two of GamePass as an introductory promotion, you wouldn’t even have to pay for them.)
Games I fully recommend, I think all available on PC:
Subnautica (Seriously, play this one. Survival/resource management games normally suck, but this is the exception. And the exploration is flipping amazing.)
Call of the Sea (It’s a puzzle game for casuals and walking simulator. It’s beautiful, with a good story, and it’s the only Lovecraft homage of a game that I’ll actually recommend. No cheap jump scare or gross outs included.)
Titanfall 2 (It’s the best FPS of the last console generation, and has a great single player campaign. Rule of Cool and Rule of Awesome are in full effect. There are issues with the multiplayer side as persons or organizations unknown keep attacking the servers.)
The Outer Wilds (Exploration inside a time loop, with good physics models, a bit surreal, with a quirky sense of humor. The only knock I have on it, is that the “good” ending goes from surreal to trippy, but quantum mechanics are involved, so…)
Deep Rock Galactic (Cooperative multiplayer, but can be played solo. You’re a dwarf, in a space station, working for a megacorp that views you as disposable. You take missions to a hostile planet to mine while swarms of hostile bugs try to kill you. Once you complete your mission, you scramble for the dropship, then celebrate survival by having beer with your comrades. It’s very straightforward, but very fun. Also, friendly fire is very much a thing, so be careful with the flamethrower.)
Actually, the game is on both PS4 an PS5. Which is why I was asking if the price difference was worth it. I have jumped between the playstation and xbox iterations over the years but do the vast majority of my gaming on PC, which is why I don’t have a PS4. As for other games, I am a Naughty Dog fan big time and have been since the original playstation games they put out. So I would be investing in them as well. There are a few other PS-only games I’m interested in as well so the price of a refurbed PS4 could easily be justified–if the machine is worth it.