Category: Uncategorized

I received an email today from a gamer.

He wanted to give me some helpful tips about MARS:

“I just wanted to mention something about Mars, the roleplaying game of planetary romance. For a long time I didn’t really take it seriously as a game I might like to play. The reason? The name suggests that it is a RPG equivalent of a so called “chick flick” because of the reference to “planetary romance”. I have a feeling lots of other men may have the same first impression. I know a lot of other men aren’t particularly interested in that theme.

I noticed you’ve been promoting it a lot and, I infer, that it hasn’t sold terribly well. This might be the reason why.”

I pointed out to this chucklehead that Planetary Romance is the established name of the genre; that MARS is selling quite well (our best-selling product this year and its only been out for 2 months); that publishers promote products — that’s what we do; and lastly, that his aversion to the word “romance” is somewhat immature, and really doesn’t speak well of him.

Naturally, I’ve received the expected reply that he was “only trying to help”, that I’m a big old Meanie-head, and that he’s going to have “nothing to do with me or my products ever again.”

I don’t think he quite grasps the fact that a customer who has problems with the word “romance” because it reminds him of OMG ICKY GROSS GIRL STUFF EWWWWW!!!1!!1! is really not the sort of customer that I want.

Then, of course, I’m struck by the realization that there are probably more gamers that are like him than ones who aren’t.

*Sigh*

I’m putting this down here (friends-locked) for two reasons: One, because I want to have a record of it — it makes it concrete, somehow. More ‘real.’ Two, because I’d like the people who can read this to know.

and I have been talking over the past couple of months, and we’ve decided that sometime around the spring or summer of 2009, we’re going to relocate to London.

A bunch of reasons for this, really. We had always planned on doing *something* once The Minion was successfully launched into university. We talked about buying a house here in Lawrence, or moving back to NYC. Something.

However, from the time I was a little kid, I always said that that “when I grow up, I’m going to be a writer and live in London.” The thought has been nagging at me, recently — and then I started to ask myself “why not?”

Since the whole cancer thing earlier this year, I’ve been struck by the fact that I’m sick and tired of simply “existing” — I want to start “living.” I want to do the things that I’ve always said that I’m going to do….instead of drifting along on the simple day-to-day bullshit. You do that, and before you know it, you turn around and another decade has gone by. The medical scare that I was blessed with in January showed me conclusively that “another decade” isn’t always guaranteed. That if I want to start “living”, I had better get off my ass and do it.

So, the plan is: Bust my ass on Adamant and on launching a fiction career. will do the same. Once we know where The Minion has been accepted, and how it’s being paid (thankfully, she’s a scholarship and grant magnet, and anything beyond that will be covered by Student Loans), we start the process of relocation, with a target date of the break between her Freshman and Sophomore years (which puts us as moving in May or June of 2009).

This gives us two years to get our ducks in a row, with a specific goal in mind: London in 2009, and, if all goes to plan, permanent residence and eventual naturalization by 2014, under the “writers, artists and musicians” visa.

So there you have it. Our goal. Friends here will have to put up with us for a couple more years, and friends in the UK have been adequately warned. :)