Beer and Merch

This week I’m putting on another Beers with Baelnorn. This time it is focused on feasts. I wrote an article about how I run my feats which you can read HERE before the stream. I’ll be streaming it on my Twitch Channel on Thursday, August 6th at 7pm PST. You can follow the channel HERE and if you want to be notified on Facebook, you can join the event page HERE.

I also have MERCHANDISE! Thanks to the wonderful Heldris I have an image to sell. You can buy shirts, coffee mugs, stickers and prints. If it goes well I have a great idea for a series. You can find it HERE or just follow the Merch link on the page. It’s a great way to support me and also get something in return. I hope you like it. I really like the image. I think it looks best on the coffee mugs.

My July

Things have been slow lately. There has been some online LARP content in July but not much. I have to admit, I’ve not been very engrossed with the content that has been released. The most notable thing was a series of classes put on by Belegarth in place of Chaos Wars, a big campout held in Idaho. They chose to do a series of online classes. It took place over several days. I regret not participating but I wasn’t very motivated.

That marks most of my July in terms of LARP. There was also a lot of dumpster fires and tense conversations on my local Amtgard Kingdom Facebook Page concerning the banning of a long time player. It really killed my enjoyment of the game. I know it’s just a phase and once we start playing again there will be a lot to enjoy but that’s not the case at the moment. I know this feeling will pass.

I did get a chance to do some sparing at a friends house. That was really fun, I’m out of practice and I got tired fast, but it was enjoyable. Rather than fighting to just fight, I did some mindful fighting. By that I mean I was working on specific things rather than just going at it. I was trying to do feints, which I’m not the greatest at. I had some success at it, it was noted by my opponent, who is a better fighter than myself.

In my non-LARP life things have been better, not great, but better. I’ve had some good days and some bad. My bad days have been me being unproductive, putting off things I need to do and spending time laying in bed, avoiding the world. COVID life can be hard, it has really killed my social life. I still have a few people I see but the frequency is down and the people I see is severely limited. I also have an aversion to going to restaurants and businesses other than grocery stores.

The good days have been fun and productive. There was one week in particular that I spent about 20 hours working on my Philip Clowes story. I wrote 10-15k words, a total of about 30 pages. It was a great feeling to get so much work done, especially in such a short amount of time.

On top of the actual story writing I’ve done a lot of non-writing work on the story. I’ve planned out several scenes, although I keep reworking them in my head. I have come to the conclusion I’ve written myself into a corner though. I’m trying to figure out how I can change the story so I can logically finish it. Part of it has to do with the chronology of the book. It’s just to fast pasted. The majority of what is written now takes place in less than 24 hours. It makes logical sense, however, it makes future scenes harder to write. It changes when characters will and won’t be awake and what they would be doing at a certain times when they interact with other characters.

The easiest thing I can do is stretch out the time, which means rewording certain scenes. I’m thinking this through first, to make sure it will solve my perceived problems, before actually doing the rewrite. I do think it will help. I’m looking forward to writing more of the story soon.

That has been my month. I hope everyone else had a pleasant July. I’d like to hear what you’ve been doing to keep busy. What LARP centric stuff have you been doing to keep your motivation up?