Month: January 2022

Quest Calendar’s diverse characters

I wrote extensively about the Quest Calendar last year, keeping a journal of my character’s adventure (starting here) throughout the year. I’m not doing that this year. In fact, I didn’t expect to be posting about the Quest Calendar at all, but I wanted to highlight some of the enhancements they included in their 2022 product.

Like last year, all of the character sheets are available as PDFs on their website. In addition to a new set of characters, they made last year’s characters available on a re-designed character sheet, as well as equipment and inventory sheets. These will be incredibly useful on this year’s adventure.

Six Quest Calendar characters with background and portrait

But this post isn’t about inventory or equipment, it’s about the diversity of characters they chose to include. Last year, they hit most of the main character classes you would expect in a fantasy setting, plus a few extras (with some duplicates due to Kickstarter options, I believe). You pick your character a couple weeks into the year, after working through the mechanics with a sample adventure.

Look at this year’s selection: Machine Artificer (robot? droid?), Half-Demon Swashbuckler, Human Cleric (there wasn’t actually a straight up cleric in last year’s selection), Feline Monk, Draakon Elementalist, and Avian Necromancer. My goodness, what an interesting selection!

Last year, I chose to play the half-elf druid, and Cassandra picked the gnome thief. This year, it was a tough choice. I briefly considered the cleric, and of course contemplated the feline monk, but the final selection actually came down to the avian necromancer and the half-demon swashbuckler. Both of them are entirely different from last year’s druid, and after some consideration, I opted for the half-demon swashbuckler.

I’m not planning to keep a character journal this year, so if you want to follow the story, I’d check their website to see if calendars are still available. If you’ll excuse me, I have to follow some children down a dry well to see where they’ve wandered off to. Their parents are worried.

My Three Names in Triple Vision

My exciting moment yesterday was holding a copy of Triple Vision in my hands, which includes my short story, My Three Names. Having edited both of Cassandra’s published books, it’s delightful to have made it through the creation and editing process with The Writing Journey to see my own story in print. I read some of the other stories during the critique phase; I’m looking forward to reading all of them now. If you’re wondering about the title, every story had something to do with the number three.

But really, I’m so very excited. I love how the story evolved from my first draft, improving because of the feedback from other writers. The creative process benefits from constructive criticism and different perspectives, revealing where something that was clearly set in your mind didn’t make it onto the page or specific parts of your story make other readers laugh.

Frances holding a copy of Triple Vision, an anthology of stories and poems from The Writing Journey

My five pages (in lieu of minutes) of fame being with this paragraph:

“Like most fae-blessed, I have three names. The first two are just what normal people have. Let’s call them legal names, one of which is probably what’s on your birth certificate, and a nickname or preferred name. In my case, my legal name is Margherita Phang. No, I’m not part Italian. My Chinese-American father indulged my Irish-American mother’s decision to name me after the pizza. Yes, really.”

You’ll have to read the book to find out where it goes from there.

Thoughts on Wish You Were Here

I have several things I’d like to share about Wish You Were Here, a recent novel by Jodi Picoult. Unfortunately, some of those are spoilers that are better suited for a book club discussion, and I wouldn’t want to ruin it for anybody.

The premise of the story is that Diana O’Toole and her boyfriend, Finn, are supposed to leave for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Galápagos just as the Covid pandemic is picking up. Finn, a surgical resident in New York City, makes the difficult decision to stay behind, but encourages Diana to go without him. Diana immediately encounters problems: her luggage gets lost, there’s barely functioning Wi-Fi on Isabela Island, her Spanish is minimal (she was counting on Finn for that), and to top it off, the island and her hotel close as she arrives. Stranded until the island’s quarantine lifts, she finds herself rescued by a woman who introduces herself as “abuela” (grandmother) and develops a friendship with her family.

The intermittent Wi-Fi connection allows the occasional e-mail from Finn to get through, detailing all the weirdness and stress that we heard about hospitals experiencing in the news in the early days – and now, with the Omicron surge – of this pandemic. The isolation allows Diana to rediscover herself and explore the beautiful island she’s stranded on. Picoult perfectly captures both the isolation and the terrifying effects of Covid on our lives, yet somehow does it in an uplifting way.

A look back at 2021

Like 2020, 2021 wasn’t quite the year we expected or hoped for. Here in the United States, 2021 started with a violent insurrection attempt inspired by the former president. His inability to accept defeat was predictable; as I mentioned previously, he never learned to lose. Thanks to quick thinking on the part of Capitol police, none of the lawmakers were injured, the election results were certified, and many of us were able to watch the inauguration of a new President later that month. An easy option for following the ongoing investigation into the insurrection is to read Heather Cox Richardson’s daily updates.

Going into 2021, we knew that COVID vaccines were being tested and produced and would soon be available for all adults. Unfortunately, the rollout was initially slow, though it sped up as vaccine production ramped up following necessary approvals. By summer, vaccines were also available for teenagers.

Having attended a wedding via Zoom at the beginning of the year, the opportunity to socialize as more friends were vaccinated was eagerly received. Bristol Renaissance Faire reopened after taking a year off, and I drove to Minneapolis for a friend’s barbecue. Just as things were starting to look up, we lost a young family member in Guatemala to the pandemic, right as he became eligible for the vaccine. (Countries that aren’t developing their own vaccines tend to have a slower rollout.) On the same day, we lost a friend in Wisconsin; we attended his funeral later that week. Near the end of the year, my aunt in England passed away; I watched funeral via LiveStream.

As the Delta variant wave climbed, conventions tweaked their policies to include vaccinations and masks, allowing Dorkstock to a somewhat quieter Gamehole Con in October. So there has been gaming – outside the house even – and goodness knows we bought too many board games there.

Some happier highlights from the year include writing – in addition to the ongoing character journal that I maintained for my Quest Calendar, I submitted a couple short stories for competitions and worked through the write, edit, re-write process with a local writers’ group to include a short story in an anthology called Triple Vision.

I also wrote a couple songs this year, mostly about fandom (“filk”), including a Blowin’ in the Wind parody about Avengers: Infinity War, Cthulhu Sleeps Tonight, inspired by a crafty friend, and a silly song about ducks and my friend John’s charity bike ride.

Safe to say, 2021 was neither the best of times nor the worst… just somewhere in the middle, and somewhat unexpected.