Christmas Eve is finally here

It will officially be Christmas Day in about three hours, and I have got nowhere with my projects... But it doesn't matter. I've decided to leave it until next year. That'll give me time to not only finish my story, but to properly edit it as well. I guess that makes more sense than trying to rush it and then upload what would technically still be a first draft... So I can relax and put it out of my mind for now.

But Christmas Eve is finally here, and I'm starting to feel a little more excited than I have been now that all my presents are bought and wrapped and The Nightmare Before Christmas is on TV. Admittedly I didn't have a very festive day, considering I spent most of it crocheting and listening to a sci-fi horror podcast. But still, I'm feeling festive now. I guess I don't really have much to say other than Merry Christmas and I hope you all have a Happy New Year if I don't get posting between now and New Year's Day. I couldn't leave you completely empty handed though, so I'll leave you with these two festive music items.

The NoSleep Podcast Christmas 2015 Theme

This is the theme for the NoSleep Podcast's 2015 Christmas special and I am in love with it. It's free to download, name your price; just click "buy now" and enter 0. It's amazing and really lends an eerie chill to a dark, winter's day.

Merry Christmas?

This is the 8tracks playlist I was talking about in my last post. I decided to upload it anyway since it was finished. It's a darker than usual Christmas playlist, but I love it.

Well there's a good selection of dark Christmas background music to listen to while you wait for Santa to arrive. Happy Christmas Eve, at long last.

Damn that was ambitious...

So, Christmas is in two days. How did that even happen...? I could've sworn it was only Halloween like yesterday. It's approaching too quickly, and that leaves me with a problem; I was hoping to have some sort of "bumper pack" of projects to post on Christmas Eve. I had a story to write, two narrations to post on YouTube, an 8tracks playlist to go with one of them and I was hoping to submit my newest story to reddit NoSleep. All of this on top of crocheting Christmas gifts, and squeezing in a new anime series, but that's not important... What is important is that a) I'm writing this at 2am and it actually makes sense wow and b) I'm not going to get those projects done. I may not even get them done by the new year. I could have one narration done by Christmas Eve if I'm extremely lucky, but I haven't even finished writing the other story and it's set on Christmas Eve so it kinda needs to be submitted by then. This annoys me for countless more reasons, the primary one being the fact that the whole point of this was to mark a decade of my creative development or whatever it is I keep calling it. I suppose I could always put it off until around my birthday next year... But it's mostly Christmas themed so it wouldn't make any sense. I don't even know why I bothered to make a post about this, I guess I just felt I owed an update to anyone who actually reads these. Plus, it's like 2.30am, I've just watched like five episodes of Black Lagoon and no one seems to be online so why not just ramble. I've never written anything past 11pm so I don't even know if this makes sense anymore. Let's just roll with it. I may even try writing some more of my story soon...
On a distantly related topic, I just realised I haven't mentioned Christmas until now. I'm not as excited about it as I have been in past years, but I guess considering I feel like it should still be October I haven't really emotionally caught up yet. That'll probably happen at about 1am on Christmas Eve. It'll hit me like a sack full of coal. One thing that does actually help to get me in the festive spirit while still feeling as spooky as I usually do is the NoSleep Podcast Christmas special. Ohh man. It's good. I mean it's really good. Lot's of creepy children and a chilling Christmas theme that I will be listening to for the rest of the month. Technically I guess that's actually rest of the year. But yeah. Go listen to it. It's 2 hours and 43 minutes of heaven for me haha.
I'm only just realising just how unorganised my thoughts are right now. Let's take this as a writing experiment, see if the quality of my writing is directly proportional to how tired I am. That sounds very technical. It's really not. It's also fun to see where my mind wanders along this thought trail. Which brings me to my next point I guess; New Year.
Ok so the new year is hot on the heels of Christmas and while I may not be entirely ready for that latter one (considering I haven't even finished my gift shopping), I do believe I am more than ready for the new year. This year I am embracing the idea of a clean slate and a fresh start and a better me. I'd like to tackle 2016 head on and I'm actually excited to see what it'll bring. If my memory serves me correctly, the last time I mentioned the coming of a new year on this blog I think I shunned all these ideas and basically said "It's nothing but just another year." Well that is a little true. But right now I feel there's a lot more to it than that. More meaning. More opportunities. Or maybe I'm just really drowsy... Yeah. Let's go with that one. Also the music I'm listening to is too dancy for 2.30 in the morning but for some reason I'm writing pretty well with it as background music so I'm afraid to listen to anything else.
Speaking of music, I just remembered I already have that 8tracks playlist done. It's saved and ready to upload whenever. I'm really pleased with it. It's a good mix of dark Christmas music to go with the story I'm working on. It's made up of all the dark Christmas "mood music" I guess, that serves as excellent background noise while I'm writing the story. It's also great to listen to when you're walking alone on a cold evening. If you like feeling slightly scared but also very inspired. I feel like that's becoming my constant state now; slightly scared, spooky and inspired. Three ingredients for a horror writer, there's your checklist.
I would continue to ramble but I am losing the ability to keep my eyes open and my hands moving. There wasn't really any plan or point to this. Usually I have a plan. Usually I know what I want to say, and I plan it in advance. This was new for me. Improv writing. I know I'm going to read this in the morning and hate myself... But it was kinda fun.

Game Jolt - The Start of an Addiction

I recently discovered a website that provides free downloads of indie games. This is probably the worst thing for me to have discovered during exam week, because before long I had already downloaded an obscene amount of games to try out and it is safe to say, studying was the farthest thing from my mind. But they are good to take your mind off things in the evenings. I wouldn't exactly say the ones I've played are good to help you relax though, considering they're mostly tense thriller/horror games... But they're still good. And I have now realized I am a huge sucker for a good horror game.
I figured since I've already done reviews for films and podcasts it's only right that I do some game reviews too. So here goes.

1. Only Footsteps
Ok, I think this is the first game I played. It's pretty good. I mean, there's an interesting story to it I guess. And that is really the only thing that kept me going with it, but not much happens until the end. Basically you're in the snow and you have to find a cave and make your way through it to the center. You find notes along the way giving you pieces of information about you and about what's going on. The cave is the most interesting part though. You end up spending most of the game walking through really long, stone corridors to get to the center of the cave. And the character moves painfully slowly which is annoying. But once you get there it's interesting. The ending? It's weird. Be prepared for that.

2. Letter to a Friend
This one... This one is weird. It's alright, I think. Again nothing much happens, but there is a slightly more interesting story here. You're at this weird old subway station. It's dark. And you basically just explore all areas while you wait for the train. There isn't much to explore as you can only go so far. Some weird stuff happens. The train comes. That's it. It's a little creepy, but just make sure you explore every inch of the subway station otherwise nothing will happen. Note: You can't move past the darkness.

3. Fran Bow
Ok... This one gets a little disturbing. The art is cute, the story is cute... until she looks out the window, then the whole thing is just weird and disturbing. It still manages to maintain that cute element throughout though. Which is strange. I haven't gotten very far with it, but it's good. It's one of the few games on this list which isn't an RPG, ha. There is a much better story to this. Basically Fran's parents were killed at the beginning by a weird monster and now she's in a mental hospital and has to find her cat. He comes to her in dreams and tells her the medicine will help her find him... Weird, but that's Fran's main motivation for getting out of the hospital. That's as far as I've gotten, but it's intriguing. I'd better go finish it...

4. Anxiety: Lost Night
This is the only game in the anxiety series that I've played so far, and god... It's so frustrating! Where is the radio power cable?! Ok... The whole point of this game is to start the car. But it's not as simple as it sounds. There's something... unnatural out there in the woods around you. Don't look into the darkness for too long, or you just might see something you don't want to...

5. 7Days
I just played this properly before I started writing and ohhh... ohh no. No. Pretty sure I'm only on like day 4 now, but if this is day 4... I don't want to know what day 7 is. My heart was pumping like I was running a marathon. It really lures you into a false sense of security because the art is really nothing special if I'm being honest. It reminds me of Pixel Dungeon. So I didn't expect big things from this. But ohh no... The noises... There are running footsteps, always behind me. And the pixel blood stains... And that damn ominous music that plays in the library. And Sam... Who is Sam? He seems important for some reason. I mean his name is written in blood in a book and on the wall soo... Maybe the aim is to find him...? Who knows. But it's so tense... Here's hoping I make it to day 7 before I give myself a heart attack.

6. Hotel Remorse
So... This one. It's awesome. Pretty intense also. But awesome. There are a few loud noises so be prepared for that. You start off in a hotel room, a loud gunshot has been heard coming from that room and you have to find out what it was through finding the letters left by the guest who was staying there. The first letter is an obvious find. But here's a little tip for once you leave the room; don't waste your time checking any of those doors. They're all locked. Literally just go straight to the end of the corridor. After that it gets weird... It really got my heart racing. And beware; the hallways can kill you.

7. Bunker16
This is one of my top two favourite games of the ones I've downloaded. It is awesome. Really intense. As you can probably tell, I have a thing for intense games that get your heart pumping. It's a fun adrenaline rush. But I just love this game so much... The general outline of the story is that you are stuck in a bunker and you have to find a way out. Lucky for you the previous person to get stuck in this bunker has left his diary entries scattered around for you to find. You have to make your way through the entire bunker each day; explore literally everything. Find those notes, they're really helpful. Once you have exhausted all of your options, checked everything, go back to where you started and take a nap. Then the cycle will repeat... But usually with a difference... Watch out for disturbing faces at the ends of the corridors, and the creepy messages in German on the walls. Here's hoping you find an escape...

8. Lurking
Ohh man, this is my favourite one. I really want to know what happens at the end, I'm so close to finishing it. You start in a dingy little room with a hospital bed and a night stand. This room serves no real purpose. It's just the starting point. Once you leave things are going to go dark. The key to this game is to make noise. Audio pulses allow you to see. But they're also the thing that will get you killed. See, you're in some kind of testing facility. And you have to pick up the audio tapes you find along the way. Each one provides another piece of the puzzle needed to discover what happened here when the experiment went horribly wrong. Avoid anything that emits a red pulse at all costs. Those are the test subjects. They will eat you. Your noise attracts them. Anything white is harmless. Anything yellow, like the computers and boxes, can be picked up and thrown to make a noise. Make your way through the facility, room by room, and explore everything. Find those audio tapes. And try not to get eaten along the way...

These next two games aren't on the site. They're flash games, but they're awesome so I thought I'd share them.

9. Every Day the Same Dream
Basically, break the cycle. That's all I'm gonna say. It's awesome, the art is very clean and sharp and I love the music. It's a quick play once you figure it out. The ending was a little shocking to me though. Gotta catch that leaf...

10. Coma
And to complete the list, this is my favourite game of all time. The art is awesome, there is a really nice story to it and the music is so beautiful. Makes me want to cry... If I were to describe my aesthetic, this game would be it. I don't want to spoil anything, just go play it.

Homework, The NoSleep Podcast and Writing.

So it's been a little over half a year since I last wrote something here. Life kind of got in the way... I was supposed to blog about the summer but I kept putting it off and before I knew it I was back in school and starting on the path of GCSEs and they had us drowning in assessments and homeworks which was so much fun. In the first week I had a difficult time adjusting to my new classes and schedules, but that never lasts long and the fact that there were numerous more assessments in this first month than we had last year is making me feel as though I've been in school longer than I actually have. It feels like it should be January. It's horrible, I hate that feeling. It's like waking up and thinking it's Friday, only to feel crushing disappointment when you check your phone. Not good.

I also feel like there's no breathing space between homeworks now. Last year there were usually one or two days a week when you wouldn't have any homework to do, or you could at least afford to put a few homeworks off until the next day, but now if you don't do a homework the day you get it they very quickly pile up as they just keep coming every day. Eventually you'll be crushed if you don't know how to manage your time well. There's never a day when I don't have to write at least two things down that I have to do for the next day, and then just when you get tick a whole bunch of completed stuff off your list you get another whole bunch of stuff to add to that list. It's a never ending cycle of stress and tears, it's just beautiful.

No matter how much homework I have to do, I always find time for the NoSleep podcast. This is my new obsession. I had become almost completely absorbed by stories on Reddit NoSleep shortly before I discovered the podcast, but it becomes very difficult to focus on reading stories online when you spend most of your day surrounded by other people. I would start reading a story on the train on my way to school, and would then spend the rest of the day itching to finish it. But I didn't want to walk around with my face glued to my phone, and ignoring people at lunch time just to finish reading a story definitely wasn't an option either. So the podcast is perfect. They basically take all the greatest stories from NoSleep and get awesome narrators to read them with great sound effects and really great background music by Brandon Boone (definitely check his stuff out on bandcamp, it's great to study to).

Listening to stories on a podcast is so much easier than reading them from your phone. I listen to it when I have any time alone or I have to walk somewhere. It's a nice break from listening to the same Blue Oyster Cult albums on a constant loop. Also the narrators have amazing voices. They are all such talented voice actors, but it wasn't long before I had pegged three of the narrators as my favourites; Jesse Cornett and Jeff Clement (who both do a lot of amazing work on Chilling Tales for Dark Nights, which is also awesome) and also Peter Lewis. They each have such different voices but there's something about each of them that makes me want to listen to them talk all day long. I sometimes download episodes I've already listened to just to have one of their voices in the background if I don't feel like listening to music. So, yeah. I think it's safe to say I might be slightly obsessed with this podcast... And yes, I do realise I sound like an advertisement. But no, that's not what this is.

Another major thing in my life right now is my writing. A while back I found a story I wrote when I was about five years old and it was, uh... interesting to say the least. But it made me think about how much my writing style has changed and developed in 10 years. I want to do something to, I don't know... mark the milestone, I guess, of  a decade of creative development. So I'm working on a story at the moment, and providing it goes well and I finish it before Christmas I was considering recording a reading of it and my old story and putting them on my youtube channel as a sort of "Then vs Now". I want to do something different with them other than just posting about them, and I think recording a reading of them would be cool. I don't know... That may not even happen, but it's a nice idea to me. We'll see how that goes.

I was going to end this by talking about Halloween, but you know what I changed my mind. I think we all know that I could write three ten page long essays on various aspects of Halloween and how much I love them, so I'm just going to say that so far my only plans for Halloween involve going to see a horror movie and I'm pretty excited. Let's leave it at that before I go off on one about everything spooky...

Here's hoping my next update won't take six months for me to write.

I wrote a thing

So it's not the story I've been planning to write, but I wrote a short based on a writing prompt I saw on Max Kirin's tumblr. I thought it would be good practice to write something shorter before I try writing a much longer story (or even a book, ahhh!). I wrote it over three days and it turned out a lot better than I thought it would, though I'm not sure about the ending I gave it. I think I was just in a rush to get it finished. I listened to a lot of saloon music and wild western mixes to get my head in the scene. I got to do a lot of research into the old west, like clothing and the lingo. You have no idea how many times I googled 'when was *insert object here* invented' while I was writing this story...

Anyway, you can read it here if you'd like;
Afterclaps in the Afterlife
Note: Afterclaps is Old western slang for "unexpected happenings after an event is supposed to be over."
Also I found this awesome website with an A-Z of old western cowboy slang. You can find it here. It's pretty amazing.

I don't have a title

So I'm trying to start writing again (I know, again) and I'm finding it really difficult this time. I think the reason it seemed a lot easier to get started in the past was because I wasn't doing it right, I wasn't planning it properly. It's been mostly silly stories up until now and I tend to just dive right in and try to start writing from page one with no idea what my plot is, who my characters are or what kind of a back story they have. I've never been able to write more than two short chapters before, which is alright I guess with no planning, and I think that's because I had no idea where my stories were going so it was all just meaningless dialogue and description scenes. Boring. I don't know how I expect to do any better this time, I mean I can't even write an engaging post here, but planning has got to help. So that's what I'm doing. I've been tagging a few posts about writing advice on tumblr for the past few months, and I've finally got them together to help me make out a clear and concise plan, and they help me make sure I know what I'm doing at every stage.
So far I've got a plot, my main characters and what drives them. Also some of their secrets and ulterior motives and what's going to change them throughout the story. I haven't got any names for them yet, but that will come later. I'm currently trying to write out a detailed timeline of the plot, and it's really difficult. The most annoying thing is I now know where I want the story to go, but I don't know exactly how to get it there. And do you know what's even more annoying? I don't even have a concrete title for this thing yet. I have a few ideas floating around in my head, but I just don't know what to go with or whether any of them are even that good.
One thing I know for sure is that writing is never going to be easy. But my problem has always been my inability to keep going when it gets particularly tough. It's so easy to give up and I always do. But I found some advice on tumblr from Neil Gaiman, and one particular point stuck in my head;

That's what I'm going to do. My goal this time is to finish writing this story, no matter how bad it seems to me. All I need is to get a first draft finished and I'll have something good to work with. I can fix any flaws at a later date. I get so excited when I think about sitting down to write this story, so I guess I'd better go finish writing out that timeline...

Happy New Year

It's hard to believe that it was a year ago that I was writing a silly post about all the things I loved and hated about new year, especially the whole "new year, new me" thing. I cringed so much when I read over that post again.
This year I've changed my mind. It's time for a new me, and I'm ready for it. It'll be fun.  I definitely intend to keep my new year's resolutions this year. I don't think I ever have before.
So, this year I plan to:
1. Eat more fruit
2. Drink more water
3. Read more books
4. Blog more (and blog about more intersting stuff ahhh)

I don't think those are too hard to do, except for that last one... Just the standard stuff. I was really hoping I would get caught up on Supernatural by the end of the year, but that was probably a bit too ambitious. 2014 has been really great though. We had national croatoan day of course.

I discovered my favourite band and my favourite TV shows. Skukduggery Pleasant came to an end which was quite sad, I still haven't finished the last book, but I'm actually looking forward to seeing how it all ends. Also, on Christmas day, my dad and his girlfriend got engaged! That was a beautiful way to top everything else.

I'm not gonna go in too deep and write paragraphs of stuff so I'll just leave it here and say that I'm wishing you all an amazing 2015. Hopefully we'll get those hover boards sometime soon...