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Writing Communities To Watch I: WritersCafe.org
When I jumped into the writing world, I immediately sought out a good writing community. In the past I wrote a lot of fanfiction, and a lot of it found its way to fanfiction.net, a popular site for that sort of thing at the time. However when I woke up one day and decided “I want to be a writer (more so than I have been before),” I knew that writing fanfiction wasn’t going to get me anywhere. A swarm of ideas buzzing around in my mind, I sat down and wrote two pieces of flash fiction that would lead me towards the start of my first original novel: Children of Solus.
That wasn’t long ago, and that novel is still long from completion, but the fact was that I needed to get myself out there. I needed to join in the hunt for new opportunities, all the while honing my skills and seeing what others thought of my work. To do that, I needed to find an online writing community to give myself an applet to show people what I could do. After all, sitting alone in a house writing silly stories that only I read to myself isn’t exactly the recipe for inspiration, encouragement, and personal success. No, I needed to put myself out there, one way or another. I plopped down on the office chair, spent five minutes or so searching for somewhere to upload my work (a long time for one with such a short attention span), and came across WritersCafe.org.
The site looked great; clean, well organized, eye-catching, and developed with writers in mind. I signed up and got right to work. First off, there is a high level of categorization when it comes to putting your writing where it needs to be. The list of genres to choose from and file your work under is extensive, and I think that’s an important thing when you’ve got a massive public database of writing. From metafiction to lyrics, WritersCafe has it all, and the upload system is simple to use and pretty self-explanatory. The site does not support file uploading, instead forcing you to copy and paste your work, but that’s not a big deal in the grand theme of things.
Once you’ve got your text in the editor and ready to submit, you have to option to tag your piece with keywords as lightly or as heavily as you’d like. You also can upload a picture with each piece of writing, which when clicked on later will popup in a fashion similar to when you click on a photo in Facebook. It’s a nice touch, and the site doesn’t force you to use only certain dimensions for your images. In addition to that, you can upload photos to an album, and even manage a simple blog all within the website, both of which can be viewed and commented on by others on the site.
Something nice about WritersCafe is its “newsfeed”, which is basically a simplified clone of Facebook’s newsfeed. Any other writers who you have added as friends will see when you upload a new piece of writing, photo, blog post, or even when you receive a comment on something. In return, you’ll see their activity. It’s smart to create a lengthy friends list, that way more and more people will see what you’re doing and read your work. As with most writing communities, there are a lot of common courtesies that come with this. If someone comments on (reviews) something of yours, it’s polite to review something of theirs. A sidebar on the main page will create a list of the last six or so people who reviewed your writing, suggesting that your return the favor. This easy access list and constant reminder creates a pleasant atmosphere where most will trade reviews without being asked.
The newsfeed is a nice feature, and very easy to use.
If you do want to ask for reviews or anything else more specific, WritersCafe also has a well categorized forum. The forums aren’t very active, but you’re likely to get answers to your questions sooner or later, and many are always looking to trade reviews with their fellow writers. If you want a bit more socializing, writers are open to create groups, complete with their own private message boards, and most groups are always looking for new members. On a similar note, writers are also allowed to create contests, customizing them to accept only certain types of writing (such as poetry, screenplays, or books), or anything and everything. Usually these contests follow a certain theme, allowing anywhere from one submission per writer to nine separate submissions. Most of the free-for-all contests become bloated with way too many applicants, but some of the more theme oriented ones find a reasonable number of applicants, giving everyone a fair shot at winning fun little awards.
The last unique facet of WritersCafe that I personally think is a great addition to the site is the presence of a section dedicated to writing courses. Anyone is allowed to upload courses, which within them hold a number of separate lessons. For example, I have my Breath Life Into Your Writing! course on WritersCafe, with each of its various installments uploaded as lessons such as “Part I: Personification, Part II: Metaphors & Similes” and so on. Readers are then able to go through the lessons at their own pace, with the option to subscribe to the course, which gives them a notification when the next lesson is uploaded. While much of the courses might be coming from novice writers, you’re sure to find a treasure trove of free writing tips and tricks.
There are courses on many different subjects, all at your fingertips.
WritersCafe sounds like a dream come true, right? Well, with dreams usually comes nightmares. WritersCafe isn’t perfect.
The most annoying aspect of WritersCafe is its server. During any given day, you will probably find yourself trying to load the homepage to no avail. Sometimes I can use the site with no problem all day, while others I can hardly load the main page once or twice. The site goes down way too often, and it’s been going on like that for years. Odds are it will continue on this way for some time.
Besides that, there aren’t too many negative points about WritersCafe. It has a few quirks that can be annoying, for example when you copy your writing over into the editor and upload it, the site will break all of your em dashes. For some odd reason, the site doesn’t like em dashes, and it turns then into quotation marks. This can be annoying if you—like me—do that a lot. It’s easy enough to fix if you just go through your writing in the editor and change your em dashes into two hyphens, but that can be time-consuming and a major annoyance when it comes to long stories and novel chapters.
Something else that can be frustrating is finding readers for longer pieces of writing. Poetry gets a lot of attention on WritersCafe, while books get almost none. It was months before my novel began receiving a good amount of attention, and only after I had a pretty large friends list, but that’s an issue you can focus effort into and conquer yourself through communication with other novel writers (who are also looking for readers) as well as groups dedicated to longer pieces of fiction. It takes effort to find the right people for this sort of thing, but at least you have a good community with similar interests and goals.
It’s time for a list now. Pros and cons, anyone?
Pros:
- Clean, organized, easy to use.
- Effective use of categorization and tagging for uploaded pieces.
- Easy access newsfeed that most writing community sites do not have.
- Friendly atmosphere encouraging review trading.
- Easy to use forums.
- Groups function complete with private message boards.
- User created contest section.
- User created courses section.
Cons:
- Server constantly goes up and down.
- Submission process breaks your em dashes.
- Little attention paid to long pieces, with most of the attention paid to poetry.
- $99 monthly subscription.
Just kidding on that last one; the place is free. I just felt like there were too many pros as opposed to the cons, so I decided to try and balance it out a little bit.
All in all, WritersCafe is a really great site. I’ve found the community to be pretty friendly, and the usability to be very high. It’s simple enough to figure out your first time using it, and detailed enough take time mastering. It’s got a lot of features, and they all work very well. I’ve been using it for awhile now, and I’m hardly ever disappointed (except for when the server goes down for six hours).
As for a rating, I give it a:
8.5 out of 10.
High praise? I guess it is, but I think WritersCafe.org deserves it. It might not be the most popular writing community out there, or the most professional, but it works. It was created with writers in mind, and as a writer, I think it’s a great way to get yourself out there, bolster your confidence, and hone your skills among fellow writers.
I couldn’t talk about every facet of the site, so go ahead and try it out for yourself. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
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2012 Hits!
Yesterday (I think) the Sundance Press reached total 2012 hits.
Sweet.
I think that’s pretty cool, and I just wanted to say thank you to all my subscribers and readers. When I started this blog little more than a month ago, I didn’t expect much. I’ve never, ever written a blog. The social media game is kind of something I got sucked into as I realized the necessity of it for writers trying to break into the industry. I wasn’t too keen on jumping into Facebook and Twitter. That’s just not my thing, but what can you do? I also knew I needed to create a blog, and the Sundance Press was born.
Since then, I’ve grown to enjoy maintaining this little blog. I’ve put a lot of effort into it, and even created my own graphics for the site (another graphical update is coming soon). Once upon a time, I updated it everyday. Unfortunately through sickness, laziness, and lack of constant ideas, I don’t do that anymore. I try my best, but I put a lot of time and effort into my instructional posts. That takes time, and it’s all off the top of my head and a product of my personal experience. Some people use other teachers’ publications as a basis for their posts, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I personally try hard to give all of you unique tips and tricks. I’m no expert, but I get a lot of satisfaction knowing that I can impart some of my own wisdom to fellow writers. It takes time to think lessons up though, so that explains why I might not post as much as others.
Anyways, I didn’t mean to go on and on about this. Simply put, thanks for reading the Sundance Press, and keep coming back please!
Tekken: Movie Review
A movie review? Yes, I don’t know. This isn’t a movie review blog, but I warned you that I can be random. This is one of those times.
The other day, I caught the movie Tekken on TV. It was never in theaters (at least not in the US), and it’s adapted from the classic fighting video game, so I really didn’t expect much. Movies based on video games almost never work. Still, I had nothing better to do, so I sat down with my dad and watched it.
Simply put, I didn’t hate it. I was a child who played Street Fighter, Fighter’s Destiny, and Marvel Vs. Capcom. I never once played Tekken, and I while I immediately recognize the old dude with his white hair spiked up on both sides, I’m not familiar with the game or the story. As is typical with most movies adapted from existing stories, Tekken was not original to the game’s storyline. I’m sure it generally was, but when it comes to details, it only took a two minute search to find people complaining “That’s wrong!” Personally, I don’t care about that. That’s how movie adaptions are. If you judge them based on how different they are, you can never give a fair rating.
Still, the movie wasn’t amazing. The story is very cliche: Evil totalitarian militaristic “factions” take over a post-apocalyptic Earth, slummy terrible environments ensue. A massive fighting competition is endorsed by Tekken (a prominent faction) because… that’s what you do when everything goes to pot I guess. The main character lives in the slums, and was taught by his mother the ways of karate and whatnot. Violence ensues, the bad guy kills his mother, and he enters the Iron Fist (the fighting competition) to kill the bad guy ruler and avenge his mother’s death.
I won’t spoil anything. Even though the movie was full of weak dialogue, corny flashbacks, and a plot-hole here and there, I’d still recommend it to anyone who just wants to sit down to a heavy helping of good old fashioned badassery. The fight scenes might be corny sometimes, but the stunts aren’t bad. It’s all very entertaining if you come at it from the right perspective. You’re not going to find a gripping, well written, emotional movie that will leave you thinking. You are going to get a lot of sweaty bleeding dudes, revenge, and a couple scantily clad young ladies thrown in for good measure.
It’s a guy movie. It accomplishes that role, but not much else. I give it 3 bloody fists, because bloody fists are cool.
Old Habits Die Hard
I’ve been writing for a pretty long time; I’ve brought that up before. A problem I always faced as a young writer was lack of focus and commitment. One day I want to write about something—and I’ve got the ideas all up top—but the next day, I’m bored. Maybe not bored with the idea, but bored with writing it. Something else would steal my interest, and I’d move onto that.
It was hard for me to focus on a single project, basically. I start something; I don’t finish it. I did that a lot, if not always. A lot of people have that problem. I know I have that problem, but I thought that I grew out of it a bit.
Seems I haven’t quite ditched the habit. It’s difficult, because while I am able to embark on a project and focus on it, I have so many ideas! I’m working on two novels and one serial. Those are all time-consuming projects. Amidst those things, I need to update this blog more often. I need to sit down and write articles for my job. When I do take the time to work on a personal writing project, I don’t know where to start. I don’t know which project to work on. Then the thought comes to mind that I should start writing something entirely new. A short story, or flash fiction. Something I can submit to places and possibly get published and paid for.
As much as I talk on this blog, and try my best to help people (mostly with their virus problems, as it seems from my 100+ hits a day on my “System-Check” Virus post), I have problems myself. I know I have the skill and ability to do useful things, but more often than not I just don’t know where to direct my figurative blows.
Old habits die hard, and I’ll still have to grapple with them for control. In the meantime, it’s good to take a step back and remember that everyone is always learning. As a writer, you never stop growing, and I’ve only just begun my journey.
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Busy, busy.
I felt like this today, but I think that had more to do with the fact that I was functioning on 3 hours of sleep and a Mountain Dew.
I started this blog thinking a post a day wouldn’t be too bad. Up til this point, I’ve done alright, but that pretty much stems from the fact that I have way, way too much time on my hands.
I’ve been doing a lot though, lately. I’ve been “busy”. I still hold a relatively high standard to what I post here, but since I almost always post something up everyday, sometimes the standards slip. Like today? The standards flew out the window. Not only have I been writing doing some freelance blog writing, I spent today working with my dad. While the man’s colorful vocabulary might be inspiring to some, it doesn’t make up for the time I could have been writing.
That sounds kind of silly in retrospect. I got out of the house for once, had an honest day’s work, and made some money, but it just wasn’t creative. I could have sat down, written a handful of blog posts and made the same amount of money (okay, less). Even writing articles about things that don’t necessarily inspire me still feels creative. I’d rather be investing more time into my projects, but those aren’t making any money. Someday they will (hopefully).
So while my posts these days might not suffer, I’m getting them off later and later it seems. Yesterday’s post came after 6pm Hawaii time. That’s way too late for everyone else. I’m not even done writing this and it’s nearly 10pm. These posting times aren’t helping statistics and aren’t attracting new readers. It’s just too late for people. Still, better to get them up than not at all, right? …Right?
Anyways, I’ll shut up now. Tomorrow I’m aiming to not only focus on some story writing, but also putting together another article for a job and an insightful post for you guys.
Wish me luck? Right, no such thing. Let’s just hope I wake up before noon.
Inspiration
Following this current trend of me humbly asking you (yeah you—I see you there) what you think about this blog, I wanted to pose a more interesting question this week. Nothing too difficult, but I think it’s a fun topic.
What inspires you?
It can be a song, an author, an artist, a place, anything. Inspiration comes in every form, and part of being a successful artist (of words, paint, or whatever else) is knowing how to absorb that inspiration! I’ll admit it can be hard, especially when you just aren’t in a creative mood, but I’ve compiled a few tips on how to get those creative juices flowing.
Instant inspiration? (Image by xbooshbabyx @ devART.)
- Listen to music: Maybe even music you don’t usually listen to. Check out new stuff—it may stir up new ideas in you!
- Watch movies: You might feel like a lazy schmuck, but visual stories are powerful tools of inspiration!
- Move: I’m not talking about moving states or houses, just move! Absorb your environment, even if it’s made of brick and stone.
- Read: This one kind of goes without saying. You don’t need to copy things, just absorb the ideas and life within your favorite author’s books and let it spark your imagination.
- Browse through art: Sites like deviantART have amazing artists! Just browsing through the galleries is a great way to come up with new ideas.
- Live: No, I don’t mean that in a touchy-feely sense. I mean just let your everyday life inspire you. Fictionalize your world!
Those are all pretty basic tips, but I think they’re the most useful things you can do to get inspired short of just sitting down and thinking! Sometimes that’s the hardest thing to do, but never downplay your own ability to craft your very own ideas through good old brainstorming. Some people take a notebook with them everywhere they go, jotting down ideas when they get flashes of inspiration. I personally don’t, because while I can’t remember other things, my mind is a trap when it comes to any writing idea that pops up. Still, find what works for you. You don’t want to forget something important!
Something I find useful is capitalizing on your inspiration sooner rather than later. If something happens, or you see or hear something that inspires you, write about it quick! I just went through hell dealing with a computer virus, and it inspired me to start on this crazy techno-thriller. It’s a big project, so I didn’t bite off more than I could chew, I just started on it. That’s what I’m suggesting. If your mind is ticking, telling you what to write, write it! You don’t have to finish it, just get those ideas on paper, even if you just throw down a rough first chapter; it still gives you a base. I’m the same way with my poetry. I don’t focus on poetry—it’s just a hobby for me. When something hits me—inspires me—I write a poem about it. It doesn’t take long, and it doesn’t take too much effort when I’m feeling inspired. I also think that if you have a poem written up, you can always use it as a basis for something bigger in the future (if you end up going that direction).
So what inspires you? Who inspires you? What’s something of yours that you’re proud of that just… flowed? When inspiration hits hard, sometimes you can quickly crank out some amazing work. Has that ever happened to you?
Be sure to leave a comment!
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Why Do You Read This Blog?
As you can see above, I decided to ask you all a question. Why do you come here? I’d imagine usually by accident, woops! But if you did happen across my humble little corner of the web, what made you check it out? What makes you come back? Maybe it’s as simple as wanting something to read, or maybe it’s as serious as learning from the the tips and tricks I write about. Do you enjoy my writing; my fiction or my articles? Anything!
So don’t be shy, lazy, or difficult. Just click one of the options and press “vote“. If you’ve got a more specific reason, go ahead and type it in, or leave a comment here. I love to hear from my readers, and it’s nice to hear what people actually find interesting to read about here. Maybe the results will sway me to focus on certain aspects of the blog a bit more.
Thanks for reading everyone!
The “System-Check” Virus
The past two days have been absolutely ridiculous. I touched on what happened a little in my last post, but today I figured I’d delve into the details of what happened. It’s been an interesting couple days.
It all started two nights ago. I downloaded a handful of Photoshop brushes and a few fonts that day. So I brought em over to my writing/art laptop and started unzipping. Unbeknownst to be, one of them was gonna turn my computer into a virus playground. My old hard drive broke. I had the laptop for years, and then it just started freezing for no apparent reason. No viruses, no nothing, just freezing. So after a mess of time-consuming hardware checks, I learned the hard drive was basically just kaput. I got a hold of an uncle of mine who’s a wiz when it comes to computers, bought and sent him a new hard drive, had him load it up with programs through the company he works for, and bam. The replacement hard drive saved me.
Problem is, the computer was never online. I never bothered to update the antivirus or anything, so when I unzipped this “brush” that I got from a third party site (that looked completely legitimate and had no red flags), all hell broke loose. Everything froze, including my heart. I probably swore; I don’t remember. The icons on my screen disappeared, a Windows “System Check” box popped up and started scanning My Computer, the HDD, the RAM, and the registry. Wait, scanning My Computer and the HDD? Aren’t those the same thing? And why is the system check still running with my custom color barf theme I created? Why is there a little “System Check” shortcut next to the start menu? Why is it is discolored and odd looking?
Who cares! My computer’s exploding! I ignored all the fishy signs and paid full attention to this scan. It only took about five minutes. Wait, what? Five minutes to scan the HDD? I’ve done that before. It took two hours. Four errors in My Computer, four in the HDD, three in the RAM, four in the registry. “The C: drive is unreadable.” No! I pressed the “Repair” button and sat patiently unpatiently. Hey!—it’s fixing the problems now! Oh wait, it can’t fix the C: drive. Awesome. I try not to cry.
The entire encounter was lots of fun. By the time I got to the end of it, the window tells me that if I want to fix all the errors, I have to pay for the full version. Pardon my Caprican, but what the frak? I have to pay to fix my computer? That ain’t right. I shut everything down and got extremely depressed, but that doesn’t mean I gave up. I’m not a computer expert, but I know my stuff. I started the boot diagnosis and… waited. The entire process takes almost two hours, so I laid down and tried to sleep, unsuccessfully. When I trudged back into the living room, expecting the worst, a pleasant sight met my eyes.
“Nothing’s wrong with your computer, bro.”
Okay, the screen didn’t say that, but it should have. You have no idea what a relief seeing that message was. All was not lost! Still, my computer was crawling with viruses. Things were bleak, but my hard drive was safe. Turning the computer back on (and wading through this dang “System Check” nonsense) I was able to find my files. They weren’t gone. The virus hijacked the start menu, as well as the desktop. My Computer and My Documents got moved to the “All Programs” tab. Tricky, but only to someone freaking out and blinded by thoughts of “MY COMPUTER IS BROKEN“. Everything was still there, to my incredible relief.
I went to bed at around 4am, finding solace in the fact that the virus was more a trick than a destructive force. Here I was thinking I got hit by some horrible virus that blew my hard drive to hell, like Magistr or CIH. The next morning I set out to find out what I was up against. It only took a single Google search to find my problem. The “System-Check Virus”, I found it was generally called. It’s not your typical virus, it’s called a “rogue“, or “rogueware”, and it’s a part of virus family called FakeHDD. Basically it’s a big illusion to trick you into giving out your credit card number. Remember the entire “buy the full version” prompt? You get it. Mostly people get hit by it when they get conned into those “free virus check” sites, but that certainly wasn’t how I got hit. I quickly found a step by step guide on getting rid of it and got to work. (Go bleepingcomputer.com!)
The process was pretty complicated. The first step was to turn on the computer in safe mode; easy enough. I downloaded all the necessary programs and threw them on a thumbdrive, like a warrior with his armor and weaponry coming toe to toe with the mighty dragon. The first step was to run a program called RKill, which basically kills all the processes that the virus runs to stop you from doing… anything really. Realize that it crippled my actions on the computer so badly that I couldn’t right click, move things, or even press crtl-alt-delete! It took multiple tries to run RKill, and I was forced to change the name of the program to “iExplore.exe” for the virus to let it through. That’s right, this virus protected itself in a big way. Try to run a program to fight the virus? The virus shuts it down. This was only the beginning of my battle.
Finally, after countless tries, RKill ran. It shut down a slew of processes and my desktop icons came flooding back. So far so good. The next step was to run a program called TDSSKiller. The aim of this program was to find and destroy a piece of the virus called a “rootkit“. Not only was this rootkit the culprit for killing my anti-virus and blocking out my virus killer programs, it also royally screws over your internet. If your computer is infected by a rootkit, your Google searches will give you crazy results, and you’ll often be redirected to ads and all sorts of nasty stuff. I think it’s commonly called the Google redirect virus, but either way, I had more problems than just that.
The rootkit proved to be a very difficult foe. Like diamond-hard dragon’s scales, no matter what I tried, my blows were deflected. TDSSKiller—no matter what I renamed it—was immediately shut down by this nasty bug. Why? The dolts over at Kaspersky Labs decided to put a nice big “Kaspersky Labs made this!” inside the properties of the program. So when I tried to open it, the rootkit saw the inner workings and source of the program and shut it down cold. I was screwed.
The solution was to download another program called Verpatch that I could use to change those inner properties of the TDSSKiller. Problem is, Mr. Rootkit stopped that program in its tracks too. Formidable opponent, right? I found a link to a version of TDSSKiller without Kaspersky Labs’ idiot name all over it, but to my great anger and frustration, the link was dead. I set down my sword and decided to move on to the next step.
It was time to ditch the sword and pull out the bazooka.
Malwarebytes is an awesome program. Not only did it break right through the virus’s defenses and run the setup and updates without a hitch, it also found eleven different viruses in the system. Yeah, eleven. I was back in business, and stomping out the bugs left and right. Problem was, the rootkit was still in business, protecting itself from the program that could root it out and kill it: the TDSSKiller.
I redoubled my search for the version of the program that would slip through its defenses, and I found what I was looking for. Kaspersky redeemed themselves, they had made an alternate version without their brand name all over it. If you’re screwed like I was, go HERE for the right version of TDSSKiller (you do have to register to the forums to download it). You can thank me later. I didn’t even have to rename the program from “TDSSKiller” and it started up like a charm. There are many breeds of this virus that I had; it looks like the one I had was nasty indeed, smarter than most versions. It wasn’t even looking at the name of the program—only its inner workings. Sneaky, huh?
The TDSSKiller fired up and found it. Buh-bye rootkit. I was glowing. I bested the beast. I ran Malwarebytes again and it found another handful of viruses. The rootkit was hiding them? I don’t know, but I was glad that thing was toast. I decided to turn the computer on without safe mode before running Malwarebytes two more times (yes, I was paranoid). You can only imagine my joy when the results came up with a big fat zero both scans. I was virus free. The final step was to run a little program called “Unhide.exe“, since the virus goes into your system files and checks “hidden” on all of them. A weak trick, but still.
And that’s my tale. Probably not very exciting, but I thought I would share, and hopefully help out anybody who’s run into similar problems. If you’re going through a FakeHDD virus hit and are stuck, feel free to get a hold of me. I might not be able to help, because each situation is different, but who knows?
Dealt with a rogue before? Comment about it! Viruses today are worse and worse. I’m just glad I came out on top this time.
Related articles
- System Check Virus Removal Guide (bleepingcomputer.com)
- A Step by Step Guide To Removing The Google Redirect Virus From Your Computer (makeuseof.com)
Looking To Get Published?: Obsolescent.info
I had a fun morning today, and my work still continues. A rather nasty virus attacked my writing laptop (the one with my life on it, y’know), so I’ve been frantic to get it working again. Thankfully I think I’ve got it under control, and I also snagged a little job this morning, so I decided to sit down and tell you lovely people about a publishing opportunity I came across today.
A weird one.
Obsolescent.info has an open call out for short stories. About what, you ask? About octopusses—er, octopi. I kid you not, this little press is working up an anthology of short stories focused on our aquatic eight-legged friends. Odd? Yeah, it is, but it also sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
This company is offering 20 bucks for each story. They need 10-15 of them, and they’re looking for stories about 1000-7500 words long. As for the contract, it looks like they’re only claiming non-exclusive rights, so basically they’re allowed to do what they want with your work, and so are you. What genres are they looking for? Well, basically anything. No kidding.
That’s about it. If you’re interested or just want to find out more, check out the page for submission guidelines below!
http://www.obsolescent.info/guidelines.html
The Sundance Press is my little corner of the web, highlighting writing tips and tricks, publishing leads, and the latest updates from H.T. Sundance. If you enjoy spaceships, six-shooters, zombies and wizards, you're in the right place! (or you're hopelessly lost)
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