February 2010

Thursday Thirteen – 13 Signs You’re a Geek

by ** Tatiana Caldwell ** on February.25.2010

  1. You want to be a member of Starfleet when you grow up.
  2. The announcement of new technology or gadgets make your heart beat faster.
  3. You actually try to use  The Force to pick up your cell phone.
  4. Ero Anime is way more enticing to you than porn.
  5. The idea of Live Action Avatar Roleplaying doesn’t sound too horrible.
  6. The only way you’d consider watching Desperate Housewives is if one of them was married to a werewolf.
  7. You haven’t been outside your home for 6 days – and you’re okay with that.
  8. Lists and Spreadsheets are your best friends.
  9. When people need computer help, they call you first.
  10. I really like you.
  11. You have a driving need to do everything yourself because that’s the only way to get it done right.
  12. Staying at home reading a good book or playing a video game sounds more enticing that going out to a party.
  13. You know it’s better to be a geek than not to be one.

Tagged as: Thursday Thirteen

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Thirteen Thursday: 13 Ways to Tell He Loves You

by ** Tatiana Caldwell ** on February.18.2010

  1. He brags about you to his family and friends.
  2. Even when you’re wearing sweat pants and a baggy t-shirt and your hair is a mess, he still checks you out when you walk by.
  3. When he talks about the future, you’re included.
  4. He’ll watch Grey’s Anatomy or go shoe shopping with you – something you like to do but he doesn’t – just to spend time with you.
  5. He remembers something you said last week.
  6. He calls or texts you just to say hi.
  7. He spends more time with you than he does with his friends.
  8. He calls to make sure you got there okay, because he’s concerned about your safety.
  9. He’ll prepare a meal for you. Even if he isn’t a good cook, he’ll learn to make a dish just for you.
  10. He puts forth effort to see to it that you too are satisfied. Every time.
  11. He’s not too ashamed to run to the store and buy feminine hygiene products for you.
  12. You can see it in his eyes. Feel it in his hands. Hear it in his voice.
  13. He tells you he loves you. And then he shows you … with everything that he does.

Tagged as: Relationships, Thursday Thirteen

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The Game of Love

by ** Tatiana Caldwell ** on February.11.2010

Love is a wonderful thing. And I’m not just saying that because Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. I truly love love. I love reading about it, writing about it, watching movies about it, talking about it, being in it.

As some of you may know, in addition to loving love I also love video games. Especially adventurous, action-packed or RPG (Dungeons & Dragons) type games where I get to be a hero or heroine and beat some bad guys until they beg me to stop. Very few of these games include any romantic elements, which I try not to complain about since I can get my romance fix elsewhere. But still, I’ve always wondered why so many game developers seem to forget that love can be a great adventure too, and often a perilous one!  So when I encounter a game which also incorporates love – and I mean actually makes the romance part of the gameplay and not just back-story or an implied relationship – then I’m completely thrilled. THRILLED I tell ya!

Square’s RPG series Final Fantasy has always put a love story in nearly every game. My favorites so far are Final Fantasy VIII with the relationship between Squall and Rinoa, as well as Cloud/Aeris and Cloud/Tiffa in FFVII, and Tidus and Yuna in FFX and FFX-2.

Even the romance in these games were entertaining and  important parts of the story, they were linear and not really part of the gameplay, however. You couldn’t choose someone else to fall in love with it, or whether or not to fall in love at all.

So today I’d like to give a shout out to a few of the games I’ve played recently that were kick-ass and yet didn’t give love the backseat.

Dragon Age

What rocks about the romance in this game is that you have options. You’ll have 3 different possible love interests depending upon your character’s gender and the sexual orientations of the game characters. Other characters reacted to my chosen relationship (either with jealousy, disgust or warnings) and there were actual love scenes.

Surprisingly, the romance was intense enough to make me gush with joy but yet somehow the game remained gritty enough for my husband to enjoy without his manhood being threatened. And when I say “intense enough” I mean enough to actually invoke real emotion in the player.  Heh, at least for me anyways. I think I have a serious crush on Alistair. At least as serious as it can get with a digital dude. But let’s just say that I think this game is so nice, I”m playing it twice!

Fable II

Unlike Dragon Age, Fable II doesn’t have a written-out romance with a main character. Instead, the “romance” in this game is more like a mini-game, where you can flirt with random citizens of the towns you visit and possibly make them fall in love with you. What I thought was an interesting touch though was that you could choose a house to buy, get married and move your spouse into it. You can even buy furniture and decorations for your home, make love and have children. After a long, hard day’s work of beating and slicing bad guys to a bloody pulp you could return home to find your spouse and children waiting to greet you and offer you gifts.

I haven’t encountered another game yet that let’s you be a hero while also getting to play house. Nice!

Mass Effect

Mass Effect has a special place in my heart because it came out before Fable II and before Dragon Age. It is one of the first games I played that actually involved you in the romance instead of just having you watch it or hear about it, and gave you at least a couple of choice. Mass Effect 2 just came out. I bought it but haven’t opened it yet, and probably won’t get to it for a while. But I believe it will continue with the same kind of romantic awesomeness as the first installment, and therefore I will be playing it.

*sighs* Bestill my heart, o-wonderous-game-makers who aren’t afraid of a little romance! Keep them coming and I’ll keep playing them! (And with any luck, one day I’ll join their ranks with some romantic game creations of my own …)

Tagged as: Dragon Age, Fable II, games, Mass Effect

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New Site Layout!

by ** Tatiana Caldwell ** on February.9.2010

And here it is – my newly redesigned website/blog!  *beams proudly*

What I especially love about this theme, besides how gorgeous it is and how much attention to detail my husband paid on the artwork, is that this was very much an enjoyable collaborated effort between the both of us. He created the design and the artwork, I built the menus, the code and the pages based on the theme he laid out.

Man, do we make a great team or what? And we had a blast doing it.

So much so, that we’re making it a side-venture to help other writers who want an attractive, custom website with the easy maintenance of a WordPress blog, but may not have the time or know-how to build a professional-looking one. We’ve already created one for my friend, author S.K. Yule.

skyule_screenshot

Caldwell Interactive would love to help set up your customized WordPress website for you to manage yourself if you wish. And because we work together we can do it fast, and thus at a very affordable cost.

Feel free to contact me or go to our Caldwell interactive website for more information.

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My Goals for 2010

by ** Tatiana Caldwell ** on February.4.2010

Okay, so I’m  a little late in posting my goals for the new year, but that’s because I’ve been busy working to achieve them!

Here are this year’s goals:

  1. Write at least 1500 words every day. This would take me about 2 hours a day to accomplish, more or less. Very doable.  If I’m in editing mode, then I plan to polish 5 pages a day.
  2. Finish 6 novellas. I just finished one up last month and I have another drafted, so I am already 1.5 down with 4.5 more to go. And it’s only February!
  3. Write 1  novel. I have 2 very different ideas for new full-length books that are fighting for priority right now, but time will likely only permit one to win this year.
  4. Redesign this website. *laughs* Yes, within a week or so I’m going to change the look of this site again. I like the look of this current theme, but my husband is creating a custom design made specifically to reflect my personality, and it looks so awesome I’d be crazy not to use it. You’ll see!
  5. Blog more frequently. I get a point for this post, right? ;)
  6. Lose 25 pounds. I gained quite a bit of weight during my last pregnancy ~ over 60 pounds. But that baby is now 2 frickin’ years old, and I’m still fighting with the remaining 25. It must go!
  7. Exercise at least 4 days a week. Preferably 5 days, for at least 40 minutes. Consistently, no weeks skipped. My biggest challenge here is keeping my routine even during the weeks I’m out of town for work. I’ve got to get better at that.
  8. Submit a writing project every month. Be it a query or submission for a novel, novella, short-story, proposal, web article or contest, I’d like to aim to have something to send out every month. This goal is a way to sort of push myself to be brave and just submit my work! How else will I ever achieve the next goal …
  9. Get Published! Nothing would make the year 2010 earn its Ten than for it to be the year I land my very first publishing contract. A girl can dream, right?
  10. Go to at least 1 Writing Conference. I had it in my head that since I didn’t have a book published, I didn’t have any business attending a professional writing conference. Now I know better. By attending one I can actually try and meet face-to-face with folks who can help me accomplish my goals.

It’s good to put your goals down in writing (and to give them eternal life on the internet for the entire world to see, putting terrible, terrible pressure on you to perform), so feel free to share your goals, too!

Tagged as: goals

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