Chapter II - The Crown of the Earth
Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 10:05 PM
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This week's chapter is quite short - possibly the shortest one yet. The few remaining chapters in the rewrite are all considerably longer, though, so I hope you won't mind one week of light reading too much. Besides, Teldrassil is my favorite set piece yet.
So here's Chapter II - The Crown of the Earth.
For folks that keep track of such things: I've removed the last several chapters of the first draft (over at oldmurloc.php). That's partly so I can declare the rewrite over four chapters sooner (!), but it's mostly because I'm going to be rearranging things significantly, proceeding somewhat differently, and revealing things which I'd previously simply sat down and expositioned (you'd think I'd know better by now) in better ways. Anyway, thought I should say something, in the interest of full disclosure.
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Kickass!
Tuesday, April 24, 2007 - 2:30 AM
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Insomnia sucks. Luckily, there's the internet.
Alequaffer and Cherubim, the wise dwarf and everyone's favorite attack gnome from the chapter which bears their gnames, have finally shown up again in the hands of their creators! It also marks a temporary and welcome return to Ian's old, gorgeous (time-consuming) artwork style from MacHall, and it's worth staring at for a while. Cherubim, speaking in Ian's voice, has grown up a bit since my take on her, and it seems Alequaffer is tapping the dark side of the Light (?!) now - leading to, as I've implied, some serious ass-kickery.
Discuss
Book Two, Chapter One
Sunday, April 22, 2007 - 8:15 PM
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A summary of Book One, for the statistically-minded among us. The book clocks in at three parts with thirty total chapters. It's got about 117,800 words, and 209 pages in Microsoft Word, making it by far the longest single thing I've ever written. According to the various conversion rates I found on the internet, that works out to somewhere between 250 and 400 pages of paper-back, for-real book pages, making it a novel of legitimate length and heft. It is, in short, something I am quite proud of.
I was nearly a third of the way through Book Two when I started this rewrite thing back in December, so there's still a bit of that to go. There are a couple of new things I'll be adding as I go, though, so along with the rewrite's (still, I believe) finer prose, I hope to also give you guys enough new stuff to think about to hold you over until we get back into truly new territory in about ten chapters. First thing's first: Book Two of the rewritten The Murloc is Lonely trilogy is named The Emerald Queen.
And here's its first chapter: Kali. I'm pretty happy with how the first couple scenes of the book turned out.
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Chapter XXX
Sunday, April 15, 2007 - 11:00 PM
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Apparently there was a solid contingent of folks on Spring Break last week. That's a bummer - you missed a good time here at Albatros Bits. I posted three chapters and did some other stuff, which is probably way more exciting than Cancun or wherever. So here's a round-up for those that haven't checked in since two Mondays ago.
- Chapter XXVI - Alequaffer and Cherubim, post II (oops)
- Chapter XXVII - On Keeping Secrets
- Chapter XXVIII - The Misty Barrows
- Chapter XXIX - Plainsrunning
I also launched a slight refresh of the website (collapsable menus!), and a wiki to keep all my lore in. Then on the sixth day, I slept.
That was last week. Now it's this week, and I give you the last chapter of Book One: Chapter XXX - The Order of Sarvavidh. It's been a long, hard journey for Horse (and me, and you guys), and the first leg of it is finally over. Next week: leg two begins!
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Chapter XXIX - Plainsrunning
Thursday, April 12, 2007 - 10:20 PM
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TMiL's birthday week celebrations are drawing to a close, and to wrap them up properly, I give you this week's third chapter. This one was a tough one for me to write the first time around. Being confronted with serious conflits and decisions is not easy, and writing that for a character who has never done anything but run from difficult decisions in his life is even harder. The chapter feels a bit disjointed, and by design: if you've ever been faced with this kind of internal conflict, you'll know why. I give you, Chapter XXIX - Plainsrunning.
On another note, we had a guest GM for a post over in World of Murloc this week...
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Day Four: Website Refresh et al.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 11:00 PM
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For the fourth day of TMiL's birthday party, I'm releasing an overdue refresh to the website. I'm thrilled with how it came out - there's a new background (obviously), a new way of handling cookies (woo!), and a rearranged menu bar including submenus. Check 'em out - they include a good list of Murloc resources.
I'm also giving the Writing community here a new emphasis: it's right up on the main menu now. It's also got a spiffy new name (created for me by the same girl that drew my albatross): The Writers' Nest. You guys are doing some really cool things in there, and you deserve the prominence.
Discuss
Chapter XXVIII - The Misty Barrows
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - 12:15 AM
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For day three of TMiL's birthday party, I give you: another chapter! (I wish I could keep up this pace all the time.)
This is the chapter I released all of a year ago to celebrate TMiL's first birthday. It's one of my favorites that I've written thus far, and it's the lynchpin of the entire first third of the story. Here it is, digitally remastered in 7.1 Dizzle Surrizzle Sizzle: Chapter XXVIII, The Misty Barrows. (Thanks again to Tony for helping me / forcing me to come up with the name.)
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Presenting: The Lonelipedia
Tuesday, April 10, 2007 - 12:05 AM
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Tonight is night two of The Murloc is Lonely's birthday party, and I'm releasing a project which has been in the works behind the scenes for a couple months now. It's something I've wanted to do for a while - ever since the Murloc lore which has accumulated on top of Blizzard's excellent Warcraft lore became larger than the brainspace I have available to dedicate to it.
When I first started writing it, The Murloc is Lonely was going to be a fairly small thing: a noir mystery set entirely within the modernized, metastasized Storm City. As the story grew in size and scope, its complexity grew as well - more plot threads tied to more characters, and more mysteries to manage. It started getting tough to keep it all in my head, and I know that it has gotten hard to keep in some of yours - when I aired the (to me) miraculous and symbolic resurrection of Rayn of the Silver Hand and no one remembered who he was, or had an easy way to find out, I decided something had to be done.
So I'm proud to present, The Lonelipedia: TMiL's official wiki! It's brand new, so there are clearly some holes: I leave it up to you guys to help fill it in. Just log in with your forum username and password; if you haven't got one, you can register for one here. (As with any collaborative environment, please be courteous of other peoples' works, and please discuss wholesale changes before you make them.) I hope this grows into quite a reference - for myself as well as for you guys!
I'd like to thank the small cadre of forum-hounds that I recruited to help get some beginner content into the thing so that it didn't launch completely blank. You guys rule.
Discuss
Happy Birthday to TMiL
Sunday, April 8, 2007 - 10:20 PM
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TMiL History-in-a-paragraph: Two years ago this week, I started writing and posting a little short-story on the World of Warcraft General Forum, with the primary aim of consoling Fangtooth the Community Manager for having lost his April Fool's Day army of murlocs. (As will happen.) The story blossomed, and is now several hundred pages (!) long and growing. I'm pretty happy with where this little experiment in fan-fiction (and in my own ability to stick with a project) has gone, and I'm even more excited about where it's going.
In that spirit, I've cooked up an exciting week for you guys to celebrate my story's second birthday. Check back every day (or sign up for the Albatros Bits mailing list over to the right or here) for something new, starting tonight with the release of the rewritten Chapter XXVII - On Keeping Secrets.
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Here's the rest...
Thursday, April 5, 2007 - 2:20 PM
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...of the chapter which I posted "all of" on Tuesday. eep.
So first, Chapter XXVI was (I believe) unviewable for an entire day after I tried to post it (although no one mentioned it). Then, once it was viewable, only half of it was there. I only discovered it now, and now it is fixed. Given the nature of what went wrong, I think there's even odds that it was me being tired and dumb, or that the FTP server crapped out on me half way through the upload. Take your pick.
For those of you that have already read the first half, the new stuff startes here.
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Chapter XXVI - Alequaffer and Cherubim
Monday, April 2, 2007 - 8:55 PM
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April Fools! I'm not a llama.
I thought this chapter was going to be another battle to rewrite, but it fairly well flew out of my fingertips: so instead of the half a chapter I figured I'd be throwing down, here's the whole thing.
Alequaffer and Cherubim are two WoW characters belonging to the author and artist of what used to be my favorite webcomic, Mac Hall. They've graduated from college and moved their humor into the real world, starting a new comic called Three Panel Soul. It's a good deal soberer than Mac Hall used to be. I don't enjoy it quite as much as the old one, but it still makes my top ten without even getting up in the morning, and Matt Boyd is still one of the most thoughtful people I've ever e-mailed. He's represented in the story by the wise dwarf. The first word is fitting; I don't know how short he is in real life, though.
(Possibly the most-requested teeshirt design is an Attack Gnome shirt - it's not mine to sell, though. You should e-mail Ian and tell him.)
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Welcome to LlamaBits.com
Sunday, April 1, 2007 - 2:10 AM
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I thought I should make a formal announcement. I've decided that the nom de plume of "Albatros" is less in line with who I am as a person - lanky, exotic and bad-tempered - than another potential totem. Pursuant to that, I'm changing my name from Albatros to "Llama". It'll take some time to get the site changed over all the way, but I've got the most important piece taken care of already - my new line drawing, for which I'd like to thank the excellent fotosearch.com.
This is going to have some effects on the story, as well. Llamas, by their nature, don't use the internet. They do, however, carry heavy things across high mountain ranges - and so, from now on, instead of posting new chapters of "The Murloc is Lonely" here on the website, I will be bearing copies of each new chapter, written out on stone tablets, to each of you at home. This will, regretably, slow down my ability to produce new chapters.
Cheers,
Llama.
Discuss
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