Archive for category Projects
A recommendation
By the way, if any of you enjoyed that little fiction snippet I posted here the other day, I highly recommend you read my colleague’s work as well. Matthew Rossi, who you likely already know from either my work at WoW Insider or Nitpixels, has a blog where he’s started posting some of his fiction.
Check it out, leave him feedback, chip him a few bucks via PayPal if you enjoyed it. He’s worth it. And unlike me, he’s actually a legit published author!
The beginning of a thing
I’ve been working hard to reinvigorate my writing outside of World of Warcraft. As much as I love my work at WoW Insider, I can’t limit myself to that. Starting Nitpixels with a few friends was part of that renewal of my writing, but I’m working on another project as well, which I mentioned very briefly in my last post. It’s a fiction project. I’ve been building this world bit by bit for years now, and every time I take the project up I put a little bit more into it and spend some energy bringing it up to my current standards. What I expect out of my writing now is far above and beyond what I expected out of it four, five years ago. I’ve finally decided I’ve reached the point where I can try to tackle this seriously.
I’m still not completely happy with my writing, especially when it comes to fiction, but there comes a point where you just have to roll with it. I’ve decided to put a snippet of the story here for anybody to read. It’s the very beginning of this first story — the initial few chapters will cover this girl’s childhood, very briefly, to set the stage for who she is from that point forward. Who she is, where she’s from, and why she is where she is.
Enjoy! Or don’t.
Nitpixels launches, StarCraft II blog discontinued
I just wanted to pop in here and provide an update on what I’ve been up to recently. A few of my major side projects have shifted around, so I thought it was a good time to do it.
First, I am no longer working on the StarCraft II blog I plugged some time ago. It was fun while it lasted, but I’m moving on from that project.
Second, I’ve officially started up Nitpixels, a general gaming blog, with a few of the other guys from WoW Insider. So far it’s Mike Sacco, Mat McCurley, Matt Rossi and myself. We’ll be doing some writing, but the main focus is going to be the Nitpixels Podcast. It’s going to be an extremely laid back project — we’re all just nerds talkin’ ’bout vidya games. The first episode is up, so you should give it a listen.
Finally, I’m getting back into writing fiction. I realized some time ago that how I write fiction needs some serious work. With how much time I’ve put into my blogging jobs, I haven’t had much spare time to dedicate to improving that particular realm of my writing. I’ve decided that I will make the time for it because it’s something quite important to me. I haven’t decided whether or not I’ll post any of it, because I am writing it with the hope of eventually publishing it legit. Maybe there’s some sort of alternative income method I could use to make it available online. We’ll see!
That’s all, folks.
Ye olde family recipes
I’ve temporarily come into possession of my grandparents’ old hand-written cookbooks. Some of the cookbooks are fairly recent — things they were writing in only a few short year before they passed away, but each of the books becomes progressively older. Some of these recipes date back to when they were children, and the recipes were passed down to them by others. It’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever actually use these cookbooks myself, I’m not that much of a chef, but merely having them is somewhat thrilling. I haven’t decided whether I’ll do anything with them, but I find myself compelled to put at least one of the recipes online for no other reason than I put everything online.
I’ve opened the oldest looking cookbook here to a random page and this is the recipe it contained:
Felicity Black-and-White Cake
Ingredients:
- 2 cups sifted cake flour
- 1 3/4 cups sugar
- 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup Spry
- 1 cup less 2 tablespoons milk
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
- 3 egg whites, unbeaten
Directions
Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt into mixing bowl. Drop in Spry. Add 2/3 of milk, then vanilla, and beat 200 strokes (2 minutes by hand or on mixer at low speed). Scrape bowl and spoon or beater. Add egg whites and remaining milk and beat 200 strokes. Bake in 2 deep 8-inch Sprycoated layer pans in moderate oven (360 degrees) 25-30 minutes. Spread Chocolate Frosting between layers and on top and sides of cake.
Done!
A cake recipe isn’t the most exciting thing ever, but the recipe makes it age apparent pretty quickly. Spry is a vegetable shortening that died out in the late 50s, early 60s — a competitor to the more widely known Crisco.
Wherein I write about StarCraft 2
I’ve officially expanded my regular freelance work into the realm of Starcraft 2. This isn’t a brand new revelation, I’ve been doing it for two months now, but I realized I never actually mentioned it here. Currently I’m the sole content creator/contributor on that blog, so with the exception of the first blog post or two, it’s exclusively my work. Much like my work at WoW Insider, it covers content for all sorts of players and fans of the game, whether you’re a casual player just learning how to play or an esports enthusiast that knows the ins and outs of Starcraft. If you’re a Starcraft fan, head over to the site and check it out.
As a final note, I’m always looking for other opportunities for freelance writing gigs. If you know someone that’s looking for writers, let me know. You can contact me via the comments below or directly via email: alexziebart@gmail.com