The short version is that I loved it. Every aspect of the game lived up to the standards that people have come to expect from Valve. I was playing it on an approximately three year old PC (that wasn’t top end when it was new) and it still ran smoothly and looked amazing. The voice acting, especially Stephen Merchant as Wheatley, was very good and the writing kept the same snarkiness and irreverence that made the original game such a standout.

The basic premise of the game hasn’t changed; you get your portal gun and use it to maneuver through an increasingly difficult series of test chambers. Many of the same techniques that were used to solve the puzzles in the first game still work but the addition of new elements, repulsion and speed gels, catapulting platforms, hard light bridges and the like, kept it fresh enough that it really felt like a new game rather than just a Portal expansion. If you enjoyed Portal I can’t think of a single reason that you would not thoroughly enjoy Portal 2.

The question is, though, does the single player campaign by itself justify the $50 retail price and, much as I enjoyed the game, unfortunately I have to say that it does not. While the single player game is definitely longer than the original Portal, I was still able to finish it in just a couple sittings. I do highly recommend picking the game up, but if you have absolutely no intention of ever playing the co-op mode, I would wait until Portal 2 goes on sale and pick it up then. $50 is a lot to ask for ten to fifteen hours of gameplay.

For myself, in spite of my aversion to multi-player, I do intend to try the co-op mode but I am going to wait until I can schedule time to play with a friend rather than risk the vagaries of random partners from the internet.

Portal 2 is available now on Steam, XBox 360 and PS3.

There is a good crop of geeky movies coming up in the next few months and this week we’re giving you the rundown. We’ve got the previews, our thoughts on the films and we’ll tell you whether you should see it in the theater, watch it at home or skip it all together.

We also talk to Danielle from Seattle’s Pacific Science Center about the exhibit Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination and we review the locally-produced documentary Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone’s Magic Man.

All that plus some geek news and Shannon watches another Dared Movie.

Our Geek Week

• Playing Poker Night at the Inventory on the PC
• Read Other Kingdoms by Richard Matheson (see Shannon’s review here)
• Playing Knights of the Old Republic on the PC
• Read Deathless by Catherine M. Valente (see Matt’s review here)
• Read Dark Jenny by Alex Bledsoe (see Matt’s review here)
• Playing You Don’t Know Jack on XBox360

Spring/Summer Movies

Sucker punch


Source Code


Super


Your Highness


Sceam 4


Rio


Thor


Priest


Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides


X-Men First Class


Super 8


Green Lantern

Geekly Extras

• Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone’s Magic Man



• Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination

Dare Shannon to Watch a bad Movie

This week’s bad movie was Laserblast (1979)

If you want to dare Shannon to watch a bad movie, e-mail us at seattlegeekly@gmail.com or call us at (206)201-2352. Check our Dared Movies Page to see what is on the list and what Shannon has already watched.

Contest!

Win a Pile o’ Books!

We have a pile of books courtesy of Tor and Ace and we want to give them to YOU!

The books include:

• River Marked by Patricia Briggs
• Glen Cook’s third book in the Instumentalities of the Night series Surrender to the Will of the Night
• The Bird of the River by Kage Baker
• SIGNED COPIES of Paul of Dune and the brand new book Hellhole by Brian Herbert & Kevin J Anderson!

This contest starts today and we’ll be picking the winner during our show on April 14. We will ship the books to you via USPS.

“How do I enter?”
Please register / log in to our website, and leave a comment on THIS POST. You can just say “hi” or whatever! One entry per person please, we’ll delete any multiple or offensive posts. Make sure you use a valid e-mail address when you register so we can contact you if you win!

“How will you randomly pick someone?”
We have D&D dice of all shapes and sizes, even a 100 sider! We’ll roll and see who wins!

News

• Epic Game Day II is April 30! Event submissions are open now if you want to host a game!
• Wolverine Pirate Pleads Guilty to Copyright Infringement

Music

Music this week was ‘Geek Rock’ and ‘Far From Home’ by Sci-Fried off their new album Future Tense.

Next Episode: April 14 – Episode #96 – Even Yet Still More Geek Music! Interviews and samples from another selection of geek musicians.

Seattle Geekly by http://www.seattle-geekly.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

With the relocation of the Seattle Geekly HQ safely behind us and a brief break in the convention schedule we’ve been able to catch up a bit on our reading. We have reviews of three books this week; Shannon reviews Other Kingdoms by Richard Matheson and Matt reviews Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente and Dark Jenny by Alex Bledsoe.

Other Kingdoms is the newest book by renown genre fiction author Richard Matheson, perhaps best know for I am Legend. It’s been close to ten years since his last published work, so this one has been highly anticipated.

The story is narrated by octogenarian Arthur White (aka Arthur Black) about his time in 1918-1919 in a magical “Other Kingdom” in northern Britain. The story starts having Arthur seeing the last of World War I, and being told to go to Gatford, the hometown of someone he saw die in the trenches. What Arthur doesn’t realize is that his life in Gatford will include witches, fairies, griffins and other fairytale creatures.

Supposedly written in 1982 by Arthur White, the narrator brings up differences between the early 1900’s and the “modern” time. It’s almost as if you’re reading a journal rather than being told the story.

It’s obvious that Matheson is a skilled storyteller and his style comes through strong in this book. The language and cadence of his words are there just as they were in I am Legend and his other works. This is one of those books I would’ve loved to read on my Nook, to look up words for me.

Many genre fiction authors, including Stephen King and Dean Koontz, have named Matheson as an influence,. If you’re a fan of Matheson this would be a great one to pick up. If you haven’t read any of his work, pick this up then go back and read his earlier books.

Other Kingdoms by Richard Matheson was published Tor and is available in hardback with a cover price of $24.99

Deathless is Catherynne M. Valente‘s tribute to, and re-interpretation of Russian folklore. Many of the figures that appear will be immediately recognized by anyone familiar with Eastern European fairy tales but the setting has been updated to the early 20th century. It tells the story of Marya Morevna, a young girl growing up in St. Petersburg in the time immediately before the Communist revolution of 1917. Marya is unique among her sisters in that she is aware of the magical world that still exists around and behind everyday reality. She sits at her window and watches as a series of birds drop out of the sky to become young men intent on marrying her sisters, she speaks with the domovoi, or house spirits, that live in her family’s home and she unintentionally summons Likho, a spirit of bad fortune in the form of an of an old, one eyed woman, who gives her a book containing the history of the mythological world around her.

Marya’s adventures take her through the tumultuous post-revolutionary period in Russia all the way through World War II in the real world and through a sometimes violent and frightening courtship with Koschei, the Tsar of Life in the fairy tale world. The troubles of real-world Russia are mirrored in the fairy tale world where Koschei is locked in an endless war with his brother Viy, the Tsar of Death. Marya is faced with the choice of abandoning her humanity and living out her life in the fairy world or betraying her friends and loved ones and remaining human.

Catherine M. Valente does an amazing job of giving Deathless the feel of a traditional folk tale, both through language and the structure of the story. She also does a good job of providing context and exposition for those of us that might not be as familiar with Russian history and folklore as we might be. I did feel like I might have gotten more out of the book if I had known the mythology better, but I certainly didn’t have any trouble keeping up with the story in spite of my lack of knowledge.

Put Deathless on your list. It is an original novel with strong roots in traditional storytelling and it is an extremely enjoyable read.

Deathless by Catherine M. Valente was published by Tor and is available in hardback with a cover price of $24.99

Dark Jenny is the third of Alex Bledsoe‘s Eddie LaCrosse mysteries. The books are a hard boiled detective novels in a fantasy setting. The protagonist, Eddie LaCrosse is a former mercenary turned “sword jockey”, a sort of medieval private investigator, who solves mysteries for his clients for twenty five gold pieces a day plus expenses. LaCrosse has all the characteristics of the traditional noir detective, he is an honorable man in a dishonorable profession with a clear and uncompromising moral code. The big difference is that in addition to dealing with the usual gangsters and femmes fatales he has to deal with magic, knights and nobles.

The Eddie LaCrosse novels so far have been written as stand alone stories with a small cast of recurring characters. Dark Jenny starts with LaCrosse receiving delivery of a coffin, sent to him by a figure from his past. The story is told mostly as a flashback to LaCrosse’s time investigating a murder in the kingdom of Gand Braun, a Camelot-like oasis of peace and justice in an otherwise chaotic world. The plot borrows heavily from Aurthurian legends but with enough twists that even those familiar with the mythology will still have a couple of surprises.

The mystery is very well written. I think it is probably quite a challenge to write a murder mystery set in a world where magic is a possibility but Bledsoe pulls it off. There are elements of magic in the story but they are incorporated well without being too deus ex machina.

The problem for me came in the combination of fantasy and noir. Both elements of the story were elegantly written but mixing them together was a little jarring at times. A lot of the dialog is very modern sounding with lots of contemporary slang and phrasing. It kind of put me in mind of the movie A Knight’s Tale with Heath Ledger and it’s medieval story set to a modern soundtrack. Fortunately the mystery in the book was compelling enough that I kept turning pages in spite of rolling my eyes at some of the more rough patches in the mix.

Dark Jenny was a fun, fast read and if you can get yourself caught up in the story enough to overlook some of the anachronisms it is entirely worthwhile.

Dark Jenny by Alex Bledsoe is published by Tor and is available in trade paperback with a cover price of $14.99

Dreadfully Ever After is a delightful end to the trilogy. The story starts off with one of the main characters getting bit by one of the dreadful zeds and most of the rest of the characters trying to find a cure before it’s too late. Not only does the action take place in the familiar English countryside, but the story takes us to London where the city has been sectioned off to keep the zeds under control. There’s plenty of zombie dispatching action by the familiar characters as well as a new set of ninjas, and a bunny!

It would be hard to jump right into this without reading the other two but I would definitely recommend this book if you were a fan of the series. Dreadfully Ever After shows that Hockensmith can and will be a great storyteller in his own right in either horror or a blend of horror and comedy

Dreadfully Ever After is published by Quirk Books and has a cover price $12.95.

Available 3/24/11 – Quirk Books put together a trailer for the book. Enjoy!

The story winds it’s way from the beginning of a war, completely different from WWI or WWII, since in the 1950’s the world had started to amass nuclear and atomic weapons. The population of Fort Repose quickly find out that they are cut off from the world, if there is still one out there. Without modern day conveniences like the internet, they had to rely on portable, transistor, and ham radios for information.

I found this book through Audible’s recommendations list. All I knew was that it was an apocalyptic novel, but I had never heard of Pat Frank, or the novel itself. While listening to it I thought it was a startlingly accurate and wonderfully written “retro” novel, not realizing that it actually was a novel from the 50′s and not just a modern look back until the end credits listed the original publication date as 1959.

I thoroughly enjoyed Alas Babylon and was struck by the detail of what the author included to make the setting and time so real. I don’t remember learning much about the politics of the late 1950’s, so I found some of the politics talked about in the book a bit confusing, but it didn’t bog the story down too much.

One other issue to be aware of with the book is that it conveys the sexism and racism of the time. Women are still considered the weaker sex, and the African Americans in the story are still segregated in every public place.

Listening to the book, I was transported back to the late 1950’s and even though I don’t think it would’ve been a great time for me, it was great hearing an apocalyptic story set back then.

If you are a fan of zombies or just a fan of post apocalyptic fiction you really should read Alas Babylon. David Brin cited it as being pivotal in his creation of The Postman, so if you’d like to experience one of the first apocalyptic novels set in the nuclear age, pick it up.

Check out the video!

And here is the official trailer for the line from MAC

For our first show in the new bi-weekly podcast format, we a going back to one of our first loves – books! We’re reviewing some of the books we’ve been reading over the last few weeks and we have interviews with Deborah Harkness, author of A Discovery of Witches, and M.K. Hobson, author of The Native Star to top it all off!

Plus the weekly Geek news and Shannon watches another Dared Movie.

Our Geek Week

• Played more World of Warcraft
• Reading Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
• Played in the regular D&D game
• Watched An Idiot Abroad on The Science Channel

Read a Book!

• Passion Play by Beth Bernobich (review at 5:46)
• Tyrmia by Ken McConnell (review at 8:07)
• Shameless Wonders by A.P. Stephens (review at 11:02)
• Night of the AssHoles Kevin L Donihe (review at 13:15)
• Sherlock Holmes and the Flying Zombie Monkeys By Chris Wood (review at 16:58)
• True Grit by Charles Portis (review at 19:10)
• Chill and Dust by Elizabeth Bear (review at 20:54)
• Song of Scarabaeus by Sara Creasy (review at 22:47)
  
  • The Native Star by M.K. Hobson (review at 24:41)
    • Fantasy podcast Podcastle co-hosted by M.K. Hobson

  

  • A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (review at 37:08)

Dare Shannon to Watch a Bad Movie

This week’s Dared Movie was The Last Airbender (2010)

The next Dared Movie will be Laserblast (1978) Dared by Richard

If you want to dare Shannon to watch a bad movie, e-mail us at seattlegeekly@gmail.com or call us at (206)201-2352. Check our Dared Movies Page to see what is on the list and what Shannon has already watched.

News

• Seattle Geekly Meetup at Emerald City ComiCon! We’ll be having our 3rd ECCC Tweetup on Saturday morning March 4th at 9am at Espresso Caffe Dior on the street level of the convention center. You do not need a badge to attend the tweetup. Joining us again is Trekland’s Larry Nemechek to help us give out prizes!
• Felicia Day debuts her geektastic Dragon Age: Redemption trailer
  

  Music

  
  Music this week was ‘In the Black’ from the album Got to Fly by Marian Call. Get the album on Band Camp and be sure and head to mariancall.com to pick up your tickets to Marain’s pre-ECCC show at the Fremont Abbey on Thursday March 3rd at 9pm.

  Next Show: Episode #92 will be our own Pre–ECCC show with fantastic guests including Amy Okuda and Felicia Day from The Guild!

  
  Seattle Geekly by http://www.seattle-geekly.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

  ]]> http://www.seattle-geekly.com/2011/02/show-notes-%e2%80%93-episode-91-%e2%80%9cread-a-book%e2%80%9d/feed/ 1 http://www.seattle-geekly.com/2011/02/wednesday-reviews-the-lost-gate/ http://www.seattle-geekly.com/2011/02/wednesday-reviews-the-lost-gate/#comments Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:18:05 +0000 Matt http://www.seattle-geekly.com/?p=9820 [...]]]>
  The Lost Gate is the first book in a new series by Orson Scott Card, the Mithermages saga. In the book we learn that all of the pantheistic deities from the myths of all of Earth’s civilizations were actually powerful magi from the world of Westil, another world that is magically tied to our own. The godlike powers of these beings came from travelling through the many gates between Westil and Earth, a process which not only restores the traveler to perfect health but also greatly amplifies any magical abilities that they possess. All this was disrupted a thousand years ago when Loki closed all the gates between Earth and Westil, stranding the gods on our world with their powers greatly reduced. The exiled gods have formed into clannish families and it is from one of these families, the descendants of the old Norse gods, that book’s protagonist, Danny North, is born.

  Danny grows up on the North family compound believing he is a “drekka”, a person born without any magical ability of their own, a condition that makes him an outcast within his family. Eventually discovers that he is a Gatemage, a talent that because of a long standing treaty between the rival families, is a death sentence. Danny flees his family’s compound and makes his way through the world of mortal Earthlings while trying to find someone who can teach him how to survive and how to use his talent for making gates in the hope of restoring the Great Gate between Earth and Westil.

  Alongside Danny’s story the book also follows Wad, an ageless man in Westil who emerges from a tree after thousands of years of imprisonment only to discover that he is also a powerful Gatemage. He conceals himself and his talents as a kitchen servant in the palace of one of Westil’s kingdoms but finds that he is unable to keep himself from interfering in the dynastic succession.

  The Lost Gate has a lot going for it. The story is reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods with a little bit of Piers Anthony’s Xanth Series thrown in. Card is exploring the theme of a young boy coming of age and discovering his power, which he did to great effect in Enders Game and it’s related titles. The setting and mythology he is developing in The Lost Gate for use in the ongoing series is interesting and has good potential. Unfortunately there are large sections of the book that really bog down in exposition.

  This is the first book in a series, and in the first book of any genre series there is a certain amount of groundwork to be laid so the larger story can progress. Enough of the setting needs to be established that the reader will begin to understand the capabilities and limitations of the characters and what it is or isn’t possible for them to do in a world where the normal rules of reality don’t apply. The Lost Gate is, however, not a terribly long book, just under 400 pages in hardback, so when there are entire chapters devoted to nothing but two characters speculating blindly on the nature of magic the overall pacing gets pretty slow. It is something that needs to be done. Gate magic in general and Danny’s ability to use it are going to be central to the series but getting through those sections is something of a chore. I might be a little more forgiving of this if The Lost Gate was a first novel by a new author, but Card has been writing for a very long time and has more than thirty novels under his belt. I would hope that an author with his experience could come up with a slightly more elegant method for revealing his world to the reader than just page after page after page of dialog.

  If you can wade through the slow sections, there is a good story in The Lost Gate. Good enough that I would be willing to give the second book in the series a shot in the hopes that, absent the need to establish setting, it might move a little faster.

  The Lost Gate is published by Tor and is out now in hardback with a cover price of $24.99.

  ]]> http://www.seattle-geekly.com/2011/02/wednesday-reviews-the-lost-gate/feed/ 0 http://www.seattle-geekly.com/2010/12/wednesday-reviews-season-of-rot-and-season-of-death/ http://www.seattle-geekly.com/2010/12/wednesday-reviews-season-of-rot-and-season-of-death/#comments Wed, 15 Dec 2010 16:08:24 +0000 Shannon and Matt http://www.seattle-geekly.com/?p=9465 [...]]]> This week Shannon reviews two novella collections by Eric S Brown, Season of Rot and Season of Death

  
  I’ve read a ton of zombie fiction over the past few years, including a couple of anthologies of stories by different authors but I haven’t read any collections of stories from a single author before this. Zombie fiction can quickly become repetitive and is too often just derivative of zombie films but I was very surprised by both Season of Rot and Season of Death because all the stories had just enough of a twist to set them apart from the rest of the genre.

  Season of Rot contains five short stories, ‘Season of Rot’, ‘The Queen’, ‘The Wave’, ‘Dead West’ and ‘Rats’. Each story has a spin on zombies, being cannibals, alien influenced, set in the Civil War, or zombies on a boat. Eric S. Brown also writes characters that would be seen in everyday life were they not in the middle of a zombie invasion. There aren’t superhero types or steroidal macho guys in every story chopping the heads off of the undead which was a refreshing change. The characters are relatable, they do normal things, and act in the way real people would. Some people argue that “Zombie Fiction” isn’t about the zombies themselves, but the people that survive, and I found myself caring if the characters in these stories survived.

  
  Right after I finished Season of Rot I picked up Season of Death. ‘Rats’, the last story in Rot, continues as ‘Undead Down Under’, the first story in Season of Death, which made for a nice little bonus. In ‘Undead Down Under’ we find out what the other continents have been under siege and by what type of animal.

  I was surprised to find that Season of Death isn’t all zombie stories. ‘Kinberra Down’ is a fun science-fiction tale complete with cat people and giant beetle crabs.

  Death also reprints ‘How the West Went to Hell’ which I read and reviewed when it was published as an individual novella. One of the quotes from my review is actually exerpted at the front of the book. I said at the time that ‘How the West Went to Hell’ was a “riveting, savage take on the good vs. evil eternal conflict set in the Wild West, complete with flesh eating demons, and a mysterious stranger in black. An excellent mix of the western and horror genres,” and I meant it! More of a demon story with zombies as minions than a straight zombie story, ‘How the West Went to Hell’ is still probably my favorite of Brown’s short stories.

  The last story, ‘Ragnarok Island’ is the continuation of ‘The Queen’ from Rot. You’d think that getting on a boat would be the best place to get away from the zombies, but these stories show that it might not be.

  In general I am not a short fiction fan. Give me Gone with the Wind or The Stand and I’m a happy reader but I thoroughly enjoyed reading Eric S. Brown’s collections so there might be hope for me. If you’re a zombie fiction fan you will want to pick these up and I highly recommend just reading them back to back.

  Here at Seattle Geekly we’ve talked with Eric S Brown twice and we’ve heard him called “The King of Zombies”. After reading these two books I think he very well might be.

  Season of Rot is published by Permuted Press and is available in paperback for around $15. Season of Death is published by Pill Hill Press and is currently out in hardback for around $25.

  ]]> http://www.seattle-geekly.com/2010/12/wednesday-reviews-season-of-rot-and-season-of-death/feed/ 0 http://www.seattle-geekly.com/2010/12/wednesday-review-nanowrimo/ http://www.seattle-geekly.com/2010/12/wednesday-review-nanowrimo/#comments Wed, 01 Dec 2010 12:09:25 +0000 Shannon http://www.seattle-geekly.com/?p=9354 [...]]]>

  Instead of a Wednesday review, since it’s the first day of December and NaNoWriMo is over I wanted to review last month’s experience.

  During the whole month of October, I’d slaved away taking notes and trying to structure a story in my head about what my novel would be about. Did a bit of research, looked up some facts and such to help me out when November 1st rolled around and I could actually start writing my book.

  I’d never in my life written anything even close to the 50,000 word “novel” I was starting. I wrote a 45 page script for a TV show in college, but that was it. I knew this was going to be hard, but I was going to try!

  The essence of NaNoWriMo is trying to write a daily goal of 1667 words. If you do that over the 30 days in November, you get the 50,000 word count. My first day of writing was inspiring. I’d had the first chapter planned out and I felt like it was going to be really good. By coincidence, it turned out that my first chapter was right around 1667 words. I kept writing the 1667 words a day or so for the first week without any problems. I found that writing up in bed with a white noise machine worked best for me; I was comfy and couldn’t be distracted. By the end of the week I’d written 12096 words and was on track.

  The second week was harder. I was setting up many of my characters and starting the basis of the main plot points and introducing my villain. My novel was a story about a franchise of horror movies and some rabid fans of the franchise finding out that the main slasher actor was actually a killer in real life. I brought up my experience at conventions, horror movies and fans of horror movies. During the second week I found that if I left some of the ideas for the next few pages or so, I’d be able to start right in with the writing easier the next day.

  I had had main points in my story I’d wanted to cover but not a lot of the stuff in between figured out. Sometimes they just came naturally and sometimes it was like pulling teeth. I’d come into NaNoWriMo ready to just spill the story out onto the page and not go back and edit until I was done with the first draft. A couple of times I had to go back to fix minor things, like how the villain gets to the convention from plane to car, that type of thing.

  By the end of the second week I had a count of 23340, still right on track.

  Without having an official outline, I felt like the third week was starting to slow down. I was starting to take 3-4 day breaks because I was trying to figure out plot points. Then Steamcon rolled around and we were working on our last podcast of the year. Laundry was backing up, it’s amazing what you forget to do when you’re trying to hold down a job, a podcast and trying to write. By the third week, I was seeing a couple of my Writing Buddies getting closer to the 50k goal. I was lagging more and more behind.

  On November 23rd, Blizzard launched “The Shattering”, the prequel to Cataclysm the next World of Warcraft expansion. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been playing WoW off and on since February 2005. This patch was going to let players play races with new classes. Since February 2005, I’d wanted to play an Undead Hunter, but until now it wasn’t possible. I saw my NaNoWriMo goal slipping away.

  
  The last day I added any words to my goal was November 23rd, bringing my total to 27109. As I write this, I technically have 4 hours left to finish the 50000 word goal. 22k+ in 4 hours…impossible.

  So, I tried NaNoWriMo. It was something I’d never done before and I feel like I accomplished something even getting half of the goal finished. I just looked and out of my ten Writing Buddies, only four people actually made the goal. Of the people that didn’t finish I wrote the most. I feel pretty good.

  Seattle was consistently at the top of the city scoreboard for NaNoWrimo, so I feel like I helped win for our city! As of right now Seattle collectively wrote 55,515,871 words, with an average of 26,248 per person. I did more than that!

  Here are things I learned during NaNoWriMo:

  1. Sex scenes are harder than you think to write.
  2. Writing without self-editing is freeing.
  3. The old adage “Write what you know” really does help. Stick with a setting or city you’re comfortable with.
  4. I have a HUGE respect for professional authors, I really didn’t know how hard this was going to be, and I couldn’t even do a 50000 manuscript which isn’t even close to a regular length novel.
  5. Thesaurus.com is VERY helpful.

  As hard as this year was, I’d love to try NaNoWriMo next year if I can come up with another story idea. They also have an April challenge called “Script Frenzy” where you have to write a 100 page script from an original idea. If you want a challenge, try either of these. At the very least you might find out something about yourself, like you’ll never be a novelist.

  ]]> http://www.seattle-geekly.com/2010/12/wednesday-review-nanowrimo/feed/ 3