Fanfiction and Epic Romances

My name is Nicole Ciacchella and I have a confession to make: I've written fanfiction.

I know, it's shocking, right? I've been writing ever since I was a kid, so it wasn't the fanfiction that made me want to be an author--that was a dream I'd had ever since I was pretty young. However, because I have always been a writer and because I absolutely love gaming, well, a marriage between the two seemed kind of inevitable. Story-based RPGs are my favorite types of games and, as wonderful as some of them are, the fact of the matter is that there are holes in the narrative, holes that my overactive author imagination tends to fill. While playing RPGs, I find myself thinking about things like how I'd love for my character to be able to tell his/her companions about her ulterior motives in choosing a quest, or I imagine filler conversations when my character hits a major plot point and her love interest or her best buddy don't say anything about it.

If you're a fellow story-based RPG enthusiast, you probably know what I mean. No matter how tight the writing in a game, there's no way for a company to put in every last little interaction you might like your character to have with his/her companions. In some ways, this is the beauty of story-based RPGs. They make the story personal, and they also leave plenty of room for you, the player, to imagine what goes on behind the scenes, when your character and your companions aren't busy running around righting wrongs or going rogue or however you choose to play.

The game that affected me the most in this way was the original Knights of the Old Republic. I was a fan of strategy games and RPGs before that game came out, but I'd never played a game like it. As a kid, I spent hours and hours playing the first Final Fantasy on my original Nintendo (old person alert!), and one of my favorite old games is Nobunaga's Ambition. I was the only girl in my family who played it, and I took great pleasure in schooling my male cousins at that game. But KotOR was the first story-based RPG I can recall playing, and I was hooked almost from the moment I started the game up.

The first time I played it, I was afraid to pick any of the snarky options because I didn't want to tick my companions off. Then I started hanging out on forums with other enthusiasts and I discovered that, not only were most of the companions okay with the snark, female Revan could also have a romantic relationship with Carth Onasi. A romantic relationship in a video game? I was over the moon. Romances in games aren't a requirement for me--I've spent many, many hours happily dungeon crawling in Morrowind and Skyrim, thanks--but a good, epic romance draws me even further into the story. Naturally, I rushed back to my original XBox to replay KotOR and see what the fuss was all about, and thus began my fangirling over a certain Republic starpilot who favored the color orange.

(Pssst: If you haven't figured it out yet, I am a HUGE geek. ;) )

KotOR claimed many of my hours. I loved it so much that I also bought the PC version, and I've played the game more times than I can count. It's an RPG that lets you play as a Jedi, and is there anyone who doesn't think Jedi are cool? I loved that my Revan was a powerful woman with a strong storyline about redemption (I only played dark side once and it made me squirm. Yes, yes, I'm a goody two shoes!). And, of course, I loved the romantic storyline with Carth. But there just wasn't enough of it, so I began filling in the blanks. Then I began writing about it. Then a bunch of people began reading and reviewing what I wrote, and I was overwhelmed by how many people enjoyed the story.

This was my first experience with letting people I didn't know read my writing. Up until that point, most of what I'd written had been read by maybe one or two friends or family members. It was exciting to think that the thing I'd always loved, the thing I wanted to do more than any other thing in the world, seemed to bring some enjoyment to others. It was an amazing feeling, one I've held onto for many years now.

After a lot of deliberation, I've decided to come out as the author of a KotOR fanfic that was fairly popular back in the day, and I've decided to start posting it here, on my blog. I've also authored a couple of short Mass Effect fanfics, and I just may post them here as well. Plus, I don't rule out the possibility of writing other fanfiction in the future, should the fancy strike me.

Oh, and I have an N7 Armour Stripe Hoody, because who doesn't like to imagine themselves as Commander Shepard? And, for the record, I'm still in love with Carth Onasi. That orange jacket. I can't even!

Woo hoo Wednesday: I'm in the home stretch!

Welcome to another weekly installment of Woo Hoo Wednesday.  Honestly, I love doing this.  I have a tendency to be something of a stress bunny, so it's a fantastic idea for me to stop and take a minute to think about all the good things in my life.

The biggest woo hoo is that the end is in sight for Phoning It In!  And by end, I mean the end of writing the manuscript.  I'll still have edits ahead of me (and some parts of the manuscript are going to need a lot of overhauling), but it feels really, really good to be on the verge of getting another manuscript under my belt.  I'm also very excited to send this one out into the world and see how it does.

Another woo hoo goes out to NaNoWriMo 2012.  I'm really looking forward to working on the next book in the Fairytale Collection, and I'm just looking forward to NaNo in general.  While I've been extremely fortunate to have found some great sources for networking with other authors, there's just something extra special about NaNoWriMo.  I love feeling like I'm a part of something so big, and I love the kinship I feel with other participants.  Writing can sometimes be a very solitary pursuit, so it rocks to have a whole month where I'm cheering on other authors, who are also cheering me on.  I've got a few writing buddies already lined up, and I'm always on the lookout for more, so if you're participating and want someone to cheer you on, feel free to look me up.  My username on the NaNoWriMo site is NCiacchella.

And now, a food related woo hoo.  I did some shopping at Trader Joe's today and bought a box of their Pumpkin Pancake and Waffle mix.  If you've never tried it, you should.  It makes some crazy good pancakes.  I was tempted to grab the box and hug it, but I thought that might make the other shoppers think I was kind of weird.  I love the pumpkin time of year.  Pumpkin ravioli, pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice lattes...  I tell you, I cannot get enough of these things.

I also want to give a woo hoo to a couple of game-related Kickstarter projects.

The first is SHAKER: an RPG by Brenda Brathwaite & Tom Hall.  Here's a synopsis of the project, from their Kickstarter page:

Shaker: An Old School RPG is a first-person perspective, fantasy/sci-fi game set in a Bridge world between the future and the very distant medieval past. Taking the role of operative James Connelly (you may also customize your lead character), an employee of Shaker Corporation, you are called upon to set right a deadly chain of events that began millennia ago. You and your crew of 3 operatives will be deployed to Antera, a medieval, fantasy world in the distant past. There, under a feudal guise, you must unearth the very beginning of a horrible chain of events and avert it, or the universe we know today will cease to exist in a mere 100 years.

I know, right?  How cool does that sound?  And one of the things I really like about it is that the company working on the project, Loot Drop, is dedicated to remaining an indie company.  Needless to say, I love indies.  The project is about 21% funded as of this posting, and I hope more people will back it.

The other is Project Eternity by Obsidian Entertainment.  Here's a description of that project, from the Kickstarter site:

Project Eternity will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment.

Combat uses a tactical real-time with pause system - positioning your party and coordinating attacks and abilities is one of the keys to success. The world map is dotted with unique locations and wilderness ripe for exploration and questing. You’ll create your own character and collect companions along the way – taking him or her not just through this story, but, with your continued support, through future adventures. You will engage in dialogues that are deep, and offer many choices to determine the fate of you and your party. …and you'll experience a story that explores mature themes and presents you with complex, difficult choices to shape how your story plays out.

We are excited at this chance to create something new, yet reminiscent of those great games and we want you to be a part of it as well.

My husband, Jürgen, and I have been receiving e-mail updates about this game and they have some really ambitious ideas that I'm really excited to see implemented.

So why did he and I choose to back these?  Well, what excites me about them is that they promise to be quite different from anything currently on the market.  I'm an avid, lifelong gamer, and I've been really dismayed by how disappointing a lot of the recent RPGs have been.  I wholeheartedly support indies who want to take risks and try making games that will elevate gaming.  A really well-done RPG can make you feel like you've stepped right into the pages of the book, and it's tough for me to think of something I enjoy more than that.

Last, but certainly not least, an absolutely ginormous WOO HOO for this review of The Eye of the Beholder that Leonor posted on her blog.  It is really exciting for me to get feedback from my readers, and nothing feels better than when a reader really connects with something I've written.  I was seriously thrilled to see this, and I walked around on a cloud for the rest of the day.

That's it from me this week.  Hopefully you're all having a fabulous week!

Food for Thought Fridays: Now you can smell like a book!

TGIF!  I'm exhausted from all of my post-vacation cleanup, so I'm looking forward to a weekend of doing lots and lots of nothing.  Because I was gone for part of the week, I didn't get a chance to collect as many links, but I still found some gems that I hope you'll enjoy as much as I did.

All Things Books

Do you love the musty, dusty smell of books?  Well, so does Karl Lagerfeld, and now he's given you a perfume so you can walk around smelling like a library all day.  Mmm, fictiony...

Nina Metz dissects why she thinks book trailers ultimately fail.

io9 has the scoop on the footage from the movie version of Stephenie Meyer's The Host that was shown at San Diego Comic-Con.  I'm looking forward to this one!

YA Highway is doing a HUGE giveaway in celebration of their 3rd anniversary.  Among the prizes: a Kindle or Nook, tons of ARCs, and critiques of your work by some of the blog's collaborators.

It's official: Mockingjay will be split into two movies.  I'm not sure how I feel about this.  I love the book, but I'm really stumped as to how they're going to portray Katniss's inner struggles, which really dominate the book.

Fans take to Twitter to speed the revealing of Cassandra Clare's A Clockwork Princess.  How cool is that?

News from the Publishing World

Forbes speculates on how the publishing industry will look in the future.

Around the Interwebs

Author Lauren DeStefano wrote a fantastic blog post entitled The art of being a human being.

Bring the Funny

Big Ten mascots want you to call them, maybe?  (Ah, college...  Those were the days!)

Gaming

Games Industry International examines how Feminist Frequency's Anita Sarkeesian "beat the trolls" and discusses some of the industry's deep-seated problems with sexism and a lack of female game developers.  I am really looking forward to Sarkeesian's forthcoming series on tropes in video games.