Welcome back, everyone. Another brief Monday, AM–made particularly short by the fact that my entire weekend was devoured by Breath of the Wild.
I mean, I wrote and did a few other things, but when it came to going outside–catching Logan or Get Out, I passed. In my defense, I’ve always been a huge Zelda fan, so whatever. Sacrifices were made.
Anyway, getting into my biz . . .
PAX East Is This Weekend
My first Pax East was in 2014. I went with an old friend and his buddies, and it was one of the best experiences of my recent life. Got to go to a few panels, be incredibly awkward while grabbing drinks with some of my favorite streamers, try out a bunch of awesome indies (Titan Souls and Enter the Gungeon were there that year), and–most importantly–I got to hang out and game with a bunch of friends for a few days.
Unfortunately, money issues didn’t let me go last year.
But this year, I made absolutely sure to have enough saved up for another PAX trip.
If you’ve never been, I’d like to convey the experience with a summary of one moment:
Partway through the convention, one of my friends mentioned a “retro room,” a single room at the convention where anyone could come in, request a game from a list of titles, and play that game on of many ancient consoles (from the NES to the Sega CD).
Immediately intrigued, I checked it out on my own. There were a bunch of tables arranged at the front of the room, a check-in counter at the back, where they kept the aforementioned list of games.
A list that I perused for maybe 20 seconds before realizing . . .
“Holy shit . . . They have Lunar: The Silver Star.”
Timid, as if the opportunity would somehow disappear, I went to the attendant at the check in desk. Mumbled, “Lunar for the Sega CD, please,” like I was a nervous little kid. They found it for me, told me I had 30 minutes with it.
And, in a strange moment for a grown man, I found a Sega CD, popped Lunar in . . .
. . . and then got teary eyed when the intro started.
Maybe it was because I’d loved Lunar when I was a kid.
But I think that it was actually because I’d forgotten Lunar. The intro, the music. No, that isn’t true; the moment the game started, I remembered all of it: the incredibly anime intro music, the dialogue, the characters.
But I had forgotten something. And, although this is going to sound cheesy . . . I think that what I forgot was how it felt to be happy.
The kind of happy that only a kid can experience when they get to do, watch, or play their favorite thing in the world. And Lunar, out of all the things I loved as a kid, is the only thing that I got to have completely to myself; no one else I knew played that game. No one in my family cared about it, so no one beat it and spoiled the ending for me, for example. I never got a chance to play the sequels either, so my love for the first in the series was never even challenged by its successors.
So sitting there, at PAX East, I realized that Lunar was a time capsule for me; one of pure love, planted in 1992, delivered 22 years later.
There’s so much else about PAX that my story doesn’t convey–the love of games in all of their media, the spirit of camaraderie–but that moment with Lunar is what it means to me.
Fingers crossed for Flashback in the retro room this year.
The Hand and the Tempest Progress
Last week, I said I had to bring it and finish chapter 4. Well, I didn’t finish it last Monday . . .
But I did finish it Tuesday.
And, somewhere in between, holy shit, did the muse come back.
I might want to write about the idea of the creative switch–the quest to find out what turns it on–because it feels like that’s what happened. One moment sparked a really fun scene with exciting world building . . .
And now, suddenly, I know what the next three chapters are going to be like. After months of slogging, I know how a character’s entire arc is going to work out, how many chapters it’ll take to get there. I’m almost done with chapter 5, and ready to roll into chapter 6.
Most importantly though, I’m finally excited. Just . . . insanely excited to write more of this novel–this YA story that I finally love.
~~~
And, in that spirit, I’m gonna call it quits here.
If you’re a regular, welcome back to Monday. I hope you guys are having a good one, light on distractions, heavy on the words.
If you’re new, my name is Louis Santiago, and I’m a fantasy writer based in the Bronx. My short story, “Aixa the Hexcaster,” was recently published in Mirror Dance Fantasy. However, I’m still very much learning about the writing process–still trying to figure it out. Part of that means posting on here every weekday, even though I make absolutely no money from it. So, if you like what you read here and feel up to getting an email every weekday–a new post from me delivered right to your inbox–then please hit the Follow button at the bottom of this page. Because, even though all I get from this site is emotional support, that support means the world to me.
Either way, thank you just for stopping by. Take care, and, as always, write well.
House of Error 