Right, so I was going to go into this huge spiel about how pathetic and depressing 2011 was for me, and to share with anyone who cares to read it about how awful things were and how badly I handled everything and how I dropped myself into whole oceans worth of shit.

But you know what? No one will want to hear about it, and I don’t particularly want to write about it or even remember it, so fuck it, I won’t.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the good things I have to look forward to in 2012.

So I finished the novel I was working on for NaNoWriMo 2011. Woo. It is out with more beta readers as we speak, and I am sitting on my hands while I wait to hear back from them, chewing the skin around my nails like a rabid rodent.

I fully, fully intend to have this book released for public consumption by the middle/back-end of this year. The thing and/or problem with this particular book is that it’s been around in some form or another for a looooooong time now, and yet I feel I can’t move onto bigger, better things until I’m happy that the foundation I’ve created is solid. So the first book is winging its way back through beta readers and hopefully a variety of opinions will be winging their way to me very soon!

That said, I’ve started editing the second book, still (currently) titled “The Vampire’s Son”, my 2009 NaNoWriMo, which basically looks like a kneaded turd right now.

No, that’s not fair. The parts that are done are pretty decent, in all fairness. But then there are g a p i n g chasms where whole chapters should be, frayed and unfinished scenes, entire plot threads have unravelled and dangle loose, with the threat of the slightest breeze blowing them away. So it looks more like a moth-eaten blanket found buried in the basement, covered in dust and dead spiders.

But it’s definitely workable, and what’s there is good, if I do say so myself.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at with writing right now.

I’ve stopped playing World of Warcraft for an indefinite period, simply because when I do play, it takes over my entire life, and I actually have other things I’m supposed to be doing.

I love the game, and by playing it I’ve managed to meet people who I can say with some degree of confidence I would never have met otherwise. But I just don’t have the time for it. I only hope that soon I will get the time to be able to return to GlenCoco, my Worgen warrior, and get back to those heady nights of drunk tanking and getting everyone killed.

Even without WoW, I’m still managing to get in a fair amount of procrastination, though – if I do say so myself – it’s not as much as this time last year. I’d like to think it might be in part because of the wake up call that 2011 actually was.

I’m blaming NetFlix for the new bout of mind wandering, since that’s just been released in the UK, and of course I had to sign up for the free month.

Anyway,  that’s where I am with everything else right now.

I have some plans/announcements that I’m going to be bursting out in the next few days/weeks for the VS series, so keep your lids peeled for that.

I plan to get back into the swing of updating this site as well, since it seems a little forlorn and filled with melancholy right now. I have a number of “Music to Write Novels By” posts still waiting in the wings, so I should be able to ease myself back in with a few of those.

Onwards and upwards, people!

2012 is the year!

Regular guildies might have noticed a few days ago that a small army came into the guild, and that all five characters (Diokhan, Diakhan, Maramay, Máramay, and Marámay) were me.

This is known as multi-boxing.

Let me tell you all about it…

How Multi-Boxing Works

Multi-boxing (or dual-boxing, if you are using two accounts, as most people do) is when a player controls multiple accounts at once. It’s an imaginative (and accurate!) name. Multi-boxing is usually done using some compilation of software, addons and macros.

Multi-boxing is not an exploit, botting, or in any way a violation of the Blizzard’s EULA.

(As a sidenote, this still is a massively debated topic, mostly bottom lined by other anti-boxer players that Blizzard won’t stop multi-boxing because it’s 5 x account subscriptions instead of just one.)

How you can Multi-box for (Almost) Free!

Since Blizzard made the game free to play up until level 20, it now means you can essentially open up an infinite number of accounts and play on them all up to level 20 without incurring any costs.

You can also get a 24-hour free trial of Keyclone, the software most favoured by boxers, which allows you to setup the system and give the whole thing a whirl.  Of course, you have 24 hours to get it all set up and try and play, so if you’re going down the trial route, do it at a weekend!

A full copy will cost you $19.99. It used to be $9.99, but obviously the market for it has grown.

Besides, with the triple XP, you’ll be able get to level 15 in about 2 hours. That’s 22 more of the trial to go!

My Horde multibox setup, showing the screen maximizer used by Keyclone,
in order to see all five accounts at once.

What triple XP bonus? I’m glad you asked!

How ‘Recruit-a-Friend’ Works for Multi-Boxing

Recruit-a-Friend was an incentive brought in by Blizzard in an attempt to encourage players to bring their friends into the World of Wacraft, by offering various perks, such as bonus XP and granting levels, plus free month subscriptions and bonus mounts.

In normal situations, group XP is divided amongst the number of players in the group. Let’s say you receive 50xp for killing a creature by yourself. If you’re in a group with one other person, that 50xp is split in half, giving you 25xp each. If you’re in a group with four other players, the XP is split into fifths, giving you 10xp each.

However, the Recruit a Friend bonus includes a triple XP bonus. This means that you receive three times as much XP, both from killing mobs and from quest rewards. So, in a group of five, while you’re only getting 30XP instead of 50XP, but you have five shots per turn instead of one.

Now, your Battle.net account can accommodate up to eight World of Warcraft accounts (I know this, because I’ve reached capacity on my Battle.net account. Twice.). You can — at any point — add additional accounts, and login to them separately from your original account, thereby controlling more than one account at once.

You can also ‘recruit’ yourself, thus earning the bonus XP etc, all within your own accounts.

Of course, there is some cost involved in this, but it’s probably not as much as you might think.

In my case, I have essentially created 4 additional accounts that I can level characters to 70 for £40 (provided I do it within the month), so around the price of a Blu-Ray or a new video game.  I also have to pay £8.99 for each subscription; however, with the RaF perks, for the first month the recruited account pays for their subscription, the recruiter earns a free month. Essentially, I’ve paid for four months’ worth of subscriptions on my account.

However, if I get to level 70, I will have to pay out in excess of £100 in order to continue to 80, then another £100 if I wanted them all to 85!

Since I’m not made of money, or living in a house of gold, I suspect I will be stopping most – if not all – of them at 70.  I may continue with one extra account and dual-box the rest of the way.

Your Choices as a Multi-Boxer

What you do as a multi-boxer is about the same as controlling a single account, with the difference being that you have a few more ‘people’ to consider about.

Multiboxing PvE

If you are running a 5-man multibox, you are essentially a 5-man instance team within yourself.

So, essentially, you can either quest and level normally, just like you were in a group, or you can queue yourself into the Dungeon Finder. You can also do this if you’re in a less than five group (dual-boxing, for example), but expect some remarks from other players if they realise you’re playing more than one character by yourself. Also, be prepared for people to call you a bot.

Not everyone’s a fan.

Multiboxing PvP

Since I don’t PvP at all, I can’t go into much detail about this, but basically, the intention is that you supposedly have greater coordination because you have 5 accounts.

PvP and Multiboxing is generally what gets peoples’ knickers in a twist, moreso than PvE and multiboxing, for the fact that in a group of two or more, you are unlikely to die when going one-on-one against another player. Obviously.

This, I don’t really get. Controlling 5 separate accounts isn’t that easy; all it takes is one person to CC the master account and kite some others, and said boxer would essentially be screwed.

But anyway, I’m certainly in no position to question the choices people make in order to enjoy this game.

Addons & Resources

If you’re interested in getting into dual/multi-boxing, may I suggest dual-boxing.com, a site…about dual/mutli-boxing!

Ha! Tricked you!

Anyway.

So, yes, it’s been pretty quiet in the world of Kat the last two weeks. Since NaNoWriMo ended, I have been wandering the proverbial streets, wondering where and when inspiration will return, open-armed, telling me it didn’t mean to leave but that life just took us down different paths. Or something.

I still have an incomplete third draft of Divided They Fall.  It lingers in shadows, watching me.  Judging me.

Why haven’t you finished me yet? it demands.  More important things to do, have we?  Have World of Warcraft Cataclysm to play, do we?

In any case, I am still working on it, albeit much more slowly now that there is less pressure imposed upon me from the world at large to write that damn novel. It’s harder to keep driving along when you are the only one telling yourself to finish it.

But I am still on it.  Honest.

As a bonus, here’s a picture of my new worgen druid, Penrefe, and a double feature with my worgen warrior, Glencoco (you go, Glen Coco!), both of which I am loving alongside my now level 83 worgen hunter (I race-changed her; I’m not that quick), Catirina.

Being addicted to World of Warcraft Cataclysm is like being addicted to crack: You know it’s going to destroy you, but you can’t resist the buzz you get for doing it.

If you play World of Warcraft and would like to join me and our awesome guild of awesome, come join us! We currently play ‘For the Alliance’ on Mazrigos EU server. Join us at TheNuGen.co.uk

In fact, according to my blog (surpassed in its level of factuality only by Wikipedia and God Google), the last time I actually wrote something related to any of the VS series was in May, and even that was a one-off in an already pretty massive writing blag’ole.

I have since blamed my lack of writing (and lack of motivation to do it in the first place) on just about anything and everything in my life, including:

• A House Guest. At the start of the year, we had a guest living in our house, and since my office was the one with the spare bed, it became her room for about five/six months. My computer, meanwhile, was setup in a perfectly working condition and I could’ve easily carried on writing in the other office, but I insisted it just didn’t “feel” right. I even talked about it in my 30 Days of Writing. But then, guest left in July, and since then, I still sit at my computer back in my old room and write nothing.
• World of Warcraft. This isn’t even an excuse in itself, since I haven’t played the game for a good month or so now, and the state of my writing flow hasn’t improved one iota.
• Getting Married. Alright, this was legitimate, I think. It’s hard to concentrate on just about anything when you have just over six months to plan a wedding. If anyone had told me to do some writing in this time, I probably would’ve just laughed. And kicked them in the face. But again, I got married in August. Have I written anything since then? No.
• My MacBook. Another semi-legitimate excuse, in my opinion, because I just wasn’t in the creative mood wondering whether this boot would be the time it wouldn’t turn on anymore, although again you could argue that a “real” writer wouldn’t let something as superfluous as the wrong type of writing software stop them from producing some kind of prose. Besides, that has also been resolved, with a brand new MacBook Pro I sold my second kidney to get (having already sold my first to get the Moleskine notebook I had my eye on), which I’ve now had over a week without writing a single page.

I’m now even blaming NaNoWriMo (of all things!), claiming that I’m too busy working on my outline to focus on anything else. That’s just a big, fat lie. I wrote the outline in one big chunk a week ago, and since my only constructive action (or action, at all) has been to open and re-read it.

I can’t blame it on “writer’s block”, either, because the ideas are still in my head; sometimes I have dreams that would make perfect scenes or even short stories in themselves, if only I had the resolve to drag my carcass out of bed to write the ideas down before they fizzle away.

Not only that, but I can’t blame life in general for getting in the way. I have it much easier than a lot of the other writers I come across. I don’t have any kids that demand my attention (save for the cats, of course), and I have a job that – while stressful in moments, but whose job isn’t? – is flexible. If I put the focus onto it, I could easily fit 30 minutes of writing time or more at least into the work day. And even if I didn’t want to do that, if I wanted to keep my work and writing “worlds” separate, I could easily find the time after office hours. I don’t do anything constructive when work ends other than get lost in television and the Internet. If I just took half an hour a day, over time I could get so much done.

My attention flits back to the post I put last New Year’s Eve; I only had two resolutions (neither of which I’ve kept; pfft, healthy eating, what’s that?), the second of which was:

2/ I will attempt to write at least one weekday and for at least two hours at some point of a weekend. That sounds reasonable enough, right? I managed 50k words in 30 days for NaNo; a couple of chapters a month can’t be that far out of reach.

The bold is new. It highlights how ridiculously easy it should be.

And yes, I know writing is supposed to be a pleasurable experience and trying to force it may only serve to push me further from the desire to write at all, but since sitting back for the last few months and waiting for inspiration to strike me down hasn’t exactly worked, I have to assume that it needs some kind of intervention on my part.

I have no excuse, it’s sheer laziness, and it’s not funny anymore. I need to fix this, fix my writing schedule and entire writing life.

I need to write my way out of this blag’ole.

The term “blagole” comes from the Spoony’s review of the board/VHS game Atmosphere/Nightmare – you should check it out. The review, that is, not the game. The game was wank.

OK, so wow, yeah, it’s been almost two months since I updated the online world of my [writing] escapades. The reasoning for this can be summarised with two points:

1/ I got married. Having a wedding to plan and manage and perform damage control for took up most of my free time, and any time where I wasn’t technically doing anything (which, to be fair, was a lot of the time) I still couldn’t concentrate because I was too anxious about the whole thing. In any case, it all went off without a hitch, you’ll be glad to hear, I’m sure, and a big thank you to anyone who reads this who was a part of it. And yes, I’m sure you can all appreciate (especially those of you who have been married) how that kind of took my attention away from everything else.

2/ I returned to World of Warcraft. Yes, it is an addictive temptress, and after just three months’ break, I found myself longing once more to pick up that hoove’d, horned vixen hunter Catrinna and start playing again. We started a new guild, and I’ve done a few blogs on there (which I’ve had the gall to call writing “exercises” but that really aren’t!).

And that’s about it, really. Between stressing about the hundred and one things that could go wrong at the wedding (none of which did in the end; it was a lovely day) and levelling a new Draenei priest (plus dual-boxing a druid / shaman combo), I haven’t really made time for any of this mysterious thing called “writing”.

But now, the wedding is over and done with, so I can let out the breath I was holding in equal amounts of anticipation and dread, and with only the prospect of a game looming over me as a  freely available pastime whenever I want it, I can (hopefully) return my focus to the whole writing…thing.

The first two weeks of married life have naturally been bliss. We’re currently planning our honeymoon for July 2011; I desperately want to go to America, and – more specifically – San Diego Comic-Con, and because my husband loves me very much (enough to marry me, no less!), we’re going to incorporate it into our trip! We’re going to Vegas, San Diego and Los Angeles, which already sounds far too hot for me just typing it, but I’m sure I’ll get over it when I’m there (or I’ll just sit inside the air-conditioned hotel room and have husband visit all the sights on my behalf…with a video camera!).

In writing news – of which there naturally isn’t much – it would appear that Amazon have finally pulled their fingers out and released the Kindle publishing over here in the UK. While the site is about as easy to navigate as Undercity (WoW joke; don’t worry if you don’t get it, just means you’re not a nerd), hopefully I’ll be able to get the information I need to be able to force “The Genesis” on the general Amazon population Soon™!

And in the meantime, I’m trying to get some kind of organisational skills around the writing, since that really should deserve quite a hefty chunk of attention right now.  I have about a half of “The Vampire’s Son” done, with the rest being stitched together by my muse, plus about a quarter of “Divided They Fall”. Both still technically first drafts (“The Vampire’s Son” is still the version that came from NaNoWriMo last November), there’s still an entire field worth of improvement room.

It’s good to be back!