{"id":45017,"date":"2018-12-09T06:00:20","date_gmt":"2018-12-09T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=45017"},"modified":"2018-12-10T05:04:27","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T10:04:27","slug":"three-random-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=45017","title":{"rendered":"Three Random Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

Number one: Based on the feedback I got last week<\/a> regarding my book cover, we decided to take another pass at it. I sort of resent this work. You can fuss over this sort of crap forever. You can dump days of productivity into tweaking font selection, obsessing over text placement, re-wording the blurb, changing image composition, and worrying about a dozen other little details. It’s possible to pour many hours into messing with things that aren’t ever going to impact sales. <\/p>\n

How will this look in print? How will it look on an eReader? How will it look as a tiny thumbnail on the Amazon store? Is this font too boring? Is this font too childish? Does the back-of-the-book blurb give enough information to let the reader know what they’re in for? Dies it give too much away? Is it too long?<\/em><\/p>\n

On the other hand, the cover really is the first thing people see, and it makes sense to put some time into it. Going by the advice some self-publishing authors give, the quality of the cover is more important than the quality of the contents. That’s really cynical and depressing, which means it’s probably true. <\/p>\n

If you’re curious, this is where we are now:<\/p>\n

It's a story about things that happen to people in a place because reasons.<\/div>
It's a story about things that happen to people in a place because reasons.<\/div><\/p>\n

Just remember: As far as you know I’ve been hyping up this release for months and everyone you know is ready to buy two copies, okay?<\/em><\/p>\n

Number two: I’m still working on my end-of-year list. This has been a weird year for me. In the past I’ve played a large number titles thanks to sales and Steam backlog, but this year I spent a lot of time with a small number of games, and a lot of those games are leftovers from 2016 and 2017. I spent over a month with Andromeda<\/a> and Destiny 2. And I’ve just spent the better part of last week playing a game from 2010.<\/p>\n

This is good in the sense that I really enjoyed my gaming this year, but it also means I missed out on the really big tentpole releases. <\/p>\n

Number three: I installed Starcraft II again last week. Oops. I’m trying to release a book, I’ve got lots of current games to play, and I’m still working on my end-of-year content, but the Starcraft II fever struck and I stupidly thought I could just install the game to “play a round or two for old time’s sake”.<\/p>\n

I’m sure you’ll be shocked<\/strong> to discover that I ended up playing more than one or two rounds. <\/p>\n

I’m still garbage at the game, though.<\/p>\n

There’s an old saying in golf, “If you can’t play golf well, learn to enjoy playing it poorly.” This quote is usually paired with an image of a dumpy middle-aged guy hacking a massive divot out of the course in a botched swing. Or he’ll be standing in a sand trap. Or he’s standing in the trees, looking at the ground and scratching his head. You get the idea.<\/p>\n

I guess Starcraft II is my golf. I’ve learned to enjoy being terrible at it. I’m really horrible at multitasking, and Starcraft is a game built almost entirely around multitasking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Number one: Based on the feedback I got last week regarding my book cover, we decided to take another pass at it. I sort of resent this work. You can fuss over this sort of crap forever. You can dump days of productivity into tweaking font selection, obsessing over text placement, re-wording the blurb, changing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45017"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45049,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45017\/revisions\/45049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}