When that clock counts down, I’ll probably say “Happy New Year” to whomever I’m in a room with. Maybe we’ll share a few drinks and laughs. When I get home, I’ll switch out my toothbrush for a new one. That’s about the extent of my New Year’s plans.
No resolutions. I don’t believe in picking one day to decide “Sometime this year I’ll be better.”
That’s not to say I discourage anyone who does, but one thing I’ve learned in my time on this earth is that you can better yourself anytime. Any month, any day, any hour. I’ve been sitting before a recently finished draft and thought “That was epic. I’m going to improve in X way” and I’ve been at the bottom of a trailer loading packages on a random overnight shift and thought “You know what? I’m going to start doing Y because it’ll make me a better person.”
Maybe you could say my New Year’s resolution is to never stop learning, but that’s not accurate. That’s not something I’m going to resolve to do, it’s just something that happens as part of everyday life.
Recently I came up with a new motto. It’s actually the title of my next-next book. (Not my next book, which isn’t quite a book, but the one after that.) You’ll hear more about it later, but for now:
“Build yourself better.”
It’s a simple little saying that I wrote into a poem, and since then I’ve been trying to incorporate it into my everyday life. Wishing at the right time or making plans for a future date won’t make you a better person or improve your life. Taking it into your own hands, finding your problems and working them out, that might.
No promises. But you won’t know until you try it, right?
In the Year of Our Death, the sequel to After the Bite and In the Lone and Level Sands is now available in print and eBook formats at various retailers, and should go live at several more over the next few hours.
It’s been two years since the zombies first appeared and changed the world forever. Keely and her friends escaped the hell of Seattle and settled down near an abandoned radio station. Bailey finds herself caught up with a ravenous group of survivors. Georgie has set up a courier system to move mail across the remains of America. Will and his friends—all of them orphans now—are out of water and have to leave their quiet suburb for the first time in their lives. Nelson, the engineer charged with running Hoover Dam and powering the American Southwest, breaks his glasses and must wander the wasteland nearly blind looking for a replacement.
Adam, however, knows the truth about the zombies: They aren’t monsters, they’re angels, sent by God to cleanse the world of the survivors, and Adam and his Church of Lesser Humans were put here to help them do it. Armed only with faith, a bus, and the steadfast rule to never allow harm to come to the zombies, Adam knows Judgment Day is coming, and will stop at nothing to herald its arrival.
You can read a sample chapter here as well as download samples from the retailer of your choice.
Store Links (more will be added as they become available):
Thanks to everyone who makes what I do possible. This includes you, the reader, without whom I’m just sitting here shouting random nonsense into a void. Thank you.
Things have been exciting lately! I published my first game, Hinterland, and while it was a little bit glitchier than I thought, it’s been mostly smooth. I’ve had a lot of fun with it, and a lot of fun watching people play it on YouTube.
Now it’s time for me to shift my focus to my other big October project. This one is a book announcement.
In 2012 I published After the Bite, a collection of short stories I wrote with my friend Seth Thomas, set during a zombie apocalypse. This was a companion book to a novel we released a year later called In the Lone and Level Sands. Now, I couldn’t be happier to announce the sequel to both: In the Year of Our Death.
In the Year of Our Death picks up roughly two years after the end of In the Lone and Level Sands. Like the previous book, it follows different groups of characters across the zombie-ravaged country. Returning from In the Lone and Level Sands, Keely and her friends live in a motel near a radio station in a small, quiet part of Los Angeles they’ve barricaded off from the zombies and the outside world. Young Will and his group of orphaned teens have been waiting out the apocalypse in a peaceful suburb, but have run out of food and water and have to leave to find a new home. Ruffian Bailey found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time and has been running with a bad crowd ever since, until she decides to flee them and try to do some good in the world. Slow but well-meaning Georgie, who could outrun the devil himself on his bicycle, has set up a courier system to shuttle packages and information across the United States. Engineer Stephen Nelson has set himself up at Hoover Dam, where he keeps power running to the Southwest—until he breaks his glasses and has to head blindly into the wasteland to replace them.
At the heart of it all is Adam. Suffering from nightmares of a church fire he survived at the onset of the apocalypse, Adam believes the zombies to be a higher form of enlightenment, and now commits his life to protecting them. His most important mission is to find the man on the radio who feeds daily advice on how to kill what Adam calls the “greater humans” and silence him for good.
After the Bite told the small tales of a zombie apocalypse, while In the Lone and Level Sands serves as a record of survivors at its onset. In the Year of Our Death finds the survivors—and zombies—struggling to survive in a world that changed forever two years ago. Every day now is a war, and this year will claim its fair share of casualties.
So this is how I find myself sitting on a series of finished books. I have to say I like how it feels. On that front, I’m also announcing an eBook collection of all three books:
Buying the three of them together will end up being a little cheaper than buying them separately, but fair warning: This is going to be quite a long eBook.
Both books release on October 20th, 2015. Pre-orders will be live soon, I’ll update with links as they’re available. Also, in celebration, the eBook version of In the Lone and Level Sands will be available for free and/or at a deep discount at most retailers through the month of October.
So that’s that. Stay tuned here for release info, teasers, and other goodies.
Special thanks to everyone in the RPG Maker community and at rpgmaker.net, rpgmakerweb, guelstie, freesound, pixabay, /r/rpgmaker, and wikimedia commons.
And, of course, anyone who plays it.
Find any glitches? Report them in the comments here or on the game’s Gamejolt page, and I’ll be sure to fix them as soon as I can.
Free resource pack coming soon. Thanks again, and have a happy October!
I think it’s safe to say I’m in the final stretch of work on my RPG Maker horror game, Hinterland. After that I’ll probably switch gears back to Let the Moonlight Give You Wings, as far as games are concerned. And I’m always working on other things behind the scenes, with ideas for one or two smaller RPG games already brewing. I’m also super excited about the recently announced RPG Maker MV.
That said, I decided to put a studio name behind my games. Here’s what I came up with:
Call it Split Infinitive Games, Split Infinitive, Split Infin8tive, it’s what I settled on. I thought for a long time about a “studio” name, and nothing stuck like Split Infinitive. It gives a subtle nod to my writing career, but I also like the imagery it invokes: splitting infinity.
I’d also like to give credit to one Klein Smith for the font used in the logo I made. The font is morbidly titled Child Serial Killer, and while I can’t find anything on its creator, I appreciate the fun, imaginative font.
I’ve spoken a lot about my RPG Maker project Let the Moonlight Give You Wings. It’s a big project and it’s going to take a while to finish, so I’ve also been working on other projects on the side. Some of these exist only to learn new things about the program, others exist to be their own games.
Hinterland is one of these.
Last October I set out to make a creepy exploration game, in the same vein as games like P.T., Dear Esther, and Amnesia. I was having a lot of fun seeing what tricks I could pull with RPG Maker, but it was pretty obvious the game wasn’t going to be done before Halloween, so I set it aside for a few months.
Now, Hinterland is almost finished. I’m hoping to release it sometime in September or October, before Halloween, just so people have another unsettling little adventure to go through to get them in the mood for the month of horror. The build-up to Halloween is one of my favorite times of year, and I’m glad to be contributing, for once.
The plan right now is that the game will be free. It’s not going to be a long or complicated project, and so far there hasn’t been anything in it to warrant a price tag.
Without further babbling, here’s the gameplay teaser for Hinterland:
So there’s a little teaser of it. Hinterland puts you in a mysterious castle full of architecture that makes no sense, scarecrows that can talk, and a whole lot of darkness. There are things coming to get you, but there’s no dying here; if you get caught, you appear where you started, and the world around you will subtly change depending on how well you’re doing. Your job is to solve the mystery of this place and escape it.
The video mentions a demo, which is available now. You can find the download folder, complete with ReadMe and walkthrough, here:
And keep in mind that this is a work-in-progress. Some of the graphics and sounds aren’t final; I’d like to make everything custom, either DLC or created from scratch or tweaked from the RTP (I think only the snow itself, some clutter, the outside graphics, and some of the sound effects are untouched in that regard). That said, if you find any bugs or have any general feedback, I’d love to hear it! You can drop me a comment on this post, or on the trailer’s YouTube page, or shoot me an email at justonesp00lturn (at) hotmail (dot) com. Any help is greatly appreciated, and if you find a bug or even just play the demo for fun and let me know, I’ll put whatever name you choose to go by in the credits as thanks.
Hinterland has a story to it. It’s one I could only tell through interactive experience, or else I probably wouldn’t make the game at all. But I like it, and I can’t wait to share it, and I hope you like it too.
It’s been a while since I last posted, but I haven’t been twiddling my thumbs. I recently gave this site and all of my books a makeover, and now that things are getting settled in, I figure it’s time for a general status update.
Writing
I definitely didn’t meet my Camp NaNoWriMo goal. That’s okay. I’m still working on the novel version of Let the Moonlight Give You Wings, my RPG and novel tie-in project. I have most of the plot hammered out, and writing it as a novel is presenting scenarios not possible in the game (and vice-versa). No idea when it’ll be finished, but it’s coming along smoothly.
I set that down to work on another project the past few weeks. I finished the first draft of it, but I can’t say anything else about it yet. Soon, though, I’ll be ready to talk about it.
The next session of Camp NaNoWriMo is coming up. I’ll probably focus on finishing some older projects, specifically a novella or two.
Playing
Aside from writing news and reviews and features for Cubed3, I’ve been playing a lot of Destiny, Splatoon, and finally getting around to the Fallout: New Vegas DLCs. I’m pretty upset about the whole Silent Hills cancellation fiasco, but I’m super excited for Fallout 4.
I’m also working on my own games. Lately I’ve been putting together some music and sound effects for Let the Moonlight Give You Wings, and I’m working on a much smaller game that will probably be finished and released first, but more on that later.
Reading
I’m working my way through The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin. So far it’s very different from the rest of her Ekumen books (which makes sense, being written over 20 years after the previous one) but I like it so far. I’m actually a little sad that I’m almost finished with her novel series, but the books aren’t going anywhere, they can always be re-read.
Watching
Game of Thrones, mostly. Exciting things happening on that show. I’ve also gotten into House of Cards, which is a lot of fun. I’ve been watching Wayward Pines with my mom; it’s interesting, and I like that what some shows would’ve left as the bigger, dragged-out mysteries get figured out as early as the first episode. I’m cautiously optimistic about True Detective; word is it’ll be a lot less weird this time around, which is one of the things I loved most about season 1.
So that’s what I’ve been up to. I’m still hoping I can share some pretty big news on a few of my projects pretty soon here. I’m always at work behind the scenes.
Hey there! You may have noticed two more changes around here. The first is that I actually have my own domain name now! Woohoo! This is something I’ve been meaning to get to for a while. Typing in the old address (davidjlovato.wordpress.com) will still get you here, but expect link updates on all of my profiles and things.
The other change is a progress meter over in the sidebar. Right now there’s one for my Camp NaNoWriMo project (which I’m very far behind on!) but a few more should pop up as well. Why? Because I think they’re fun! It’s technically impossible for me to give an exact progress update (I’m never finished with a project until it’s finished) but it’ll at least give a general idea of my goals and my progress on them. Again, just for fun. Big thanks to honorless (http://honorless.net/progressbar.htm) for the awesome progress bar.
Perhaps you’ve noticed this very site (as well as Twitter) list me as “David J. Lovato” while the name on all my covers and storefronts simply reads “David Lovato”. That’s going to change.
Big changes this far along can get messy, and I spent the better part of two days updating all of my book covers and websites to add one little “J”, but the end result will be worth it. Why the change? Well, “davidlovato” wasn’t available for use as a WordPress site, so I added the J way back when, and it’s always good to keep things streamlined. Another reason is that I’m not the only David Lovato in town, and I think it’s best to keep any potential confusion to a minimum. So, starting in the coming weeks, you should see “David J. Lovato” on all of my books and store fronts. Also, it turns out I really like the way it looks. It’s like a little hook cementing my name in place. At the risk of sounding full of myself, I think I’ve realized you can tell a great font by its J.
Anyway, It’s a lengthy process to change all of my links and descriptions and profiles, but I’m almost done, and hopefully I did it without breaking anything too badly.
So, while I’m busy writing a post about my writing, I guess I should give a general update.
I’m way behind on Camp NaNoWriMo, thanks in part to burnout and in part to a household emergency. I may or may not get caught up, but I do plan to finish this project someday, and hopefully not too far away.
I have another project, a big one, that I’m hoping to release by Halloween. More details on that when it’s a little more ready for the spotlight.
I’m kicking around ideas for another poetry book. Possibly two of them. I enjoyed writing and publishing Permanent Ink on Temporary Pages, but for these two, I’m thinking bigger. Maybe louder.
I’m sitting on some novellas! One is finished and polished and I’m working to get it published traditionally. Another one is finished but not edited, and the last is unfinished, but I hope to put the final touches on those two this summer. Not sure whether I’ll self-publish or try the traditional route with them; that will depend on how I feel about the finished products. I also have an almost-finished short story collection that will most likely be self-published; the stories are all set in the same world and follow a specific theme.
And, as always, I have plenty of projects always moving, some slower than others, but they’ll be revealed when the time is right.
In short, I promise I’m working on things, and I’m pretty sure at least one of them will see a release this year.
Speaking of Halloween (I know that was a few paragraphs ago but it’s my blog and I’ll do what I want), last year I started a second RPG Maker project in the spirit of Halloween. With any luck I’ll finish it and release it before Halloween this year. It’s just a short little adventure where I challenged myself to see how odd I could make things go in that game engine, but I don’t see the harm in getting it out there, supposing I finish it. My main project is still Let the Moonlight Give You Wings, but that one is a lot larger and less predictable, so I can’t give an ETA on it. If I do pick up my Halloween-ish game again, expect to see some previews around these parts.
That about does it as far as talking about what I’m working on. One last thing though:
My favorite band is back! I can hardly express how excited I am to see Brand New recording and putting out new material. My history with this band is a long one. I’ll probably write a whole post on it pretty soon. But for now let’s just say they have a new song called “Mene” and you should buy it because it’s awesome.
Modest Mouse is another of those bands that I hated at first. I remember when “Float On” invaded the airwaves, and played approximately every five seconds on every single radio station, and it just plain grated on my nerves.
Then a DJ at my local alternative station decided to break the mold and play “Bukowski”, which I found interesting. After that, “Ocean Breathes Salty” and “Bury Me With It” replaced “Float On” and cemented Modest Mouse as one of my favorite bands. In time I would even come to like “Float On”.
I like bands that don’t sound the same with every album they put out. I like Good News for People Who Love Bad News, I like We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, I like The Moon and Antarctica, and I like various other songs from their past discography that I’ve heard over the years. I love the ironic, clever lyrics and titles, the anger present in Isaac Brock’s voice even when the accompanying music ventures into zany, even goofy territory, and I love Jeremiah Greene’s complicated, addictive drum beats.
There has always been, however, a strange duality to Modest Mouse’s releases. I tend to absolutely love about half of each record and not really care for the rest. In an even weirder turn of events, I do like those songs I don’t care for—while I’m listening to them. It just usually takes some out-of-the-ordinary turn of events to get me listening to them.
Eight long years went by without a new release from Modest Mouse, so I hoped they were working on something special. Finally they announced Strangers to Ourselves, which I promptly pre-ordered; Modest Mouse is one of a very few bands whose music I can easily pre-order without hearing a note of, because I know I’m going to get something good out of it.
What I got was probably the first Modest Mouse album where I love almost every song.
The album starts off slow, with “Strangers to Ourselves”. Honestly, it’s a little boring for an opener; I’d like it a lot more as a minute, minute-and-a-half tune, but it lingers for three and a half. It stands in stark contrast to other openers; “The World at Large” is a slow and lethargic song, but I love it for its clever lyrics and playful melodies strewn throughout the track. “March Into the Sea” is a fun opener for how loud and angry it is, and “3rd Planet” is the song that turned me on to the band’s earlier discography in the first place. “Strangers to Ourselves” just doesn’t pack the same punch as any of them.
The album takes a sharp turn for the better with “Lampshades on Fire”, a faster, upbeat tune that sets the environmentalist tone found through most of the album. It’s a good example of that irony I mentioned earlier; the song sounds happy and upbeat while Isaac Brock belts out frustrating, angry lyrics like “Pack up our things and head to the next place / Where we’ll make the same mistakes.” After this is “Shit in Your Cut”, an odd song that reminds me of something off of Brand New’s Daisy. It’s darker and slower but just as much fun.
If “Shit in Your Cut” is like a Brand New song, “Pistol (A. Cunanan, Miami, FL. 1996)” sounds like the band’s attempt at a Nine Inch Nails tribute. A quick Google of the title suggests this song is probably about the formative years of a certain serial killer. “Ansel” continues the theme of upbeat-sounding songs with dark, disturbing meanings, this one about how Brock never patched things up with his step brother before he died in an avalanche.
“The Ground Walks, With Time in a Box” is another fun one. Lyrically, it reminds me of the “beauty in nature/science” themes found on The Moon and Antarctica, at least partially, as it seems a little bit more sinister toward the end. I love the lead guitar and the multiple male/female vocal chorus, something present in a few songs on the album. The addition of feminine vocals in general to Modest Mouse’s sound is a refreshing and welcome one, and it works well.
If I had written this post a week ago, I would probably mention how much I dislike “Coyotes” right about now, but it ended up growing on me. I’m not fond of the lyrics for the verses basically being the same thing but in reverse order, but I do love the brief bits of acoustic guitar that pop up before the chorus. “Pups to Dust” is my current favorite. The first time I heard the main vocals arguing with the backing vocals I laughed out loud and it has that flowing, airy lead guitar I’ve always loved in Modest Mouse. “Sugar Boats” is another favorite of mine; if steampunk has a sound to it, it’s this song. “Wicked Campaign” slows things down again, while “Br Brave” is one of the few songs I don’t particularly care for. It’s all right while I’m listening, but it’s not one I’ll go out of my way to listen to.
Well I’m not a doctor, but I’ll sell you an itch
I could apologize, but then a bit more nothing’d exist
So the world’s got plenty of good and bad liars,
But our lies should come with chariots and choirs!
—Modest Mouse, “Wicked Campaign”
“God is an Indian and You’re an Asshole” is a funny little interlude set before “The Tortoise and the Tourist” which is probably the most important song on the record. Every Modest Mouse record has at least one song I’d argue has an almost literary quality to it, and this is it on Strangers to Ourselves. It’s heavy and dark, very cynical, it’s a good thing it’s sandwiched between “God is an Indian and You’re an Asshole” and “The Best Room”.
There was this tortoise, its shell was covered with jewels
And had been since time began
It knew the world through all its histories
And the universe and its mysteries
One day it came across a man
The two were talking,
The tortoise offered to tell him about the future and how the universe ran
Oh, the man killed the tortoise, took its shell, and with a song on his lips, walked off again.
—Modest Mouse, “The Tortoise and the Tourist”
Speaking of, “The Best Room” is another fun one, a heavy criticism of western culture. The last minute or so escalates into a crazy, fast summary of the entire song preceding it, accompanied by a wild lead guitar part and a sudden dropoff ending the song.
“Of Course We Know” closes the album, and it’s another one I don’t really go out of my way to listen to. I love the theme of it, the lullaby-like tone accompanying a criticism of complacency, but the song is very long and repetitive. It’s one I have to be in a certain mood to listen to.
On the whole, Strangers to Ourselves is critical without being preachy, it’s dark but fun, it has a strong theme that it carries through to the end. It’s easily my favorite Modest Mouse album. It was worth the wait, but I still hope the next one doesn’t take quite so long to come around.
Go reckless, unharmed
The shut-ins they’re well-armed
Well we all led the charge,
‘Til we ran aground in our party barge
Every little gift was just one more part of their grift
Oh yeah, we know it.
The best news that we got
Was some dumb hokum we all bought
Let’s go reckless, feeling great
We’re the sexiest of all primates
Let’s let loose with our charms,
Shake our ass and wave our arms,
All going apeshit.
Faded Pages 