30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 11]: Favorite Adventure I Have Run

To this day, the most fun I ever had DMing campaign was the year-long trek with Michael, Amber, George, and Joe. It was my first proper campaign, I didn't know the rules as well as I should have and I'm not sure if it's because the rest of my life sucked SO badly that D&D on Friday Night was the most fun I had at that point, or if it was because those four crack me up and were extremely patient with me, but I still have fantastic memories of that time.

It was a little random sauce. I was a little terrible at it. But my players gave me things to bounce off of them and no one ever dropped the ball. It was a great way for me to get an idea of how the rules really worked and generally it was just a lot of fun.

I think it might have been more fun to me because I didn't know how it worked as well and because it wasn't nearly as much pressure at the time. We were just sitting around having fun.

...but that also might be the graduation goggles talking.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 10]: The Craziest Thing I've Seen Happen

A good D&D tale is like a war story, I think. The dynamic is pretty similar. You find someone that's played, you sit down to talk, everyone has a tale and they swear the dragon was this big.

My story comes from a time I was DMing.

Okay so I've already established I don't have the most orthodox group in the world. The one I am playing with now is even LESS orthodox than the one I had before. This particular story involves a wolfborn wizard named Beracav and a dwarf fighter named Falgrim. I gave them a DMPC for extra damage, by the name of Cyrie.

As a bit of backstory, earlier in the campaign Beracav begged me to let him learn to summon demons and I went ahead and let him figure out how it was done. That was my first mistake.

We get near the end of the campaign and Beracav pitched the biggest fit ever about not having used his summon ability, so I went ahead and let him because it was just Beracav and Falgrim at the table that night (we usually have a party of 6 or 7) and I figured they would need the extra help.

Beracav summons two Balor.

At this point I am already staring at him with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. What happens next goes a little like this.

Falgrim: You did say he could do it.
Me: I said he could summon some demons, not that he could summon too Balor.
Falgrim: We're level 18. -cites some obscure mechanic that allows Beracav to do this-
Me: okay whatever, you summon two Balor.

A round later, it got back to Beracav's turn.

Beracav: I cast enlarge on the Balor.

Just let me share a vague representation of the face I made.

=_______=

...but the boys had fun. That's what matters.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 9]: My Favorite Character I Haven't Played

Now, I'm a little bit unclear as to whether this means "concept I have had but not implemented" or "someone else's character". Since Pun went with "have not implemented", I shall do the same.

Lysan Shaiith, son of the aforementioned Demetrius Shaiith.

You see, Demetrius and Kaskara had three children. Galashon, Nymhora and Lysan.

Galashon was the strongest of the three physically and turned out to take after his mother, a very kind boy, a very gentle giant.

Nymhora had a rogue's hands and took after her father, going on to become an assassin.

Lysan found himself off to the side of this. He was not like his father's side of the family, not a rogue, and not like his mother, a warrior, but found himself taking after his maternal grandfather, Draco, who was a sorcerer. Lysan is physically the weakest of the three but is by far the smartest and has the potential to be an amazing mage.

But, of course, coming from a family of rogues, that doesn't mean a whole lot and has left him as a bit of a black sheep.

I will get to him eventually, I'm sure.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 8]: My Favorite Character I Have Played

Now this is one I can really sink my teeth into, but it's also probably one of the hardest questions I could ever be asked. I love my characters, all of them, and I tend to  get into them far more than a person should.

The first one that popped into my head was Cheris, my Avariel Ranger. I am not a minmaxy type player, but I just happened to get lucky with the way I statted her and some of the equipment she landed early on. She was a fucking glass canon. Cheris was doing ridiculous amounts of damage and getting +35s and over to hit at like, level 12.

But the thing about that is, as much as I liked her as a character, I think I had so much fun playing her because she was statted so well and was more or less THE party DPS. Shannanana would throw things at us that the party shouldn't have been able to handle and Cheris would still be able to hit them.

She was extraordinarily vain. When we ended up in one of those "worst fears" dungeons, it played on her vanity almost exclusively. She was also seriously racist against orcs, which became an issue on several occasions because earlier on in the campaign we had a TPK (Total Party Kill for those who don't know what I'm talking about, I really should make a glossary for this stuff) and one of the PCs at that point had been a full blooded orc.

Suffice to say he got resurrected. Shit hit the fan.

She also had a pseudo-doomed romance with another PC by the name of Galleon (who shared a player with the orc ironically enough) and when that campaign died off they were planning on getting married and founding a town somewhere so I'd like to think that happened.

That said...I'm going to have to cheat this entry because as much as I loved playing Cheris, the second character that popped into my head when I saw this prompt has been around longer and probably fits the prompt far better...

Okay let me put it this way. Cheris, from my perspective, was a really fun character to play. Demetrius, however, was part of a chain of campaigns that were arguably better organized and lasted longer and the DM made me love him.

...wow this is a shitty picture, I really need to draw an updated reference of him, but let's not quibble over the details right at the moment.

Demetrius Shaiith, son of my first character that lasted more than two sessions, Caliel Shaiith.

Caliel was a half drow, half moon elf bard / rogue / assassin. Demi's father was a human assassin. Which makes him, statistically, a half elf. His father owed Caliel a favor for saving his life at one point during one of her campaigns and Demi was the favor she asked for because, what could she say, the man had good genetics.

And Demetrius turned out to be everything she imagined he would be.

He was raised in a house of rogues, taught to be sneaky and underhanded, and he was, in every way, destined to be an amazing killer. Until he started travelling with a half-dragon named Kaskara and shit hit the fan.

They were both pretty shitty people at the time, and they fell in love. They had a Bonny and Clyde thing going on for a while, and then they got attacked and separated. Each one thought the other was dead and Demi was more or less kidnapped by this cult of asshats and went along with it. There, he met this girl who called herself Satine and started a casual relationship with her because she reminded him of Kas.

...it turns out she was Kas's half sister.

Then finds out Kas is still alive but doesn't reveal himself to her because she's found a new party and has actually become a good person and he doesn't want to ruin her life.

WELL, he ends up in the middle of this whole irrelevent mess with other people and this guy named Shade whose basically Kas's uncle. He kept telling Demi he was a horrible person for not telling Kas that he's alive and eventually provokes him to attacking only to find out it was actually Kas disguised as her uncle and he more or less killed her.

Except big old Daddy Draco is an amazing sorcerer and manages to save her life, except she's still in this like, eternal sleep state.

Whereas Demi just snaps and lets the god Bane inhabit his body (and Bane at this point was on the shit list with the other gods for a lot of reasons that had been built up in the campaign but that i'm not going to get into here or this entry will be forever long). Cue Demi going on a bloody nasty killing spree for like a hundred years give or take a decade.

Finally, his atheist mother (Caliel acknowledges gods are real but refuses to worship them) lets the goddess Jaden take over her body and there's this massive ass god-avatar fight and Bane gets forced out of Demi's body and he goes to wake up Kas and they live happily ever after.

Except for the part where he had a son he didn't know about with Satine and Draco still hates him.

Somewhere after that whole mess he ends up becoming a half dragon through divine intervention and he and Kaskara have three kids of their own and live up in some mountain somewhere.

That campaign lasted /forever/ and it was the /best/ campaign /ever/.

Still all the happy memories when I think of Demetrius.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 7]: My Favorite Edition

I cut my teeth on 3.5 and I know it the best. I've played 2nd Edition and found it lacking in certain respects, and don't even get me started on 4th edition. Okay, actually, the truth is I think 4th probably has its merits, but I won't be playing it any time soon, at least not seriously.

The fact is, I bought all these books for 3.5...I don't want to buy them all over again for 4th. And if I played it I'd have to buy the materials. Yeah, no, no thank you, 3.5 is good for me. It's not broken, it doesn't need fixing. And if it does we house rule.

Then again I presently have a group of players that are ridiculously good at breaking the game (Josh and Michael I am looking at you).

Usually trying something new is a good way to trip them up so they can't do that for at least three sessions, although Josh managed to break Mutants and Masterminds after 2 hours of having the book.

I've veered off topic. Honestly, though, this isn't something I have a whole lot to say about. I like 3.5, it's the edition I know and love, I can DM it decently, so that's my answer.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 6]: My Favorite Deity

Please don't get the wrong idea of me when I tell you this. But it's Bane.

That might have something to do with the fact that when we need an evil deity my good friend Amber Sherman always grabs Bane first. He's got his own set of problems, she presents him in a way that makes him extremely interesting and accessible.

And I mean, just look at the guy. You look at Bane and you see The Power. He's fucking scary and I love it.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 5]: My Favorite Set of Dice / Individual Die

My favorite set of dice is a purple-red set with silver numbers. It's newer than some of the others, but it always rolls high and the colors are very me. I don't let anyone else use them, it's the one set I get squirrelly about. And you know how superstitious gamers can be with their dice.

My favorite individual die...now that's a difficult one. They all have their purposes, but give me a minute to show some love to the d12.

12 months in the year. 12 signs of the zodiac. 12 is one of those magic numbers, it's pretty easy to make something symmetrical when there are 12 pieces.

It's more stable than the d20 but just as big and easy to roll and it doesn't hurt as badly when you step on it as the d4 does. At the same time, most people reach for the d20 automatically. And plenty of things use the other dice for damage, but what love does the d12 get?

When it gets to the point of using d12 usually people just go "Roll 2d6" which makes sense mathmatically, but seriously.

Give me some d12.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 4]: My Favorite Gameworld

I'm biased when it comes to this. I like to sit down with my players and build one, tailor it to their needs as a group. Start fresh every time. The reason I'm biased is pretty simple; set a campaign in an established world and it's hard to use anything from it later.

If I have to pick a favorite published gameworld, though, I always find myself coming back to the Forgotten Realms. You can do practically anything there, I know where everything is and what it's supposed to be able to do. If I have to run a game on the fly, you can bet it's probably going to start in some hole-in-the-wall tavern in Waterdeep.

Mind you, ACTUAL Faerun and MY GAMING GROUP'S Faerun are not necessarily the same place. Play in a world long enough and the PCs will eventually alter it. I can't tell you how many times we've had to rebuild Balder's Gate, or how many times we've gotten a few sessions into a campaign and someone goes "The goddess Jaden Vrinn? Who the hell is that, I don't see her in the sourcebook!"

That said, Forgotten Realms is one of those gameworlds everybody knows, so when I tell my players they're in Waterdeep, chances are I don't have to describe it to him. They already know how shitty and how infested with rogues and ne'er do wells it is. Makes it easy to just dive right into the plot.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 3]: My Favorite Playable Class

This one is a toughie, but at the end of the day I have to go rogue.

There are so many things a person can do with a rogue! They can be the sneaky thief, the obvious option, or they can be thuggish. Or they can be a combat rogue. Or they can be a diplomancer rogue, the cunning silvertongued grifter.

I love the class for its versatility, and it's the one I go to almost every time when I play. Sneaky bastards are the best.

I wish I had more to say about this. Honestly, if I don't have time to plan I usually default to Rogue 5> Assassin because contract killers are really fun to play. That is a good part of why I ended up going straight to the Dark Brotherhood in almost any given Elder Scrolls game ever.

Don't look at me like that, who doesn't take a certain guilty pride in their ability to headshot?

Anyway, that's what I've got. I feel like I should have more, but I'm a simple gal with simple needs.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 2]: My Favorite Playable Race

If I'm being totally honest, there will always be a soft spot in my heart for Fire Genasi. I was a bit of a pyro before I started playing D&D, and chances are I will be even if I ever quit (though roleplay, like writing, is about as necessary for me as breathing and sleeping so I will probably never stop). The Fire Genasi has always been just totally cool to me.

The rub with that is, as much as I love Fire Genasi, I've never had a DM that would let me play one.

However, I also really love Tieflings. I still think it was incredibly stupid to make them a core race in 4th Edition, but I'm not going to get myself started on that rant right now. Let me focus, instead, on how cool these bastards are.

When I rolled my first tiefling, it was because I was trying to translate my first World of Warcraft character into D&D terms and it was the only thing I could find that would let me keep the horns and skin color. So there enters Lyaera, Tiefling Sorceress, who I always still see in my head as a draenei at first.

Back to Tieflings in general, though.

They have demonic blood. They're resistant to fire and electricity.They are, by their very nature, roguey and full of angst and I have a thing for that. Also, they have horns. I like that more than I should.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 1]: How I Got Started

When I was a little bit I role-played with my friends all the time. I didn't know that was what it as called at the time, we just referred to it as "playing pretend", but our playing pretend had really intricate plots that sometimes spanned whole weeks (which was a really long time for 3rd graders). Slowly, as we got older, the playing pretend petered off for most of them.

I refused to grow up, however, and kept dragging Gwen into these games with me. We'd call each other on the phone and play like we were at Hogwarts. I'm not going to tell you how old we were when that stopped. I'm not ashamed, but for her sake, I'll leave it as "we were embarrassingly old to be doing that over the phone with no real character sheets or rolling system".

I spent some time doing paragraph RPs on the Harry Potter forums, and a few chatstream ones in the Star Trek chatrooms. Life was good.

When I was 12, however, the whole roleplay scene changed. I got a Star Trek novel, and I can't remember the title of it now, but I remember the dedication page. It was a memorial to someone's character, Seymour, whom the author had killed. And I remember thinking, "Why didn't he just go back to the last save point?"

I asked my mother and she told me there was this amazing game called Dungeons and Dragons where you could actually die, like for real, and not go back to the last save point. And you'd actually have to roll a new character, holy crap.

Suffice to say, it had me at "there's a chance of you really dying".

I spent the next few years with notebooks upon notebooks of character concepts. Then, when I was 14 or 15, I'm not quite sure which, I met Emily Bear and actually got to play for the first time. Given that I was already knee-deep into writing and was already a relatively accomplished cartographer (and when I say this I mean I doodled maps in class and people thought I was planning to bomb Russia) I ended up DMing before too long.

And never stopped.

30 Day D&D Challenge

I totally ganked this from my brother, Justin "Pun" Isaac. If you like gaming and you're reading this, you're probably already following his blog, but just in case, here it is: http://networkedblogs.com/RHNmG

Anyway, he's doing the 30 day D&D challenge and that looks like lots of fun. I'm writing this on the same day he started but I'm going to schedule it to come out later so it doesn't look like I'm just sitting here procrastinating and doing one blog post after another, alright? Good.

So in true little sister fashion, I'm going to do this because my big brother is doing it and it looks cool.

The Process Entry

I may be jumping the gun with this, but I really want to write it so here I go.

Keep in mind, this is about exactly what it looks like. I've written a book. That book has yet to succeed or fail, I have no idea if people are actually going to like it or if they'll hate it and throw rotten fruit at me (but if they do the latter I would like to know who those people are and how they are sending things through the internet because I desperately want that technology).

This is in no way me saying this is how you should do it. What works for one person won't necessarily work for someone else. But this is how it worked for me, and if you're where I was last year and haven't found a method that does it might be worth a shot.

I kneel before the power of the almighty outline.

I know, it's strict and not easy to alter once you get it written down and then it's hard to come up with new things in the middle of writing--except it isn't. I ended up with a good bit of content that wasn't in the outline by the end of the book--I know, I know. I started off as totally anti-outline too, but I have seen the light and I am a believer.

It's gotten to the point that I want at least a detailed enough outline to know how many chapters I'm going to have, the projected word count for each one, and what's going to happen in those chapters as well as what points of view they're going to contain.

Not necessarily so far as "every last scene", but it can help.

At least know how the scene you're writing is going to end before you start writing it. That way you won't have to delete and rewrite over and over again. That has been the death of many a poor project of mine.

So I look at it like I'm laying bricks. One scene at a time. It's not so much word by word or paragraph by paragraph, as it is in terms of scenes and foundations. With an outline, it's easier to figure out what I need to build up on to make the ending make sense. This reveal leads to that build leads to one facet of the climax and it all comes together like a steeple.

I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Make-Scene-Crafting-Powerful-Story-ebook/dp/B00506VMC4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386090968&sr=8-1&keywords=make+a+scene

I can honestly say I learned a lot more from that right there in the week it took me to read it than I did just tinkering around for years before that.

For the most part that's all I got. This journal turned into a sermon of "Praise the almighty outline", but that's okay. That's basically my process.

Fortune Favors,
Megan

Chronicles of Drasule Book 1: The Revenant Pact - Available Now

My first completed novel is available for purchase through Amazon and will be soon through Barnes and Nobles.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Revenant-Pact-Chronicles-Drasule-ebook/dp/B00H21OFAG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386035277&sr=8-1&keywords=drasule

This has been an adventure and a half. I've spent the past 5 months deeply entrenched in this story, and I'm about to spend what I estimate will be three more months on the second book. I want to share my process, but I don't feel like this is the right journal to do it in. This one can be about the book, just let it stand that I finished it and it's available.

...I need to up the ante on my lifelong dream now, I'll be back when I figure out my next goal.

The Ninjas Entry

By now you've probably realized I am a filthy liar and posting schedule? What posting schedule? That could never, ever happen.

That said, I was getting out of the bath this morning when I suddenly remembered a scene from a cartoon I liked as a kid. (And still like, actually, but my Peter Pan syndrome is neither here nor there.) The Fairly Oddparents.

Now, I don't remember what the episode was even about, but this one scene has always stuck with me. Wanda produces a magical typewriter from hammerspace and starts working on "that novel she always meant to write". As the scene cuts out you hear her narrating what she's writing:

"It was dawn. I was in my towel when the ninjas attacked."

Clearly meant to be comical, right? But you know...I actually think about that scene a lot. It legitimately bothers me why there are ninjas attacking this person in a towel so early in the morning. I mean, don't ninjas want to sleep in, too? And if she's (I'm assuming she because Wanda was writing it, let's not think too far into this) in her towel this early in the morning clearly she has something to do, what if those rascally ninjas make her late for work?

...you know, I really want to know what that story was about.

And, damn it, I want more beginnings like that one!

Maybe not necessarily with comical ninjas, but slamming right in. You know who does that really well? Jim Butcher. And not just at the beginning of the book, either, almost every scene is like being thrown into ice water from the get go.

Is it a little pulpy? Maybe. But you wanna hear a confession? I love it.

Don't get me wrong, literary fiction probably has its merits, it's just not my cup of tea.

There's an argument my boyfriend and I always have about our respective tastes in stories, both movies and books. He likes nonstop action and I like a little more character development and social type drama. It's hard for us to find things to agree on because of it.

Partially, this is because I feel like nonstop action is just as boring as three pages describing how a wilting flower on a windowsill is representative of Ramona's breaking heart. I tend to skim fight scenes like most people do descriptive passages if they last too long and nothing is going on with them.

I realize a lot of people think it's a major no-no to have characters talk to each other during sex scenes and fighting scenes because it's "not realistic", but I'll take "interesting" over "realistic" any day. If that fight scene is going to stretch three pages, I say go ahead and have the hero and his adversary screaming at each other while its happening.

Almost lost the point there.

What I'm saying is, I want stuff to happen.

Not wilting flowers. I don't care about wilting flowers unless the entire kingdom is pinning its hopes on this plant to eventually provide the cure to some kind of plague or it's Beauty and the Beast or something. Give me actual stuff happening.

Whatever your ninjas are, give me ninjas.

Fortune Favors,
Megan R. Miller

The Tarot Entry

So, I am a writer. And this is meant to be a writing blog. But for the moment I can't think of a single writing-based thing to blog about, however, I do know a few other things that might be beneficial and this is one of those things that drives me bat-shit whenever I see handled poorly in fiction.

Tarot Cards: the staple method of divining information. Want to make a character appear mysterious and magical? Slap a deck into their hands and have them say a few cryptic words, right?

Except a lot of people decide to write a psychic reading and don't bother doing any research on how the Tarot actually works.

Have I made this post sound relevant yet?

Oh, good.

Tarot Basics:

There are 22 major arcana and 56 minor arcana. That means 78 cards in a Tarot deck.

The Major Arcana are the ones that are most typically used in tarot readings in fiction. These are cards like "The Fool", "Death" and "The Wheel of Fortune". Suffice to say some of them just sound ominous enough that when you sprinkle it in it makes everything all arcane and creepy. Foreshadowing!

Except contrary to popular belief, people that read tarot cards are not just a bunch of charlatans that make things up as they go along. The cards have real meanings and not all of them are what they appear to be at a glance.

The Minor Arcana are broken up into suits. Those suits are as follows:

Cups
Rods (or Staffs or Wands)
Swords
Coins (or Pentacles)

There are 14 cards in each suit, for those of you who, like me, are too lazy to do basic division while reading a blog entry but would still wonder if they didn't already know. From now on, rather than mention the alternate names for the suits, I'm just going to refer to them as the ones I called them first, respectively.

Minor Arcana: The Suits

They're not used nearly enough, totally underrated, but each suit has its own meaning that can help a person remember what the numbered (1-10) and court (Page, Knight, Queen and King) cards mean. I'm just going to give a quick cheat-sheet style peek at the suits here:

Cups - Water - Summer - Emotions and good things. Cups could also represent alcohol.
Rods - Fire - Autumn - Mental endeavors and creativity.
Swords - Air - Winter - Sharp logic and cruelty, often without good connotations.
Coins - Earth - Spring - Business endeavors, money, practical and materialistic things.

There are also certain meanings for the numbers, and much of the time the trick is in taking the meaning of the number and just matching it to the suit it belongs to, and while each card has its own set of meanings and suggestions, for writing a tarot reading that should be enough.

Aces - Beginnings, origins.
Twos - Duality, balance and imbalance.
Threes - Stability, trinity, skill
Fours - Staying the course, waiting
Fives - Disruption, entrapment
Sixes - Departure, a journey beginning or ending
Sevens - Waiting and not waiting.
Eights - Movement, travel
Nines - Almost completion
Tens - Completion
Page - A young woman or girl
Knight - A young man or boy
Queen - An older woman
King - An older man

Major Arcana

Now, when the majority of the cards in a spread are major arcana, as they often are in fiction, it means the querant likely cannot change the outcome of the situation. That can make for some really boring fiction, at times, and these cards are the most often to be read wrong.

0 - The Fool - The beginning of a journey, bliss

I - The Magician - Creation, bringing together of things, magic

II - The High Priestess - Knowledge, wisdom

III - The Empress - Motherhood, fertility, women in authority

IV - The Emperor - Fatherhood, men in authority

V - The Heirophant - Tradition, marriage

VI - The Lovers - Could be literal lovers, is more often a choice to be made

VII - The Chariot - Being pulled in two directions, chaos, travel

VIII - Strength - Most often strength through gentleness, quiet power

IX - The Hermit - Wandering, seeking something.

X - The Wheel of Fortune - Chance

XI - Justice - Balance, getting what you deserve . Exactly what it says on the tin.

XII - The Hanged Man - Lack of mobility, boredom, stagnancy

XIII - Death - NOT LITERAL DEATH. Rebirth, new beginnings, reincarnation.

XIV - Temperance - Balance, zen, watering down of things

XV - The Devil - Being stuck, bound to something, trapped

XVI - The Tower - Disaster, everything falling apart

XVII - The Star - Inspiration

XVIII - The Moon - Night, things hidden, secrets

XIX - The Sun - Day, truths, joy

XX - Judgement - Culmination, karma

XXI - The World - Everything

There are a lot of other nuances, but this is the very basic of the basics. If you don't know about tarot and want to write a tarot scene, you could quick reference this and get it past most tarot readers as long as you don't embellish too much.

I'm not saying don't write without doing the research, do that at your own peril. I'm saying if you do people will notice. AKA me. I will notice. Quit that.

Fortune Favors,
Megan R. Miller

The First Entry

It has been a long while since I've had a blog. At least, since I've had a blog that wasn't connected to something else (I use my deviantart journal almost religiously). Recently, though, I've opened several accounts surrounding my writing and most of them ask for a link to a personal site or a blog.

And if most of them have that, guess what I should probably have?

So here I am. I'll drop in here now and again to rant and rave bout the things I'm interested in, most of it is probably going to have to do with literature. I'll avoid personal problems if I can because that's what my other journals are for.

This one, though, is for my writing.

My first book goes up on December 1st. That's a little under two weeks from now. I've been writing back and forth with my cover artist, seen a couple of potential designs for the cover, and I'm elbow deep in the editing process. Right now, as I type this.

I'm also a procrastinator. I'm trying to kick that habit, but if I set a deadline for myself I meet it. So I'm writing this out as an introduction of sorts. Which means I should probably introduce myself.

Hi, I'm Megan. I'm not quite 24 (I'll be 24 before my book comes out though), and I've been telling stories since I was 6. I wish I was joking; we had show and tell every week in the first grade and I would always forget my show and tell object so I just stood there and made a story up off the top of my head. The other kids loved it, but for some reason I was still convinced I wanted to be a paleontologist until I was in the sixth grade.

I've written a novel, but I still haven't discovered any new dinosaurs, so you can see which field I went into.

I have two younger brothers that live in the same house I do, and three sisters that do not. I have a cat that everyone thinks is a girl because he's fluffy, but he's not. I have a programmer boyfriend that you can just tell is nuts the second you see his massively curly hair and realize he has it that way on purpose. That's okay, though, because most people think I'm more nuts than he is.

So there's the first entry. From here on in I'm going to try to be a little more focused and try to find a posting schedule that works for me. It might be a little bit sketchy for the first few weeks while I try to hit an equilibrium, but when I do you'll know.

Fortune Favors,

Megan R. Miller