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Archives for May, 2014
Counterfeit Game Money
At Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group we design and play a lot of games involving game money. We do this to the extent that we often joke that all you need for a game are CLWG members and some (play) money. By definition none of this is real, but in game terms it is always genuine. There is never any question that some of it could be fake. For more modern games involving high value government expenditures this is definitely fine, but in some of the games we play it would make for an interesting dynamic if it turned out we couldn't rely on the value of the coins. Game money (Photo credit: James Kemp) So while my daughter was playing with my stack of play money (see the photo above) I was thinking that I could run a…
Hunting Nazis – Commentary on writing the story
I've written a short story titled Hunting Nazis for the End of Module Assessment (EMA) for A215 Creative Writing. The target word count was 2,500 with an upper limit of +10%. The first draft weighed in at 5k words, double the target length. However some of this was because although I plotted it I needed to tell myself the story in the first draft. Once I got to the end it was much easier to re-edit and take out some of it. Hunting Nazis The central premise is that Reggie and Dot (from the earlier story Planting the Past) have been hunting down nazis guilty of war crimes against the members of the French resistance and SOE agents supporting the network that they were both part of during World War Two. The story takes place in Berlin in 1953 when they are tying…
Still here
I've not been able to post much for the last couple of weeks, I had a bout of cellulitis in my left leg which knocked me out for a few days, followed by lots of antibiotics. On top of that I've been spending what time I have for writing on the end of module assessment (EMA) for the creative writing course. This time it is back to fiction rather than continuing with poetry, because fiction is what I want to write (the poetry has been fun and interesting and it takes lots of craft, but I find writing stories more interesting). So far I'm 5,000 words in to a 2,750 word short story. So there needs to be lots of editing done (which I'm sure will be fine, there is lots of detail and dialogue that I can pare down now…
Fire in the Night
This was the view from my bedroom window when I woke up this morning, there had been a large house fire a few doors down in the middle of the night. Six fire engines, a turntable ladder, command and incident support units on the green this morning (Photo credit: James Kemp) From speaking to neighbours and some of the Surrey Fire & Rescue Service crews and local Councillors (lots of which was via Twitter) I found out some of what happened, no doubt there is more to it than this. Sometime around 03:40 the fire started in the upstairs part of a semi-detached house at the other end of the green from my house. The exact time is unclear, but Surrey FRS reported that they were on the scene at 03:47. The man who lives in the house, a local mechanic…