Purple is Dar's Fav Color

I'm clumsy.

I'm clumsy like a baby figuring out how to walk... except my bones aren't made of rubber. So when I was shooting a short film on Friday where my 'good cop' character chases a bad guy over a roof and I caught my ankle on a big bump, it didn't just fix itself.

And that's right, you guessed it: I kept shooting. For another 2 hours. And then refused to take a cab home because I'm more-than-kind-of a jerk!

We're still not 100% sure what's wrong; all we know is there are no fractures (thank you Mr. X Ray). It's likely a bad sprain or a few small ligament tares. I thought these pics were both disgusting and interesting - so be sure to enjoy both of those key features.

These first 2 are about three hours after the injury after having walked on it much longer than I should've. Friday afternoon, approx 4pm:




I went to the ER Saturday morning when I woke up and couldn't walk, hence the X-ray. This is Saturday night approx. 8pm. Swelling is way down, but that lovely purple is blossoming nicely.

The ER docs were kind enough to give me a sexy splint & some crutches, which are helping quite a bit. This is Sunday around 4. The bruising's getting pretty nasty, even after 2 days of doing nothing but laying around. Ugh.

News, News, News, and Sunshine

It's been quite awhile, and for that we're both sorry. But we have good reason, I promise.

March has been a month of exciting news, and I've been a bit of a tease about everything. Not because I wanted to toy with your collective emotions; but because I didn't want to announce something awesome and then have it turn out to be made of suck. I'm glad to say that has not been the case.

And now, Good News. In the order it occurred:

* I was offered (and accepted) the lead in a feature length film! I'll be playing a spicy/strong cop in an upcoming slasher flick produced by Yellow Ape Productions. We're keeping a pretty tight lid on most of the details, for good reason, but I'll share as I'm able to.

* I was offered, accepted, and began working with CUNY's School of Professional Studies in concert with the NYC Office of Emergency Management as the Content Manager for customization and development work on Sahana Disaster Management software. To say I'm excited would be a massive understatement. I just wrapped up my first week with them and the project is engaging, the people are awesome, and the work is enough of a challenge that I wont be bored. (And you know how I feel about being bored...)

Those are the big things. The response to Venture has been incredibly positive; so fans of the book will be happy to know I started working on book 2, mostly because my brain wouldn't let me write anything else creative. We're planning to take a much longer creative process this time around; partly because the book will be longer and partly because we had to rush so much last time.

We're getting a bite of spring this week in NYC and I'm going to be out on a rooftop filming all afternoon and enjoying it. I hope you are too.

-D McC

Thrown From The Nest

Venture has been launched from the safe harbor of my laptop out into the world; and along with it I have released the notion of control. There's no pulling it back now, even if I wanted to... and I don't.

I've been doing my best to let it percolate - to allow time to pass before diving into the next volume; both for the sake of my sanity and that of Jenne & Jennifer. It's been difficult. My mind wants to continue running down the paths of folly it's now being restricted from; longing for the dappled sunlight of imagination. I've tried satiating it with writing short stories. No dice.

One tactic I've been playing with is How to Host a Dungeon, a sweet game John got a few weeks ago. I'll admit, I was skeptical at first; after all, how fun could drawing the history of a dungeon be? Well, what a fool I am! After watching John play with our pal Ben a few weeks ago I made him play it with me on Saturday - and I've played twice more since. I might have the rules memorized by Friday...

Here are some sweet dungeon maps that came out of game...

Primordial Age - I rolled a scorched earth landscape and added some extra features to start with. The game was designed to be played on a standard piece of paper, but I took the liberty of enlarging it a big.

Age of Civilization - Playing two civs made it a lot more dynamic. The Dwarves and a demonic spawn moved in. The red areas show demonic worm tunnels that punched through a number of other caverns, including the dwarven, until they hit a 'FATE' cavern where the gods took vengeance on them. Finally, the dwarves dug too deep.
At the beginning of the Age of Monsters a meteor struck and molded the landscape a bit. A number of monsters moved in and dug around massing wealth. Long story short: some human miners got really powerful and took just about everyone else out.Good times.