Hello dear readers! Things are going well; I am waiting on my editor at Skyhorse to have a look at the final draft of the MS. From there it’s line and copy editing. I can’t wait until I can share the cover with you!!
In the meantime, I wanted to share a few neat games with you. For one you will need nothing but people, for the other you will need people and a deck of cards, and for one you’ll need the game itself and a thinking cap!
I played a game called Would You Rather on New Years Eve, and it is fascinating. It’s a game where one person posits a question to the group, and each person has a go at picking the thing “they would rather”. The devil’s in the details though; the best ones are the ones that divide the group in half.
Here are some of the “would you rathers” that stuck with me.
Would you rather: never have eggs again, OR never have berries again? (To clarify, “berries” are things that are berries in common parlance, not any technical bullshit like “tomatoes are berries” or “strawberries aren’t berries, they’re aggregate accessory fruits”. And never having eggs again includes anything that eggs are in.)
Would you rather: Whenever you encounter stairs, you don’t know what they are or understand what they work, and to use them someone must explain them to you, OR have every article of clothing you wear jingle like it’s full of a ton of loose pocket change? (To clarify, you don’t remember you don’t understand stairs; every time you encounter them is like the first time, and you simply cannot use them until someone helps you grock what they are.)
Would you rather: Have your mind in a gorilla in a lab being experimented on, with the knowledge that you will eventually be retired to a sanctuary at the end of your life, OR have your mind as it was at 4 years old, in a horse, working as a trail-ride horse. (To clarify: as a gorilla, you are you with all your experience and knowledge. You may have a chance to communicate with your captors, or a chance to escape, but only after years of failed attempts. As a horse, you are you as you were at 4 years old.)
It yielded some interesting discussions.
Another game you will need a deck of cards for. It’s called Hateful Ace, and it’s a neat party game as well!
BTW there’s a huge market for collectable decks of cards right now; Kickstarter has been a boon for designers!
So, grab a deck of cards and shuffle it up.
The game is about trying to guess how good or how bad something is, according to the person talking about it. Good things are red, not so good things are black. High cards are more, low cards are less. So a red ace is best, a black ace is worst. A red 7 is pretty good. A red 2 is just barely ok; black 2 barely not ok, and a black 7 pretty bad.
So someone goes first and draws a (secret) card. They look at it and formulate something to say that will enable the other players to guess the card.
Say I draw a Jack of diamonds-
I’d have to think of something I thought was pretty good. It could be something that happened to me, or something in general that I made up. I might say something like “…When you see your book cover for the first time.” And one by one, the other players guess what card I have. If someone nails it bang on, guess stops, and they’re awarded the card as their point. If no one gets it, it goes to whoever is closest. In the event of a tie, you can do either carry the point over, or do a tie breaker question with another card.
When it’s someone else’s turn, I won’t know what card they have and have to guess it using their clue. So if I said to you, “Seeing someone achieve their lifelong dream of becoming a published author, and you really dig their book,” what would you guess? I’d have to guess
because to me that’s pretty damn good. (By the way, that 10 of diamonds comes with 3D glasses; it’s a set of 3D playing cards!)
The last game I want to mention quickly is “The Witness“. It’s a puzzle solving game where you wander around a beautiful island and solve puzzles. I can’t say too much without it feeling like spoilers, so I’ll just show you some pictures, and then a link to a video review from one of my favourite content creators right now, Justin MacElroy.
So it’s pretty beautiful and beautifully pretty! The puzzles are fun and challenging, and truly there are some innovative things to stump you until you have a lightbulb moment. I really recommend this game if you like solving puzzles!
So that’s all for me for now. I’ll keep you posted about the progress of my book, Sleep Over. I hope to update here more regularly, even if it’s just to say hi and to show you neat stuff I’ve found, writing or otherwise. 🙂
Thanks for stopping by!
Heidi out.
H.G. Bells 