Week 710

What’s this? I’m blogging about my work on a weekly basis – a simple way to track and archive whatever it is I spend my time on.

Last week I wrote a new retro column for the Dutch Official PlayStation Magazine, about Wipeout and Gran Turismo, or really about PlayStation racing games in general.

I also got the new issue in the mail, for which I did a 4-page interview with Dylan Cuthbert of Q-Games, titled something like “British boy wonder in Kyoto”, and a column about Tony Hawk Pro Skater, comparing the original Tony Hawk to Super Mario 64 mostly. (I should do a column series that compares random games to Super Mario 64.)

The latest issue of Bright Magazine should also be out, but I didn’t receive it yet. It has my Minecraft feature, as well as a papercraft PS3 controller on its cover, so all you gamer folks should check it out.

I wrote a Next Level column for nrc.next, about game development environment Unity and famous games entrepreneur Peter Molyneux. It was triggered by the Unite event for game developers which took place in Amsterdam last week, which I didn’t attend in the end. The column can be read over at Bashers.nl. In the same spirit, Control finally published my interview with Unity CEO David Helgason.

On Tuesday, my father-in-law helped to get rid of the pile of sand in our garden, and finished the encasement around the hazel tree, which means the garden is now officially pretty much feature complete.

That night, I had another meeting with the Bashers.nl core team. We’ve decided that we want to do a soft relaunch in early September, slowly rebuilding the content flow. At the same time, I’ll work on creating the next version of the site, which should launch as soon as possible.

On Thursday, I visited the press day for The Spiral, the upcoming TV show and ARG combo, which I’m blogging about. I saw the first two episodes for the second time, now with music and color correction, and chatted with some of the guys who are LARPing to apply another layer of reality, as well as its creators. True to character, I was totally star-struck by the show’s Flemmish star. The game has already started at TheSpiral.eu, while the first episode will air on Sunday, September 2nd.

As before, most time was spent working on my new novel, De verdwijners. I started working through everything I wrote before, slamming it into shape. This is mentally demanding work, but feels like something I’m experienced at, as it’s not that different from editing a newspaper article. While writing fiction, to me, feels very different from doing copywriting or journalism.

Finally, my editor got back from her holiday, and we agreed that I’ll send her a ‘solid’ version of the book in the week of September 3rd. This gives me a full week, plus some bonus days, to get it all done. Let’s go!