My Game Reviewed by Orson Scott Card

My aunt Sheila saw a review in the Deseret News where Orson Scott Card discussed my card game, "Blast from the Past". He said,

"...most Mormon games, if you remove the Mormon references, are not very fun. It's like most Mormons who set out to write a novel. "Mine will be good because it's clean," the writer thinks, or "Mine will be good because it's Mormon." They don't grasp that the story has to be fascinating or it doesn't matter how clean or how Mormon it is -- no one will want to read it. So you can imagine how happy I was to discover that there is now a Mormon trivia game that is actually fun to play. When I was picking up Seek, I noticed a game -- also published by Deseret Book -- called Blast From the Past, a game about LDS Church history."

I take that as such a high compliment!!! I mean wow, I wasn't even trying for that one. I just wanted to get a game out there and see how it would do. He also said,

"Blast From the Past is a Mormon game that can be played again and again. It's fun because of what you learn and how amusing some of the cards are, and also because any player might win,"

which I totally agree with. I've played the game dozens of times now, and I've only won twice!!! Aaaaaagh, I must be really bad at trivia if I can research it, write it, and then still get mixed up on dates.

Anyway, I'm working on a new game now, and I don't think it will get nearly as much praise, but hopefully I will learn more about publishing this time around.

Here's a link to the review, in case you're interested:

http://www.mormontimes.com/mormon_voices/orson_scott_card/?id=9917

Lifeless TV show pilot

This past April, I spent 2 weeks working on a TV show pilot in downtown Salt Lake City. The show is called "Lifeless", and I think it is getting post production audio right now, so its almost ready to pitch to networks or whoever...

I was the 2nd AC, which stands for 2nd Assistant Camera. We used a small HD camera that doesn't record to tape, but to a little drive. Our 1st AC had to leave the shoot after just a few days because his sister was in a car accident, so I was also the 1st AC for much of the shoot.

Basically, I was really busy and had a blast. It was a great crew and the talent were really, well, talented. If all goes well, we'll be shooting a whole season in the Salt Lake area next year.

I threw a little bit of lyrics to music and turned my friend Phillip's band loose on it. The end result is a pretty decent TV theme song. Its a little too upbeat for the show, but quite a catchy song.

What a fun time.

Which one do you like best?  I personally like the James Bond feel of Phillip's arrangement.

Mormon Tabernacle Choir

We interviewed Craig Jessop a few days ago, director for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. After the interview, I gave him a copy of my women's chorus arrangment of "Far Away on Judea's Plains". He was very gracious. What a remarkable guy.

Here is the first few pages of another hymn arrangement I did of "I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go".

Recently I got a little choir together to sing yet another arrangement, "Praise to the Man", at a devotional for the Church of Jesus Christ audiovisual department in a few weeks.

Even though music is not my profession, I spend a lot of time working on it. Thanks goodness for hobbies. I love it.

Multidentity

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Talk about a different sort of card game! If you can pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time, then you'll love playing Multidentity. There are 108 charade cards, and your head, hands, and feet act out different charades at the same time. You can see what the cards look like here, but imagine acting out a clumsy waiter with swimmer arms and a tyrannosaurus head!

I'm toying with the idea of making a few videos to advertise for the game on Youtube. There, I'll refer people to my ebay account to order copies of the game.

This is ex-siding!

Here is the before and "after" for my house's new siding. Actually, I think the real siding will look better than my drawing.

You can see that the side of the house is shaped really weird, and the brown wood siding has got to go. It took a little while to figure out a design that would make the side of the house look quasi-normal. Hopefully it doesn't look too cool for the rest of the neighborhood, right? It will cost about $6000 to put new siding on the house, but I think it will be easier to sell with new siding.

What do you think?