SticksNTricks' Writing Shticks

Happy Spooktober everyone! Since my last update on Twitter I've been pulling overtime on Kowloon. I've come so close and now I'm practically finished the final draft. Now comes the grueling process of editing and polishing. It is rather ironic that I've finished this around October. Wouldn't be a bad time to celebrate the holiday by publishing this. Not out of the wood work just yet though. I will say that I am so excited. At the same time, nervous. I'm really glad all the hard work I put into this is finally about to pay off, and hopefully the feedback I will receive will help me improve on future writings. I rather not be complacent. See you soon!

(This is a work in progress and does not reflect the final draft. These are the first two sample chapters.) I The Kowloon Walled City; once upon a time it was an ungoverned, forgotten, densely populated city with the highest rate of drug abuse, triad activity and prostitution in Kowloon. The Walled City grew over the past couple hundred years. The Chinese government restructured their policies that would allow less restricting child birth rates. At the same time, the policies restructured the city in a way to migrate homeless or lower income residents to the expanded segments. The entire area of Kowloon City eventually became a part of the new Walled City. Houses stacked upon houses upon commercial structures, Chinese manufacturing organizations dominated the rooftops, and the borders managed by the military. With so many new additions, there was bound to be tension and unrest within the populace. The tight knit community grew into a network, and Triad activity tripled s

Hello readers! I hope everything is going well on your end as it is for me. This is one of those rare moments where I post some personal stuff that may or may not interfere or tie with my creative projects. There's also going to be some plans I have in store for the future so that I can better manage, organize and track my work.  First off is some New Dawn Initiative stuff. I've not yet touched base on that for a while but I'm sure to bring in some new materials for the coming week. Expect a couple articles and some stories on the series.  Second; next week I will be back in college for my last semester for my duel major associates. It has been a long time coming given how different community college works and all that, especially given some early year complications. I expect my days to be short there since I've so few classes left to get my two degrees. Though that doesn't mean I won't have as much free time to devote into writing given the kind of schoo

I am Calvas Jones. My life once revolved around the mechanics of clockworks. Every gear, every mainspring, motors with their adjustments and patterns, how to synchronize them in perfect harmony with the hours of our planet. The music I hear with every tick, a testament of my success. Works of art to me while a mere complex contraption to others. However, my work ensures these timekeepers make their way in the hands of man. The shop has seen better days though. Rarely have I been in to tend the place. Not many customers were willing to purchase my merchandise. However, it was a very rough time. One where I was fortunate enough to keep my house and store. Unfortunately, I could not make a substantial amount needed to keep the infrastructures alive, and my fortune would not last forever. I had fought tooth and nail in the past to keep my father’s store running. At that time, I was but a mere boy barely reaching adulthood. Even when The Great War took his life, I persevered. Until thr

Each count of his breath was as painful as the last. With every second, to him, minutes. The corners of his eyes brought dread.  A fading conscious… a fading mind. He had forgotten how long he had been drifting. The ship was wrecked... its crew dead. It was instantaneous if he remembered correctly. They were the lucky ones. He continued his count, taking into regard how little he was taking in oxygen. John lost a quarter of his tank through a breach. A rough patch job earned him about a few hours left of oxygen… provided he rationed it. But those few hours were already long gone.  A fusion of anxiety and fear shortened his lifespan. And in those moments he was close, close to what he believed would be his inevitable fate.  Death did not scare him, however… John was afraid of dying. He was afraid of being alone in his last moments… afraid of dying alone and dying a slow, helpless painful death. Never in his life had he imagined this was how it would end. It was his worst fear com

In this era of gaming, there's been a surplus of one particular genre that's been on the rise since TheChineseRoom's Dear Esther. A narrative driven game that focuses heavily on said narrative... and absolutely nothing else. And many other games that came out have been trying to work exactly as Dear Esther has. And each time, each game provides simplistic 1-4 hours of minuscule game time with pricing way above the necessary limits. 20 dollars, 30 dollars even. Time and energy has been wasted making a game that shouldn't be called as such. And its an insult to both the gaming community and the medium itself to call these genres as such. Now I don't want to hear all this crap about 'its poetic' or 'its art' and 'its different' because these are not good excuses. They are never good excuses. And I honestly am ashamed to call myself a writer in a time where people look upon some of these as narrative 'masterpieces' befitting of literary

Its hard for me to appreciate Arkane Studio and Bethesda/Zenimax's reboot of a highly underappreciated video game. Coupled with the potential sequel the original had before it was canned in favor of said reboot, it left a bad impression when I saw the initial trailer for it. And many of the underlying problems stems from a very severe case of unoriginality and uncreativity the game had. Sure the game mechanics were beautifully sound and the level designs were pretty decent, but said levels all looked exactly the same and there was hardly any substance to the style. Let alone the story itself is ill-motivating and very bland and ill-paced. From a decent genre of first person shooting sci-fi adventure/horror that was Prey, where the lines of supernatural elements and science fiction blends beautifully within a living starship, is brought down to a very ill-contrived reboot where familiarity and generalization takes the good out of everything that was to enjoy.  Arkane basical

Anomaly Class: Solar Item:   S-761 Threat Level: Blue Containment Procedures: S-761 is to be kept in a standard containment storage in a secure section of the X-Facility. Only those of Class 2 personnel with security clearance Beta and higher are to have access to S-761. For the duration of an A-9 council member’s service, they are presented with one S-761 tablet. This same procedure will apply to the position of Director. Description: S-761 is a large glass jar, during the time of discovery, contains one thousand, five hundred and thirty seven orange florescent colored pills. At a glance, ingestion of the pill did not cause any severe side effects or beneficiary usages. That was until at 5/27/20XX when a Class-3 personnel was supposedly terminated during a containment breach. Several minutes after his death, the Class-3’s body combusted into flames that burned for approximately ten seconds, leaving behind a massive lump of ash and soot. Thirty seconds in, what appeare

Anomaly Class: Solar Item: S-551 Threat Level: Green Containment Procedures: S-551 is to be kept in a containment cell. Personnel of Abrahamic faith are to attend to S-551 at least every Sunday. The same protocol follows for any day during Abrahamic holidays including lent, fasting, Christmas, Hanukah, Good Friday, Hijra, Passover, etc.  Description:  S-551 has multiple characteristics defining its appearance depending on personnel’s piousness and beliefs. The most common characteristics reported by members of every faith is that S-551 is a humanoid skull. Anthropologists have deduced from studying the materials from the skull, and the skull itself, that S-551 is over [REDACTED] years old. The genetic compound of the skull shows no records of any human or subspecies hominids that match it. S-551 is sentient and shows cognitive functions. Discovery and recovery of the object took place at 19XX when local reports detail a discovery and attack of a hidden multi-faith cult.

Mass In 2065, Von Braun Aerospace unveiled the controversial physics defying Mass Drive, capable of warping and reducing the surrounding ship of its mass to absolute zero. Ships were capable of exceeding 1.5 times the speed of light. In 2070, Von Braun revealed the 2 nd generation of the Mass Drive, dubbed the Mark II Vittore Mass Drive after its original inventor. It utilizes solar energy stored as a method of powering the drive and the ship itself for long term space exploration. Expeditions were sent to determine habitability and colonization. In 10 standard years, Humanity has colonized the Moon, Mars, Ganymede, Io, Europa, Titan, Triton, Calisto, Phoebus and Deimos. In the future, plans to terraform Venus are being evaluated. 2077, Axom Industries created a powerful thinking computer under the name Durendal. Its purpose, to lead exploratory science vessels across the depths of deep space. It was this year the Mark III Vittore Mass Drive was unveiled. Durendal was s