Inkshares + Sword & Lasers = Awesome!

I ran my first crowdfunding effort during the last few weeks. It would be lazy to say that the experience was difficult but rewarding when in fact it was so much more complicated than that. The reality of running a crowdfunding campaign is already a daunting, nerve wracking prospect. What made this into an incomprehensible nightmare was the layers or complications that almost obscured what should have been an already difficult but straightforward task.

So what’s Inkshares?

I think the best way to describe Inkshares would be as the love-child of Kickstarter and any of the more reputable self-publishing houses. Whereas Kickstarter is great, if what you’re looking for is a pile of money to spend on your project, and self-publishers want to take that money to turn your project into a book (handling such things as design, layout, cover, distribution and all manners of editing) Inkshares combines the best of both.

You see, the problem with Kickstarter and other similar crowdfunding platforms is that they don’t solve the main problem writers encounter; handling all the tasks that aren’t writing. While there are plenty of companies that will gladly do all that for a fee, you still need to pay them a fair amount of dollars. The natural solution is to fund with the former and then hire the later. Inkshares skips ahead in that process by merging the two. However there’s another layer to it.

As far as I can tell, Inkshares isn’t simply trying to be the crowdfunded self-publishing company. They’re looking at being recognized as a legitimate publisher. This is an important distinction and one that I hope proves true (update: so far they have been extremely professional and demanding. Treating me almost as a valued employee rather then a customer. I am liking this.) because it means that funding campaigns aren’t just about amassing funds but also about gathering an audience and proving the project’s worth. This essentially turns the costly process of filtering through hundreds of submissions into a pre-ordering phase. You don’t need a slush pile if the entire platform is about determining which books can find readers.

The interesting thing is how this changes the dynamic for the author. This is a much more modern approach that both opens doors to writers but also puts much more demands on them. I’m conflicted about this because all I want to do is write my stories, but at the same time, as a student of new media and social network marketing, I realize that the modern author needs to be more then a writer of words and teller of stories. He or she needs to be able to communicate with an audience, preferably pre-built, and be comfortable handling all the ancillary tasks a writer will one day be asked to perform. A lot of that is acquiring and interacting with readers. One thing that’s clear about having run my campaign on Inkshares; to be successful on this platform you either bring an audience or you quickly learn how to build one. I know some of you will probably think that your success should only be dependant on the quality of your book and I’m sorry but you’re wrong. Few people hate self-promotion as much as I do but if you don’t believe in your product enough to show it off and get people interested in it, why should a publisher? The good news is that self-promotion is a skill and like any skill, it can be learned.

Where Inkshares shines though is that unlike self-publishing houses, they have a vested interest in your book being good. Once funded it is my hope that they treat you like a publisher woul. So far, so good. I’ve been given a publishing team and a production schedule and it seems I’ll be working with professionals who, I hope, don’t see me as a client but as a team member (satisfied so far on that point). Someone with whom they’ll work and be demanding of quality. This is important to me because Inkshares’ legitimacy as a publisher is directly linked to my own legitimacy as an author, which in turn has an influence on my career as a writer.

The Sword & Laser Collection Contest

I learned about Inkshares through an acquaintance (CJ Boat. Check out his project here) who had signed up for the Sword & Laser Collection Contest on the platform. I’ve been a listener of the Sword & Laser podcast for a couple of years but had been behind on episodes so I was not aware of this contest at first.

Sword & Laser is what I would consider a big deal. If it’s not that important in the publishing industry it is very relevant to me. As a fan of new media, science fiction and fantasy literature, it is a natural fit to my sensibilities. I enjoy the show, I like the hosts and the podcast is part of a media ecosystem in which I’m personally invested. Having my dream job be somehow associated with the Sword & Laser brand would not only be an important stepping stone in my career but a personal badge of honour. I had already tried my hand at getting into the Sword & Laser Anthology that was published last year but both the stories I submitted were rejected. To be fair they weren’t really good and out of roughly a thousand stories submitted, Sword & Laser published twenty. Even if my stories had been good that’s still only a 2% inclusion rate.

For this contest though, I didn’t have to hastily write anything. I already had a book ready and it was seeing some fairly good reviews. It was only a matter of verifying that I could enter the book in the contest, setting up and account and I was in.

The prizes for the contest are pretty amazing. The top five books with the most pre-orders would get published regardless of goal met. The authors of these books would also get some coaching advice from Gary Whitta, author of Star Wars: Rogue One. Not too shabby. On top of that, one of these finalists would be picked by Tom and Veronica of the Sword & Laser as the first book inducted into the Sword & Laser Collection on Inkshares and be interviewed on the podcast. Both a great honour and fantastic opportunity for exposure. Not to mention some serious validation.

The good

It took a while to get to the point where being in the top five wasn’t the only benefit I could see from the campaign. I knew it was a long shot but being one of the finalists was the single goal of the effort in my eyes. Getting a publishing run as described on Inkshares’ website would run me between 5 000$ and 8 000$ at a self publishing house. I never really believed I had a chance at being selected for the grand prize (see my success with the Anthology above) so there was really only one bullseye to hit.

It’s towards the end of the contest that I realized a couple of things. The first was how much of a learning experience this was. Remember what I said about self-promotion being a skill? Well, it’s not a skill I had and in fact I’m probably still not very good at it, but y’know what? I’m a lot better at it today then I was on April 1st. I also got on board with Twitter and discovered a few things about how to approach people for help. The biggest lesson I can point to is that if you want something from someone, hinting is a bullshit way of going about it. Asking is the proper method and persistence the winning quality.

The second important lesson that I benefited from was about friendship. No, this isn’t a 1980s cartoon PSA. However, if you’re going to be plunging into self-promotion, you’re going to need all the help you can get. Now, you can obviously pay for help, but as I discovered, a lot of time that can be a waste of good money (of the few dollars I put into ads on podcasts I'd say I saw a 0$ return on investment). My best results came from asking old friends and making new ones. People are surprisingly willing to help a guy out when his cause is just and his requirements not too demanding. People came out of the woodwork to support my campaign and I made new friends out of people I reached out to. At the zero hour, I even made friends with the competition. This is very important because the moment you strip off the veil of competition from the contest, you reveal the cooperative nature of crowdfunding, especially in the publishing industry. Only the insane would not want to see other writers succeed because, normally, we’re not competing for readers but can in fact refer fans to one another. Which leads me to…

The Bad

From the day I entered the contest up to Monday, June 1st at 3:30 am, I was a ball of nervous energy and felt ready to implode at any moment. Running a crowdfunding campaign can be a very demanding and stressful experience on it’s own, but it’s one I’m somewhat well adapted to. However, once you attach the competition component of the contest, it becomes a completely different animal. One with fangs, and spines and venom as I would later discover.

Normally, if this would have been only about crowdfunding, I would have reached out to the other authors early. We would have built a network to refer readers to one another. The hardest part of crowdfunding is finding new ‘markets’ in which to promote your campaign. Having access to each other’s network would have made the process a lot less lonely and significantly easier. We could have concentrated our efforts on the campaigns closer to finishing and referred one another to various media outlets. The contest, while being a fantastic opportunity also built walls, if not between all authors, at least between me and the rest of the participants. It made for a miserable and lonely experience. At certain points in the contest the margins between participants were so narrow and the benefits to winners so good that it was infuriating whenever another book got so much as a single pre-order, yet incredibly relieving when someone pre-ordered my book. I hated it. That malicious attitude is what led to…

The Ugly

So let’s get this out of the way: I won. I won really big. If you don’t already know I finished fourth in pre-orders and maybe third or fourth in unique readers. Not only am I getting published but I was also selected (along with Asteroid Made of Dragons) to be in the Sword & Laser Collection. It’s an incredible opportunity but it also means that I need to be somewhat careful about what I’m about to talk about.

Let me start off by saying; Inkshares is a very young company. This contest was the first event of it’s kind they ran and their goal was to generate a buzz about their services in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre. Sword & Laser, while an older institution, isn’t that experienced with running this kind of contest either and their goal was to do something cool with their brand for the Science Fiction and Fantasy community because that is what they do. Both entities had nothing but good intentions and I think it’s very important to remember that going forward because these are two institutions which I believe will be very important in this market during the coming years.

The contest was well run, but there are some things that I suspect will be handled differently. Let me lay it out for you from my perspective and you’ll see what I mean.

About a week or two into the contest I managed, to my surprise, to squeeze into the top five. I hovered in fifth place I believe. At some point I was dethroned, so to speak, by another book who had a suspiciously low number of readers and had jumped by a surprising amount of books within minutes. So far I had been used to small, granular increases in my pre-orders so this rang all the alarms to me and I was ready to cry foul. The very next day, my friend Vincent ordered fifty copies of my book for his shop, catapulting me into third place. This created a grey area in my mind. On one hand, I had discovered that it was possible for someone to create a proxy account and buy his own book to go up in the rankings. On the other hand, I also knew that a sudden jump in pre-orders wasn’t necessarily a sign of malicious behaviour but, the seed of paranoia had been planted.

Let me go on a tangent here and explain the flaw in the system. Inkshares’ failing if you will. Why would someone buy his own book just to be in the top five? Why not just go to a self publisher instead? Well, aside from the coaching from Gary Whitta and the potential to be picked for the collection, there are strong economic incentives to ‘cheat’ that way. First, for each pre-order the author gets paid back 50% of the book price. So each book is actually half-price. This means an enterprising author might use this method to jump ahead in rankings while also building a stock of cheap books to sell at conventions or locally. Also, without going into too much detail, Inkshares had a system of credits that could be accumulated by signing up and referring books on social media. If an author was accumulating credits and using them to buy his own books, he was essentially setting up a situation where he would be paid to receive copies of his book which he could then sell at cons, locally, etc.

I was never tempted enough to even consider doing this, but could I blame someone else for doing it? Yes. I could understand their motivation however. The prizes at the end were that good.

This is where diplomacy stays my hand. Both because someone ignorant of my campaign’s behind the scenes could accuse me of this and because pointing fingers would hurt no one but me, I’m not going to name anyone, but I spent the last few days of the contest convinced several books were using the above technique or something similar to buy their way into the top five. Today however I give everyone the benefit of the doubt, including Inkshares who, I decided, must have run their own verifications and decided that everyone deserved their victory.

So how did I decide that some people cheated and that Inkshares would have acted if they found behaviour that was against what they would tolerate for the contest?

In the night from Sunday to Monday, I spent hours chatting on Twitter with Joseph Terzieva who is publishing Lost Generation, as we monitored, nervously, the progress of the campaign in the last few hours. Here’s where I get catty. A few hours before the conclusion of the contest, a book appeared in the top 10 out of nowhere. It had 50 readers and was accumulating pre-orders fast. Half an hour before the end, Awakened, the book in question, was still at 50 readers but had gone up a few hundred books and was in 8th place if I remember correctly. I know that a few other authors were losing their shit because there was something extremely irregular about the situation. A lot of the readers for Awakened seemed odd and I would wager were proxy accounts. I’m not saying this is what happened but here’s another little trick that could be done with this contest: If you have enough proxy accounts, you can use the referral link from one to buy books on another. This gives the account with the referral credit,s which it can then use to pre-order from the link of another proxy account, etc. Thus creating a chain of orders that cost no money (except to Inkshares) and generate pre-orders without affecting the number of readers. Now, I feel comfortable saying that the book in question was Awakened because no matter what was happening, Inkshares took action and removed a significant amount of the pre-orders from that book sending it back below the 10th position. I don’t know the facts behind what happened and there is a chance that it might have been a bug in the system or overzealous fans thinking they were helping out. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that while it was shown the system wasn’t perfect, Inkshares demonstrated the will to correct things where they could.

That’s very important I should note. One of my worries, above the possibility of being edged out by someone running a less than legitimate campaign was that a soiled contest would hurt the Inkshares platform and as I’ve stated above, I see a lot of potential for that company to be an important player not just for aspiring authors but in the publishing industry as a whole.

The book industry is changing and while we can see the major publishers slowly adapting to a certain degree, Inkshares is a completely new player that offers a model that fits perfectly into the current hole between new writers and their potential audience. They are a bridge that connects those with books that have the chops to get readers and the public they deserve. This contest was a trial for the writers who participated and a few really good books didn’t make it, but it was also a test for Inkshares as they made a land-grab for a larger audience. I can proudly say that I’ve brought over 200 new people into their ecosystem which is important. A crowdfunding service like this depends on readers becoming a community and browsing their site like they would a book store. Just a book store where most of the books aren’t available yet.

In the end, I’m glad I did this contest and I hope that The Life Engineered finds success at Inkshares. I would like to run another campaign for the sequel as soon as it’s ready. I’m eager to start work with the publishing team I was assigned and put the finishing touches on my book. I want to get it in the hands of my readers as soon as possible. Now, would I do a contest like this again? Knowing the stress and work it entails but not the results I might get? That’s a difficult question.

As a final note I want to say that a few really promising books did not make it into the final 6 (it was supposed to be 5 but Inkshares and Sword & Laser changed their minds. I support their decision). These books are still in their funding stages and they look amazing or, as I would have said a week ago; threatening. I highly recommend you go have a look at them and pre-order. These are the guys that will be my contemporaries and fellow authors in the coming years. I would appreciate if you showed them a little love.

Thank you,

Ghosts of War

These Old Bones

Rockets

Here there be TadPools

God dammit I love a cruise. Which is good, because I’m organizing one for the Facebook fan community of the Frogpants podcast network. I stumbled into this role after a few posts extoling how amazing it would be if we all went cruising together. After a few of these posts I interjected that if we wanted this shared experience, then why not organize it and see where it goes. Just like that and without my immediate knowledge, I had volunteered for the job.

"Finally! I can show off my old vacation photos!"

However, not everyone knows exactly what to expect from a cruise and pertaining specifically to this group what are some of the hurdles to organizing such an event. There’s a lot I need to explain to my fellow Tadpooligans (members of the aforementioned Facebook community) so it makes sense that I should tackle this in a blog post so as not to miss an opportunity to give out some extra information. I want to talk about what to expect on a cruise, what are shore excursions, why I made some of the choices I did and some of the extras I’m hoping to include that will make this a Tadpool cruise.

The first time it was suggested I go on a cruise, my reaction was to ask “do I look in my mid-seventies?”. In my mind, a cruise ship was like a floating retirement home. A hotel with buffets, casinos and bingo, where people spent a week bathing in the sun while drinking watered down cocktails and gorging on heat-lamp food. To be fair, one can absolutely do this on a cruise and if that’s their jam, more power to them, but as I discovered, there is so much more to this kind of vacation.

You’ll feel an incredible amount of freedom

Complimentary pizza until 2am? The taste of freedom!

When you woke up this morning, what was the first thing you thought about? Was it the things you have to do? Did you have to plan diner? Get the kids to a play date? Go to some social obligation? Figure out where to fit in doing the laundry in all this? When you wake up on a cruise ship you have none of these thoughts. The only thing on your mind is the list of fun things you’ll do today. We don’t always realize how much like shackles all these mundane responsibilities are. Now, being an adult and taking care of all your obligations is important and I’m not advocating for a Mad Max world of anarchy, but wouldn’t it be nice to not have to think about anything for a few days? That’s the freedom of being on a cruise ship.

Since you’ve already paid for lodging, food and most of the activities you’ll be doing, you don’t have the burden of constantly budgeting yourself. Meals are available almost everywhere at almost any time. Your only responsibility is to decide what you want to do. Sure there are a few scheduled things like shows and meals, but if you missed a show you were probably doing something more fun anyways and you can catch the next one later that week. As for scheduled meals, those are just for the dining room. You can grab a bite almost anywhere on the ship and the food is excellent.

Added bonus: I find that cruises are a great class equalizer. Passengers might have different sized cabins but out on the ship? It doesn’t matter if you’re a millionaire or if you won your trip on a radio contest; everyone is the same.

You will not get bored

Let me be a little more specific; you will be exactly as bored, as you want to be. As a vacationer, I have a lot of difficulty sitting still. I wake up, race to breakfast and immediately chain one activity after the other. I’ll go on shore excursions or swim laps in the pool during the day. I sign up for classes or visits (Note: the Oasis of the Seas, where we’re planning the cruise so far has an art gallery and is filled with a huge variety of art. Worth visiting the ship just for that). I’ll catch seminars and shows later in the day and hang out in bars at night. Others are happy just sitting by the pool or in the park (Oasis has a park too). If I were an athlete I’d sign up for some of the sports available like basketball. I’ve lost weight since my last cruise I’m planning on hitting the gym each day and trying out the wall climbing (there are two climbing walls on Oasis).

Any ship with a surfing machine can't be boring

What I’m saying is that cruises today offer such a wide variety of activities (or innactivities if you’re so inclined) that one has to intentionally look for reasons not to enjoy themselves. Putting aside tragedies and illnesses, with very little effort, you will find something to do that suits your character.

You can customize the Hell out of your cruise

So the base price includes everything you need to feel unprecedented freedom and relaxation, but what if you want more? What if you want to customize your vacation just a little more though?

"Come with me, you will see..."

It doesn’t take a whole lot of extra money to put in some add-ons to your trip that will make the whole difference. For example, while Royal Caribbean will have a long list of available drinks available as part of your standard cruise package alcohol and soft drinks aren’t complimentary. That’s great news if you don’t drink these beverages but less so if you thrive on a nice effervescent cola or want to get sloshed. This is why there are drink packages available to give you access to sodas or certain alcoholic drinks so you don’t have to think about that either. There are even wine packages so you can have a bottle or two waiting for you at your diner table.

If relaxing by the pool is just not relaxing enough, the Oasis has a complete spa offering pedicures, manicures, massages and other treatments. Some more complex and advanced classes are available, like scuba diving or wine tasting. If the incredible food available in the dining room and in the many restaurants all over the ship still aren’t to your liking, because you’re a real snob, there are a few specialty restaurants where you can pay a little extra for a truly unique dining experience.

In short, whether you have a little money or a lot of dough to toss around, there are ways to adjust your experience. If all else fails, there’s always shopping. The promenade is essentially a small mall with shops of almost any variety from souvenir to liquor to luxury items. Finally, if money is really burning a hole in your pocket, I have one word for you: casino.

Of course, with three days out of the trip being ports of call, one of the biggest way to customize your trip are the shore excursions.

Shore excursions

As I’ve mentioned, there’s hardly any reason to get off the ship if you don’t want to. However, the ship travels between destinations for a reason; there are things to see and experience amongst these islands. Before I get into the details of some of the choices I’m contemplating, I need to take a moment to discuss some of my decision making process.

I’m making choices. Not all of these choices are going to please everyone. Nothing is set in stone yet, but I have to start picking a few things if only so I have solid matters to discuss with the travel agent I’m working with. Screaming “Cruise!” into the vacuum isn’t very likely to yield results, so I’m using my own experience as well as information I’m gathering from a few place (including the survey I gave the TadPool to fill) in order to make my decisions. It’s the first time I organize a cruise for a fan group, but it’s sure as sugar is sweet that this isn’t my first trip to the confectionary. While I will inevitably either price or organize the trip so it’s out of reach for some people, if I were to accommodate them I’d be doing the same disservice to others. It’s a sad fact that what works for some don’t work for others. So bear with me, I’m doing my best to accommodate the majority and that’s what you’ll see reflected as we move forward.

Trust me.

Shore excursions are a way to experience what each port of call has to offer. I’ve decided to explore a West Caribbean cruise out of Fort Lauderdale on Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas. Let’s take a second to explore this line of decisions.

Royal Caribbean’s : Surprisingly, the cruise line and ship weren’t my decision. I asked Teras Cassidy of Geek Nation Tours to give me an initial proposition for a group cruise that would suit a very diverse ensemble of nerds and he came back with Royal Caribbean’s. This is the only cruise line I’ve ever dealt with and I have nothing but praise for their service, ships, amenities, food, etc. Having already worked with them for an onboard event, I know that they are great at communicating and accommodating. Bottom line: Even if there are reputably cheaper options, I didn’t feel the need to argue for them, choosing instead what I consider a sure bet for a great experience.

The Oasis of the Seas : Again, it wasn’t my idea to pick that ship, but I could hardly argue against it. While it’s not as cheap as the smaller ships it does offer more comforts and luxuries as well as variety of activities and environments to enjoy (there’s a park with actual trees and an aqua-theater for Cirque du Soleil-like performances).  Even the larger, newer ship, The Quantum of the Seas, while having more gimmicks, doesn’t have the same variety as the Oasis.

Western Caribbean : Why the Caribbean at all? Why not a West Coast cruise or an Alaskan cruise? Simply, Caribbean cruises are the ‘entry level’ cruise and offer the biggest variety of activities and better prices. There are sailings pretty much any time of the year and it offers most of what is to be expected from a cruise. Finally, if I’m expected to organize this, I want to do it in familiar territory.

February : It’s outside of hurricane season. It’s not too hot like a summer cruise and, unlike the originally suggested holiday cruise, it’s cheaper. The only thing that might make the date slide one way or the other is that we may very likely need to accommodate school holidays for people who want to bring their kids. 

Now that we have the ground rules covered, let’s talk about what I have in mind for shore excursions. First stop…

Labadee, Haiti

A lot of people mentioned being interested in doing some beach activities during the cruise. Labadee is pretty much perfect for a TadPool Beach Party. There are a series of shore excursions and activities but I opted to not do anything special for this port of call. The ship will be bringing a buffet to shore for food. There are activities like kayaking and seadoos as well as swimming of course. I’d like Labadee to be our ‘free day’ for shore excursions. As we start making reservations and hammering things down, we can form small group for those who want to explore particular activities, but otherwise, my wish is that we all enjoy the beach together while everyone goes off to do whatever excursion they’ve signed up for.

That's a lot of jet skies 

Falmouth, Jamaica

There are a lot of activities in Falmouth, most of them culminating in climbing the Dunn’s River Falls. This is something that might cause some welcome discussion because, though the falls are kinda fun, they are a little crowded making the ascent like standing in line in a river. For a similar price, I was contemplating we could all take a catamaran trip along Montego Bay to go swimming amongst coral and fish. For those who want to stay on the catamaran they are more then welcome to do so and enjoy the complimentary drinks on board and just enjoy the sun.

Cozumel, Mexico

Again, I’m bucking the trend with my selection of activities. The go-to excursion is visiting the Mayan ruins of Tulum. However, these are over an hour away by bus which isn’t that bad but isn’t my idea of fun. Instead, since a surprising amount of people have expressed interest in culinary activities, I was thinking of splitting our group in two: those with a taste for inebriants can enjoy the Tequila Experience and become tequila experts. Those who don’t like booze as much can enjoy the Salsa, Salsa and Margaritas excursion to learn how to make these Mexican specialties.

I’m obviously open to other suggestions or discussions for these excursions and there are still a lot of details to figure out. Note that price had to be a consideration for a lot of the choices made here and I wanted to offer as inclusive a catalogue of activities as possible while keeping the group somewhat together a little.

TadPooligans on the Oasis of the Seas

Before any of you get the wrong idea for my previous paragraph, I have no intention that the TadPool group spend every waking (and some not-so-waking) moment together. Most shore excursions last a few hours at most, leaving participants to do their own thing the rest of the time. However, this is meant to be a TadPool cruise, so there should be plenty of opportunities for the Damn Distracting Bunch of Freaks to see each other.

I don’t want to force anyone into anything but I will strongly suggest we get together every morning for breakfast. The ship issues schedules for each day and I’d like us to be able to discuss briefly each morning over bacon what everyone is planning to do so that those who want to group up for onboard activities have no trouble doing so.

This is all well and good, but we need some actual TadPool activities to make this a proper TadCruise.

The scavenger hunt

Scavenger hunts on cruise ships aren’t new but they sure are fun. The Oasis of the Seas is an enormous ship (second largest cruise ship in the world I believe) and has an incredible amount of things to see on board. This would be a continuous event that would culminate with an award ceremony during…

A podcast taping before a live audience

Brian Ibbott has agreed to tape an episode of Coverville (or something else, we’ll figure it out) during the cruise. For the moment I’m thinking this could be an activity for our last night on board so that we have a full week of insane adventures to draw from for topics an discussion. While we can have access to a conference room for this, if we have enough people we might be able to leverage taking over the comedy club on board. This would also be a perfect night to have…

A trivia contest

I don’t have much decided regarding the details of this activity, but I think an hour of trivia before or after the recording would be incredibly fun. Mr. Ibbott has demonstrated his genius at hosting such things, so I might call on him for that. I have to be careful how much I ask of him though or else I’ll have to start paying the poor guy.

A board game night

It wouldn’t be a geek trip without breaking out the board games. Zombie Dice, Cards Against Humanity, etc. We can take over a conference room and play until the wee hours of the night if we so please. They serve food and drink late on those cruise ships.

Cruise activities

I don’t want to overload the week with TadPool specific activities as there is already so much to do on the Oasis and all you need to do to make something TadPoolish is add a few Distracting Freaks, we can easily organize a Casino Night and Dance Night or a wine tasting, etc. There are traditionally two fancy diners on board; the Captain’s diner and the Chef’s diner as well as a plethora of things to do. As long as we’re doing some of them together, it’ll be a blast and it’ll be a TadCruise.

There you go folks. This is what I’ve got so far. I haven’t submitted anything to Teras yet, so everything remains malleable for the time being, but I’d like to be able to send him to negotiate prices and benefits on our behalf as soon as early February so we have time to prepare and save up.

The survey will remain open until then and if you need to communicate with me for questions or suggestions, feel free to do so at jfdubeau at gmail.com

On Talent

Yesterday I listened to a podcast by one Justin Robert Young. It's a good podcast. Insight on sports, politics, media, whatever. Varied enough to be interesting but also so varied that it's sometimes hit-or-miss. Doesn't matter, the host is compelling and the subjects tackled are often in synch with my interests. I listen and like it.

The latest episode was of particular interest to me. Mainly because the host said the following: "There's no such thing as talent!". Preach it Justin! Or so I initially thought. I mean, these are words, or at least a concept that I've long held as a core belief. I don't believe in talent.

It's kinda weird considering that a lot of people, very nice and generous people, tell me I'm talented. However, where this might be seen as a compliment, I have trouble swallowing it that way.

You see, talent is defined as natural skill or aptitude. I believe in skill and I believe in natural aptitude, but if you put all these ingredients into the same cake I think what you're baking is a load of excuses. We'll get to that in a moment. Skill is great because it's something you develop. It's the ability to do something well, an expertise. I believe in that. To become skillful you need to work at it. You need to put in the time and effort to build that expertise. I'm also cool with natural aptitude, but only so far as 'aptitude' is a better capacity to do something. Say if you're tall and have good reflex then you have an aptitude for basketball and ducking from low door frames.

Talent however is trickier. Especially the way it's used in today's parlance. The way people talk about talent they act as if it's a super power. Take a great composer or a brilliant illustrator. It's easy to say "Oh, he's so talented.", but have you ever heard anyone talk of a doctor as talented or an engineer as talented? Of course not. Doctors, engineers, scientists, these people are smart and have worked hard to get to where they are. Artists? They're just talented. The implication is that they're born with it.

"But JF," you whine, trying to find an excuse "a talent has to be developed.". You're a terrible person for thinking that, because that's worst. That's like saying that if you've got talent but you don't develop it, you're wasting a gift. You're Superman using his powers to do his groceries faster instead of saving the world. If someone doesn't study to become a doctor or whatever, well, they just didn't work hard enough. The 'talented' artist though? He has the power in him already! There's no excuse not to be awesome. The average Joe works hard to acquire skills, the 'talented' however have to willfully waste the skills he was given at birth.

That is a load of bullshit.

Order your own!

"But I mean it as a compliment." your shrill voice explains, and to that I say 'no, you don't', or maybe you do but that's not how I hear it and a lot of artists I know don't hear it that way either. Here's what we hear: "I could do that too if I had the talent.". Even if you don't use the word 'talent' as an insult, if you believe in this supernatural birthright of certain artists to be good at what they do it boils down this aforementioned thought. It single-handedly dismisses the hours upon hours of work and effort put into learning a craft while excusing you from not being able to perform to the same level. 

And that's messed up. If people could just accept that art and music and writing and all those skills that are explain with 'talent' take just as much work and effort to build up as any other expertise, then they wouldn't need to find these justifications for why they're not good at any of them.

So next time you want to compliment the artist in your life, how about you shift from "Oh my, you're so talented. I wish I was that talented." to "Wow. It must have taken a lot of work to get that good.". Trust me, they'll appreciate the compliment infinitely more because it did take them a lot of work to get that good and they deserve to have that recognized.

JF

Here, practice by telling me how talented I am at drawing cartoon foxes.

Warhammer World

Oh my god... Warhammer World. The Disney of Games Workshop fans.

Warhammer World, you damned teasing little slut you.

Not photoshopped. 

We were originally supposed to go to Games Day, but that never materialized. It was determined there old be two days at WW, but we turned that into an outing o Duxford. However, on the day most people went to tour other companies, several of our group just wanted to go to WW. that was a difficult dilemma for me. Get an extra day of Warhammer World, better justifying the army I built and carried all the way through Scotland? Or visit some manufacturers to see and learn about their process, getting some one on one time with them to talk about their games? In hindsight, the choice was easy, I don't play any of these other games and I already know a lot about their processes, so I'm glad I went to WW.

There were Tyranids to fight after all. 

The first day was pretty exciting even if I didn't get to do much. All I really did was gush at the sweet tables, play a game against Brent (who kicked my ass) and eat some onion rings. However, there was something fantastic about being somewhere that I could enjoy the hobby, geek the frak out about it and not be judged or criticized. 

'Admired' was gladly accepted though. 

The environment is so relaxed there, it's kind of easy to see why Games Workshop employees have trouble thinking of their games as competitive outlets. The staff is earth shatteringly helpful and seem to want nothing more than geek out with people about the hobby. The decor is top notch and the readily available food and drink really drive home the 'beer and pretzel' nature of the games. My only regret is stealing Brent from Natasha. I really should have let them play together. 

Then again... Brent was a great opponent. 

After this first day at Warhammer World, it was time for a Geek Nation Tours tradition...

I've been calling Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem, or simply 'the Trip' a pub ever since I've known about it, but I've since bee corrected. The Trip is an Inn, the oldest in England. It is centuries old, built partially from the caves and warrens under and around the castle and is brimming with more history than many a museum in my own province. From cellars that were used as prisons, cock fighting pits and gambling houses, to a chair reputed to cause any female that sits on to become pregnant within months and a model ship rumored to anyone who moves it, the Trip has a story for everyone.

The plan for the Trip was a diner and meet-and-greet with some of the better known names from local miniatures and gaming company. Anyone who knows me realizes that the networking aspect of the diner meant precipitous little to me. I'm just not comfortable making small talk or adulating people for their work. I mean, I happy giving credit where it's due but beyond the obvious compliments, I seek interesting conversation.

In that case I lucked out and struck up a conversation with one of the guests about writing, the publishing industry and self publishing. I learned at the tail end of the conversation that I was chatting with Alesio Cavatore who is somewhat well known in the wargaming industry for writing rule books.

As seen from where I ate. 

Second day at Warhammer World  was somehow even more epic than the first. That's because, aside from my father, the gang was all there. We posed in front of the life-sized Rhino APC in front of the shop, chatted with some Forge World guys and paired up for games. 

I played against Ryan Carnes who was an amazingly fun opponent. Chill and funny, he kept a smile a kid around as I mercilessly destroyed his army. Good luck on my part, bad luck on his, a spectacular massacre... That only ended up with a 2:3 victory in my favor. That's right, despite bringing him down to only four models, I only won by one point. 

This was also the day of purchasing.  I did not o as overboard as I could have, but I did net some pretty sweet models. Not to mention that I got to benefit from my dad winning the random dice roll for the Geek Nation Tour Titan Giveaway. For that, I got to collect a Forge World Tyranid Harridan. A massive resin model. My brother also got himself a Forge World Keeper of Secrets, a gorgeous model.

Might have to clean off the 'releasing agent '. 

It was a full day orgy of enjoying the hobby with mostly other people who feel the same. Amongst my favorite days of our entire trip.

We ended it with a final meal in Nottingham at the Roundhouse. The meal was average, but the way there was great. Still high on a great day, we got to take in som final sights from this gorgeous city.

JF

Green Arrow!? What are you doing here?

Nottingham Castle. For realz yo. 

Duxford

If there's one thing this trip has taught me is that it's difficult to keep up with a lot of content updates while on the road and following a busy schedule. It certainly doesn't help that I've had a cold for the better part of the last three days. Oh don't worry... It's not a very bad one and I'm not letting it slow me down too much.

So I woke up in Nottingham, yes, 'that, Nottingham. This city is very interesting, a different kind of beast, but I'll get to that later because today... Today, I didn't spend much time here at all.

Where do you store all your tanks?

No, our first day in Nottingham wasn't spent there until the evening. Instead, twelve of us travelled to the Imperial War Museum in Duxford. This museum tour, roughly an hour and a half away from Nottingham, was actually put together specifically for my father and brother who preferred going there than an extra day at Warhammer World. The other ten of us just happened to jump on the opportunity.

Just planes... Everywhere. 

Duxford is actually a difficult experience to describe chronologically. There are no events that divide the experience in easy to sequence order. Instead, let me describe to you, what Duxford is and I'll try to include as many photos as I can.

Duxford is essentially an airport where the hangers and surrounding buildings are exhibits. Some repurposed, some purpose built. Some are straightforward but impressive, like the ground warfare exhibit, boasting a disturbing amount of cannons, mortars, batteries, tanks and other land-based vehicles, others are simply insane, like the American and British aeronautical history hangars.

These last two exhibits are each housed in enormous hangars, planes of various shapes and sizes can be found, tightly packed almost on to of one an other. Most impressively, several planes are simply hung from the ceiling like models in a child's bedroom. It's worth noting that these are not tiny personal aircrafts and WW II fighters (though the later do pepper the space) but rather a B-52, B-17 and B-29 sharing the floor with an SR-71, and that's just in the American hangar. The British hangar has a Concord lying around.

While these are the two most batshit-crazy exhibits to behold, it's the smaller ones that put the insanity into perspective. Duxford has smaller hangers that are just infested by aircrafts that can best be described as artifacts and they're polled away with care but also a level of laissez-faire that can only come from being surrounded by such multitude of historical planes and other important items.

Needless to say, Duxford is immense. We walked all day, pretty much to exhaustion before we got back to the bus, ready to go back to Nottingham just in time to join backnupmwith the rest of the group to head out to diner and allegedly a pub crawl.

Again we went as a group to a pub. This time however it was themed. You'd think it Would have something tondo with Robin Hood, what with the whole Nottingham thing, but no! It's actually themed on Edgar Allan Poe and is called the Pit & Pendulum. The closest thing to a goth Irish pub I've ever seen and it really kind of works. Had great food and drink but then the crawl began.

The pub crawl was a well intentioned event that I simply did not have the energy for. We had this awesome in-character story teller that gave us a bit of history of each pub we visited. This meant more standing around which was slowly murdering my back, so I bailed early. Apparently I missed out, but I don't regret my decision. The back needs what the back needs to survive.

JF

Edinburgh

Last time I was in Edinburgh, it was 2008 and we were on a mission. We were there to visit Edinburgh Castle and boy did we ever. We explored the hell out of that castle. We listened to audio clips about every cannon, gate and wall. Every word was fascinating and boy did we learn a lot of facts to forget later.

So with a little less than two days in Edinburgh, I decided that the Castle was one tour I'd skip. We had arrived on Thursday and gone out to diner, but that was an uneventful meal at a pub, cut short by loud, live music.

Efinburgh Castle

On Friday, while most of the group went to the castle by taxi, my brother, father and I walked for an hour to the Royal Mile. Walking through Edinburgh was kind of important to me. Not just to save a few pounds (or try to shed a few) but because I wanted to see more of the city and I love to walk. Edinburgh is strikingly similar to Montreal aside from certain very mild differences. Obviously the 'European' dial is turned to ten. Cars, brands, restaurant and store chains are all foreign to us except for a few outliers. Apart from that, the mix of old and new architecture is everywhere. People have the same pace and streets have very similar smell. Even once on the Mile, the tourist activity and shops are extremely reminiscent of Saint-Paul street in the Montreal Old Port.

We went down the Mile to Holyrood Castle where we took a break, and then back up the Mile and towards the Game Hub. Warning non-nerds: geek talk ahead.

The Game Hub is a gaming store in Edinburgh and its on the razor's edge between awesome and terrible. It's awesome because it's got a lot of the ingredients that I believe makes a successful game store. It had hot paninis, coffee, snacks and drinks, gaming space and even board games for people to enjoy. The staff was friendly and very welcoming. However, being in Edinburgh, where space is both at a premium and building configurations are sort of messed up, the store is divided into a series of smaller rooms spread over two floors like a gaming warren. 

We played a board game called Formula D. It was fun. I tasted Scotland's second national beverage, Iron Bru. It was not fun. After the first game though, I was eager to go back to visiting the city and that's what we did.

Killed some time wandering the streets, walking the Mile some more, until we decided to get some food. We walked into the first pub with wifi and sat down to have a pint and some food. I'm kicking myself for not taking down the name of the place, because it had fantastic haggis and was, for the most part populated by locals. The wifi however was an utter disappointment.

After diner, we meandered our way towards the Real Mary King Close tour, where we met up up with the rest of the tour group. The tour was broken up into two parts: a tour of the close under the city streets and a tour of the area around the close, outdoors.

The underground tour showed us how people lived in Edinburgh, from the most horrid squalor to whatever passed for rich on Mary King Close. There was of course talk of the Black Plague and how the people handled it and we were treated to two ghost stories. What was most impressive about the tour was the level of tech involved. Projections, lighting effects, interactive displays, mannequins and decors. Our guide was also delightfully funny and fun to have around. Easy on the eyes too.

The outside tour was just as informative but relied on the splendor of the city instead of tricks to impress the group. We went down several of the Closes and dis covered how little of Edinburgh we had actually seen. Between each block is a world of hidden architecture and history and we got to sample some of it (like important figures burried under parking spaces).

Saturday we went on the Scotch Whiskey Experience. We took the 'Gold Tour' which includes all the basic stuff from the 'Silver Tour' plus a tasting of four Scotches at the end of the tour. The tour itself starts with a Disney World style ride in 'barrels' with little dioramas and videos teaching us how Scotch Whiskey is made. After that, we got some more information about Scotch (nothing new after four distillery visits) from our guide, Iain, who is clearly very passionate about Scotch. We did learn a lot about the four regions where Scotch is made and the differences between them.

A small part of the world's biggest scotch collection. 

After that was explained we each got to pick a region and get a taste from a whiskey of that region. However, before we were allowed to taste it, we were taken to another room, a special room, the room where the largest collection of Scotch Whiskey in the world is kept. It's a gorgeous room and there Iain gave us a course in how to drink and appreciate Scotch. Of course ther's no 'right way' to drink scotch, but there is a 'recommended way'. 

The Amber Room

After a few more explanations in the Amber Room next door, the 'Silver Tour' was over... But the 'Golden Tour' wasn't. Four of us total had signed up for the Gold. My brother, father and myself as well as a young chilean woman from Nottingham. We all drank our four Scotches in slow succession, discussing the favors amongst ourselves and Iain. Our tour guide mentioned his favorite Scotch: an Ardbeg Uigeadail. He made us smell it's aroma and I immediatly purchased a dram. It was everything Iain had said it would be.so we each bought a bottle. Before we left however, I had chatted with our Chilean friend during the tasting and upon leaving she gave me her last dram of Scotch.

At this point, I was on my seventh dram before noon. We finished off our Scotch Whiskey Experience with a bit of shopping (see bottles bought above) and then some lunch further down the Mile.

The rest of the day was spent traveling andvwas therefore uneventful. The next day:Nottingham.

JF

Day 6

Castles and battlefield. 

Today we leave the small town where Fishers Hotel, our home for the previous night, is located. We're technically on our way to Edinburgh, but on the road we're going to stop at a few spots to take in some history.

We're joined today by a very Scotish guide. The honest to god, kilt-wearing Alastair. Alastair is a tour guide machine. On the bus with us from the moment we left the hotel he talked about Scottish history and geography, non-stop during our travels for the day. An extremely competent and eloquent man. If you've read yesterday's post, you'll know that this is very much the kind of approach to history that simply does not hook me. In fact, most of this post was written while I ignored our guide. I don't mean to appear like the man didn't do a good job, he clearly knows his stuff cold, but I vastly prefer a more interactive and narrative approach to history.

Our first stop was Doune Castle. Or as you may remember it 'Winterfell' or that 'Most of the Castles from Monty Python Search for the Holy Grail'. We didn't get much time there, roughly half an hour, which was barely enough for Teras to goof around with coconuts and walk the castle grounds. I didn't mind as I had visited Scotish castles before and could concentrate on taking photos, but it was rushed for others in the group.

"A graaaaail?"

Next up we drove to the Wallace Monument. Now, I liked Braveheart well enough, but as much as I love Scotland, her heroes are not my heroes and spending an hour at some monument wasn't exactly exciting to me, but Scotland is full of surprise. Instead of a statue or memorial that one would associate with a 'monument' there stood a tower on top of a hill, five hundred feet up. The climb was exhilarating, especially after so much sitting on a bus. The view from the top was breathtaking, overlooking everything around except for the distant hills. I took my photos as our group caught up to me and we all enjoyed the sights together. One thing I learned on my climb however is that I'm in fairly good health compared to most tourists. This meant I could easily catch up with the group on the way down. This gave me a solid five minutes alone to enjoy the silence and wind as well as the majesty of standing in such a beautiful piece of architecture. I was eventually joined by Brent, one of our Australian, but before then, the moment was quite zen.

Alastair started to shine after the monument as he gave us a lively description of William Wallace's first and most important victory. This was followed by lunch and then off to Stirling Castle.

Stirling Castle was fascinating and reminiscent of other castles but convincingly restored and alive. Alastair served as our guide for most of the duration of the visit, while actors playing period characters explaining details about life in the Castle. Alastair was as entertaining on this tour as he wasn't on the bus. It's not the manes fault. He knows his shit like a pro, I just don't like historic lectures. But drop me in the middle of a setting with a knowledgeable narrator and I'm loving it.

The Castle visit also offered more breathtaking views of the surrounding, including the Wallace Monument, but also the river, hills and fields. The day was the best scottish weather had to offer. Sunny with billowing clouds rushing through the sky as winds blew our hair in a tussel.

After Stirling we took a very short us ride to the presumed site of the Battle of Bannockburn. The actual tour was blissfully short yet informative. It was getting late in the day and we were all getting a little tired and still had one activity to participate in; the Battle Game.

The Battle Game is amazing. It shouldn't be, but it is. I expected some kitschy re-enactment with bad choose your own adventure style video. Instead we got an insanely high tech projection screen tactical war game. The room we were in was a thing out of a sci-fi movie. We got to re-enact the Battle of Bannockburn then had it played back with what really happened. Quite a surprising treat.

After this, it was off to Edinburgh.

JF

Day 5

Oh Scotland, you always manage to surprise me.

Right next to our hotel that morning...

Day five sees us doing our last distillery visit after going on our first dreaded battlefield tour. Let me explain something; I'm not a fan of history. I love stories but history is just a bunch of names and dates and it's boring and terrible and you're terrible for judging me.

Where was I? Oh yes. I wasn't exactly dreading the battlefield tour. I knew it would be pretty if perhaps a little uninteresting and dry, but I wasn't necessarily looking forward to it either. Also, I had a feeling, as we were moving further south that Glenlivet wouldn't be my favorite scotch either. So knowing the best of this leg of the tour was behind me, I got on the bus that would take us to Culloden for our first battlefield visit.

And it was freaking awesome. Well, maybe I'm overstating it, but it was pretty great. Maybe the subject matter was in my wheelhouse (it wasn't), maybe I'm just more into history now (I'm really not) or maybe our guide sounded like Ken Burns' long lost Scotish twin brother (that one). To be fair, the format of the tour was also a huge contributor.

Memorials...

...memorials everywhere. 

The site was the Battle of Culloden which took place in 1746, the last battle of the Jacobite Uprising. Let me tell you gentle reader and potential terrible judge of my person that there is a chasm of differences seperatinh book learning and walking a battlefield with a competent narrator. We were expertly guided through the battlefield, making frequent stops to discipover new details about the events that took place right where we stood, almost 270 years earlier. Each waypoint on the field gave us a few re details, leaving us each time with a bit of a cliffhanger before moving on. By the end I felt I had learned some history and enjoyed the process tremendously. I'm looking forward to tomorrow for hopefully more of the same.

Brent, one of our Australian, recruited by the Jacobites. 

We finally made it to Glenlivet after lunch and, while I was looking forward to it, I knew this was going to be my least favorite distillery. I like my scotches peaty and smoky and that's just not in Glenlivet's DNA. The tour itself was fine. Entertaining but bringing nothing new to the table. Nothing to do with the quality of the tour, but Laphroaig and Oban had done a superb combined job of educating us on the subject and Coal Ila had filled the margins of our textbook with extracurricular notes with their unique tasting methodology.

The post-tour tasting at Glenlivet wasn't to the standards we'd been accustomed to either. A single dram of scotch that we had to chose from three options. Hardly the best way for us to really explore the variety of products offered by Glenlivet. That being said, our guide did pour us a couple of drams of his favorite 25 year old scotch to try. He had described it as the 'perfect scotch' and some of my fellow tasters seemed inclined to agree. It was a good scotch, smooth going in with a cinamony flavor, it had a rough, beery aftertaste I didn't care for too much.

Not as awesome as it looks. 

Glenlivye's founder was extremely badass. 

Still, a good day. As a bonus, my webcomic's automatic updates worked perfectly. You don't read my webcomic?! You should, or you're just showing me one more way you're terrible.

JF

Day 4

Oban looks like a lovely town. Just lively enough to stave off boredom but not so big as to lose the local charm. It's really too bad we didn't get to see much of it.

But, we are on a distillery tour and distilleries are what are here for, so when said we were visiting Obama, we meant the Oban distillery, so that is exactly what we did.

First thing after breakfast, we drove over to the site of our visit, a whole five blocks away. Maybe four. We're not lazy, but we had to put our bags in the bus and know where to meet after the visit. Logistics you see. Where Laphroaig was a hands on exploration into the making of single malt whiskey, Oban was a theoretical treasure trove. On its own, it might have been a little heavy and wordy, but with the information we had already accumulated, the academic approach was a welcome addition to our curriculum. 

Also, we got to drink scotch.

Not terribly much of it. A sip of this and a nip of that, but it allowed me to determine that my sweet of choice for scotch is not crystallized ginger. I dont hate it, but I also don't love it. It gives the alcohol more bite than necessary while canceling out a lot of the subtle sweetness of scotch, an effect that chocolate doesn't seem to have as much, surprisingly.

After Oban we hopped back on the bus for our journey to Glen Coe and Loch Ness. On our way we stopped for a light lunch at the Cstke Stalker View Café where, as luck would have it, we got a great view of Stalker Castle.

We made our detour to Glen Coe where we stopped for a photo op. the sight was nothing short of breathtaking. The area was used in the filming of 'Braveheart' and it's easy to understand why. The scene is everything we think of about Scotland and its natural beauty and we were lucky enough to visit in typical Scottish weather.

Finally we made it to Loch Ness and our hotel. Reading this, one might think that we didn't do much, but truth is, we stopped for photo ops in several places and got to take in the scenery. There's no point in describing what I can show with images.

JF

Day 2 and 3. Islay

Had haggis this morning. Didn't know breakfast haggis was a thing. Then again, breakfast sausage is and haggis is sausage's emotionally insensitive cousin anyways... It wasn't really good haggis though. Not bad, but too mushy. 

The waffles though we're amazing. I'm on a two-thousand calorie a day diet (1800 actually) and I already exceeded that by far.

Dietary tragedies aside, today we're on the bus and on the ferry. We're heading to Islay for our first distillery visit. We're starting with Lagavulin because fuck easing into things. I'm a moderate scotch drinker so I kind of know what we're in for but those of us new to the experience are in for a rough start. So far the scenery is beautiful and the breakfast was plentiful, which is important if we're going to be drinking any.

Normaly, when I'm not doing something, I get nervous. If I'm not painting or writing or even walking, I get gripped with anxiety and I have to get off my metaphorical ass and get shit done. On the boat to Islay however, for the first time in years, I was comfortable just hanging out on deck near the prow and doing absolutely nothing. Not that I didn't have options. There were plenty of places I could have cocooned up and done some writing or sketches, but I was content for an hour or so doing nothing. That's how chill this crossing is.

On the horizon: Islay. 

Had a tasting at the Lagavulin distillery. I'm not a gargantuan Lagavulin fan. It tastes to me what other scotches taste to people who don't drink scotch. The tasting though was particularly interesting. We got to sample two drams, each paired with a piece of chocolate. The was a double fermented single malt paired with a cinnamon-milk chocolate and the second was was a triple fermented single malt paired with a ginger spice dark chocolate. I don't want to brag that I got two portions of the triple fermentation, but I did.

Lagavulin tasting room. 

Lagavulin tasting. 

We stayed the night at the White Hart, a small inn on Islay. Old, creaky and noisy, it was a very authentic place to lay our head.the food for diner was however fantastic. Finally had my first taste of a decent haggis in the stuffing of my chicken. The hotel allowed us to play games in the dining hall but halfway through a Cards Against Hunanity game I was already nodding off so I climbed up to bed.

The White Hart. 

Gunsords Japan? Please... Scotland's had pistolshatchet for a while apparently. 

Day 3

I woke up just before the fire alarm. 

Oh there was no fire of course and we didn't to have evacuate the building. In fact the ear-splitting noise only lasted for a few seconds. Just long enough for me to start swearing that this was bullshit.

Today we visited the Laphroaig distillery. That's the one I was looking forward to most and it did not disappoint. Our tour guide Stevie was delightful and entertaining. The tour itself was fairly fast paced and interactive. Obviously we had to follow Stevie around and we were warned to touch potentially hot surfaces, but otherwise everything else was pretty much fair game, up to and including eating barley off the ground. We got to taste peat smoked malted barley and the beer-like swill that exists in that quantum state between malted barley and scotch. It sweet on the lips and terrible everywhere else. I like to think that life is about the journey, but I'll make an exception for whiskey.

The tasting was more than I could have expected. We got to sample a marriage of 12 year old single malts in a sample glass we got to keep. Afterwards, we had the opportunity to sample other scotches. I went through most, maybe all, of the available options and settled on a 10 year cask that has some bite to it, a smooth presence in mouth and a lingering finish and is apparently unavailable in Canada. 

Gateway to awesome. 

The 'beer swill'. 

Beautiful Laphroaig distillery. 

Caol Ila is our destination for the afternoon. I'm not familiar with this distillery, which is exciting as I'm here to learn. We're only doing a tasting, but after visiting Laphroaig, they would have to give an impressive performance to compare.

And they freakin did!

While we couldn't do a proper tour, we did. Have a guide to help us through the tasting and she did an incredible job. First off, she had what I'd call 'Ashley Wells Eyes'. A few of you will understand exactly what I mean, for the rest, they were stunning. Second, unlike Lagavulin which, while classy, wasn't exactly involved, this tasting was an experience. We tried not two, but five scotches, and some kind of proto-scotch called 'white spirit'. We had a nip of eight year old harsh motherfucking scotch straight from the cask, followed by a twelve year old I believe and then a mystery scotch that turned out to be 25 years of age and was delicious. The fourth was a special distillation for last year's annual Islay Whiskey Festival. Finally, I got to pull a 26 year old freak scotch from a cask that tasted like liquid wood. The experience was interactive, educational and fascinating. I'd like to thank my traveling companions whom don't drink scotch for allowing me their share.

Coal Ila wants you drunk.  

We took the ferry back to the main island after this. Bigger boat, fancier food. We did the traditional Geek Nation Tour dice roll off for the Warhoud Titan from Forge World and of all people my dad won. The only person there who doesn't game and had to have it explained to him what exactly he'd won. At first, even I thought it was a bit of a bitchslap that he'd be allowed to win it at all, but I had to remind myself that he paid the same goddamn price for this trip as all of us and has the same rights we all do.

Our ferry off of Islay...

Besides, my brother and I will probably get a cut of that pie.

JF

Day 1 - Glasgow

So it begins.

I'm currently lying on a single bed, in a room at the Glasgow Hilton. I'm fresh from our welcome diner downstairs and I can barely keep my eyes open. It feels like I've been awake or ages and I've been eating the whole time. I've been on two planes and in three airports and I've been either eating or given food at each stop. I'm no longer used to eating this much food.

The first flight was pleasant enough. I usually don't sleep on planes, mostly because I'm always too exited with the very concept of flying to sit still. I'm not kidding, I'm like a child in a candy store. I sit as much at the edge of my seat as the cramped space will allow. I stare out the window and wait in anticipation for the plane to finish taxying and take off. I'm an annoying brat the whole time. Except this time, where out of the five and a half hour flight, I slept a solid hour. Then, after our layover in Heathrow I slept almost the entire flight to Glasgow. I did however get to seen the sunrise over an ocean of clouds out my window.

The trip is so far almost overwhelmingly relaxed. I quit my job on Tuesday and won't start the new one until a few days after I return. This means that I'm currently traveling with absolute peace of mind regarding my career. It is glorious.

Turns out Glasgow is a beautiful city that's actually got a few things in common with Montreal. The River Clyde reminds me of a much larger Canal Lachine with its multitude of bridges each with a unique look and the juxtaposition if old and new architecture is almost making me homesick.

It's going to be a good trip.

JF 

It’s time…

After many months of preparations, anticipation and excitement, tonight I’m finally getting on a plane to Scotland.  This is going to be a three week gaming and drinking trip. Two weeks in good ole Scotch Country under the umbrella of Teras Cassidy from GeekNation Tours followed by four days in gay Paris and two days in the London fog.

The gaming leg of the trip, the backbone of this adventure prompted me to put together an army I’ve been lusting after for a long time; a full jetbike Eldar army. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you might not be familiar with my near obsession with painting and playing (mostly painting though) Warhammer 40K. As I tend to do, I finished painting my models for this trip only a day or two ago, but it’s a gorgeous and fun army that I’m going to enjoy for years to come.

This is the first time I’ll be going on such a grand voyage since I’ve started writing and blogging and doing the comic thing and contrary to my last trip to Europe, I now have the ability to, hopefully, keep a running blog of the trip.

I’ll be away from many friends for a long time and this should be an interesting way of keeping in touch after a fashion.

So check in often. I should be updating this every evening (UK time, so in the afternoon to my East Coast friends) with details of my travels, photos and impressions. I can’t take you all on the trip, but I can bring part of the trip to you.

JF