Jamie Wakefield

Usually I try to be very funny about the travels, but another aspect of the book is trying to capture the wonder I felt at discovering the beauty of Europe. This is on page 60 of the book I am editing today. So far it is 160 pages and I think it will end up being about 200 when I finish. Anyway, I thought this part showed the "wonder" portion of the book, so I thought I would share a snippet. Hope you enjoy it. In late May we fly to Provence to visit Colette and Mathieu. We fly to Marseilles and rent a car for the hour long drive to Provence. As we drive along, I look out at the beautiful greenery, the coastline, the fields filled with vineyards and I come to a startling revelation: I have finally found a place on Earth more beautiful than Vermont. That place is Provence. I never thought I would type those words or feel that way, ever, but Provence is as green and unspoiled as Vermont and then, on top of that, has vineyards, and coastline. We have a Hertz "Never Lost,...

Been looking for a new title for the book. I wonder what happens when you type "Cancer Sucks" into Google? A lot of hits. Charities. T-Shirts. Bumper stickers. Ads. Interesting. Wonder if anyone has written a book with that title. Amazon.com > Cancer sucks > search > books. Wow are there a lot of books on Cancer. I mean, wow. Holy...Wow. "Cancer Sucks" by ... "Breast Cancer Husband." "Chicken soup for the Soul: Cancer." "I didn't order this pink ribbon." "Help me survive:" and on and on and on. Which, should come as no surprise, but it does. I'm dumb that way. I guess that explains why a hundred query letters to agents resulted in so many rejections. Not that original a topic I guess. Oh well, work continues. I know my writing will set my book apart. The current plan is to finish up Lena's suggestions, have Wendy read it and offer final suggestions, self publish it, have a proof sent to the house in Middle...

My friend Chris McMahon has been doing editing for me on Marilyn's Story and just sent me the latest changes. I have to look through Lena's comments and then Wendy is going to read the final copy for one last look for mistakes and then I'm publishing it. It's been a long journey. It needs a new title. "Courage Made Flesh" is unanimously hated. Hopefully one will come to me as I look it over these last three times but any suggestions you have are appreciated. Thanks Jamie

That's what she said to me over drinks the other day. Even though Wendy has only played seven actual games of Magic, she couldn't believe I qualified for the Pro Tour with mono Green. "No way. Really? I have to know how you did that." So, lucky you, "Quest for the Pro Tour II" will be coming your way. That fictional conversation sounded so much funnier when I wrote a little note on my iPhone to announce it that way... Actually, my incredibly supportive girlfriend thinks it's a good idea just to get my name out there as much as possible and liked the results of the poll I did the other day. Which amazed and thrilled me. I have always wanted to write (and by "write" I mean "collect old material into" a second book) but figured, why bother? I'll spend a hundred hours collecting, organizing, checking, polishing, then sell a couple dozen copies and make thirteen dollars and fifty cents for my efforts. It will be a labor of love. You k...

My website hit counter says that Monday's are my busiest days so I try to have something up for people to read. Todays will be short as I am typing this handicapped. Working on a chair I sliced one of my fingers very badly. Typing is one and a half handed right now. Blood went everywhere, even the ceiling. I am such a dork. I have approached over seventy-five agents concerning Marilyn's cancer memoir and only one requested to see more and she wasn't moved by the writing enough to want to see the whole manuscript. (Insert frowny face.) I received twenty-three rejections and over fifty silences (which means rejection, sorry, can't be bothered to write you since our agency gets a hundred queries a day.) Because of my past, I believe I have what it takes to be a writer. I believe I will get a following someday for my books; I just need a few breaks. I believe the rejections are coming in because of many reasons. 1. The economy. 2. Memoir? Too common. 3. Cancer memoir? Um, w...

Above is the tribute card that Wizards of the Coast made for Marilyn. (I bought the original artwork, I hope Dan Dossantos doesn't mind me directly copying it from his site.) A wonderful gesture that touched me to my core. Such an amazing honor for an amazing woman. You can read the write-up I did explaining the card here. Marilyn didn't want me to be sad when she passed on. "What good would it do for me to look down from heaven and see you crying? And know I couldn't do anything to help?" I know she feels that way for everyone. So, today, do something you love in tribute to her. Read the things she loved in the text below and honor her by doing one of them. Play a MMORPG, work in your garden, watch the birds, watch some UFC or one of her favorite movies. Marilyn's Obituary. Marilyn Jane Wakefield passed away from ovarian Cancer on Tuesday, May 23, 2006 at 6:00 p.m. She passed away at home, in a bed looking out French doors at her birds, and dogs playing in t...

Yes, yes, I know its been a while. I have no one to blame but Wendy. Seriously, we have just been so out straight with commitments that I can't explain right now, that we have had no time on the computer. We went to a party Friday that lasted until three a.m. and had another commitment, an hour away, at noon the next day. That lasted until four then we met up with more long lost friends and danced and talked until eleven-thirty and then had a half an hour ride home. We slept until nine then had a day trip with a couple that lasted until six. It has been three days since I have even had this computer on. Cry me a river Wakefield. Just trying to explain that it's not that I don't love and respect you, but for once it's not because I am lazy or because I had one of my horrible mental breakdowns or have just plain been ignoring everyone, but because honestly, it has not been possible. Below is an update I wrote a while ago but wasn't happy with so have not posted it. I...

Above is the tribute card that Wizards of the Coast made for Marilyn. A wonderful gesture that touched me to my core. Such an amazing honor for an amazing woman. You can read the write-up I did explaining the card here. Marilyn didn't want me to be sad when she passed on. "What good would it do for me to look down from heaven and see you crying? And know I couldn't do anything to help?" I know she feels that way for everyone. So, today, do something you love in tribute to her. Read the things she loved in the text below and honor her by doing one of them. Play a MMORPG, work in your garden, watch the birds, watch some UFC or one of her favorite movies. Marilyn's Obituary. Marilyn Jane Wakefield passed away from ovarian Cancer on Tuesday, May 23, 2006 at 6:00 p.m. She passed away at home, in a bed looking out French doors at her birds, and dogs playing in the yard. She was surrounded by family and friends and had been for days. Marilyn was born in Brattleboro, Ver...

The tournament is this Sat May 3rd (see www.heroeskingdom.com for details) (Sorry this got up late, I thought I had more time to post this and rereading mail today I found out it is today.)

Yes, two posts in two days, can you tell the Holiday season is over? I'm back baby, and I need your help. Of the following two plans, which is smarter? The current plan is for the primary focus to be learning Spanish (and trust me, the “learn Spanish” part is immutable) and then get back to writing. Of course the web site would be updated sometimes and I would be transcribing notes for the upcoming book “I’m not an alcoholic, I’m just European” but none of that would see Lulu print (re – Quest for the Pro Tour.) See, under the current plan, everything I have written is going to sit on my hard drive for months. But when it is published it will be much more refined. A man who shares my love of UFC and I assume Magic, Chris McMahon, has become my editor. And the amount of editing I need is staggering. The man has an excellent eye for detail and I think we’re up to revision five of “Quest for the Pro Tour” now, with a ways to go yet. (Note – “Quest for the Pro Tour” was formerly publis...

Well, I was wrong on some of my predictions for UFC 73. I didn't have the patience to wait and steal it from U-Torrent so I actually paid for it the next day and Wendy and I layed on the couch and watched it. Dear UFC, You have WAY too many fillers, fluff and dead air time in your programs. Seriously, I don't know if I will ever buy another one. If I do, I'll tivo it and fast forward through all the shit you put me through while waiting to get to the actual fights. Love J The fights pretty much sucked. I bought the card because I was looking forward to a lot of the match ups. Too many of them weren't even shown. Two of the ones were corrupted in streaming download from the UFC Direct to disk site. Apparently Kenflo had a nice victory we didn't even get to see. Never saw the Lytle flight. Nor the Gurgel fight. Nor the Bonner fight. Not that I carred about that last one anyway... The fights I did get to see were boring or confusing. Sherk is an amazing athlete. Amazin...

Have I finally got this thing fixed? As you may have noticed, I've moved again. Typepad was interesting and hosted on a friend's site (besos Lorelei! Okay that was effeminate... let’s just move along.) But it had some problems you might have missed me bitching about so let me count the ways... 1. No spellchecker. 2. Typing in Word and then pasting into Typepad made formatting errors. Paragraphs lost their forms and ran together. 3. Links didn't highlight. 4. Pictures weren't working and Dave couldn't figure out why. So I moved to a place that did all of the above (http://www.blogspot.com/) and set up a page. I liked it so much I moved everything here. Simple, effective, does what I need, no flashy trashy gizmos. Sure, I did some research into what site I should move to, but Google always does things well and I imagined they would do their blogging software correct as well. And I was right. In the reviews I read, one other site was mentioned called "Vox" wh...

Rodney Sheldon wrote this - Hil and Michele held a release tournament for Planar Chaos in February. It was dedicated to Mare’s memory, due to the fact her card, the Timbermare, is part of the set. There were 52 people that played in the tournament… this is quite a large number for the small state of Vermont. People came from all over the state and even other states and a few from Canada. There were another 30 plus that filter in during the day. All of the procceeds are going to the American Cancer society. People that did not even know her and were there to pick up comics or a game… just donated to American Cancer Society.This is not a tournament report… because I did not play… Mick and I helped Hil and Michele out running the tournament, the raffle, the bake sale, the drafts and anything else that need doing during the day. It was great fun!! I don’t even know who won the tournament… and in the end it really did not matter as that is not what the day was really about. Just a few thoug...

Things are rolling along. Not very fast, but they are rolling along. This weekend, Hilary, Michelle, Doug and I all went to the Planar Chaos Pre-Release in Montreal. None of us did well, but we had a great time. I got a great column out of it, had some steak and so much laughter tears were streaming out of my eyes at dinner. We didn’t go to win since you don’t qualify for anything, we just went to honor the release of Marilyn’s tribute card . Sorry for the lack of updates. Much of the things I write about here have become food for my column at Star City Games . My column appears every Tuesday. Still have a lot of stuff that doesn’t belong in there that does belong here, so updates aren’t ending, just getting a little more sparse. Plans for Madrid grow by the day. Right now I am reading Death and The Sun and it occured to me the writer’s not very good at what I do. Which is draw you in. The story of the matador’s life is interesting, but you care about what happens to him purely by th...

In an extremely rare move, Wizards of the Coast has printed a tribute card to Marilyn. You can see the card and read my thoughts on it here - http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/13483.html Make sure to read the thoughts people have in the forums link at the bottom of the article.