I spent last night - all evening and into the wee hours - sitting on the couch in the living room of my new/old lakehouse, feet up, listening to music from my virtual iPod. For the first couple hours, it was progressive rock. Then I switched to classical.

Today, I’m down the hall, in my office, classical music again. I’m settling in, decorating. The spot that was supposed to be for a big comfy visitor’s chair has been taken over by a second bookcase because there are just that many books. Many are still packed away and others will be moved up from the city. This is really home now. We may spend weekdays there for Artie to go to school and for me to go to work and for baseball and soccer practice and clarinet lessons and doctors appointments and car repairs and…all that other stuff. But this is where we “are.”

Yeah, so what was that? Looks like some kind of in-character writing. I...

I am sitting in my corner office at the lake house. When the kids are playing, I have midday turned on but when it’s just me, I tend to go for midnight.

It’s my virtual office in the virtual lake house in a virtual world. And I was referring to virtual kids. And the virtual me.

Things are finally settled. Home is a region called Lakewood on the Germany-based virtual world, Metropolis Metaversum. I am using the hosting company, Oliveira Virtual Lands, based in Brazil. I placed my order one afternoon and a few hours later, my regions were online. There were a couple problems getting things running but tech support was very responsive and in less than 24 hours time, I am writing my first blog piece while sitting at my desk in my new virtual home.

In story, Artie and his Dad, that’s the other me, Paul Milkwood, spend summers at The Lakehouse and come up often on weekends in the spring and...

It’s been been a busy couple of months getting Artie and the gang started. I have created most of the regular characters. I have their names and brief bios and I’ve opened accounts for them in the virtual worlds, Second Life and Metropolis. Artie is the only one whose avatar is ready to use. That’s fine for now as I want to “be” Artie for awhile and get comfortable with the character before developing the others. Down the road I might change Artie’s look as I learn more about him but creating something to start with so I could just jump into it, was my priority.

Among the cast of characters will be Artie’s dad. I just today created an avatar for him. Since I joke about being Artie’s dad, I gave him my first name. He’s Paul Milkwood. It’ll be interesting playing him as I’ll be playing me, sort of.

The funniest thing happened a week ago. I created a character called The Whoopee Pie Man...

“…if you can’t find a way to make a page for it or get it to appear on your landing page or whatever…at least do a post that says…”

All original writing on this blog

Copyright 2014 Paul Campbell

“Okay,” I said.

A long time ago, I did a little acting. Very little. Only got a couple of parts. Did a lot of theater workshop though. Lot of improv. I developed a few characters in a regular improv workshop and on a public radio show which featured scripted material I wrote. One of my best and most well-received characters was a five-year old kid. I really had fun playing that kid and developing and writing the character.

In recent years I’ve combined some of my writing projects with roleplay in virtual worlds such as Second Life and OpenSim. RP is much slower than improv theater of course but the creative principle is the same. A recent notice about an RP event caused me to recall my kid character from long ago and got me thinking about creating a kid avatar for virtual worlds.

I’d see someone portraying a kid from time to time in Second Life and I’d hear of RP groups centered around children’s...

Old blogs never die, they just…sit there forever collecting virtual dust.

I couldn’t go back there. I couldn’t just pick up and go on without saying anything about not posting for three years. But I couldn’t go back there and do one of those, “It’s been awhile since I paid attention to this blog…” kind of posts either. Oh my gawd I hate those! I vowed years ago NEVER to write one of those. “…and so I promise to post more regularly here and keep you up to date…blah, blah, blah…” Hate ‘em.

So I decided to just walk away. Start all over again as if that other blog had never happened. Just let it sit there. A relic of an earlier place and time.

I have a new project just underway and it seemed like a good time to start blogging again, so for starters, that is what this blog will focus on. I’m sure it will evolve but it all starts with Artie.

I’ll tell you how it started, next time.

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