Why do I keep pointing out stuff people could be buying in between asking for their money?

Probably because it's stuff that's worth supporting... I had the thought yesterday about whether or not I would have pushed Cat's ventures so much if I'd known my laptop was going to give up the ghost so completely a day after ...Fairyland... launched, and I came to the conclusion that yes, I would have.

Anyway, River's Daughter, a novella-length ebook, is now available. This is the first book produced by verb_noire, an independent press started up to encourage visible presence of frequently invisible minorities in genre fiction, or as they put it,

To celebrate the works of talented, underrepresented authors and deliver them to a readership that demands more.

Emphasis mine. Because this is what I keep saying: these audiences are out there and they are hungry and they have been ignored so often and for so long, and since the internet gives us so many tools to find each other and so many ways to connect with each other and benefit each other (and the exchange of enjoyable art for money is, at its core, people helping each other... a mutually beneficial transaction)...

Well, if you're reading my blog, you've heard all this before.

The point is, new book out from Verb Noire.

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Note: According to karnythia, they're still working out some technical issues with their first product launch, so as of right now they're having to email purchased copies to folks. That's why there's no download link when you finish paying. Mine arrived ten minutes after the PayPal timestamp, though I'm sure that will vary with time of day and such.

For out-of-towners - things' to see and do in Omaha.

So, popelizbet tells me that the College World Series is in town... that should give you an idea how externally aware I am, since she's in Tennessee and watching it on TV and I'm here in Omaha where it is. No, it's just I haven't really gone out outside the immediate neighborhood since it started (the 13th, apparently) or else I probably would have noticed.

Restaurants and stores and stuff tend to get extra crowded when there's the equivalent of a whole extra town in town, and that's to say nothing of the traffic. I'm glad I don't have to go downtown for anything any time soon.

But to all the people visiting Omaha... few, if any of who, are likely to be specifically reading this blog, welcome! And since you are in town, do yourself a favor and check out our zoo and gardens, both of which are relatively close to the stadium (in fact, the zoo's right next to it). They are both world class institutions... don't laugh when I say that, it's true... and well worth the cost of admission.

You probably already know about the Old Market, but in case you don't, there it is... I won't bother with specific recommendations because the whole place is worth checking out. :P

And if you're looking for unique gifts but can't afford Market prices, check out Aki Oriental Food and Gifts. It's an absolute gem of a store that fewer people know about, but those who do come from several states away to shop there. Another good store for folks looking for the same sort of shopping opportunities you can find in the Market without as much of a crowd is The Next Millennium. For used books outside of the Old Market area, Mary's is a good choice, as is Pageturner's at 50th and Dodge.

If you're visiting from out of the region, make sure you treat yourself to at least one Runza before you go, and if you like the American version of Italian food and too much sugar in your spaghetti sauce, visit Valentino's Grand Italian Buffet, a Lincoln and Omaha institution. Also, if you're the sort of person who enjoys allegedly coffee based drinks that are more like drinkable candy bars than anything else, look for a Scooter's kiosk. They have recipes for mochas (hot, iced, or blended up smoothie-style) in the style of almost any candy bar you can name. The almond joys live up to their name.

Yes, everything in the last paragraph is a chain, but they're all local chains and worth recommending. I wasn't planning on making a post like this... there are a lot of neat independent establishments for eating and shopping I could be thinking of that are absolutely stuck inside a blank spot in my head right now. :P I'll make a point to start keeping a list of them, though.

First impression: Eberron 4th Edition.

I had a chance to look at the Eberron Player's Guide tonight. While I've got no interest in the setting, my first impression is that they did a better job of packing it with setting-independent/portable player content than they did the Forgotten Realms one: three new races, an artificer class that I'm more pleased with than I'd expected, a handful of new rituals, interesting new alchemy items, an alchemist paragon path (good idea and well executed), a handful of new magic items of multiple types, etc.

The "Dragonmark" feats strike me as a bit overpowered compared to other feats, especially as many of them include the full benefits of another heroic tier feat plus other stuff. Maybe there's something in the world setting I don't know about that would act as a counterbalance to this (no, "well, each mark is associated with a house" is not a drawback and neither is "well, once you've taken one of these essentially-two-and-a-half-feats-for-the-price-of-one feats, you can't take any others isn't a drawback either), but I would think twice before allowing someone to import them into my campaign. Or I would make them count for both the first and second level feat. I don't know. I'd have to look at them some more and think about it.

Perhaps a better way to handle it would have been to divide them up into multiple feats, an initial one that gives a bonus comparable/equal to a single feat and then locks you into only taking other feats of that Dragonmark... much the way feats are used to handle racial subgroups in the Forgotten Realms book, or the way that you can gain more powers for your familiar by taking further familiar feats as shown in Arcane Power.