My sincere apologies to those of you who keep checking this blog hoping to see a new story posted. I seem to be having a tough time writing updates. I have all the pics for a Maude update ready to go, and all the pics for a Brayton update ready to go, but whenever I sit down to work on the writing part, my interest drains away. I’m sure you can see how that might be a problem.

There are reasons for that fading interest — sometimes it’s been so long since I’ve taken the pictures that I’ve just plain lost enthusiasm for coming up with a story to go along with them. Sometimes I have writer’s block. And sometimes — well, all the time — it takes me forever and a day to write the updates, so I run out of steam before they’re completed. I could go on, but I’d bore you to bits.

The bottom line is — I don’t want to give up on this blog, but clearly a new approach is necessary. What seemed to work best for me in the past was my Legacy Challenge family. They were fun to play, since I was working towards a particular goal, and writing the updates didn’t take forever or make my brain explode.

So I might try starting a new challenge family — I already have some ideas for what I could do. It’s also possible I might continue the Chinchilla family or try the new Nightlife Xtreme Legacy Challenge. In any case, my more in-depth stories will be put on hold until I feel motivated to work on them. I know, I keep putting everything on hold. Hopefully something will stick one of these days.

In the meantime, as always, thanks so much for your patience and support and for continuing to check my blog.

So how many of you have played Nightlife? What are your first impressions? I think it’s pretty cool so far. My favorite new feature is definitely the ability to see your neighbors when you’re in a given lot — I wanted to weep for joy the first time I went into a Mt. Geneva lot and saw other houses around, and trees, and the water tower! It feels so much more like a real neighborhood now and will add so much to stories and pictures. Unfortunately the graphics of the surrounding structures are fairly crude — it’s just like when you hit “Tab” in Neighborhood view and zoom in. But I realize if they rendered everything in the highest detail it would really slow down gameplay.

Another thing I was happy about were the new animations for Sims chatting while eating at the dinner table. Whenever someone spoke, they used to turn their heads slowly and look at them with stupid expressions on their faces. Now the motion is much more realistic. The cars and vampires are neat additions to the game, but more than anything I appreciate the little improvements like those animations. I think they’ve also improved Sim AI as far as downtown lots go — Sims don’t mill around just asking each other to dance and getting rejected. They play pool, they dance solo to the DJ, play poker, bowl, dine out, order drinks, strike up conversation — it makes for a much more dynamic community lot experience.

As far as updates go, I have to confess I’ve enjoyed taking a little break from them. I’ve gotten more housework done (though my bedroom still looks like I just moved in!) and spent more time with my family, which is nice. I’m itching to get back to my stories, though, and plan on writing one tonight or tomorrow. It’ll either be a Maude’s Tale or perhaps the Braytons. Until then, thanks to everyone for continuing to stop by despite my lack of updates. Take care and happy Simming!

Hey guys, just wanted to let you know I’m still alive and simming. I’ve been playing quite a bit lately but not writing any stories — mostly because I’ve been jumping around from family to family, from neighborhood to neighborhood, and feel like I shouldn’t post again until I figure out what my focus will be with this here blog. Or maybe I’ll decide to have no focus. Not sure yet. :-)

At any rate, change is in the air…I don’t know if it’s the encroaching autumn or the promise of riches in the Nightlife EP, but I have so many ideas for my Sims that it’s driving me bonkers! And I’ve let so many things fizzle out — the Braytons, the Shanleys, Annabel Island (which I’m still playing, just not writing about) — that I hesitate to latch onto any one idea at this point. I guess we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, I’m sure you guys are checking out all of the great new blogs that have popped up, as well as the older ones that are still going strong. Amanda at Danbury Fields has a great story going right now and just posted some cool info about Nightlife. She’s also started a forum for Sim pictures called Sim Shots, which promises to be a lot of fun once it gets going. Bitsy from Somnium is back after a 5-month hiatus and is going strong with her Legacy family and its satellites (and I love her new blog layout). So there’s a lot going on in the Sims blogging community these days.

By the way, September 29th will be the one-year anniversary of Greetings from Mt. Geneva (its original incarnation on Blog*Spot is still out there, oddly enough), so hopefully I can get my act together by then, and we can have a contest or something.

Last but not least, my heart goes out to those affected by the Hurricane Katrina disaster. I can’t imagine what you must be going through. DylanTK, I hope you and yours are getting along all right.

After three weeks of immersing myself in Victoriana for my Royal Kingdom Challenge families, I decided to take a little break and play a family in the modern world. None of the Mt. Geneva families were calling out to me, so just to amuse myself I created a brand new Sim, plopped her into Strangetown (which I had never played), and began DylanTK’s I’m Surrounded By Idiots! challenge. I had so much fun with it that I decided to share it with you guys.

This is Christal Chinchilla. A few things about her: Her name was randomly generated (and I picked it because I’m easily amused :-D). She looks very Barbie-like because originally I wanted to marry her off to someone hideous and see just how ugly the family could get (since my Shanleys got so weird-looking after several generations, I figured, why fight it this time?). And…she’s a Romance Sim. I figured I might as well make it extra challenging so I wouldn’t get bored with it (and it worked, by golly).

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Don’t you hate it when your breadbox spontaneously combusts?

Hey guys, thanks a ton for the feedback! And thanks for understanding about the Braytons. I have a feeling I’ll get back to them sooner rather than later, so they won’t be gone for long.

The most popular options seem to be Maude’s Tales and the Royal Kingdom Challenge. So here’s what I’m going to do:

I’m going to create all my families for the RKC, build their houses, and play each family for a little bit, just to see how the gameplay goes and whether or not I can make some decent stories out of it. Since that will probably take awhile, I’m going to tell some Maude stories in the meantime. How does that sound?

Personally, I’m really excited about them both — I get to use the Victorian stuff I love (and build Victorian houses) and also tell stories about modern families who will be able to take full advantage of Nightlife once it comes out (cars! clubs! karaoke!). And I might try Option 2 just for fun — if it turns out to be interesting enough, maybe I’ll make it a Maude Tale.

A couple of things:

I wanted to let you guys know that I’m having a few problems with the Braytons, so I’m going to put their stories on hold for awhile until I can get things straightened out. I’m not giving up on them by any means — I’m very fond of them — but I would rather do some other stories for awhile until I resolve these issues. I know some of you will be disappointed, especially since I left the story hanging, and I’m sorry to do that to you. I hope when I finally return to the Brayton saga, it’ll be worth your wait.

So what stories am I going to tell in the meantime? Well, there are the Shanleys, but even they seem to have worn out their welcome a little bit, and I have to admit I’m a teensy bit tired of them myself. I don’t think it’s the Shanleys themselves, but the whole Legacy thing — I think I’ve had enough of it (for myself, anyway — I still enjoy reading everyone else’s Legacy stories). However, I don’t want to give up the Shanleys completely; I’ll probably keep playing them at least until I get to 20th generation. I just may not post about them as much.

What I’d really like to do is work on something completely new and/or bring back some of my old families, but it depends on you guys. I have about five ideas brewing in my head, and all of them are equally interesting to me. Even if I weren’t sharing my stories, I’d be tackling these ideas, but since I’m sharing, and you guys are taking the time to read my blog, I thought I’d ask you what ideas interest YOU the most.

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Hey guys, I ended up taking a little vacation from my Sims stories for the weekend, but now I’m working on the next Brayton update and have another Shanley update in the works as well.

I also played the old Shanleys a little bit — Mia’s brother and sister, who have grown up and gone to college. I ended up moving the old college lot I built (the one I was going to use for Maude’s college stories before University was announced — anyone remember that?) to Sim State and had Parker and Jacinda move into it with a bunch of CAS Sims. The lot is S-L-O-W, but it was fun to play.

Here are Parker and Jacinda as teens (they were 10th gen twins, but I didn’t get any points because they were born after Mia):

Jacinda reminds me a lot of her niece, Sierra. They’re both a bit weird-looking, but oh well. The Shanleys have been always been weird-looking (with a few exceptions), so I guess it’s just in the genes. :-)

Anyway, just wanted to let you guys know I’m still alive, working on stories, and hoping to update soon! Hope you’re all doing well.