I know! This is more like an interview than anything. I will try to answer a few at a time, at moments when I am too zombiefied to do actual writing, like in the morning before the caffeine kicks in.

How long have you been playing the Sims? Did you play Sims 1 and if so, what did you think of it? Did you have as intricate a hood and story in Sims 1, if you played it?

I had (and still have on my bookshelf) Sims 1 and every EP for it that I could find. It was like Barbie meets Little Computer People! I loved it. I also paid real money to download CC from sites like SimFreaks.

I had a few Sims I really liked but since they didn't have life cycles, they didn't play as much like a story as Sims 2 does. I would create a new Sim, build a new house, play for a little while, and then move on to another.

I stopped playing The Sims after a while, and I didn't get Sims 2 right away, because I remembered having seen a few shots from the game, with a low, close-up camera angle (like I do all the time now) and furniture and stuff, and I was so annoyed because I thought it was a cut scene, and I hate when games are advertised with screenshots of cut scenes, and then you get disappointed by the graphics of the actual game.

But I admit, when I finally did start playing the game, I wondered what on earth one could do with a low, close-up camera angle, since it was impossible to really play that way and see what the Sims were doing. I thought they just added that possibility for game screenshots and demos.

When you first started playing did you play with the Maxis hoods for a bit or did you just create a custom hood right away? If you did play Maxian, who is your favorite family/Sim/hood?

I think my first hood was Pleasantview? The one where Old Mortimer lives. But I never played any of the NPC families. I always have to start from scratch and obsessively build everything. So I only played long enough in that hood to figure out how the game worked. I don't even know who the characters are in the other hoods, so sometimes Simmer conversations are a bit over-my-head.

I know you started out playing the Royal Kingdom Challenge, how did it morph into this whole story? I mean, at what point did it move beyond the challenge?

I played one "round" of RKC, going through perhaps a week for every family, taking pictures as I went, and then assembled them into the first couple of years of the story. As it happened, in most of the families, that added up to two kids. Caedwulf and Brit were born, Dunstan and Yware, Athelis and (I believe) Brinstan, Bertie and Wynna... Only Egelric and Leda didn't have any, and Leda had a miscarriage since her motives got too low. (Inteenimator I think?)

It was as I was assembling the story that I started getting ideas for things that didn't happen on-camera (and couldn't... like the whole medicine-rubbing scene with Alred and Gytha... obviously I had to set that up). So, I don't remember whether I went back and took pictures to retroactively sneak in amongst the real RKC pictures, but either way, after the first round I was done with "playing" and became a Hollywood director.

I should mention that I started my RKC with the intention of blogging it. I had just stumbled across my first Sims blog (a rather uninteresting one which is no longer even there) and I wanted to try something like it. Simultaneously I stumbled across the rules for RKC, and I had just seen some medieval CC that looked interesting, so I combined them.

Have you played the Legacy Challenge and if so, did you like or not?

Never. I wasn't aware such things existed... RKC was the first I found and so I went with that. If I had known about Legacy, I am sure I would have gone for it... those sorts of restrictions are the sort of thing that turn a mostly free-form, no-win-condition game like this into a real contest.

Once I found out about it and found some Sims blogs, it looked like everyone was having so much fun with it. Several times (before I had any readers) I was tempted to put it aside for a while and do a Legacy Challenge or some other challenge, but luckily(?) I kept going.

What do you look for in Sims story? What pulls you in and keeps you?

I'm a sucker for medieval-ish/fantasy stories, obviously. Anything historical would probably work, though... Sydonie's Regency story was one of my favorites. Maybe it's a little unfair, but stories set in modern times have stricter criteria applied to them... there are more bad ones, first of all, and anyway the same is true for my reading choices in actual books. I am not up on modern fiction.

Either way, I don't much like stories where you get glimpses of the game. Like, when it's a challenge and the challenge isn't craftily worked into the story in some way, like a reality show, for instance. I don't really care about points and stuff. And in real life people don't have "motives" and "aspirations", they don't regularly pee their pants, they don't follow their coworkers home and then sit on the couch for three hours reading the paper...

I guess what I mean is that it needs to read like a novel, but with pictures provided by the game. I would much rather have a stray plumb bob slip into a picture than read about the character's bizarre desire to Woohoo with exactly 25 people. (And you lose points if you call it Woohoo! )

I guess I am kind of literary, too, since I expect it to be reasonably well-written. Not that mine was so great at the beginning, but at least there aren't too many spelling and grammar errors. They're like speed bumps in prose. Anyone not writing in his or her native language gets a pass though. I am totally overwhelmed by such people... Yicke and Rowena come to mind... I am quite fluent in French but I still can't imagine myself writing a story in French.

OK that's like a third of the questions? Now I really do have to go to work, so I will get back to the rest later.

Obliging? Who doesn't like to talk about herself? (at least secretly...)

It is interesting... one of the things I don't like about the Sims are those little weirdnesses that make it not like the real world... like the way they instantly age to a different life stage. I wanted my game as realistic as possible. I never used stuff like the elixirs or whatever to make my Sims not age, or skill faster, or etc. But I definitely admire the creativity of people who work the weirdnesses into an "internal logic". I like that term.

I don't see it as a world-building tool, myself. It is more like a family-building and house-building tool. It's too limited outside of the household. For example the neighborhoods are so tiny... I originally put all of my castles and lots on the same terrain, and they were way too unrealistically close together. I have since split them apart into many different downtowns, but it still bugs me.

I have a lot of stuff external to the game that makes up my "world" -- maps and so on, as well as my current behind-the-scenes project which is a population simulation experiment that I'm running to model every man, woman, and child in Lothere. (Computer scientist hobbies.)

Anyway, as someone who spent a lot of times building worlds on paper back in my D&D days, I tend to use the Sims as only a part of the world-building kit that has gone into making this particular world. As it happens, the logic of Lothere is not internal to the game.

Back to the questions...

What are your real life literary influences?

I've mentioned it a few times, but scattered all over the place, so here goes... in terms of influences I would name L.M.Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables), Jean Giono (French novelist), Louisa May Alcott (Little Women), Colleen McCullough (particularly the First Man in Rome series), fellow Ohioan Sherwood Anderson for his mastery of character, Jane Austen and Edith Wharton for subject matter and maybe tone, and perhaps Diana Gabaldon for all these sexy Scots . These are authors who have affected what and how I write. There are others whom I love but I can't say for certain that they really influence me.

My favorite author, hands down, flat on the table, is Jean Giono, but except for François I doubt anyone here knows or cares.

I suppose I also have been influenced by Marcel Proust -- I really did love Remembrance of things past, and not just because it is the snobbish thing to do -- but I would guess that any influence has been negative. Only Proust can write like Proust and get away with it. I am not that good.

If anyone is interested in a longitudinal study of my reading habits, I did keep a sort of log for a few years, which you can read online. Don't read the Summaries unless you want mega-spoilers though. I have such an abysmal memory that I am obliged to write this sort of blatant summary if I am to have any chance of remembering what I have read and what it was about.

Hmm, I think, looking at the list, I am a big fan of nineteenth century social novels.

Have you always been interested in Medieval times or did you story just happen to end up that way?

I have always been armpit-deep in history, but my focus has always been ancient Egypt. My lifetime goal has long been to write a novel or series of novels about Tuthmose IV and the aftermath of his reign. But my obsession with detail has prevented me from ever getting started on that. I just research, research, research.

I guess I like reading about medieval Europe more than some other periods in history and more than some other areas of the world. *shrugs* Anglo-Saxon history, in particular, has never interested me much, and I was always more on the side of the Normans. That perspective has totally changed! The Anglo-Saxons were awesome! The Frenchies were barbarians next to those guys.

I would surely have done a story from a later time period, except that I needed a good reason to justify the start of an RKC. My choices were the Black Death and the razing of the Anglo-Saxon nobility after the Norman Conquest. I chose the latter.

Do you have a Map of Lothere and it’s world? Do you have any pictures of the actual hood that you could share?

I did an article on Verso about maps of Lothere. That was a year ago and some of it needs to be updated, but the borders haven't changed.

My hoods are no longer worth looking at though... I have split everything out into about 12 or 15 downtowns, each with only 1-3 lots at the present time. I am rebuilding most of my castles at the moment from the ground up.

I at least need to do a world map with the locations of Eirik's island, Whitehand's island, Murchad's house, the seats of the different clans under Black Colin's banner, etc. Also some of the local neighbors like Hamelan and Dyrnemoras so you can see where Ethelwyn's family is from and where Brinstan has been spending the last six months.

How long does it take you to load your game? Where do you like to get your custom content?

I would guess it takes me about 25 minutes from the time I launch the game to the moment I'm in a lot and able to start moving things around. It takes a while to load a hood and then load a lot too. I also have to wait for my video card to choke on the number of textures and toss off the work of rendering to my CPUs, at which point I magically get good quality textures. (Otherwise it's super-blurry like in my pictures from the first few years). That is why I usually start any session by doing a little building... loading up the catalog and dropping down lots of objects and wallpapers will quickly overload the video card and, paradoxically, fix matters.

That's not too awful, but I waste a lot of time even while I'm taking pictures because I have so little RAM and such a crappy video card. I turn the camera and wait and wait... I exit build mode and wait and wait.. I don't want to talk about that.

I plan to buy a new computer as soon as I find out whether our application for permanent residency is accepted, because I don't want to go and buy a new computer and then leave it behind when I move to Hawaii or New Zealand three months later. Until then...

The one site I check regularly for CC is mts2. I also get a lot of my hair from XM Sims, Peggy, and Rose. There is a French site that used to be called Caravane Sims or something like that... they changed their name but they have awesome medieval stuff there. Medieval Sims, too. I think these sites are linked on my Where can I get? page. I'm at work and can't look for links now.

I try not to look too far afield for CC, because people will ask me where I got stuff, and then I don't know. If I only visit a few sites I can usually find things again. And I download way too much CC as it is, with just those sites.

Last question for my lunch break:

This is one I have wanted to ask for a long time: How often do you play and for how many approx hours at a time?

Since I started work full-time, I usually play twice a week (Sat. and Sun.), for about 4-5 hours each time. If I don't do any building, redecorating, or Sim-creating, I can usually take pictures for 3 simple chapters or 1 to 2 complicated chapters in that time. By simple I mean people mostly just talking, maybe shoving each other around or kissing a little. Complicated means either lots of move_objects to put Sims where I want them and make them do unusual things, since every time I switch between live mode and build mode and back I have to wait a minute or two for my PC to catch up, or it means one of those crazy party or wedding chapters with all those Sims that need to be herded into place. If I had a good computer I could probably do twice as much, or do it in half the time.

In terms of writing, I try to write at least 2 hours a day. Sometimes it is a lot more. Rarely is it less. A chapter can take anywhere from 3 hours to 10 or 12 to write (once the pictures are done), depending on how well I had it planned out ahead of time, and how difficult the subject matter is to write about. Any chapter with Dantalion and Eithne must have the Dante/Eithne difficulty factor of 1.5 applied. I don't know what it is about those two but they slow me down!

And, you know, it's a lot of work. I do think I am getting something out of it -- not only the interactions with readers, but also I think I am still growing as a writer without leaving this story. So I keep it up. But there are times when I reeeeally don't feel like writing, and I force myself anyway. It's like exercise.

Caravan Sims changed its name to Sims Design Avenue, by the by. I love their medieval sets, I swear the alchemist set just made me keel over in glee.

Very interesting behind-the-scenes look at the author! It definitely does read like an interview! Maybe you can even compile the answers into a post for Verso or something.

Oh, you like Giono, Lothere ? I think "Un Roi sans divertissement" is one of my favorite books. I think you could compare the valley in this book with Lothere's valley. There is this atmosphere about the place... If you did not read it you absolutely must ! It was during my last year in High School in Literature class that I had to read it and it was sooo great !

Taryn, I didn't mean to offend -- I hope I didn't. The question was what I look for in a Sims story, and a big factor for me is human-life realism -- make me forget the game. That doesn't mean that some people haven't found some very clever and creative and funny ways to make the game "real" -- the "internal logic" Jen described. Just not my cup of tea -- not my "genre" of Sims-related fiction, if you will. The fact that I never play the game any more probably has a lot to do with my tastes... I've gotten out of the habit of game-play issues.

Anyway, everybody, keep writing!! don't let anything I say discourage you from doing your thing your way. It's probably the best way for you. I am sure my style turns some people off, but they tend not to stick around long enough to tell me about it.

François, when I first started imagining Lothere as a landscape, I thought back to a few descriptions of the valley in Un roi sans divertissement. You were so right there. I did like it, though the book is not one of my favorites of his -- in fact, I find it to be something of a departure from his usual style. My favorite book is Que ma joie demeure. And Chant du monde is probably my 2nd favorite book ever. I like the really intense, romantic allegory. Read Que ma joie demeure if you haven't yet -- it is soooo tragically romantic! I haven't read all of Giono's books yet, though, because I am afraid someday I will find I have read all of them, and then what? I think I would rather die not having read them all than find myself with 40 years of life left and no new Giono to read.

OK, back to the questions:

Would you ever self-publish Lothere? I mean, with the pictures included of course. I have always wanted to buy the Book of Lothere, all the story in one book, or perhaps split up into volumes to keep size down - asier than reading the whole thing online.

The idea had never occurred to me. I think the pictures seem like such an insurmountable problem that I never bothered thinking about it.

Even if it were physically possible, I don't think I would. It is like Vash asked Alred once -- how do you know when your poem is finished so you can write it down? Not only is the story still fully ongoing, but I would feel obliged to go back and clean up a lot of the earlier chapters to bring them into somewhat presentable format, and that would take months. Some of them are downright embarrassing to me. As long as it is online I can tell myself it is a work-in-progress and can always be polished. If nothing else, someone would need to edit the whole thing to find all the inconsistencies, both in terms of the story and also stupid trivial stuff, like how I sometimes have called Cynewulf "the Old Man" and sometimes "the old man" and probably also "The Old Man" for all I know.

One of the things I like about this format is the fact that it doesn't feel permanent, so some of the sloppiness passes under my detail-obsessed Virgo radar. If I didn't have that freedom I might find myself paralyzed.

But if a real editor ever comes along and wants me to put together a book, and oh by the way here's a nice advance check... sure I would.

If you take your site down, did you keep a copy of the story for yourself? I keep Thyme’s entire story in Word Doc format. I had the Book of Lore and Legend before I had a website, so I can keep it always.

Honey, I'm a software developer... you wouldn't believe the byzantine backup system I have made with multiple servers and mysqldump and rsync and svn and chicken wire. Barring nuclear holocaust on the North American continent, there are copies of this story all over the place.

Will I keep it always? I can't answer that. These characters inhabit me in a way none ever have before, but there's no reason to believe another set of characters won't come along to replace them. And anyway, all is vanity, especially this.

Do you ever get bored of Lothere and play any other hoods? If so, what are they like?

Nope! I have been tempted a few times, early on, but I haven't played 5 minutes in another hood since I started Lothere.

Before Lothere I had one hood that I really got into... I really felt like stories were developing there, and what inspired me to begin a blog was my frustration with the impermanence of the stories I was dreaming up. I don't remember much about it now, except that it was in modern times, and I really made an effort to play "rounds" among families so that they would age at approximately the same rate. I remember I had an Iranian family with a ton of kids, a funny red-haired guy who was a journalist, this real stick-up-the-ass politician who had a gorgeous wife who suddenly died on the kitchen floor due to pregnancy complications... Oh! And I downloaded this sex worker career and had a total slutbag romance sim living on the bad side of town, and obviously the politician showed up there all the time. The usual stuff. I think I got into the births and childhoods of Gen 3 kids before I started Lothere.

Do build all your buildings yourself, and if so, how long does it take you to build and decorate an average lot?

I build everything myself, without exception. I like designing and building -- castles especially. I have my own style of building which probably wouldn't fly well if I put my lots up for download, and likewise there are too many things I don't like about other people's lots... especially castles, with their cardboard walls. The Sims does not lend itself well to medieval architecture. I've ranted about this enough already.

I can't guess how long it takes me to build an "average lot" since my average lot is, in fact, a castle, and I have never truly completed a castle. A couple are fully built in terms of the architecture (Dublin castle, Cian's ruined castle, Eirik's keep), but not fully decorated on the inside.

For a small castle like those three, I might spend 2 to 4 hours designing it on graph paper, or (as a software developer I am so humiliated to admit this) using MS Excel as a drawing tool. Then, building the undecorated, unwallpapered castle is about 3-4 hours... I am always trying quirky architectural stuff using different cheats and CC so I "waste" a lot of time playing around with that, rather than just reproducing my plan. Then decorating.... I can spend 30 minutes to an hour per room, fiddling with details and stuff like ceilings and ceiling beams.

But overall I build and decorate as I go. On bigger castles, like Lotheresburh or Raegiming, I even design as I go. Right now I am rebuilding Nothelm and so far all I have built are the dining hall and a half-decorated Duke's bedroom just above it, since those are the two rooms I will be needing in the near future.

If it's a very small house/lot, like Osh's barn, I might be able to do the whole thing in a session of 3-4 hours.

I have always wanted you to give tours of your world/lots in Verso or here, would you ever do that? I know you did do a bit of one awhile back.

Well, there are only so many hours in a day. I enjoy doing tours, but that takes up time I could spend working on the story, and I try to make the story a priority. But if there's a lot of demand maybe I will do something. Any lot in particular?

What are your must have mods?

Sorry I can't do links (though many of these are on my Where can I get? page), but here are the ones that come to mind:

• Insiminator & Inteenimator
• Camera mod to let you get down close with no clipping
• Gunmod's radiance lighting, though I have so utterly rewritten everything it's more like Lothere's radiance lighting these days
• Hula & More
• Reaction tester and a variety of animation boxes to unlock animations from different EPs
• Buyable sky object
• Weather controller
• No ZZZs while sleeping

I also have a lot of the "No autonomous X" type hacks, but I don't really know they're there any more. The ones above tend to be the ones I interact with a lot.

In case anyone is curious, I almost never use the AllMenus cheat. First of all, it's insanely huge and difficult to navigate, and second, if you pick something incompatible for whatever reason, it triggers an error on the Sim. And what happens when you trigger an error on a Sim, kids? Oh, you don't know? They snap back to stretch ratio of 1.0! So unless it's one of the rare people like Sigrid who is exactly size 1.0, they either shrink or grow, which totally ruins the scene for me unless I exit without saving and come back to the lot... and teleport the Sims back, and change their clothes and move them around... and that's like a half hour of waiting and work on my PC.

Are you looking forward to Sims 3? What do you think of what you have heard so far? Will you stop playing Lothere when it comes out?

Meh. My computer can barely handle Sims 2, though I hope to have a new one by then.

I hadn't heard anything "so far" until just 3 or 4 days ago, I finally went to the preview site. It did not strike me as being as radically different from Sims 2 as Sims 2 was from Sims 1, but I was reasonably pleased with what I saw. The lighting system looks more realistic (though still surely too bright for my tastes), and I love that Sims have some variety in body shapes. I want a chubby Conrad darn it!

I certainly wouldn't stop working on Lothere on account of Sims 3. (Remember, I'm not actually playing here.) I would probably be happy to switch to the Sims 3 engine, but unless our Sims 2 CC is backwards compatible (which seems utterly unlikely, and as a software developer I can't say I blame them) it will be ages before I could even hope to make Sims who look like my characters -- much less dress like them and live in castles like them.

I have considered ending the Lothere story in 1095 (when the 1st crusade starts), and if there is still interest in you and in me, continuing with a "new and improved" format. Sims 3 would be a good improvement, but only if the CC is there. And anyway, at the rate I'm going, it will take me far more than 10 years to write into 1095, so I will probably have to come up with a different upgrade path.

Whew! Caught up. That was fun.

"I have a hard time, very hard time, feeling that my work - which is like a part-time job, on Thyme is valuable because eseentially I am a grown woman writing a story about an imaginary world that I play with a game. This makes me feel like I am doing something immature instead of going out and doing something "worthy" in life. I just can't shut this little voice up, no matter how much joy Thyme brings me (which is considerable)."

I think we all feel like you. I am a musician who plays classical music and I play the Sims during my free-time and still I feel guilty not to be reading some composer's bio or a History of Music... I think we all need a break in our lives and those little world we built are nothing but the need of dreaming that's in every man/woman's life...

François, A.K.A. gab75

God bless the "ç" ! It is called a "cédille" and it's the favorite part of my name. It also the reason I call myself Gab for English keyboards... (Totally off-subject...)

Aww Lothere, you didn't offend me. Each person has stories they like and don't like, I totally understand that. There are a few stories I've come across out there that I haven't liked. I justed wanted to inform you that my Legacy was one that you'd probably not like, but with my lack of sleep these days, I guess I kinda rambled on and on a bit.

I only really keep updating it coz there seem to be some folks out there who are enjoying it. Its become my little soap actually, I couldn't be bothered writing about a whole weeks playng and only posting on who was born and who grew up etc. So if I find they've done something interesting, then I post about it. Or thats how I try to do it anyway

Anywho, I've had a bit or sleep now, so I'm not gonna ramble on like I did previously. Sorry if you thought I was offended by your preferances, that was soooo not what I meant. Ach, I shouldn't make comments when I'm tired, my brain doesn't process to well, lol

I saw, Jade. And I've been looking forward to answering them. As I said in response to Verity's comment, over here, I had a crazy weekend of server administration distracting me from just about everything.

But since I am still in the middle of writing a chapter involving sex and nudity, I don't really want to work on it during my lunch hour at work, so I will be catching up on responding to questions and comments then.

Oh, I am very pleased Lothere.

I'd categorize this story as being pretty angsty. At least recently. Oh mah goodness, the amount of angst we've had lately!

Oh my God, totally. And Anne would just slap him silly if he tried to hit on her, and he would end up finding her incredibly amusing...and Marilla and Rachel Lynde would just stand there with their Disapproving Eyebrows.
*Giggle*

Lothere, happily reading your response. We have more in common than I thought! I ABHOR violence. But having said that, I do have a murder mystery going on right now, but I think the violence in it is negligible. Interesting...it is easier to write it than to read it.

Anyway, just waiting for your final response, then will reply - am going out of town to visit friends, will reply when back home.