tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36658516795304724672024-03-12T18:09:33.657-07:00Gypsy CilarieUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3665851679530472467.post-19388178261675788372015-10-27T11:39:00.001-07:002017-07-13T07:19:37.825-07:00Welcome...<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Hello.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">My name is Marion. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I'm the <a href="http://authormgw.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">author of several novels</a>, strolling towards middle-age.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I have always loved stories, but it takes a long time for a writer to become good at what they do. One of the things I loved most when I was in my early teens was playing <b>M</b>ulti <b>U</b>ser <b>D</b>imensions (MUDs). These were online role-playing games before fancy computer graphics came along. They were text-based worlds, where each room had a description, and some of those descriptions would talk to you or attack you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Other players would log-in from all across the world, and you could invent yourself as anyone you chose to be. I was always a thief. I enjoyed hiding in the shadows, stealing into locked rooms, and walking, unseen, through a crowd. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I went by the name of Gratia, my middle name in Latin, and my absolute favourite place to play was a MUD called <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/208122749227891/?fref=ts" target="_blank">Realms of Aurealis</a>. That's where I met my American friends Gabe, Silver and Andy. Andy went by the name of Reverend and became my main RPing partner. He later taught me the basics of coding MUDs on his own server. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">That really was a game changer for me. I'd always been a <i><a href="http://deckledged.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/fighting-fantasy.html" target="_blank">Fighting Fantasy</a></i> fan, especially of anything involving Port Blacksand. But with MUDs, I not only got to walk around a text-based world, I was given the chance to write my own. It was like creating a living book and watching as other people brought it to life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I honestly reckon text-based games were a major influence on my desire to write. Being able to interact with the page, and to observe both description and dialogue - it was a fast track to story construction. I've listened to enough authors talk about their own RPing backgrounds to know this theory holds weight.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Building character was what these games were all about (well, that and killing fluffy woodland creatures for experience points). Many of my fellow MUDers had written character profiles for the website, some had written a couple of pages. I decided that I wanted to do the same. Reverend had asked me about my character's history, and I felt inspired to tell Gratia's story - up to the point where they first met.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">One page turned into three, three into ten, ten into twenty, twenty into fifty... thousand words.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I struggle to remember exactly when this was all written, but it was completed by the time I settled into university aged eighteen. So it was started anywhere between the age of fifteen or sixteen, and completed by seventeen.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I gave it two titles: </span><span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Tale of the Gypsy Cilarie</i> or </span><span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Tale of the Gypsy Queen.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">It was my first </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">novella-length story, resting at around 56,700.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Here on this site I am going to offer it up to the world. The furtive first fumblings of a bookish, geeky, slightly mad teen who loved make-believe. I'll admit that I have given it a bit of a polish, to iron out some of the worst offending typos and lessen the elliptical overload. I made most of the mistakes you'd expect from a young writer. I freely admit that grammar eluded me well into my early twenties. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Other than that, it is as was.</span></div>
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