Mystery Book Discussion in Second Life

If all goes well, I'll be attending a book discussion in Second Life, the virtual world. It's a reader group, but I believe any book dissection is valuable for writers, and it's the kind of thing I've been looking for since I began knocking about in the SL universe a couple of weeks ago.

The event, a discussion of Ross MacDonald's The Moving Target, the first Lew Archer novel, is at 6 p.m. SL Time tonight, and it's sponsored by Info Island, one of the first libraries to provide Second Life programming.

I'm hopeful that it will be a good experience to add to a list of several positive SL visits I've had over the last few days.

I dropped by the Book Mooch group's picnic on Sunday which included virtual coffee, pizza and some general book talk plus some valuable info for me on where to visit on the grid to talk about books, writing etc.

One of the Book Mooch members directed me to a nice in-world coffee shop, where I chatted with some nice people.

I did not make it to the "Blue Angel's" open mic poetry event but that's a regular activity that I'll try to catch, maybe even read a poem or two though it's been a while since I've picked up a quill.

I Can Quit My Second Life Any Time I Feel Like It

OK, I won't talk about this Second Life stuff much more, but I spent some time "in world" last night. That's what we Second Lifers say when we're walking through the Second Life 3-D online universe, and I had some thoughts about the experience.

My quest to aquire better hair continued as did my effort to generally modify my off-the-rack "Urban Chic" avatar. (Hey, best I could find, OK? The choices were: boy-next-door-in-a-tight tee-shirt-and-jeans or lounge-lizard-in-black-jumpsuit. Or a fox or something. I'm not ready to be a "Furry." Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Modifying your appearances is not as easy as you'd think.

You can right-click on your computer self and modify your look a little by using sliders. Click on a slider and make hair longer or shorter, your nose bigger and more narrow, your beard thiner or bushier.

You can also modify your clothing. In the snapshot I took, I'm wearing a jacket I modified from a small white overshirt. It looks a little like a Nehru jacket with a longer tail. I like it. I'm wearing a red shirt under it and I got free jeans in a shop to replace my avatar's original knee-shorts.

So now I look roughly like a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Society.

I got free hair in one shop but it was red and the original black hair stayed when I put it on so I walked around looking kind of goofy until I figured out how to fix that.

After a little Goo Diligence, I discovered there are volunteers on Help Island, one of the many places to which you can teleport to in SL. (It's kind of like web surfing only in a 3-D environment in which you jump to places on your search results.)

So on Help Island, for the first time in-world, I struck up a conversation with a girl sitting on a bridge railing near the landing pad. I think people sit around there because they're volunteers.

Don't worry about a job yet, she said. Look around for freebies. Go and talk to people. Talk to everyone.

"Everywhere I go seems to be empty," I typed, my avatar mimin the keystrokes.

"Click on the map and go where there are a lot of people."

About then my computer froze up and when I got back in-world she was talking to some other people and I couldn't seem to get back into the conversation. And, you know, my feelings were kinda hurt. ?! It's weird. It feels like the real world in that respect.

Another girl was sitting on the other side of the railing so I walked over and tried talking to her.

"Do you know much about SL?" I asked, figuring she was hanging out there as a volunteer also. That seems to be the protocol on Help Island.

She said something involving LOL and and I got the impression she was giggling at the stupid newbie. Evidently I'm socially awkward in-world too. (Psychological research on all this is going on, I'm sure, or to come. Perhaps it will give me a glimpse through a different pane of the Johari Window.)

So I clicked on the map and looked for spots with lots of green dots and teleported.

And I landed on some guy's virtual patio and set off a security alarm. Just like my feelings were hurt by the conversation issue, I started to panic when it started to warn me I had 10 seconds (or some SL equivalent of time) to get off the patio.

Only thing is the message box that popped up with the warning meant I couldn't click anything like the teleport options because it had choices that required clicking didn't seem contextually relevant.

So while I was trying to figure out how to make good my escape, the security system said in effect: "Time's up Dirtbag, you are being physically ejected."

And I went flying through the air. You can fly in SL, and crash landings do not seem to invoke any system of damage points. Fortunately.

I went to the search option and typed free hair. That got me to the place pictured above. They , heavy sigh, seemed to have women's hair only.

A few other map quests got me into a club or two including some rather interesting Goth places and a few other empty malls with no hair extentions.

No Linden bucks, bad hair and I was snubbed by a cartoon character. It may take me a while to get the hang of this.

I Won't Get Lost But If I Did

A couple of comments on my Second Life post expressed the fear of getting lost in the online-avatar world.

Fortunately I don't have the time to get immersed on say the level of Rona Jaffe's Mazes and Monsters.

There's cable TV and Christine's desire to have me paint rooms and pursue square foot gardening to keep me safely grounded in reality.

Plus there's my attention span. Racking up enough Linden bucks to say buy land and open a casino or anything appears to require a lot of time and attention.

But if I were so inclined, hmmm -- wiggle your computer so it looks like there are ripples on the screen and imagine some harp strings being strummed...

Once I got the avatar customization figured out, I'd open a little bar called Dark Mortum on some appropriate fake avenue. (Thanks to "My Goth Name" from Gothic Style for the name inspiration)

We'd have:

• Drinks with Goth-sounding names
  
• Flash fiction readings
• Dark poetry slams
  
• A corner booth for Charles, Wayne, Kate S., Etain, Stewart, Cliff and all of my other blog pals.

Could be a lot of fun, and lots of people with avatars that look like Morepheus from Neil Gaiman's Sandman could stop in.

I guess that's my fantasy fantasy life. I'll probably just wander around a while there and see if I can ever get my hair right.

Surreal Seconds

I dropped from nothingness into a crowd. On my left someone looking like Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands. On my right, a biped with fur, pointy ears and a flowing tail.

Hesitantly I took a few steps and information screens began to appear, and upon experimentation I discovered I had control over them just not control in the way I was familiar.

I moved a little further, past more strange people into a spot where several pavilions were set up with artwork and games and other displays.

I began to stroll through the pavilions and suddenly my pace accelerated and I was not in the pavilions any longer but somehow over a vast blue sea. I was walking on water.

I'd been meaning to get around to Second Life for a while, but since I knew there'd be some assembly required in the form of an account and computer tweaks I kept putting it off.

Then I got an e-mail that Dean Koontz would be putting in an appearance and thought what the heck.

I couldn't create an account that night, some system malfunction but I decided to try a second time.

I had to get new drivers for my graphics card and upgrade to a .net platform with new numbers in it, but wow once I finally got it working ...

This avatar living is kind of wild. I've been meaning to read Snowcrash for ages and even had an idea for a thriller using avatars that my agent didn't sell, but the cyberpunk world is here.

It's kind of fabulous just walking around the Second Life environments where blue men hover in meditation and kids with flaming hair swish past with winged shoes. It's like being inside a science fiction novel.

I dropped by the book shop where Koontz did his reading and the currently empty space where Book Mooch has gatherings, visited some clubs and Festival Island. So far loads of fun.

Word has it there's going to be a lot of marketing done in Second Life, so I figured I better get a handle on that for my first life job.

Ironically, I have had trouble getting my hair to look decent in Second Life also. Some things you can't change even in Quicktime.