It was insanely hot. Hotter than it had ever been
before. Steve stood about 7 or 8 blocks underground,
though for the moment still exposed to the harsh desert
sun, so the normal cooling benefits of being
underground didn’t currently apply. “Why did I
build my base in a desert?” Steve asked himself. This
was a question he found himself asking on a daily
basis. “I mean really, why, out of all the biomes in
the world did I pick a desert? I hate heat and sand,”
Steve continued to complain to himself as he
put the finishing touches on the grinder section of his
iron golem farm. “I could have set up my base in a nice
cold taiga, or maybe in a birch forest, or even up in
the extreme hills. Even a plain. Everyone sets up in a
plain,” Steve mused, mostly to
distract himself from the relentless onslaught of solar
radiation. The fact that he was working with lava
didn’t help with the heat problem. Steve was thankful
he couldn’t sweat because if he could he knew he'd be
drenched. Nothing was worse than wearing
soggy leather armor. Steve dumped the last bucket of
lava out over the collection pit where the golems would
fall. It spread out, completely covering the top of the
pit. “There,” Steve said as he inspected his work, “Now
just need to throw in the water
and this thing is done." Steve dug around in his pack
for his water buckets, eager to put the finishing
touches on his new farm and start using the iron for
all the insane projects he had in his head to get to.
Hoppers, minecarts, rail systems, new tools
and armor, the iron farm was the key to all of it.
Steve climbed up his dirt scaffolding to the upper
spawning floor. The floor was made out of smooth stone
with a stone brick border. It took a little more time
to smelt the usual cobblestone back into
smooth stone and even more to craft that into stone
brick blocks, but Steve felt like the aesthetics were
worth the extra effort and the farm did look really
good, if a little monochromatic. In the corners were
small raised platforms designed to help the
water spread and cover the whole spawning floor. Steve
took out his two water buckets and a bit more dirt and
made a quick and dirty, no pun intended infinite water
source to draw all the water he'd need. In very short
order Steve had placed the four
source blocks for the upper spawning area and quickly
removed the infinite water source. Steve had to
struggle against the current to get back to the hole in
the wall that led to the scaffolding, but he managed
and soon found himself plugging up the...
Interview with Irony Author
Author: Chauncy J. Kent
I know, I know... After the review fiasco, how could I
possibly believe that it would be ok to interview myself
about a story that I wrote and reviewed? Thankfully, As I
explained in the review, I wrote the story seven years ago
so it's not really interviewing myself, but me from seven
years ago, which is a little less strange. Also, I was the
only one available so options were limited. That said, let's
get into this.
Interviewer: Let's start at the begining. For our readers,
who do I have the pleasure of interviewing today?
Author: I'm Chauncy Kent, author of the short story Irony.
Interviewer: Thanks so much for speaking with me today. Just
to kick things off, what exactly was your inspiration for
the Story?
Author: Well, that's kind of a two part answer. For this
specific story, I was working on an iron farm in one of my
Minecraft worlds and while I was working I got surprised by
a zombie. It was easily dispatched, but it got me thinking,
what if there were more than one and they called for
reinforcements? But the second answer is for all of these
stories and it came from noticing two things: The game
doesn't have much in the way of lore, and there are items in
the game that will let me add some of my own. With that in
mind, I started writing stories to fill those items and add
a little more lore to my worlds.
Interviewer: If you had to pick one of your stories as your
favorite, which one would you say it is?
Author: It's hard to choose, but I think my favorite story,
if you would call it that is Rising Sun, which is basically
a bible of sorts for the cleric villagers. It's the closest
to a true "lore" book that I've written and just a lot of
fun to boot.
Interviewer: Alright, I don't want to take up too much of
your time, but I have one last question for you. It's been
seven years since you wrote Irony, your most recent stand-
alone story. With so much time passed, do you have anything
in the works?
Author: That's a great question, and it certainly would seem
like maybe the run is over after all that time. However, I
do have a story in progress. It's been sitting on my dropbox
for about seven years half finished, but I keep thinking I
need to come back and finish it as soon as I have some time.
So, keep your eyes peeled, something may be coming soon.
Interviewer: Very good stuff, we'll keep a look out for
that. Thank you again for speaking with me today and we look
forward to what's to come.