Love at First Sight ~ Earlier I hopped off the bus and trudged through the cold drizzle toward my apartment, gloved hands stuffed into my pockets. And there he was again—the man on the bus had followed me, matching my steps like he was my shadow. I sighted him in the side mirror of a … More Spitfire Chapter 2
Flames of Passion ~ The Blue Jay’s façade lit up brighter than ever before as flames spat from its windows, dancing in the night like tortured birds. Its warmth coursed over my face, and the smoke, bitter and harsh, drove away every trace of Autumn’s brisk chill. The street around us was deserted—no one was … More Spitfire Chapter 1
I thought I’d do something fun, something to put a bit of life into this blog while I’m working on other things. Immediately after I finished The Waste, I began a new novel, a story I never really intended to publish. It was less a novel and more a collection of things I really like—gangsters, … More Spitfire, a gangster web novel. A new chapter every Tuesday.
I’ve meant to do this for a while, but here they are. The maps are on their own page under the heading Beautiful War, which you’ll see on the site’s header. And here’s a link, in case you hate that little bar chasing your progress through the website and want to find my new … More Introducing some maps!
See what I did there? Designing the cover of The Waste was one of the most fun parts of its creation for several reasons. 1) Unlike the book itself, the cover only took a few weeks, as opposed to a fourth of my adult life so far. 2) It was the first time I got … More Covering Beautiful War: The Waste’s cover
It’s finally happening. After a few years of feverish brainstorming, followed by a few years of stale procrastination followed by actual hard work, and then another few years that wouldn’t just get on with it, my first novel is ready to publish. It’s called The Waste, the first of the Beautiful War series. I’ll put … More Upcoming Release: Beautiful War Book I, The Waste
One morning in my Junior year of high school, I woke up with an idea. I was going to write a story, an epic about a prince who sacrifices himself to redeem his kingdom, a tale of camaraderie and suffering, of triumph begat by a young man’s willingness to stand above his past sins and … More How I Became a Writer
A friend of mine and I have had a discussion about the nature of difficulty in gameplay—what changes to a basic design make it harder to reach a state of victory, ideally increasing the sense of reward when the player reaches that state. I would suggest, and will talk at length here, about how games … More Challenging versus Punishing in video games
Or, Video Games that Challenge the Player’s Expectations The word of the day is Deconstruction. Deconstruction is, as I understand it, when a writer takes the tropes (the concepts and archetypes we viewers expect from a genre or series) and turn them on their head, questioning elements of the story that we take for granted. … More Deconstruction in Gaming
I’m an argumentative person. I don’t go after topics to argue, and I’ve never been politically oriented, but I enjoy getting into deep discussions with people who disagree with me, really digging into the points to find out what the other person thinks. This is fun to me, and a lot of people don’t like … More Debating vs Arguing, or how to prove your point without being a jerk
