Whispers of a Machine – An inventive puzzle game with a “killer” plot…PLUS cyber tools
One of my guilty pleasures is the murder mystery. One or more people are dead. We don’t know who killed them. Catch them before they either get away or kill again. My preference leans toward the lone (or with just a sidekick) detective as opposed to police...
Inspector Gadget had nothing on the modern smart watch
Can we take a moment to appreciate the technological majesty of the smart watch? Dick Tracy was an American comic strip that debuted in newspapers in 1931. It starred a hard-nosed detective with a super-fancy piece of technology: a watch with a built-in radio. For...
District 9 – A dystopian future, or an uncomfortable past?
It never became a franchise, because it was never looking to become one. District 9 feels like a forgotten relic of an era that wasn’t even all that long ago. It wasn’t about superheroes. It wasn’t an adaptation of a famous book. It wasn’t a remake of an old classic....
Last Angel has Fallen – Why I scrapped my take on an unanticipated apocalyptic failure
Armageddon has come, the demons won…but the last humans are looking for a rematch OK, I talk a lot about stuff I decided not to write because it was too weird, too derivative, or too incomplete. But what about when the subject matter is so polarizing that it will be...
Check the Haul (a Black Ocean Christmas parody)
Holiday fun, reimagined by J.S. Morin for the Black Ocean fan group December 2021. Fa la la la la, la la la laFa la la la la, la la la la Check the haul, collect extortions Fa la la la la, la la la la (fa la la la la, la la la la) Tis the season to make fortunes Fa la...
Dice Throne – A cool adventure…or “Yahtzee with hitpoints”
Dice Throne is a fantasy combat game that, boiled down to its core, is “Yahtzee with hitpoints.” Each custom hero comes with their own playing board that lists out their abilities (triggered with various Yahtzee scoring rolls like small and large straights), a deck of...
Portable Payment Processors – No cash? No problem…there is an app for that
How are we going to explain the change jar to our grandkids? When I was a kid, I had a wallet that had velcro to keep it closed. It usually only had a couple dollars in it, but it started a wallet-carrying habit that lasted until… well… even today. But the key...
Who is the galaxy’s most interesting man?
Hint: it's not me. What I'm currently writing: My current project is getting Mission Pack 1 of Black Ocean: Passage of Time ready to release. I’m in the meaty middle of writing Mission 3 right now (titles are still hard to come by and TBD at the moment). It will...
Willow – A classic 80’s epic fantasy that is still worth a watch today
What do you get when you combine George Lucas & Ron Howard? Willow… Once Upon a Time, George Lucas had finished his Star Wars opus and needed a project. So, five years after Return of the Jedi, Lucasfilm released Willow. Set in an entirely made-up world, it...
Want to hear my dream plot for “Starcraft 3”?
Who is ready for the next Starcraft game? I dreamt I wrote it.. I never really went through a fanfic stage as a writer. Apparently, as author origin stories go, it’s the equivalent of being exposed to weird radiation, or being orphaned at a young age: pretty bland and...