Deep Space Mine
When Matt Larkin and I were first brainstorming ideas for Black Ocean: Astral Prime, one of our first sticking points was what to call the series. I don't recall the various interim titles tossed around during that debate, but I do remember my first suggestion: Deep...
An idea that conquered itself
Not sure what my Author Scrapheap is? I introduce the idea on the Author Scrapheap archive page. Idea: A Conqueror's Tale (2 Books) Premise: Both books tell essentially the same story, from opposite sides. A war of conquest where an upstart overthrows a series of...
Race for the Galaxy: the game I’ll never get sick of
I play a lot of board games. I love sci-fi. Where the two of these passions best overlap is a board game called Race for the Galaxy. This is my favorite game. It's not hard to play, with simple buying and phase choice mechanics. It's quick to set up, doesn't take up a...
(Virtually) home for the holidays
As we spend more and more of our time indoors (those of us not deemed "essential", anyway), we're seeing an uptick in what was once solely the domain of sci-fi: video conferencing. Whether we're talking about the main viewscreen on the Enterprise (pick your model...
Year 7 of My 5-10 Year Overnight Success Plan
Welcome back, everyone, to my now-annual tradition of updating my blog. For those of you who don’t know, Jan 31, 2020 marks the 7th bookiversary of Firehurler, my first published novel. It also marks the end of Year 7 of my 5-10 Year Overnight Success Plan. My theory...
Fighting for Freedom
With Independence Day behind us in the USA, it's a good time to talk about rebellions and revolutions in fiction. Sci-fi and fantasy are rife with stories of the oppressed rising up and fighting back. Though in fairness, not a lot of them delve much into the aftermath...
Fantastic Fathers
Back around Mother's Day, I made a list of the best mothers in sci-fi and fantasy. Fair's fair, so now we're having a look at the top fictional fathers out there. It's interesting. Whereas mother figures are often absent entirely, fathers are more commonly stern,...
RPGs: the Fantasy Author’s Gateway Drug to Writing
This past weekend, I got together with the same group of guys I've been gaming with since the mid-'90s for some tabletop D&D action. Even though we're all married (the last bachelor joined us married guys last fall) and many of my friends have kids, we sometimes...
Are You Ready to Upload Your Brain?
So, who's ready for the robot revolution? Will you rise up and join our new robotic masters in a shiny new machine body? Or fight to preserve biological life as Homo roboticus emerges to threaten our very existence? Anyone who's read my Robot Geneticists series will...
More Than a Sword
The sword is the iconic staple of the fantasy multiverse. It's among the more effective all-purpose melee weapons, while more conveniently portable than the ultimate medieval weapon: the spear. They can denote rank, carry magical enchantments, or hack down foes. But...