An Unexpected Benefit of Kickstarter
Now that the final volume of my and C. Aaron Kreader’s gamebook trilogy Midnight Legion has been funded by Kickstarter, and with a few weeks to go in the campaign, I want to take the opportunity to mention what I think has been one of the best parts of the process. I should mention that while […]
The Bigger Picture Podcast: Future Vision
In May I joined three fellow authors for a panel discussion at Balticon 52 on the topic of finding optimism in a world that doesn’t always seem to warrant it. The panel was moderated by Charlie Brown and hosted by Vex Mosaic, the online magazine of speculative thought to which I’ve contributed two essays. The […]
“Possible Futures” in Vex Mosaic
My essay “Possible Futures: How Spec Fic Reengineers Reality†appears today in the online magazine Vex Mosaic. It’s about how fiction, and speculative fiction in particular, helps to shape our perspectives and influence society. My involvement with Vex Mosaic can be traced back to a presentation about fiction writing that I attended at a recent Capclave. […]
Hot sauce, salsa and spicy food
I’m from New Mexico. In other words, I love hot food. One of my favorite things about traveling is finding local spicy dishes. In fact, one of my favorite reasons for traveling is to seek out new spicy foods. And since my best friend just sent me an enormous jug of Sadie’s salsa for my […]
CNN, You’re Wasting Our Time
Let’s get this out of the way first: the only reason you’re even on is that I’m in a Geneva hotel room and there aren’t many other English-language options. I suppose I could turn on Fox News, but that mostly exists to frighten old people. If I actually wanted news, I’d look online, where I […]
Writing and observation
One of the insights of John Gardner’s classic On Becoming a Novelist is that writing is about how you see the world. You can only write what you imagine or observe. And in that sense (I’m extrapolating here) fiction is about what writers notice and find important enough to share. To be admitted into what […]
Pitre on Art
In 1997 I visited the home of painter and inventor John Pitre to interview him for an article for the Honolulu Weekly. The article never ran, but I recently came across my notes, which include this quote from the artist: Art can be an emotional thing, or it can be just a pretty picture hanging […]
How to Make Awesome Things More Awesome
Something I’ve discovered over the past year is that nothing is so cool that it can’t be made cooler. For instance: here’s the Great Wall. Pretty awesome, right? But you know what would make it more awesome? If China took the Great Wall, and then added a roller coaster. And they did that: And here’s […]
Guest post on Electric Spec’s blog
Posted by admin on February 25, 2020 · Leave a Comment
“What excites me about this story…is a world where understanding how the world works is only the first step to being able to advise monarchs.” Today I was invited to share a few thoughts on the Electric Spec blog about my forthcoming fantasy story, “The Tenders.”
Category Commentary, The World of Dinian · Tags