WARS Mavericks Novella Celebrates First Fan Art!

When my friend Brian first linked me to the picture he made of Jack Wilgress, I thought it was pretty cool.  I shared it with the...

WARS Mavericks Novella Celebrates First Fan Art!

How Amazon Failed Us All… and How To Fight Back

I don’t really like ebooks.  I like to open a real book with real pages.  I especially like to read from the standard...

How Amazon Failed Us All... and How To Fight Back

It Doesn’t Have to be Good

I am Team Jacob. I just wanted to get that out of the way, since that seems to be the most important social label right now.  Yeah, werewolves...

It Doesn't Have to be Good

Enlisted and Ready for WARS

No, I am not suddenly embarking in a career in the United States Armed Forces. On Monday I signed a contract with Grail Quest Books to write a Novella...

Enlisted and Ready for WARS

Shooting for the Stars With Your Novel

In the quest to become published authors, we writers are faced with a critical decision: what do we do with the brilliant literary treasure...

Shooting for the Stars With Your Novel

News

WARS Mavericks Novella Celebrates First Fan Art!

When my friend Brian first linked me to the picture he made of Jack Wilgress, I thought it was pretty cool.  I shared it with the rest of my friends on Facebook, but I thought it deserved a blog post.
One of the coolest things about this picture is the wording behind the character, “3:10 to [...]

Projects

Thesis: A Fantasy

A writer begins work on a treatise explaining his utter dislike for the genre of Fantasy. In the spirit of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, he finds himself transported to a fantasy realm full of strange and outlandish cookie-cutter fairy-tale characters. The drawback? This writer has a penchant [...]

Writing

Sigler-izing the Creative Queue

I once asked Scott Sigler, podcasting superstar and Crown Publishing author of Sci-Fi/Horror novels, what elements led to reaching his first contract with a large publishing house.  He listed three things for me:  Quality content, consistency and promotion.  Quality and promotion are obvious.  You can’t build an audience by giving them crap, and you can’t [...]

Politics

Misrepresenting the Tea Party Concept

The Tea Party movement, as I see it, is being misrepresented both by the left and the right, and there are two seminal moments which cement this misrepresentaion in my mind.
I want to put it into perspective a little bit, though.  The biggest proponent of the Tea Parties has been conservative talk show host Glenn Beck.  I [...]

Social Media

Service, not Advertising

There’s a paradigm shift coming in the social media space.  I can sort of see it out there on the horizon, but it’s kind of blurry.  I’m not sure what form it will take, exactly, and I’m not really a prognosticator of all things internet.  But I am a thinker.  I sense a lot of disillusionment [...]

Recent Posts

Sigler-izing the Creative Queue

I once asked Scott Sigler, podcasting superstar and Crown Publishing author of Sci-Fi/Horror novels, what elements led to reaching his first contract with a large publishing house.  He listed three things for me:  Quality content, consistency and promotion.  Quality and promotion are obvious.  You can’t build an audience by giving them crap, and you can’t [...]

Service, not Advertising

There’s a paradigm shift coming in the social media space.  I can sort of see it out there on the horizon, but it’s kind of blurry.  I’m not sure what form it will take, exactly, and I’m not really a prognosticator of all things internet.  But I am a thinker.  I sense a lot of disillusionment [...]

Misrepresenting the Tea Party Concept

The Tea Party movement, as I see it, is being misrepresented both by the left and the right, and there are two seminal moments which cement this misrepresentaion in my mind.
I want to put it into perspective a little bit, though.  The biggest proponent of the Tea Parties has been conservative talk show host Glenn Beck.  I [...]

WARS Mavericks Novella Celebrates First Fan Art!

When my friend Brian first linked me to the picture he made of Jack Wilgress, I thought it was pretty cool.  I shared it with the rest of my friends on Facebook, but I thought it deserved a blog post.
One of the coolest things about this picture is the wording behind the character, “3:10 to [...]

How Amazon Failed Us All… and How To Fight Back

I don’t really like ebooks.  I like to open a real book with real pages.  I especially like to read from the standard page because it gives my eyes a much-needed respite from the glare of a monitor.  There’s something about an object that shoots light directly into your eyes that bugs you after a [...]

On The Wheel of Time and Characters

I just finished The Gathering Storm, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, and I gotta say:  I have never nearly fainted from sheer awesome before.
I am beginning to think Robert Jordan is perhaps the single greatest developer of characters in the history of mankind.  Scratch that.  The second-greatest.  I think the only competition Jordan had [...]

It Doesn’t Have to be Good

I am Team Jacob.
I just wanted to get that out of the way, since that seems to be the most important social label right now.  Yeah, werewolves are infinitely cooler than vampires, and maybe I’m biased because of Hugh Jackman’s Van Helsing.  But that’s not why I’m Team Jacob.  My wife is.  And I’m with her.  [...]

Writing in Someone Else’s Universe… and Our Own

I wouldn’t have thought my first writing contract would be in Science Fiction.
Let me amend that.  The WARS universe has all the makings of a classic Space Opera.  Sure, there is some concrete scientific theory behind the universe, throw in some quantum mechanics, yada yada yada.  I never was big on the whole science aspect [...]

Enlisted and Ready for WARS

No, I am not suddenly embarking in a career in the United States Armed Forces.
On Monday I signed a contract with Grail Quest Books to write a Novella in the universe based on WARS, the Collectible Card Game from Decipher, Inc.  I am one of three authors enlisted to work on this project, each writing [...]

Parsec FAIL… and Other News

Well, my adventure at the Parsecs ended rather ignominiously, as The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd took the prize for Best Audio Drama: Short Form at Dragon*Con.  I was unable to attend the convention, which is just as well considering I didn’t win.  I don’t begrudge my competitors, and will continue to put out projects [...]