It’s the start of a new year! Yes, I know, it’s the end of April as I write this, and 2019 is speeding toward the halfway point, but I see this as the beginning of what will hopefully be a good writing year. After a bit of a break, long needed after writing three novels back to back, I sold a story. My science fiction story, “Binary”, will be appearing in an upcoming issue of Analog. When I first started thinking about writing professionally, it was always the Big 3 genre magazines that I imagined one day being in — Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Analog. They’ve been on “the list” ever since. And now I get to cross one of them off. I’m really impressed with what Trevor Quachri has been doing with the magazine and I’m proud to be a part of it with him as editor.

I should mention that this story came out of the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop that I attended back in 2015. I attended (despite having a terrible case of bronchitis) because I wanted to write more science fiction and I thought learning more about space and astronomy would help, and I’m happy to say that it did. Yes, it took a few years to get the story right, but I’m glad I was able to finish it and sell it and I can’t wait to see it in print. I’m hoping it’s the first of a string of science fiction stories from me.

I’ll post an update when I have an idea of when it will be out, but in the meantime you should check out the current issue (March/April 2019), particularly the story “The Walk to Distant Suns” by fellow Altered Fluid members Matthew Kressel and David Mercurio Rivera. It’s a great story and I’m happy to follow in their footsteps.

For those who don’t know, I have a podcast with Devin Poore called Spirited Discourse, where creative people chat over drinks and we record the conversation. We had a bit of a gap in our episodes due to the intrusion of life and work, but as of yesterday we are back on track. Up right now is Episode 007 with writer Matthew Kressel. We talked about writing and critiquing, television, beer, Alice in Wonderland, and of course, with Matt, Blade Runner. It was a good time recording the episode (and drinking the applejack and beer) so please check it out if you have the chance. And if you haven’t heard the earlier episodes, please check them out as well. And if you like them, please leave us a review on iTunes (or wherever).

Here’s the iTunes link

Here’s the SoundCloud link

Those who know me well know that I have always been a fan of tabletop RPGs. I spent countless hours in my childhood playing games like D&D, Star Frontiers, Villains & Vigilantes, and Champions. Later, in college, I started playing again and that was my first flirtation with writing for games. I sold an NPC to Steve Jackson’s Pyramid magazine and though I never won, I did well in several open-calls. I thought for a while that writing for games was going to be my future, long before I was committed to writing fiction. Eventually, I fell out of gaming and got my first 9 to 5 job. For a while I was putting out an online gaming magazine called The Fireblade with a friend of mine, but eventually that fell to the wayside as I started taking fiction writing more seriously. It wasn’t until recent years that I rediscovered my love of gaming and realized the wealth of material available both from established companies and indie game developers. And this year, after creating some concepts for small gaming groups, I decided to try to put those ideas together as adventures and supplements.

For those familiar with D&D, they now have an online store called the DM’s Guild. Wizards of the Coast, who currently produces D&D, sells PDFs of older supplements there, but it’s also a marketplace for creators to put up their own creations and sell them. Figuring this would be the easiest route, I put together my first adventure and put it up for sale. Cavern of the Violator is a 5e D&D one-session adventure for low level characters centering around fungus and a strange disappearance, and was heavily influenced by the X-Files. It’s meant to be dropped into any campaign and I tried to give some tips to make it work for anyone. It’s currently for sale on DMsGuild.

That was only the beginning, though. After delving into the Warlock class, I wrote up Rykard’s Book of Patrons, an 87-page supplement with sample patrons for each of the official warlock subclasses, including optional rules and plot hooks. The goal was to create interesting patrons with their own backstories and personalities that players and DMs could either use as written or else make them a springboard for an original concept. The book also includes a new patron type, The Elemental, as well as a new patron category — Locations. Rykard’s Book of Patrons is currently on sale at DMsGuild for 7.95 with over 40,000 words of material (and lots of pretty pictures).

To celebrate the release of Rykard’s Book of Patrons, I dropped the price of Cavern of the Violator to $1.00. If you do check it out (or the patron book), I would appreciate it if you would leave a review and/or tell someone else about it if you like it.

Since I’m having so much fun, I’m sure there will be more game-related releases once I’ve worked them out. I can’t wait.

As usual, it’s been a long time since I posted here. And as usual, a lot has happened in the interim, so it’s a good excuse to dust off the blog and mention the most recent events.

One of the big writer items is that I sold a story to Lightspeed Magazine. “All In” is the third story in my Card Sharp series of weird western short stories, after “Card Sharp” and “Second Hand” and wraps up that storyline. I don’t know when the story will go up on the site, but I will update this site and shout about it on social media when I know more.

Working with the Lightspeed team is always a pleasure and I’m happy that I get to finish this series of stories (for now — there may be more down the road).

Hi, everyone. It’s been a while since I last updated here, but life has been a bit of a whirlwind. Since Raining Fire came out, I’ve been working on short stories after a long absence. I was laid off from my day job and started a new one. And, with my friend and fellow writer, Devin Poore, I started a podcast. It’s been something we’ve been talking about for years now, and inspired by Jennifer Udden, who co-hosts the Shipping & Handling Podcast, I decided to finally commit to it. We’re just starting out, and we’re still finding our legs, but two episodes are currently up on our website and iTunes and SoundCloud (both with horror writer, Grady Hendrix) and the third is imminent. The idea behind the podcast is simple — geeks talking over drinks. It’s an attempt to recreate in some ways the kinds of discussions that writers and other creative types have at conventions, in the bar, about topics they’re excited about. I hope you’ll check it out and add it to your podcast app of choice.