Happy Valentine's Day to all! Hope you did something nice tofor someone you love.

"City of Shadow and Glass", very short cyberpunk vignette, is available in the current issue of Bull Spec, which is excellent and you should order right away, not because of my story but because it regularly provides great speculative fiction in a high production- ( Read more... )

My first introduction to Jirel of Joiry was "Jirel Meets Magic", first story in the Jirel of Joiry compilation from Ace, and it was love at first paragraph. Jirel was, as is her custom, riding toward the biggest, baddest evildoer in the land, and before she leaves her castle she curses her soldiers for cowards (again as is often her custom). As ( Read more... )

I've been sitting on this awhile, though some of you know this already, or have kindly pointed it out to me ( Read more... )

When we moved into the new place, we didn't know that a grape arbor came with it. At first glance back in March it appeared to be a tangled mess of mysterious dry vines, long abandoned. By the time we moved in it was decidedly not dead, but covered in several feet of thick green leaves and runners that were trying to eat the house. In August, there ( Read more... )

Despite all blogular evidence to the contrary, I am merely buried, not dead -- and nearly emerged. Since last we met, there was Thanksgiving (driving to San Diego), Christmas (see "Thanksgiving"), my father's 70th birthday (flying to San Diego), three Escapist articles, a two-month-long still-in-action sinus infection ("chronic sinusitis") with ( Read more... )

Hallo again all -- I am still behind on comment replies to the Mac Attack!, but am on a plane again tomorrow so wanted to post this quickly.

"Why Your Game Idea Sucks", a short-order article I wrote for the Escapist a couple of weeks ago, popped up in my google alerts yesterday. By the time I got to it, it already had about 25 comments, and now it ( Read more... )

One of the occupational hazards of being a game designer is an obligation to play up-and-coming games, both to stay ahead of where the market is moving and to dig for signs of the One True Game Design, aka universal mechanics that move people. Lately there's been a lot of buzz around Bejeweled Blitz, so I dug in for a sample today.

Blitz takes the ( Read more... )

Hey all -- long time no see. I've been reading my friends' page sporadically, and have a few posts queued up to finish, but travel has been putting me behind on LJ again. I flew somewhere different every week in June, and even then was still trying to catch up from LOGIN in May. Things should be quieting down a bit now, at least until TNEO in mid- ( Read more... )

I'm pretty sure several things I was going to post about have since fallen out of my head, but I thought I'd grab a couple of these because they are cool.

As you may have seen if you were watching time_shark's journal during April, the 10th anniversary issue of Mythic Delirium is out, with a quite wonderful poem by Neil Gaiman as well as terrific work from ( Read more... )

Hi all. Behind on updates again, but just wanted to get in a quick update. More posts coming soon, including a Smeagol update -- he has a vet re-visit next Saturday. Overall, he's doing much better -- more details soon. :) Much travel ahead... NYC this weekend, Seattle next month (for LOGIN Conference, where erikbethke and I will be discussing BetterEULA's ( Read more... )