It was day two-hundred and twenty-four that he started talking to the ghost.
”We have so few tales of the goddess as a child. Most accounts treat the banishment as the earliest holy parable, and while there are glimpses of her young divinity in the fragments of Cade the Younger's Confessions, we are often left wondering what was she like, and did those around her know of her great destiny?”
— Professor Sunita Berhard, 1299 A.D.E
“Story! Story Aunt 0!”
Éo of Andevale, slayer of tygers and vampyres, friend to pirates, savior to children, blessed of Mari and bane to injustice, knew that despite her storied history of victories, this battle could not be won. The two children grasped at her legs. “Story! Story! Story!” and she picked up one in each arm, my how Cate was getting heavy, sat them down on her knees, the heavy Cade on her left leg, the iron underneath better suited to his weight, and put Hope on her right the child’s perfect metallic face beaming with joy.
Nothing could stop the child from dying. Even so, a simple statement of the facts would be bad for business, so she made a show of it. She would not waste the rare stash of pills, smuggled from the city and carefully hidden around the half-tent-half-hut she made her home. No, potent as they were, they would only delay the inevitable. She grabbed instead a pinch of jewelweed, a large sprig of willow, and a faceted bottle with an iron clasp that, despite all appearances, contained nothing more than highly distilled hooch. Then, the performance, the flamboyant manipulation of the mortar and pestle, the holding the bottle up to the light, the mumbling of mystical and to be honest, nonsensical words.
You’ve decided to take your children to PAX Unplugged. Congratulations!
PAX Unplugged is my PAX: this year will be my fifth visit. And each year, I’ve taken my son, from when he was about negative three weeks old still in my wife’s belly to last year. We’ve only missed the forbidden year and the year the vaccines weren’t available for kids. We’ve learned a lot about what works each trip. We’ve also learned what has not, my son teaching me these lessons with his “big feelings”. (And for the first time, this year we’re taking two kids. Let the learning continue!)
Look, I have a problem with blog post titles.
This one’s informational. I have four manuscripts in progress: two finished and edited, though I still tinker, two unfinished. If any of these strike you as interesting, and you wouldn’t mind writing about 500 to 1000 words about what you liked and disliked, send me an e-mail as described below and we’ll see about getting you a copy.
Update Three: Return of the Pen
It’s the last Star Wars themed title I promise.
I started drawing again. No, I will not be posting anything here, at least not for a while. Drawing is a skill that I have not spend a ton of time developing, but I’m not sure that is its purpose for me. I find it therapeutic to have a hobby that is just for me: no expectation to share, monetize, improve. A hobby with no pressure. (There is some essay here about the state of both our current grind culture and how my personal psychology fits in to said culture, which I will leave as an exercise to the reader.)
PAX Unplugged is Here!
It’s PAX!
Some quick links before we begin:
Instagram where I’ll post live updates.
I’ll be posting my best discoveries here as we go, specifically oriented towards gaming with children.
PAX Unplugged Guide for Parents
You’ve decided to take your children to PAX Unplugged. Congratulations!
PAX Unplugged is my PAX: this year will be my fifth visit. And each year, I’ve taken my son, from when he was about negative three weeks old still in my wife’s belly to last year. We’ve only missed the forbidden year and the year the vaccines weren’t available for kids. We’ve learned a lot about what works each trip. We’ve also learned what has not, my son teaching me these lessons with his “big feelings”. (And for the first time, this year we’re taking two kids. Let the learning continue!)
Some jackass once said, “To every thing there is a season.” Yeah, Solomon, wisest of all men, we know. I’ve seen one example after another in my life where the truest knowledge did not equate to maximum happiness. Knowing the night will pass is useful when you are near daybreak, perhaps less so when the sun has just set.
All that to say: I have much less progress than I wanted at this time. Sequels are hard, ya’ll. I think the balance in the elements is a bit trickier: in the early drafts when I worked out the pacing, no one knows anything about these characters. Now I’ve got just a few pages to excite with some action, elicit some nostalgia, introduce some new elements, remind of the relevant history, remind everyone of the mythos, all while convincing the reader that the happy ending of the previous book had a big enough flaw that Éo has to get back out there and cut some throats.
Update One: A New Hope
Three chapters and nine thousand words into The Eye of Fury, the next Éo book, and it's starting to feel like I'm writing again.
The Hand of Sorrow- An Open Query Letter
While anyone is always free to read anything they see, please enjoy this post if you’re ok with potentially spoiling a book you may never read. For example, if you’re an agent looking for a new work.
A few years back, I was rocking to sleep my nearly one year old son and going through a reading list of the best science fiction and fantasy, as determined buy the readers of NPR (a list which I have long since abandoned.) I was reading a book I will leave unnamed, one you would certainly recognize, a classic sword and sandal adventure. I finished the book thinking I wish I could have my son have the fun of reading such an imaginative tale, minus the absolutely abhorrent racism and sexism that was so ingrained in every story.
It was only days later that I wrote the first few paragraphs of the tale of Éo of Andevale, often called Éo Ironblood, the divine hero of many a childhood story and venerated by millions across the world. Those paragraphs survive, more or less, in the chapter below.
The Skeptic- An Open Query Letter
See below for an open query letter for my novel The Skeptic. It should be obvious, but just in case: spoiler alerts ahead.
If you are an agent, or know an agent, please feel free to contact me at the e-mail below. I’d be thrilled to have a further discussion, even if it’s just advice for how to improve, or a hot tip on who might be interested.
The Skeptic- Sample Chapter One
The Skeptic is my first finished novel. I loved the book so much I essentially wrote it twice: the first draft being so bad that I rewrote probably eighty percent of the book. I’m currently in the process of finding a publisher, which might be harder than writing the damned well-loved and cherished thing to begin with.