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Fave magazines
Two of my favorite magazines are On Spec and Black Gate (they cater to two different readings tastes but both provide intelligent and entertaining stories every issue). Anyways the folks on the Black Gate blog have posted a short note congratulating On Spec on their 20th anniversary! If you haven’t read both of these fine magazines you should grab yourself a copy. In addition to print both now offer electronic versions of their magazines. – Brent
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iPhone Developer's Cookbook – Review
I originally purchased this book while at BioWare in anticipation of working on an iPhone game and so it had sat on my unread pile for a bit. I finally decided to tackle it, one reason being that I’ll be writing a review shortly for a new book from O’Reilly called iPhone Game Development and thought it would be interesting to compare the two titles. The author of The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook, Erica Sadun, seems very knowledgeable about the iPhone SDK and the book was organized well and was a good read. It should be mentioned that I do not have a Macintosh and hence couldn’t actually test any of…
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The Prophet
My story ‘The Prophet’ is now available in the anthology END OF DAYS: AN APOCALYPTIC ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 2 from Living Dead Press. You can order the anthology directly from Amazon. This story is actually the first (chronologically) in a series of stories featuring Wanderer. The ‘end’ of the series was my first story in print. It was called ‘The End of the Road’ and appeared in Not One of Us and is available through AnthologyBuilder. Goodreads reviews for The Prophet Reviews from Goodreads.com
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Brent Knowles – Writer of the Future!
Win! Well the news is (finally!) out and I am ecstatic. I’ve placed first in the Writers of the Future Contest for the third quarter. I’ve known for a couple weeks, but have had to wait until Joni Labaqui (the contest director) had posted the results. During the wait I’ve been scouring the Writers of the Future website (watching the podcast of the last awards ceremony, et cetera), and reading blogs of past contest winners. (I’ve also been writing a new story but to be honest this whole ‘excited over winning’ thing has been a bit distracting) First, I want to congratulate the other third quarter winners Adam Colston (2nd…
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Nebula Season
The nomination period for the Nebula Awards has opened up and several writer blogs that I follow are now listing eligible works. Here are a couple of so far: Mike Allen, who had a nomination last year for the “The Button Bin” has a couple of new stories, including “The Blessed Days” in Tales of the Talisman, which I read and really enjoyed. There is also “Stone Flowers”, which I have not read yet but will be doing so shortly. He also lists the contributors to Clockwork Phoenix 2, which I have not read yet but the previous volume had some truly excellent stories. Dr. Phillip Edward Kaldon has written…
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BioWare-Brent Year 4 (2002 – 2003)
This is the fourth of ten posts, one for each year that I worked for BioWare. Neverwinter Nights Expansion Packs So it was around this time that we started working on the expansion packs for Neverwinter Nights, specifically Expansion Pack #2. Yes, you read that correctly. The team I was leading was focused on the second expansion pack. The intent was to have a third-party developer create the first expansion pack, giving my development team more time to work on the second expansion pack. That was the plan anyways. My team was small. I don’t really remember who was with me on the expansion pack from the beginning other than…
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Review On Spec #78
Cover by Cristy Road Just finished reading the latest On Spec. This is issue #78 (Fall 2009). From the Sea by Brent Knowles Well, I kind of know the author of this one so I’ll just keep my mouth shut here. Every Witch Way by Joanna M. Weston This story is about the only man in a family of witches and how he copes with the powers used by his mother and sister. I liked this story. It dealt with family issues and struggles — as did most of the stories in this issue, it seemed a theme of this issue, whether intentional or not, I’m not sure. Favourite by…
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"The Tale of Lady Spite" as told in Tales of the Talisman
Received my contributor’s copies of Tales of the Talisman Volume V Issue 2, in which my dark fantasy story “The Tale of Lady Spite” appears. Tales of the Talisman has custom artwork for all the stories and I was pleased to see what Erika McGinnis had created for my story. Though I have had much experience with artists taking my words and transforming them into something visual through my years working on videogames, having an artist do the same for one of my stories is much more personal and delightful. With “The Tale of Lady Spite” and “From the Sea” I now have two stories set in my dark fantasy…
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The Lazy Designer: Providing Useful Feedback
“How to Submit Feedback that Will Make it into the Game and not the Recycling Bin” Feedback (re: bug reports, user analysis, critiques) is essential for many creative endeavors, from writing stories or making movies or designing games. Even the most talented game designer benefits from seeing her product through the eyes of a potential consumer. Knowing how to provide great feedback is essential for a designer, preparing them for when they must solicit feedback and respond to it. Feedback in this section refers to subjective analysis of gameplay, interface, story, et cetera. More straight forward bug reporting will be described elsewhere. Consider this example: Your interface sucks more than…
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YourOtherMind 8.2 Released!
To much fanfare (re: my kids screaming at me to come play with them), the new version of YourOtherMind, the Writing Organizer has been officially released. You can download it from the download page. This new release includes a full-screen text editor, storyboards for better organizing stickit notes, spellchecking and a host of other features (See full list of new features for version 8.2). Existing users,please DO NOT download this new version, just turn on automatic updates to receive it, well, automatically. Thanks to everyone who helped beta test. I think with this version YourOtherMind has taken a huge step forward as a fully featured writing environment. Check back in…