• My Life

    Kill it or Leave It?

    The home we’ve recently moved into has this tree growing in the backyard. Short of decapitating dandelions I’m not much of a gardener but I’m a bit concerned about how close the tree is to the house. It is starting to lean a bit… pushing itself away from the house (not really obvious in the photo). I would appreciate any suggestions in regards to what we should be doing here. Is the tree okay this close to the house? Should it be cut down? Or maybe just thinned out a bit.

  • My Life

    Go Away! Come Back! With Zombies!

    So one of the many amazingly fun games I play with my kids is “Go Away/Come Back”. I’m not sure if this has a more official name but the basic gameplay is that I tell my kids to go away. Then I snarl, “Come back.” Then I grab ’em. Then I let them go and say “Go away!” Repeat for hours of giggly fun or until a head injury occurs. Well the other day I tried a new variant. I pretended to be a zombie when I tried to grab them, snarling “Brains!”. Then once I had them I became a survivor, shouting out in a desperate voice, “Flee man!”…

  • My Life

    Stickers!

    While cleaning out some old files I came across these old stickers. I believe I got them for the writing organizer software I used to distribute over a decade ago. When I first started seriously writing I really wanted some kind of digital notebook to organize all my ideas, stories, and submissions. So I wrote my own, using the Delphi programming language. I received the stickers because the software reviewed favorably. And I am still using this software, though it was rewritten in C# a few years ago. I stopped distributing it because supporting software is a bit of a headache and I wasn’t making enough money from it to…

  • Writing Resources

    Submissions

    Whew! Busy day! As of this afternoon I have four novels and twenty-six stories out at various markets. I also have another four stories fairly close to being submission ready! No wonder I never have any time to be online :)

  • Game Reviews,  Second Project,  The Lazy Designer

    How to Script for Games

    I’ve made an excerpt from my second Lazy Designer game design book free for the next few days. Download it here. This excerpt is about *scripting* and not stripping (there’s been past confusion and disappointment and for the record I’d just like to point out that I know a lot more about scripting than I do stripping). Anyways if you read it and like it, please consider leaving a review on Amazon! p.s. Please remember you don’t need a Kindle to read this! There’s software available to read on your computer/smartphone and so on.

  • Game Reviews

    Interesting Podcast – Irrational Interviews

    Thanks to Mordi Peshkess for bringing to my attention (through comments here) a recent Irrational Interview with Ken Levine and Amy Hennig about their roles as Creative Directors. I found this quite an interesting interview, with them discussing various issues and processes, from writing to management to dealing with feedback. Definitely worth checking out if you are curious about this aspect of game dev.

  • My Life

    Update!

    So this is what I got done over the past few days: – Installed a timer for bathroom fan – Ran a new Cat5e cable through the walls – Installed shut-off valves in the master bath and put in a new faucet Oh… you were expecting a writing update? Ah, okay. Even with all the home improvements I have done a bit of writing. I have about ten chapters to go before I’m finished major revisions to novel #4, so I’m starting to get back on track. At this point in the schedule I should have started writing Novel #5 but that looks to be a couple weeks away (wasn’t…