• The Lazy Designer

    New Feature: Couch Games

    I know I’ve been terrible with keeping to my blog posting schedule so I hesitate to commit myself to anything else, but here I go, anyways. Over the past few months I’ve continued learning how to use Unity to build games. I’ve moved a bit beyond some of the cruder prototypes I’ve put together and shown here previously. Starting next month I’ll begin blogging (probably just once each month) about the design process I’ve been using on the current title. The updates won’t be overly detailed, but should provide some insight into what’s going through my head as I work on the game. They will also be paired with a…

  • Writing Resources

    Question and Answer over on Goodreads

    Today some fine folks over at Goodreads have invited me to a question and answer. Users have been adding questions for about a week and I’m trying to finish off replying to them all today. If you’d like to see what people are asking about and my responses, check it out: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1946103-featured-author-discussion—brent-knowles—august-20? And if you have a writing related question or two, ask away.

  • Writing Resources

    Read: “Her Robot Babies”

    My short story “Her Robot Babies” is now available over at Perihelion Magazine. You can read it for free here: http://www.perihelionsf.com/1408/fiction_3.htm This is my second story that I’ve sold to Perihelion and I’m delighted to be appearing there again! Definitely encourage you to check out some of the other stories available. For those of you who need a bit of a teaser, here’s the opening: “At night we stuff our babies inside microwave ovens.”

  • My Life

    Drumheller

    After living in Edmonton for over a decade, we finally decided to check out Drumheller. This town sits about three hours drive from us and it is home to loads of dinosaur related stuff, so my kids were pumped to check it out too. Overall we enjoyed the trip. The drive was uneventful. We particularly appreciated it when the flat prairies became badlands, a welcome change of scenery! We spent a couple days in and around Drumheller. What was nice about the location is that you can undertake multiple excursions in a day, pretty much everything is close by. We checked out the Royal Tyrrell Museum and several other smaller…

  • My Life

    San Diego Zoo

    Our final big excursion while in San Diego was a day trip to the zoo. I wasn’t overly looking forward to this… I’ve seen some cool zoos before and I’m not very fond of the whole “watching animals in cages” thing. The Zoo Overall this was a fun day. Though the day was sunny there’s a lot of shade, especially in more heavily treed areas like the rain forest. There’s so much to see and some neat opportunities like the underwater viewing of the hippos and polar bear exhibits. The park got busy (we went on a Monday) but it was only super congested in a couple chokepoints. For the…

  • Writing Resources

    Robots for the Win

    I’m pleased to announce that Perihelion magazine has purchased my story “Her Robot Babies” to appear in an upcoming issue of their science fiction magazine. I have written a few stories with robots as protagonists, but in “Her Robot Babies” I delve a lot more into how a robot-only society might function. I am thrilled that the story will be available to read sometime in August. And if you can’t wait, head over to Perihelion and check out their latest offerings — all free to read. (I have also sold another story with a robot protagonist living in an equally odd — but quite different — robot society, but I’m…