• Writing Resources

    Another Novel Finished

    Yesterday I completed the first draft for my latest novel. No title exists yet so I’ve just been calling it the ‘Blue Bay’ novel to this point. At 158 000 words, I believe this is my longest first draft (aside from another novel that I have since discarded). I’ve been writing the novel since August of this year, at least a few hundred words every day, but the planning for it started a couple years ago. Overall I’m pleased but I’ve definitely noticed major errors, while writing, that will need to be addressed before I can begin the editing phase. (I generally do not make corrections while writing the first…

  • The Lazy Designer,  Video Game Design

    Game Hauler Version 3 (Part 4 / ?) “The Big Design Change”

    Note: This post has previously appeared on Gamasutra and via my newsletter. Jump to Part 1 (if you have not read it previously). (If you want to play the latest build before reading the commentary then scroll down to the end of this post.) PROTOTYPE 3 (BUILD# 0.0.4.0) When I started building my prototype I had a general idea of where I wanted to go with it. Unfortunately my initial ideas didn’t pan out into anything I thought I could make fun. With this prototype I began the process of developing a rather different sort of core gameplay. The components of the game remain similar to the previous prototype (placeholder-art…

  • Writing Resources

    Story Sale: Red Means Go

    Over the summer I sold my story “Red Means Go” to On Spec Magazine. I had planned to reveal this earlier but I like waiting until contracts are signed and all that, so consider this the formal announcement. This is another of my robot stories — I really enjoy writing about robots, probably in part because I’m terrible at building them (yes, I’m not making much progress on my personal robot army). I’m not sure when the story will be published, but I’m guessing not until 2016 (On Spec has another of my stories in the queue, I imagine that will head to print first). This is my seventh story…

  • My Life

    Evil Snow

    We survived our first major snowfall with the only major casualty in our household being our garage door opener, so now I thought I’d give another brief update. Yes, I’m still preparing another post, which will give you more of a glimpse into some new opportunities I am considering, but it is not ready yet. This November I competed in my second Nanowrimo. If you aren’t familiar with it, Nanowrimo requires participants to write 50K words in November. I participated a couple years ago and managed it, but I wasn’t able to make my schedule work in subsequent years. This year, even though I still wasn’t finished another novel, I…