Author: Luke M.

Luke Matthews is a writer, board gamer, beer drinker, and all-around geek. He currently lives in the Seattle area with his wife, two cats, and two German wirehaired pointers.
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My Zen Place

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If you follow me on social media at all, you know how into tabletop gaming I am. For those of you who don’t… Well… uh… I’m really into tabletop gaming. Over the years I’ve been a gamer, I’ve noticed a confluence of different aspects of my personality that have led me to being a sort of specific type of gamer. Today, I’m talking about how my collector’s mentality has affected my board-gaming hobby.

I grew up collecting things. Comics, trading cards, POGs, what have you. I’ve always been meticulous about caring for my collectibles. Comics are always bagged and boarded (and HOLY SHIT don’t ever open one far enough to cause stress lines around the staples), trading cards always in sleeves or binders, stored carefully away from any potential damage. As I’ve grown into board gaming, I’ve found my collector’s mentality not just creeping around the edges of the hobby, but taking it over full-force.

sleeving_01See, I can’t just buy a board game and play it as-is – especially if it includes cards of any type. Thoughts of drink spillage or Cheeto-fingers grubbing up the components… I just… I can’t even. The concept of “mint condition” is so deeply embedded in my psyche that I get the same ragey hind-brain reaction to someone gunking up a game component as I used to when I’d see someone bend a Magic card or break the spine of a book. Though there’s not much I can do to protect a standard game board or punch-out components, if there’s something I can laminate I probably will, and every single card in every single game goes into a sleeve. EVERY ONE.

If you’re not familiar, sleeves are simply small plastic pockets made to fit snugly around gaming cards to keep them protected from the elements. Originally they were made out of thin polypropylene – exactly like comic book bags – to protect baseball cards. When Magic: The Gathering popularized the concept of playing a game with trading cards, sleeve technology changed to offer better protection not just from dirt or moisture, but from the rigors of constant shuffling.

An Aside About Shuffling: In addition to sleeving every card I own, I even now play poker and other standard card games with high-quality plastic playing cards. I can’t stomach the thought of shuffling bare paper cards in a normal riffle shuffle anymore. They’ll wear out! Shuffling will warp them over time! They could get marked! DEAR GOD WHAT IF ONE GETS CREASED YOU FUCKING ANIMALS no it’s fine I’m fine

sleeving_03So, I sleeve all my cards. For many gamers, the downside of this is the actual act of putting decks of cards into individual sleeves. It’s not so bad when you’re thinking of a standard deck of cards. 52 cards? Meh. Even a standard M:TG deck is 60, so that’s okay. But what happens when a game has hundreds?

I played a ton of M:TG in high school and college, and the M.O. for most TCG players is to have a good storage solution for the bulk of your collection, and keep a few decks that are regularly played in sleeves. So, a Magic collector might have thousands of cards, but they’re not sleeving every single one of them.

That’s not really the case with board games. Each board game is its own, individual thing that has to be ready to go every time you pull it off the shelf. So, if you own a ton of games, you can’t just keep a certain subset of cards sleeved. If you (*I*) are going to sleeve any of them, you (*I*) have to sleeve them all, and the number of cards that come in a board game ranges from “almost none” to “Vegas casino”.

sleeving_02For example, we just picked up a copy of a card/board game called Trains and its expansion Trains: Rising Sun. Between the two boxes, there are over 1,000 cards. One thousand. Games like Dominion might have 300-500 cards in a box and 10+ expansions. That’s a damned lot of cards to sleeve. At last count, I have over 130 games on my shelves, plus expansions, and I’ve sleeved every single card.

And, you know what? I find the activity supremely relaxing. There’s just something about it… It’s not just the repetitive monotony, it’s the peace of mind. As compulsive as I am about the condition of my games, when I’m sleeving cards there’s a part of my psyche that realizes I’m doing my part to ensure that I don’t have to stress over those components anymore. I put on a podcast or a TV show and sit down at my desk or on my couch with a pile of cards and sleeves and just go.

The task itself is almost meditative. Time just floats on by, and before I know it I’m packing up a nice, protected, aggravatingly slippery deck of cards into a new game box, and making that game available for play (I mean I wouldn’t let people play it before the cards are sleeved what kind of monster do you take me for). I’ve even, more often than I’d care to admit, taken to cutting down some of the off-sized sleeves so they fit the cards better, and even this has become relaxation time for me.

I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who would say that sleeving this many cards from this many games isn’t worth the money. It does, on average, add $3-$15 to the cost of a game (or, in the case of a game like Trains, more like $30). For me, just knowing that my games are armored against the terrors that gamers can inflict is worth Every. Solitary. Ducat. Knowing that 15 years from now, these cards will be just as playable and nice as they are now. Combine that knowledge with the zen-like trance I achieve while actually carrying out the task?

You can’t put a price on that.

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Goals For 2016

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Three years ago, I quit my job at Nintendo after nine years. When the opportunity came to leave and write full time, a burgeoning passion spurred by the ongoing work of my first novel, I couldn’t pass it up. I’d spend virtually every night after work for months cramming writing into what little time I could eke out, and the concept of being in control of my own work-flow and having exponentially more time to accomplish what I was already doing in my free time was… unfathomable.

After releasing Construct, I found myself drifting.

At work every task I was assigned was time sensitive, and I had a constantly shifting list of rolling deadlines. It was a driving force that helped me to maintain focus and determination. Without those clear delineations, my lack of focus became clearer and clearer as 2015 drew to a close and I failed to finish my second novel. At first, I wanted to finish it by the end of September. Then November. Then the end of the year. And as those deadlines kept slipping away, I presented myself with unavoidable evidence that my time-management skills weren’t as robust as my old resume would have one think, at least not without a boss looking over my shoulder.

I need challenges. I need tasks to complete. Preferably long-term projects comprised of a series of short-term tasks that I can check off as I go. So, for 2016, I’ve set myself a hefty list of goals to try and get myself into the professional shape I’ve desired ever since finishing Construct. Only one of these goals, technically, is directly related to my professional development. All of them, though, will require discipline to attain, and I’m hoping to channel them into long-term skills that will help me professionally, creatively, and personally.

GOALS #1 & #2: No alcohol or caffeine in 2016. These aren’t specifically “goals”, but rather omissions. These were both actually my wife’s idea, and I loved them, so we’re doing them together.

Most people, upon hearing this resolution, have the same reaction: Alcohol is easy enough, but HOLY SHIT CAFFEINE BUT HOW HOW WILL YOU HOW?! I’ve gone for a year without alcohol before, and as most people think it’s pretty easy. I’ve definitely gone more than a year without drinking soda, but I filled that caffeine gap with coffee and tea.

Which is part of the problem. I actually don’t know how much I rely on caffeine as a stimulant. Morning coffee, afternoon soda, and evening tea have become such an ingrained part of my life that I’m not honestly sure what will happen when I’m finally going without. I’m sure there will be some grumpiness and withdrawals, but I’m hoping it’ll help me find a better balance where I can start supplementing my energy in healthier ways.

Ideally, both of these will help with focus and clarity, and get my brain running at a better pace creatively.

GOAL #3: Read 50 full-length novels in 2016. I tried this challenge a couple of years ago and fell short. At some point toward the end of the year I sort of faltered and gave up, and clocked 43 reads that year. I had all kinds of excuses and rationalizations for failing the goal, none of which I will accept this time.

If writing is breathing, then reading is hydration. As a writer, reading is an absolutely essential part of my creative development. If I treat it solely as a throwaway hobby, then I’ll find all kinds of excuses not to better myself through books, and my writing will suffer and stagnate because of it. This goal isn’t so hefty that it’s unattainable, but it’s definitely hefty enough that I’ll have to carve out specific time to make sure I accomplish it. In doing so, I hope the challenge itself will help with my time management, and the reading will enrich me both personally and creatively.

GOAL #4: Read 50 comic book trades in 2016. I have a giant shelf of comic book trades. I’m a huge comic book nerd, but an embarrassing number of those trades stand unread, and I intend to correct that. It’s an art form that I absolutely love, and one that – much like reading 50 prose books – I hope will enrich me in a number of ways.

GOAL #5: A 20×5 board game challenge. My wife and I have always been board gamers. As kids we’d play the old standbys like Monopoly and Stratego and Clue, and in the mid ‘90’s, we were introduced to Settlers of Catan. For about six months straight, we played Settlers with a group of friends every Saturday until the wee hours of the morning. A year or so later, when we picked up Carcassonne, we were hooked.

Once we finally had a place of our own with space to play – and, more importantly, store – games, the rabbit-hole opened up and we ran through like madmen. We now have a dedicated gaming space in our home with over 120 board games, a collection that keeps growing in spite of that already huge number.

Every year on Board Game Geek, they post what is called a 10×10 Challenge. The idea is to combat the “cult of the new” by picking ten games from your collection and playing each of them at least ten times over the course of the year. We wanted to do a similar challenge, but wanted more variety, so we modified it by picking twenty games, and pledging to play each of them at least five times. At two games per week, it’s an attainable goal that I hope will make us more familiar with our collection.

My intention is to keep track of this challenge here on the blog, and to write a review of each of the twenty games in the challenge as soon as we complete the requisite five plays.

GOAL #6: Maintain a writing pace of 5000 words per week throughout 2016. This is my big professional goal. This is strictly drafting – not editing or revision – and specifically drafting fiction, not blog posts or other non-fiction. Maintaining this pace would put me at 260,000 words written for the year, or approximately two novels the length of Construct.

For a professional writer, this goal isn’t strictly ambitious. This is a pace maintained and frequently exceeded by many pros, and attaining this goal is an absolute necessity for me if I intend to make a go at an actual writing career. For the last third of Construct, my pace was more like 7-8k per week, so I think 5k is reachable.

My biggest hope for this particular goal is simply to develop some sort of routine. My failing as a writer, right now, is a lack of rhythm. If I can build a repertoire and maintain it, I’ll be able to start churning out the fiction that’s still in my head, and free up some space for… well, more fiction that’s still in my head. Hell, this blog post alone is almost 1,300 words, and that’s already one quarter of my weekly production goal, if I can apply this pace to fiction.

All in all, this will be a hugely ambitious year for me. If I can translate that writing pace into two actual book releases, I will triple my bibliography in one year and set me on a pace to legitimately call myself a professional writer rather than just some guy who self-published a book that one time. My other goals are meant to fill and balance the non-writing aspects of my life while fueling my creative and cognitive abilities.

This year is all about fun, ambition, and focus. Let’s do this.

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In Memoriam: Bastion Matthews, 1999-2015

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It’s been almost a week since my wife and I lost a family member, and I’m not okay.

Last Thursday, our cat Bastion passed away. He’d been struggling with a renal insufficiency (a problem with blood-flow through the kidneys) for a while, and had taken a downturn a couple of weeks ago. He’d lost weight and wasn’t eating much. Try as we might to get him to eat, we just couldn’t get him to take in enough sustenance. The day he passed away, I had made a vet appointment for him for the following morning to try to get him back on track. A few hours later, he was gone.

My wife and I were married in 1998, and Bastion had been a part of our family for almost that entire time. Early in our marriage, we’d take a trip up to Victoria, British Columbia for our anniversary each year (it’s also where we had our honeymoon). On our way to our first anniversary in 1999, we missed the morning ferry from Port Angeles, and needed to waste some time. So, on a whim, we stopped into a local pet shop.

bastion_7_smallWe didn’t really have any expectations at the time. We were just browsing. When we rounded the corner in the store to see two tiny, weeks-old kittens behind the glass of a play-area, we instantly fell in love. We asked to see them, and the moment we held them in our arms, we knew we were taking them home. Each of us picked one up, and we knew from the start that the one I held was “mine” and the one Christina held was “hers”. That little guy was Bastion, and I held his brother, Gremlin.

We bought them on the spot, but told the store that we would have to pick them up when we were on our way home from Victoria. We left them there, then headed out for our vacation. And we couldn’t stop thinking about them. We talked and talked about taking them home, about what we’d need to get and how we’d potty train them and how things around the apartment were going to change and on and on.

bastion_square_smallAlthough I already knew I was going to name “my” kitten something like Goblin or Gremlin (I even considered Kobold), Christina had no idea. It wasn’t until a couple of days later, while wandering through Victoria, that we came upon a beautiful little public market space called Bastion Square, and something just clicked with her. She’d picked her name. I settled in on Gremlin, and the vacation was instantly doomed. Now that we had names picked out, we couldn’t stand to wait the extra three or four days we had left in Victoria, so we cut our trip short and headed back to Port Angeles to pick up our kitties.

They were both freaked out by the drive, but Bastion was the loudest. He didn’t stop screaming for a single moment that the car was in motion (which ended up being his M.O. any time we put him in a car from that point forward). The closest to quiet he got was when we were on the ferry. Christina and I stayed with the car, and let them out of their little crate to explore. They wandered around the inside of the car and crawled all over our laps, Bastion still meowing his displeasure with the scary situation. We got them home, and our lives were forever changed.

Bastion’s boisterous vocal nature was part of him his whole life, and an indication of his clinginess. He was, without a doubt, the neediest cat I’d ever encountered, but that also meant that he was by far the most affectionate. Most people talk about cats being independent and aloof, and Bastion was the opposite. He always made you feel like you were the most important person ever, like he was giving you attention, not the reverse.

bastion_5_smallWhenever you entered a room with him, he’d stop whatever he was doing – even sleeping – to come to you. When you carried him on your shoulder (my wife’s right shoulder was one of his favorite places in the world), he’d nuzzle his head into the side of yours and be content to sit there for as long as you’d hold him. He spent most of his life upside-down, flipping onto his back in that goofball, uniquely kitty-cat head-turn flip maneuver that meant “Pet my belly!”. He wasn’t so much our cat as we were his humans, and he loved us unconditionally.

Which is why losing him is one of the hardest things I’ve ever dealt with. I’ve had a lot of pets over the course of my life. My childhood was always filled with cats and dogs. But they were never, really, mine. When you have pets as a child, there’s a sort of mild separation or distance that, I think, is bred by the fact that you’re not wholly responsible for their welfare. I’m not trying to diminish any of my pets’ role in my life – I loved them all – but losing a pet that your parents are responsible for and losing one under your own care are wildly different experiences.

Neither of us expected this to be so difficult. The toughest loss I’d ever dealt with before this (aside from my parents) was my childhood dog Smokey. We picked up Smokey when I was in sixth grade, and he passed away when he was 12 years old. At that point I’d been away from home several years, and although I still thought of Smokey as “my” dog, that separation blunted the blow of his loss. I cried for a day, grieved for a while after, and then my life shifted back to normal.

Bastion, on the other hand, was a constant presence in my everyday life in a way that Smokey hadn’t been at the time he passed. Every morning, I’d wake up with Bastion curled up next to my pillow. All day, I’d take moments to give him and his siblings little scritches and love, especially for the last three years that I’ve been working from home. Every evening, he’d wander around our bedroom vocally declaring his displeasure with our attention being focused on books or sleep until we’d call him over and give him some cuddle time.

bastion_3_smallIt’s been tough to roll across little comments and in-jokes that Christina and I would have about our group of cats as a whole, now that Bastion’s missing from that group. We used to make jokes about “being surrounded by 3 Billion Kitties!”, where Midnight was half-a-billion, Bastion was one billion, and Gremlin was one-and-a-half billion (because of their relative sizes). We used to refer to the three of them as “Wee, Not-So-Wee, and FRICKIN’ HUGE!”, from an old Saturday Night Live skit with Mike Meyers and Patrick Stewart. We’d make comments about having “three kitties but only two hands” when they were all begging for attention at once.

I hadn’t really realized how much emotional support I got from Bastion until he was gone. That feeling of love I talked about earlier was an amazing force for self-esteem. It was almost impossible to feel down or angry or frustrated when Bastion was head-butting us in the face, or lying on his back stretching out his paws to us for a hug. If there were ever a moment when I was having a tough time and needed a buoy, he’d be there for me.

Our other animals have always served other roles in the family. Gremlin has always been the stalwart – yes, he loves attention and loves us back, but he’s got his own things to do. Midnight has always been the adorable little girl, and she definitely loves attention – but only on her own terms. Colt has always been the most empathetic of the lot, but that also means his emotions kind of mirror ours: if we’re happy he’s upbeat; if we’re sad, he’s sad too. Bastion was the light. He was always in a good mood, and always did his best to make sure you were, too. His loss leaves a hole in my life that will never be filled, and will take a long time to pave over.

This is why it’s so hard for me to understand anyone who utters the phrase “just a cat”. For us, pets are family. As much family as any other member. We allow ourselves an attachment, a love and deep connection, to our animals that makes them a part of our hearts. To not do so would seem pointless, and do both them and us a disservice. If not for that connection, then why have animals in your life? That connection makes for a terrible sense of loss when they leave us, and sometimes we feel like others look at us askance for grieving so hard. To those people, I say: You can fuck right off. But I digress.

For both Christina and I, Bastion is the first pet we’ve ever lost who we were solely responsible for. For me, that means I’ve spent every moment since he died feeling like I let him down. What if I’d been more diligent? Would he still be with us if I’d taken him to the vet fifteen minutes, or two hours, or two days, or a week earlier? Are all of these warning signs that I’m seeing in hindsight things I should’ve caught in the moment? How could I not have seen? Why wasn’t I paranoid enough?

That feeling of responsibility – and, frankly, guilt – indescribably magnifies the grief I feel at his loss. I’ve cried every single day since we lost him. I knew Bastion was getting old, and I didn’t expect him to live forever… but I did expect more time than we got. People can talk about his “long life” until they’re blue in the face, but it will never assuage that horrible feeling that we still could’ve (maybe?) had just a little more time with him. If only I hadn’t failed in my duty as his caretaker.

The only small solace we have is that we were with Bastion when he died. We’d just given him his nightly dose of medicine for his renal condition. He was weak, and we both laid down on the bed with him to give him our attention. We laid there petting him, hoping that he’d feel a little better. I worried about him, trying to decide whether he needed to go to the vet right then, happy that I’d made an appointment for him for the next day. Thinking I’d made the right decision.

I honestly believe that our presence – surrounding him with love – helped him decide it was time to let go. We rushed him to the emergency vet, but somehow I knew we weren’t getting him back. Before he finally passed away, we both had the chance to lean down with a hand on his side, pet him one last time, and tell him goodbye right in his ear. To tell him that we will always love him.

I have absolutely no insight on grief. I have no way to know how long I’m supposed to feel this way, or how to move past it, or if I’m over-reacting to his passing. I have questions that will never be answered, and all I can hope is that he enjoyed his time on Earth. That he wasn’t angry at (or worse, scared of) us for the times we scolded him or yelled at him or shushed him or swatted him. Whether or not the love we felt for him was conveyed, and made up for the times when we were impatient or frustrated with him. No one but him can tell us whether we gave him a good life.

But now, he’s gone. And we have to try and figure out how our life will balance out without him here. Colt is worried about us – you can see it in his eyes, in how he approaches us, in his posture. Midnight is still kind of aloof, but is looking for more attention than she ever has before, needing some sort of connection. Gremlin misses his brother. He’ll stand in the middle of the bedroom – their domain – and cry, just meowing and meowing until I come in and spend a little time to calm him down. He never used to do that.

And I’m stuck in a sort of constant state of mild panic about them. Gremlin’s diabetic, and Midnight has a cardiac consult next week for a heart murmur in addition to a milder form of the same renal issues that Bastion suffered from. Colt’s a little overweight, but in pretty good shape. But the suddenness of Bastion’s passing shot a spike of fear through my heart that leaves me manic, a knot of worry settling into my gut that won’t loosen. I question every little movement, every moment, wondering if it’s out of the ordinary or just another day. Wondering if I’m doing enough. Wondering if I’ll be able to take care of them.

I’m not sure if writing this will be damaging or cathartic. I know I wanted to write it, but I have no idea whether it will help. At this moment in time, I don’t think much of anything will. All that’s left to do now is to say:

Goodbye, sweet boy. We all love you with all of our hearts, and we will miss you forever.
bastion_6_small

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The Changing Taste of Tastes Changing

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Tastes change. And you know what? That’s okay.

But it doesn’t always feel that way, especially in geek circles (and sports fandom). Changing one’s opinion on some aspect of geekdom is seen as a betrayal, something worthy of scorn and shunning. I’ve found this to be the case numerous times as my tastes have changed over the years, and have drifted apart from many whom I once called friends because that one unifying fandom no longer binds us.

There’s a drive, when you’re part of a community of like-minded individuals, to maintain ties with that common interest through thick and thin, partially to maintain some level of “status” amongst its fans, and partially to maintain relationships which rely on that mutual fandom almost exclusively. It’s hard, as one’s tastes inevitably shift, to let go of something that might be hoarding an inordinate amount of time that is no longer commensurate with the joy it returns.

I think it’s important to realize that sometimes, you’re just not interested in something anymore. You’re just not as invested as you once were, and while there’s a certain amount of disappointment that comes with that realization, the freedom that can come from leaving it behind can be exhilarating. It means opening up time and thought-space for something new.

When I was 16, I went to my first LARP. It was a transformative experience for me as a young introvert, flipping the script on my entire personality and building a number of friendships along the way. I played in various live-action games until my early 30’s, and built a cadre of friendships that, when I was much younger, I thought would be everlasting. It was a very difficult decision to leave the LARP I’d been invested in for over a decade. While I had built a number of relationships around the game, the community as a whole had become toxic, and my life outside the game just no longer felt like it had the space to maintain it.

Here’s what I learned upon leaving the game behind: The friendships that endured beyond it were – as expected – those friendships that didn’t solely rely on the commonality of the game. Outside interests and common mindsets led to lasting relationships, while the bulk of the people I once called “friend” drifted slowly to “acquaintance” or eventually – to use a popular song lyric – “somebody I used to know”. Applying this thought retroactively, I realized it’s why I’m not really friends with anyone I went to high school with. When the only common language you share with someone is an educational institution and physical proximity, graduating and moving away has a pretty strong sundering effect.

This dynamic also taught me that filling those spaces isn’t nearly as hard as it seems when you’re looking at the world at large from within that sort of community. Eschewing a hobby or interest that has brought one closer to other people can be a scary concept, especially if it risks the deconstruction of one’s social circle. That being said, I’m not sure maintenance of particular social circle is worth maintaining a hobby that no longer holds you in thrall.

After high school, I made new friends. After LARPing, I made new friends. After leaving Nintendo following nine years there… I made new friends. As interests and desires dropped away, new ones flowed into those temporarily empty spaces, bringing with them the communities of other like-minded folks. As I’ve entered new arenas, I’m inundated with a rush of new potential friends, eventually winnowing down that group to those with whom I share enough common interest to talk with regularly, and then again narrowing as I flow away from an educational institution, job, hobby, or interest to leave only those people whose Venn diagram circle overlaps with mine to more than a cursory degree.

All of this has been brought to the forefront once again by this year’s PAX Prime. Once a staple institution in my life – an annual pilgrimage to video gaming’s Holy Land – I’ve found myself in a sort of crisis of faith, as it were. I’ve attended all but two PAX Primes, and my excitement for the event had never waned – until last year.

I identified the feeling, this year, as a sort of PAX fatigue. There’s a certain sameness about it all that has the effect of dampening the endorphin rush that once accompanied the frenzied search for badges, the excitement of their acquisition, and the frenetic energy of the crowded show floor. It doesn’t help that my tastes have begun moving away from video games in general, so immersing myself in the loud, bright, in-your-face oontz-oontz of the largest video game convention in the country is maybe just not my thing anymore.

And I hate to use the terms “evolve” or “mature”. Those phrases imply an inherent superiority or rightness in the new mindset that doesn’t exist. People who still LARP aren’t somehow beneath me simply because I’ve moved on to other things. Video games aren’t childish or immature simply because my tastes no longer run toward them. A hobby is a hobby is a hobby, and although I might be able to attribute my shifting tastes to growing older, I try very hard not to ever say that I’ve “grown out of” something. I fucking hate that phrase, because it means that as an adult I’m not allowed to go back, or that there are certain things that are shameful to enjoy as an adult. And that whole idea can just fuck right off.

But sometimes, you’re just not into something anymore. Or maybe you’re just not into it at the moment. When we’re kids, the phrase “going through a phase” is bandied about as a way to justify or endure waves of taste that may not be acceptable to adults. But those “phases” are just a normal part of life, and don’t stop happening just because we grow up.

As I sit here, at home in the middle of a PAX weekend, contemplating the fact that this might be the last PAX I ever attend, I ended up reflecting on all of the phases I’ve gone through in my life. All of the things I used to love, and can still look back on fondly, but just don’t engage me anymore. It took me a while to come to grips with the fact that it’s not a betrayal or abandonment… it’s just that tastes change.

And that’s okay.

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WorldCon At Ground Level

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This last weekend, I attended my first ever World Science Fiction Convention. WorldCon, as it is known, is a traveling convention that’s been running for over 70 years, and hosts the Hugo Awards, one of genre fictions highest honors.

No, I don’t plan on getting into a debate about that.

Before I start, I’ll preface by stating I had an amazing time at WorldCon. I had loads of fun, met a ton of great people, and had a chance not just to meet, but to actually hang out with and befriend some of my favorite authors. I state this now because I may not be entirely positive about the convention itself in the coming paragraphs.

I’ve been to a decent number of conventions. I don’t go to a ton, but my staples for the last few years have been Emerald City ComiCon and PAX Prime in Seattle. I’ve been to GenCon five times (and can’t wait to get back), and a ton of smaller, regional conventions like NorWesCon, OryCon, SakuraCon, and Stumptown Comics Fest. I even went to a Star Trek convention when I was in high school.

If I were to try and come up with a hierarchy, I’m still not sure where I’d place WorldCon. I’m going to talk a bit about my expectations and disappointments first, mostly because there was so much good stuff this weekend that I’d rather get the negatives out of the way early and end on a positive note.

WorldCon/Sasquan was not a large convention. Someone told me the attendance this year was in the neighborhood of 4000. To put that into perspective, PAX’s attendance runs a little over 70,000, and San Diego ComiCon is almost double that. That was my first major surprise. While I wasn’t expecting PAX or ECCC levels of attendance – certainly not in the tiny convention center in Spokane – I wasn’t expecting the sparseness I encountered at the show. I’m so used to being packed into a convention with all the other sardines that the openness of WorldCon actually made it feel unnervingly empty.

I say “unnervingly” because WorldCon is, ostensibly, one of the largest and most important conventions for genre fiction every year. To see it so empty throws into sharp focus the very core comparison of SFF fandom to other, more pop-culture-y fandoms. Genre fiction is a big business, and yet the nature of its fandom doesn’t lend itself to social gatherings the same way comic books or video games or movies might. The relative size of the convention wasn’t all bad, but I’ll get to the positives a little later.

One of the strangest dynamics at WorldCon, for me, was how much of the floor space – and thought-space – was taken up by the promotion of other conventions. Of course, the primary hawking came from shows vying to host future WorldCons, but there was also a surprising number of other random conventions promoting themselves. Between people trying to get me to vote for their city as host and other small genre conventions desperately begging for my attendance, that part of the show floor began to feel like some weird convention circle-jerk.

I’m sure that this is just standard operating procedure at WorldCon, but it threw me off because you don’t see it as readily at other conventions (although it does happen). Here, it was such a significant and central portion of the show floor that it felt almost oppressive. I’m not sure if that’s an organizational issue, but it felt like the convention-hawking should’ve been made purposely less prominent than the dealer’s area and signature lines, but instead it was the central focus of the show floor.

When it came to organization, WorldCon was… less than stellar, primarily from an information standpoint, at least from a fan’s point of view. The website was downright terrible. While it was very easy to ask questions of the information desk, if information about events or locations hadn’t been poorly or unevenly disseminated in the first place, it wouldn’t have been nearly as necessary. Here’s a prime example:

George R.R. Martin’s signing was capped at 100 people, and they didn’t allow online sign-ups for the event. When we arrived Saturday morning, we heard there were already people in line for the 2pm signing, so we went down to check. There were, in fact, already 40 people in line, and the con staff said people had to stay in line to get into the signing. I had panels I wanted to attend that day, so based on that information I decided I didn’t want to waste my whole day in line.

After missing out on GRRM’s signing, I found out that the line was in fact not capped at 100. The staff (perhaps at GRRM’s direction, but I’m not sure?) capped the line at 100, but once the signing started, they stated that 400 signatures would be allowed, so new people could join and/or recycle through the line. And they never announced this information anywhere else in the convention center. In the end, they never even reached 300 people. So, I could have gone down after a panel I’d attended and stepped right up for a signature without any issue, but because of the (frankly) shitty flow of information and seemingly intentional obfuscation, I didn’t.

The handling of programming at WorldCon was downright strange. In speaking with several authors, I found out that the Sasquan staff determined virtually all of the placement of authors and industry professionals on panels of their own design, with little to no consultation with the professionals themselves. Wesley Chu was placed on a YA panel – having never published any YA books. Several popular genre authors chose not to attend the con at all because they weren’t “given” any programming – Brian McClellan being a prominent example.

This seems so completely backwards to me. At larger shows like PAX, only a portion of the panels and programming are created by the convention. These conventions open up a submission process well in advance where content creators can propose panel topics and guests, then the convention approves and schedules those panels. Professionals have at least some say regarding what panels they participate in. It seems so strange that a convention would not give professionals much, if any, say in what programming they participated in, but also that they wouldn’t give content creators the opportunity to populate the convention with programming.

That being said, I was able to attend some fantastic panels at this show. Panels are not usually a focus for me at conventions, but after I was able to get everything I wanted out of the show floor in my first two hours of attendance, I realized I needed to shift my mindset. I went to several authors’ readings – Elizabeth Bear and Brandon Sanderson among them – but the best panels were the ones involving the more in-depth discussions of the writerly arts.

On Thursday I went to a panel on world-building with Kay Kenyon, Matt Wallace, and Richard Kadrey that helped me immensely with that shift in mindset. Although in depth panels on writing were surprisingly few, it was this panel that made me realize they were there and re-evaluate my schedule of events.

I went to a fantastic recording of the Ditch Diggers podcast, where hosts Matt Wallace and Mur Lafferty ran an adventure, D&D style, asking authors Aliette de Bodard, Linda Nagata, Fonda Lee, and Kate Elliott to brave the Forest of Publishing, then wrapped up with a discussion with editor Lee Harris. I ended up at two other panels with Kate Elliott, one an individual lecture entitled Narrative Structure and Expectation, the other a one-on-one dialogue on world-building between Kate and The Grace of Kings author Ken Liu. Both were absolutely fantastic, and Kate Elliott handled some major technical difficulties at her lecture with WAY more grace than I would’ve been able to muster. My last panel of the convention was entitled Writing About Controversy, with M.J. Locke, Eric Flint, John Scalzi, and Mike Glyer. This was the only one I found only mildly interesting, since they didn’t really delve too deeply into the subject in any way that I wasn’t already familiar with.

Although the panel selection at the convention was a little lacking, in my opinion, I did manage to find some really fun ones to attend, which made my days at the con way better than I was expecting them to be right off the bat.

And, for most of the convention, I completely avoided anything that remotely looked like Hugo controversy. Not in a Neo-dodging-bullets kind of way, but as a boots-on-the-ground attendee, 79% fan and 21% author, it just rarely ever came up. In the grand scheme of attending panels and getting shit signed and hanging out with the community (shout out to the folks at Reddit r/Fantasy, who made my weekend fucking amazing), the worry over Puppy stupidity just never reared its head. It didn’t really seem to have much effect on the convention’s atmosphere.

Speaking of atmosphere (ba-dum-bum): Washington state is in the midst of one of the worst wildfire seasons in history, and even though none of the major fires are directly in Spokane’s vicinity, the sheer volume of smoke that sometimes descended on the town was staggering. On Friday, specifically, there were major air quality warnings. Downtown establishments had warning signs on their doors telling people not to go outside or walk major distances in the smoke which, at one point, was so thick that visibility was only about five or six blocks. It was an exceedingly strange experience, and reminded me a lot of films I’ve seen of downtown Beijing in the midst of their worst pollution seasons.

I ended up being forced to walk about a mile in these conditions (a long story about car troubles that I won’t go into), and I got a brief glimpse at what being a smoker would be like. No thanks.

Anyway, enough about Smo-Con.

On Saturday night I hung out with the aforementioned r/Fantasy crew at Guinan’s (a bar set up at the far front of the hall and named after the Ten Forward bartender from Star Trek: The Next Generation) and watched the livestream of the Hugo Awards with a crowd and a beer (okay four beers). The Awards ceremony itself was unflinching in its comedy about the controversy, and at times gut-bustingly – and unexpectedly – hilarious. Bob Silverberg’s bit had me crying I was laughing so hard. I was worried I was going to be bored by the awards, and that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

But, amidst all of that, the best part of the entire weekend were the evenings after the show floor closed. The very night I showed up, I ended up at dinner with a table of fellow authors that included Jay Swanson, Tim Ward, Jason Gurley, Mike Underwood, and Jason Hough. Jay was the most inquisitive at the table, and all of us had a really lovely discussion that ranged from thoughts on publishing to individual influences to the importance of networking. I’ve been saying for days that it was the best panel I went to all weekend, and I really wish we’d had microphones to record it.

Thursday night was Reddit r/Fantasy’s Drinks With Authors event, a meetup that the organizers were worried was going to be small and poorly attended because the Sasquan staff had expressed complete disinterest in supporting it. Over the course of Wednesday and Thursday both Del Rey and Angry Robot jumped on the hype train, both promoting the event and donating piles of books to the giveaway tables. What originally was going to be a 50 or 60 person event with a couple of authors ended up overflowing the meager space at Black Label Brewing and was attended by authors Megan O’Keefe (who, alongside r/Fantasy moderator Melissa Shumake, ran the entire show), Jason Hough, Wesley Chu, Ramez Naam, Gail Carriger, Kameron Hurley, Kate Elliott, Courtney Schafer, Randy Henderson, Mike Underwood, and Brandon Sanderson. And, hell, I’m sure there are some I’m probably forgetting.

Both nights, after dinner and post-con events, I hung out in different bars and bullshitted (bullshat?) with a bunch of authors and industry folks. This was really my first exposure to the phenomenon known as “BarCon”, a paradigm so common at these sorts of industry events that it has its own name. Oddly enough, it’s something that I’ve always wanted to get out of the larger conventions I’ve attended, and never been able to make happen. Getting people to go out to dinner or a bar after PAX or ECCC has been like pulling teeth, but at WorldCon, all I had to do was show up somewhere and I’d end up in a crowd of fans and industry pros talking about everything from writing to gaming to fashion to drinking.

On Friday night, I was a bit worn out from the frenetic energy of the BarCon atmosphere from the previous two, and ended up having an amazing, relaxing dinner with Melissa from the r/Fantasy table and authors Alberto Yáñez, Courtney Schafer, and Kate Elliott. This, to be honest, is still the highlight of my convention. I tend to enjoy quieter, more relaxing environs for social interaction, so even though it may not have been the best “exposure” in terms of “networking” (two phrases constantly thrown at me when I was debating whether WorldCon would be worth the money), it was by far the most interesting conversation and enjoyable part of my weekend.

We ended up all going our separate ways after dinner, and energized by the conversation I stopped by the bar at the Davenport Grand, the swanky hotel by the convention center that seemed to serve as both the BarCon jump-off point and late-night wind-down. I didn’t immediately see anyone I knew, so I sat down at the bar with a beer. Before long, I met up with Tod McCoy, a board member for Clarion West whom I’d met at a reading a couple of months ago. He invited me up to the Clarion West party, which was one of the few room parties at a convention I’ve ever attended that was genuinely fun. I was one of the last people out the door at almost 1:30am.

Saturday evening, as I mentioned before, was all about the Hugos. That had the effect, for me, of separating out many of the authors I’d been hanging out with all weekend because the after-awards parties were exclusive events, to one degree or another. That’s not at all a bad thing, though, because I spent the entire evening hanging with the crew I’d met from helping with the Reddit r/Fantasy table, and we had an absolute blast. It all started with a steady flow of beer during the Hugo ceremonies, then we ended up at a (sadly mediocre) barbecue joint just talking about the weekend until the wee hours. Melissa, Jodi, and Joel from r/Fantasy were my peeps for the entire weekend, and capping it off by hanging out, laughing, and drinking with them couldn’t have been more perfect.

If I sit down and analyze it, WorldCon was technically a mixed bag of an event. The convention itself ranged from okay to bad, with a few bright spots. What really made the convention interesting and fun was the people, and the after-hours activities. It’s a dynamic I’ve never encountered before, but when I really think back on the weekend, that “mixed bag” just feels like a humongous overall win. If it accomplished nothing else, WorldCon was an excuse to gather publishing industry folks en-masse, which made the weekend extremely fun.

Before, I probably would’ve never thought to travel to Kansas City for MidAmeriCon next year, but man, the allure of BarCon is pretty fucking great.

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It Is, After All, Just A Board Game

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Today, while putzing around on Reddit r/BoardGames, the game Five Tribes came up as their “Game of the Week”. Five Tribes is a very fun tactical board game set in an Arabic-themed fantasy world around the time of the 1001 Arabian Nights.

There is a minor controversy (read: not actually a controversy at all) surrounding this game. If you’ve ever watched Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop, they did an episode on Five Tribes that addresses the issue: the original version of the game included Slave cards that were part of the game’s marketplace, and were used as a currency resource.

Thematically, the Slave cards fit the game alright, but many (rightly) found them distasteful. In subsequent printings of the game, Days of Wonder replaced the Slave cards with cards depicting Fakirs, lightly altering the cards place in the game’s theme without altering the game mechanics in any way. Overall, a positive change.

AND YET…

There is a vocal contingent in the board gaming “community” who are distraught by the change. Their argument – much the same as anyone who has ever used the term “politically correct” as a pejorative – is that the slaves were thematically appropriate and that Days of Wonder shouldn’t have “caved” to “pressure” by “sanitizing” the game.

As happens whenever the game is brought up in internet forums, this argument arose again in the r/BoardGames Five Tribes thread. I very nearly embroiled myself in an argument over the issue, but decided that my sanity and good mood weren’t worth the effort. I still have opinions jangling around in here, though, so here goes:

Within the context of the game, Slave cards are another type of resource or currency. They are acquired in a market alongside things like silk, papyrus, spices, and ivory. There are three ways they can be used in the game:

1) They can be “spent” to boost the power of Builders, earning a higher score for building. Thematically, the assumption is that the builders use slave labor for larger constructions.
2) They can be “spent” in conjunction with Elders to summon Djinn. Thematically, the assumption is that the slave is being sacrificed as part of the summoning process/ritual.
3) They can be “spent” to boost the effective range of Assassins. Thematically… well, fuck, I honestly have no idea how that fits thematically.

Fakirs, historically, are religious ascetics who, through their devotion to their religion, earn both power and authority directly from God. In a fantastical or mythological setting (like the one depicted in Five Tribes), they are powerful mystics whose devotion earns them God-granted supernatural abilities. Their inclusion in Five Tribes over Slaves alters the theme somewhat, but in a positive way.

Now, instead of using slave labor, Builders are calling upon Fakirs to augment their abilities to create even more grandiose architecture. Instead of sacrificing slaves to summon Djinn, Elders now enlist the help of the mystical Fakirs to use their powers to summon and control the Djinn. And instead of… doing whatever the fuck it is assassins might do with slaves, Fakirs lend their powers to augment the efficacy of assassins. This last one might be problematic for some people, but history and fantasy are full of religious assassins who believed themselves to be doing the work of God, and who were supported by both worshipers and clergy, so the idea of a Fakir helping an assassin isn’t too big a stretch.

So… yyyeaahhh… While Slaves may be thematically appropriate, they’re wildly insensitive and inappropriate in far more ways than solely the game’s theme. On top of that, their inclusion was off-putting to so many potential buyers that it was having a direct effect on the sales of what is otherwise an absolutely fantastic board game.

What’s worse, though, is seeing members of the board game “community” vehemently arguing that their removal was some kind of slight that ruined the game, and that their inclusion was a necessary component. Days of Wonder has no plans to reintroduce the Slave cards in future Five Tribes expansions, which one Redditor deemed “shameful”. Somehow, that’s more shameful than including a slaves-as-currency mechanic in the first place, or more shameful than wailing to the heavens that you don’t get to play with slaves in your game.

I guess.

Or something.

The Slave cards were an uncomfortable blight on an otherwise light fantasy theme. Their replacement has exactly zero effect on the game’s mechanics and, in fact, has a wildly positive effect on the popularity of an absolutely fantastic game. Vehemently arguing for the inclusion of Slaves is, quite frankly, GROSS, and makes you look like a nasty excuse for a human being. The arguments for thematic appropriateness of both Slaves and Fakirs weigh – at least for me – equally, so wouldn’t you rather be on the side arguing for positive inclusion rather than racial and cultural insensitivity?

It is, after all, just a fucking board game.

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The Snowball of Inactivity

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It’s amazing how inactivity snowballs.

As a kid I was horrendously, agonizingly introverted. It wasn’t until I got involved with LARPing – no joke – that I learned how to express myself externally and set aside silly concepts like “shame” and “embarrassment”. At some point during my senior year of high-school, the combination of having a job at a TV station and running around the woods hitting people with foam-padded sticks flipped a switch in my brain, and the little introverted bag of nerves that I’d been turned into a loudmouthed, abrasive, alpha-personality.

Over the years, being relatively extroverted has served me well; much better than introverted ever did. If nothing else, I learned to speak my mind, which alone has opened up a host of opportunities over the last two decades. My devil-may-care personality leveled up my flagging (at the time) self-confidence, and gave me the guts to pursue paths, both social and professional, that “the old me” likely never would’ve chased.

It earned me my marriage.

It made me a writer.

It has, perhaps inevitably, led me to be blindsided by a weakness I didn’t think I’d encounter.

Writers talk a lot about things like writer’s block and depression and distraction. About the need to overcome crippling self-doubt to make a run at writing for a living. When I started writing, these concepts were ephemeral things, ghostly apparitions at the edges of my consciousness that I cavalierly ignored, confident that I would be somehow immune to doubt’s paralyzing effects or, ideally, be able to simply power through them.

I still don’t believe in the traditional definition of writer’s block; this crushing inability to put words to paper, characterized as some outside force pressing in upon the besieged author. I’ve learned, however – and this might not be news to a lot of people – what writer’s block actually is: it’s not the inability to generate and record ideas, it’s the inability to set aside critical judgement of one’s own work in order to put words down, because they don’t live up to our self-imposed expectations.

Is that what’s happening to me, right now? I’m not sure. I do know that, regardless of the underlying reason I’m having trouble putting words to paper, the inactivity snowballs fast. I’ve been surprised at how insidious inactivity can be, and how it cascades into fear, depression, and even self-loathing. I sit in front of my computer and stare at the screen, and don’t write. I feel like shit for not writing. Which, in alpha-land, should kick me into gear and get me busting-ass on putting words to page when, in fact, it has the opposite effect.

Instead it sets me looking for distraction rather than fulfillment (or maybe fulfillment in distraction?). I look for those little things that provide the endorphin- rush of short-term gratification – crafting frivolous things (I’ve gotten into building custom inserts for board game boxes, of all things), posting to social media and waiting for Faves or Retweets or Shares or some such bullshit, reading articles on craft that just rehash the shit I already know and indulge my confirmation bias. Even doing housework – something I need to do anyway – has become a substitute for sitting at a computer and hammering away at the keys.

The worst part is that, intellectually, I know all I need to do to make it right is, well, write. While I don’t get the same short-term rush from writing a thousand words as I do from finishing a chore or interacting on social media, it’s a much deeper satisfaction that spirals upward into happiness and fulfillment and, above all, a completed project.

But it’s so much harder.

There is a kernel of doubt at the core of all of this. Like every other author, I worry that I will fail to live up to my readers’ expectations, and over time simply go gentle into the night. But that self-doubt is merely the falling chunk of ice that starts the avalanche – it’s really the disappointment that’s paralyzing. When I don’t write, I feel like shit. When I feel like shit, it’s hard to write. I’m disappointed in myself for not writing, which makes me feel like more shit. When I feel shittier, it’s harder to write. As that weight comes bearing down I go from opening the file and not writing to not even opening the file at all to not even opening my laptop for fear that I might find myself staring at the file and tapping keys.

And that’s something Alpha Me never expected to encounter. I strode into writing like an overconfident general, blithely dismissive of the struggles that other writers not only encounter, but told me about ahead of time. Not me; oh surely not me. These are not the trappings of confidence! And yet I sit in front of my computer, not typing, and have learned the hard way the paralyzing effect not of self-doubt – but of self-disappointment.

Why am I writing this? Probably because putting any words down at all is better than putting down nothing. In the hope, perhaps, that writing it down will, like all of my other ideas, get it out of my system and put me back on track. Because, at this point, I need to power through.

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Taking A Social Media Break

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So, I’m taking some time off of social media. I’ve done it once before, and the result was better than I could’ve expected. It’s a bit of an outrage-reset, if you will. So much of social media, any more, tends to be all about The Next Big Outrage. Peripheral, meaningless discussion turns into blathering, pointless rage (in the case of my feeds, nerd rage) at the drop of a hat… or quote… or piece of cover artwork.

It gets exhausting.

I’m on social media to have fun and connect with like-minded people. On balance, social media is a wildly positive experience for me. I’ve met some very good friends and had some wonderful interactions with some of my favorite creators of art on Facebook and Twitter. So, when it reaches a point where I start feeling put upon by my feeds, I know it’s time to take a step back.

Intellectually, I know that my (carefully curated) feeds are a positive force in my life. Emotionally, though, they can start to feel like a slog – an anger-ridden pit of hostility. And mostly, it’s because anger is easy. Ranting is the most simplistic response to stimuli. Anger is faster and more instantly gratifying than reason.

And even though I try to be reasonable – to look deeper into an issue before blowing my hate-wad all over the internet – I still find myself being sucked into the negativity vortex without really knowing it’s happened. I’ll hear a piece of news and start typing up my knee-jerk response, then immediately delete it (on a good day) or hit “post” without thinking (on the worst days).

It’s a hole that’s not easy to climb out of by degrees, because I’ll have sunk so far before noticing the pull that I can’t just inch my way back out. Hence, the break, a cold-turkey cutoff.

Although I’m finding the timing of this one to be a bit awkward. Initially, I picked April as my month off for two reasons:

First, absolutely despise April Fool’s Day. I’ve never been much for trickery to get a laugh at another’s expense, but before the internet April Fool’s Day was at least mostly tolerable. A truly good AFD prank use to require effort and planning, but now this stupid fucking day just turns the entire internet into an utterly untrustworthy cesspool. So I decided to skip it.

Second, I’m taking a vacation at the end of the month, and I wanted to do it without social media being involved. I wanted to focus on being away, to engage in experiences that were just for me and my wife, rather than feeling the need to share them with all of my Friendz and Followerz.

But here’s where it gets awkward: Emerald City ComiCon just wrapped up. For the first time in a while, I managed to meet a TON of new friends at the convention. I met fans of Trade Secrets, online buddies from Twitter, some of my favorite comic creators, and a group of speculative fiction authors with whom I’ve had varying levels of online interaction. And now, just after I met all these people, and have a chance to reinforce those friendships and interactions with social media (the whole point of social media, IMO)… I bail.

Part of taking breaks like this is learning to unplug, and learning that my social life isn’t going to fall apart when I do. My hope is that, in a world of instant gratification and bite-sized interactions, the new friends I’ve made and relationships I’ve kindled will still be strong when I return. For right now, though… I need some time for me.

So, I’ll be back in a month. In the meantime, if you really want to interact with me, feel free to buy a copy of my book, Construct, and – if you like it – leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads.

Or, you can e-mail me. One of the two (although, I prefer the former).

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Reddit AMA Transcript

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My AMA on Reddit /r/Fantasy a couple of weeks ago was a rousing success. I received a ton of support and questions, so I thought I’d post an edited transcript here, since it’s effectively an author interview. It’s a nice mix of serious and goofball questions, and I had a great time answering them. Hopefully this is a better format for some of you Reddit-averse readers out there.

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself.

A: I grew up on fantasy. My dad shoved The Hobbit into my hands at a very young age, and while I liked it, I wasn’t really a huge Tolkien fan. The first fantasy that really struck me was David Eddings’s The Belgariad. It’s pulpier than most, but it’s still my favorite, and holds a very special place in my heart. I quickly fell down the fantasy and sci-fi rabbit hole, and never climbed back out.

I’m a geek of nearly every stripe. I’ve been a video gamer since the Commodore Vic-20. I’ve been playing D&D and other RPGs since I was eight years old. I LARPed for almost fifteen years (mostly in NERO and Amtgard). I love board and card games. I read a ton of comic books (and host a comic book podcast called Trade Secrets).

I worked in the gaming industry – first at Wizards of the Coast, then at Nintendo – ever since graduating college in 1998. Due to the good graces of my wonderful wife, I left Nintendo in 2013 to pursue writing full time.

Random (Not-Necessarily-Geeky) Things:

  • I play a lot of poker, and have a weekly home game.
  • I’m a Seattle Sounders and Pittsburgh Steelers fan.
  • I absolutely love to cook.
  • I love craft beer and scotch.

Q: What were your positions at WotC and Nintendo? As a follow up, do you think working within the tabletop and video gaming industries informed your writing at all?

A: I held several positions at both.

I started at WotC as an intern, moved into customer service, and then worked in R&D for about a year-and-a-half before being laid off in one of their recurring purges. At Nintendo I started as a game tester, then moved over to Lotcheck – their version of certification testing. My last position there was part of the 3-person team under Dan Adelman that handled the distribution of all of Nintendo’s digital titles for WiiWare, DSiWare, and the eShop on 3DS and Wii U.

I definitely think my time at WotC influenced my writing. Getting to see the nuts-and-bolts of RPG development gave me a fantastic view into the process of building a world from scratch. Even though I wasn’t directly involved, I had access to a lot of meetings and materials that gave me a ton of insight.

Although my time at Nintendo didn’t directly influence my writing, being a game tester for seven years had a direct effect on my editing and troubleshooting abilities. I’m super detail-oriented and anal about quality, and used a lot of those skills when creating and bug-testing the eBook versions of Construct.

Fun Note: Although the idea for Construct predates my time at WotC by a bit, the first time I was spurred to actually write any of it down was during a call for novel submissions that was open to WotC employees. Although he didn’t have a name yet, in that version my main character Samuel was a warforged in the Eberron setting.

Q: Did your time at Wizards of the Coast inspire to write about Constructs rather than people?

A: Not specifically, no. The idea for Construct came to me in college, a couple of years before I started working at WotC. For many years the idea was pretty amorphous, though, teetering back-and-forth between fantasy and sci-fi (the sci-fi version centered around an android rather than a construct). It’s always been a story about an artificial being’s plight.

Q: Character Development in Construct is very well done. Will we see more twists and turns for Eri, Pare, and Jacob?

A: Thank you for the compliment! Characters are important to me, so knowing that my character development worked for a reader is fantastic. To answer your question: Absolutely, yes. We’ll see all of those characters again in roles of varying importance. I don’t want to get too specific for fear of spoilers. If you know how the first book ended you know why I’m being a bit vague here. 🙂

Q: Being a long time comic book fan, is Samuel more of an anti-hero, a forced hero, a distraction for the readers?

A: Hrm. This is a tough one. I definitely wouldn’t call him an anti-hero, and he’s not intended as a distraction. I’d say Samuel starts off as a somewhat archetypical forced hero, but eventually overcomes his reticence and starts driving his own narrative. That was really my intention: I wanted Samuel to take charge once he garnered some inkling of what was going on; to overcome his doubt and fear and start taking charge of his own fate.

Q: What are your preferred scotches?

A: One of the best I’ve ever had was Glenfiddich 21, but I can’t afford it regularly. Glenlivet Nadurra is pretty fantastic, as is Glenfiddich 18. One of my wife’s favorites is Dalmore 15, which I also enjoy. She brought back a bottle of Tomintoul 16 from a business trip to Scotland that I’m very fond of. I don’t usually like very peaty scotches, but she also brought back a bottle of Jura Prophecy that’s really fucking good.

Q: What do you find are some of the biggest hurdles for indie writers to over come?

A: Exposure, hands down. Discoverability for indie books is a bitch. Readers need to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, and most don’t have the time or inclination to sift through thousands of books. Right now, there isn’t a solid mechanism for curating self-published content.

Since indie authors don’t really have advocates or (man, I hate this term) gatekeepers, we have to walk a razor’s edge between self-promotion and professionalism. It’s something that’s constantly at odds, for me. I struggle to strike a balance between pimping my own work and not being “that guy”. Finding the right signal-to-noise ratio is probably the hardest thing I’ve dealt with.

Q: If you could collaborate with any writer, living or dead, who would it be?

A: Fhew… My knee-jerk answer is David & Leigh Eddings. The Belgariad and The Malloreon are such a huge part of my childhood and reading life that I would’ve loved to have collaborated on a story set in that world. I recently participated in a giveaway that asked what character I’d like to see a short story based on, to which I answered Silk from The Belgariad. I’d love to have worked with the Eddings’s on such a story.

I’ve been introduced to a ton of fantastic authors since The Belgariad, though. Some of my recent favorites have been Ann Leckie, Daniel Abraham, and Kameron Hurley, so they might make the list, as well.

Q: How did you get the cover made for Construct?

A: When I decided to self-publish, I began looking online for cover artists. There are so many. One of my favorite artists from RPGs and my time at WotC is Wayne Reynolds, who is currently the key cover artist for most Pathfinder books. On a whim, I contacted him – just to see, you know? – and I was quoted a $8,000-$12,000 for a full-color cover commission. I had my little chuckle, and continued searching.

I contacted Jon Schindihette, whom I knew from working at Wizards. He used to be their managing art director. I didn’t know Jon super-well – I’d spoken with him a few times at WotC and I’m friends with him on Facebook – but he was extremely helpful. I gave him the parameters of the cover and told him my price range, and he was able to give me a short list of up-and-coming artists who fit the bill.

Of the artists he suggested, it only took one look for me to land on Carmen Sinek. Her work is fantastic, and she was right in my range. My collaboration with her was absolutely amazing. We had a great dialogue through the whole process, and the final cover completely exceeded my expectations. I go into a little more detail about the process in this blog post. You can check out her work at TooManyLayers.com.

My advice for indie authors looking for good cover art:

  1. Be willing to pay for a good artist. There are plenty of decent, affordable artists out there, but set your expectations of cost higher than what you see spoken of online if you want real quality.
  2. Don’t be a control freak. The image of your cover in your mind is great and all, but give the artist leeway to create. They’re the one with knowledge of design, color, and composition; let them use it. You’re not just paying for a finished piece of art, you’re paying for an artist’s skill, experience, and expertise, which you do not possess.

Q: There are writers who write short stories and share them freely on their websites to maintain interest in their books between novels and to create buzz when a novel is near completion. Would you consider writing some stories about the secondary characters in Construct? Also, you can offer free short stories on Amazon to promote your book. What are your thoughts on this?

A: The idea is fantastic… I’m not sure it would work for me, though. I don’t have many ideas for short stories surrounding these characters that I wouldn’t just incorporate into the main narrative. On top of that, I’m – frankly – not very good at short fiction.

There are several things I also have to consider:

  1. My production is pretty slow as it is. Every moment I spent writing and revising a short story would feel like time I could be spending on the main book, and would be hard for me to justify in my own mind.
  2. I’m a quality freak. One of the most elucidating experiences of my life was the editorial process I went through on Construct. I’d feel the need to have my short works professionally edited before publication, which is an expense I can’t afford, at the moment.

All of this is not to say that I’d never do something like this, but at this early stage of my writing career I just don’t think I’m really capable of it.

Q: What’s your favorite board game? Favorite sport? Favorite superhero?

A: Favorite…

…Board Game: Right now, it’s probably Lords of Waterdeep. It’s such a fantastic implementation of the Euro-style resource-management mechanic. I can’t get enough of it. Small World ranks really high, too. In fact, we just received our copy of the Small World Designer’s Edition. It’s the best board gaming product I’ve ever seen. We have a ton of board games in our house, though, and beyond those two, I’d have a hard time ranking.

…Sport: It used to be football, but now it’s soccer. A while ago, I had a ton of friends who were into soccer. I had trouble getting into it, because I didn’t have a team to root for (I have trouble watching any sport in which I have no stake). That problem was solved when the Seattle Sounders got a MLS franchise. We decided to become season ticket holders, and over the course of the last 6 seasons, my wife and I have become pretty hardcore soccer fans.

…Superhero: Hm. There are lots of ways I could answer this question, but one of my all-time favorite superhero comics is Robert Kirkman & Ryan Ottley’s Invincible. I love that character and book. In movies, Captain America has become one of my favorites, which is really odd because I can’t stand Cap in the comics.

Q: Earlier, you mentioned that discoverability for indie books was a struggle. What did you do to overcome this?

A: To be honest, I can’t say that I have. I’m a new author, and new to the realm of self-promotion. I’m very lucky that the mods here at /r/Fantasy offer a platform like Writer of the Day for guys like me to try and make my voice heard, but I’ve had a hell of a time trying to get my book in front of readers and out from under the standard self-publishing stigma.

For me, it starts with quality – the first step is a well-written, well-edited, professional product. My ego tells me that I have a story to tell and that I’m the only person who can tell it right. My experience backs that up, but also gives me the vision to realize I can’t do it without editors and artists. So, Construct went through multiple rounds of developmental editing and copy editing, and I spent an immense amount of time designing, building, testing, and tweaking both the eBook and tree-book versions.

The two go hand-in-hand, for me: All the promotion in the world doesn’t matter if the product you’re selling is garbage, and putting effort into a fantastic product won’t matter if no one ever sees it.

Reviews are extraordinarily important to indie works. Reader reviews, yes, but I’m talking about reviews on blogs and bookish publications. Part of the importance is showing readers that someone other than the author is willing to put their voice behind a work. The other part is giving the author a) a platform and b) quotes and tools to add to their self-promotion arsenal. Getting those reviews is the issue, though. I’m not going to go into a lengthy complaint, but I’ve sent out literally hundreds of review requests and have received exactly one website review.

I think sites like Fiction Garden and Genre Underground are steps in the right direction. Websites willing to sift through indie works and provide a place where readers can access curated content that has been vetted by a third party. I’m lucky enough that Construct has earned a spot on Fiction Garden’s “Recommended Reading” list (which, incidentally, is that one review I mentioned earlier). We could use more spaces like this, on a much larger scale.

Q: Who is your favorite Star Trek character?

A: Riker. All the modernity of TNG combined with all of Kirk’s swagger. Second in line, oddly enough, is probably Neelix, and that’s solely for a single line from Voyager (a show I actually don’t like very much): “This ship is the match of any vessel within a hundred light years, and what do they do with it? Oh well, uh, let’s see if we can’t find some spatial anomaly today that might RIP IT APART!“

Q: What are your feelings on curry?

A: I haven’t met a curry I don’t like yet. I make Japanese curry rice at home all the time, and I’m working on a home recipe for Thai panang curry at the moment that I haven’t quite perfected. I love Indian food, as well, my favorites being paneer saag and lamb shahi korma.

Q: What’s the best edition of D&D?

A: Oh, what a trap this question is. I grew up playing 2nd Edition Advanced D&D. Usually, when this question gets asked, if the answer is anything that came after, you’re stoned and burned as a heretic.

However, my favorite edition is 3rd Ed./3.5. Granted, I’m a bit biased, having worked at WotC during the development and release of 3/3.5, but I honestly do think that it’s the best of all worlds. It retains the flavor of the older versions but streamlines some really dumb rules and makes the game more accessible to more players.

Like any version, though, the sheer volume of supplements and expansions and extra rules cause the game to drown in its own shitting of the bed, but as a core rules set I loves me some 3.5. I have not yet played 5th Edition.

Q: You are stuck on a deserted island with three books. Knowing you’ll be reading these three over and over again, what three do you bring?

A: This is a supremely hard question to answer. The vast majority of books that I absolutely love are parts of series’, so if I’m restricted to three books and not three series, I have a very hard time figuring out what I’d take. But here’s my go at it:

Belgarath The Sorcerer by David & Leigh Eddings. I’m so in love with The Belgariad that this had to be on the list. I can re-read this book pretty much infinitely.

Timeline by Michael Crichton. I’m a giant Crichton fan, in general, and this is, without question, his best book. An amazing adventure.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. Even though this is part of a series, it stands well enough alone on its own, and is one of my favorite individual novels of all-time.

This whole list goes out the window if I can pick series instead of individual books, though.

Q: I was in choir practice in my primary school and we always had to pay attention to our conductor. There was a boy in the year above me who always got very confused because his name was Luke and the man was always shouting ‘LOOK’ at us instead of ‘Luke’. Except for the times where he’d actually shout Luke. As a result the poor kid was always on his toes.

Has there ever been a time where you have had your name confused with the word ‘look’? If so, what happened?

A: Not in the way you describe, no.

However, you’d be surprised at the sheer number of times someone has attempted to spell my name “Look” when I tell it to them. It’s shocking.

There are really only two ways to spell Luke: L-U-K-E, or L-U-C if you’re French. And yet, somehow, I’ll tell people (bank tellers, especially) my name is Luke and they’ll try Look and Luck and Leuk and Louk.

Every single one of those has been an actual attempt by someone to spell my name.

Q: What is your favorite way to eat ice cream?

A: For most of my life, my favorite way has been the most simple: in a bowl, drizzled in chocolate syrup.

But about a year-and-a-half ago, I was on vacation in Australia and was introduced to a new favorite:

French toast, made with cinnamon-swirl bread (or a slice of cinnamon roll), topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, drizzled in butterscotch, with crushed macadamia nuts sprinkled on top.

Holy.

Shit.

Q: I’ve long been interested in the differences between writing short fiction and novels. What do you think are the main differences between the two, and do you think your writing mind works better with novels?

A: I once saw the basics of storytelling split into four overarching parts: prose, character, plot, and world-building. In my experience, short fiction must be primarily focused on prose and plot, where long-form fiction has more leeway to concentrate on the other two.

(Note: An argument can be made, with which I tend to agree, that world-building should exist as a supplement to the other three, and should never overshadow any of them.)

A short story is a vignette; an interesting moment in time. It tends to explore a single decision, an individual or a small group of people, a particularly stirring style of prose, a focused experience. Longer (novel-length) works are concerned more with action, reaction, and consequence, and long-term development of plot, world, and character.

Where long fiction allows the author to explore how their characters’ actions affect their fictional worlds, successful short fiction – at least standalone short fiction that’s not supplemental to a longer work – either a) isn’t always concerned with the larger ramifications or b) is willing to leave the extrapolation of such implications to the reader.

I tend to be a fairly linear writer, primarily because I’m always concerned with the downstream effects as I’m writing. Even if I’m developing or writing a scene out of order, my mind is always swirling both with “How did we get here?” and “Where does this lead?”. I struggle with presenting a short snippet of a story, because my mind is always framing it in a larger context. I haven’t yet been successful in settling myself down to just present that interesting vignette, at least not without burying it in obvious cliche.

Q: What types of characters do you generally play in LARP?

A: Healers and fighters, mostly a combination of the two. You asked me a nerdy question, so this is going to be a sufficiently nerdy answer:

Most of my LARPing history was concentrated on games like Amtgard and Belegarth, which are more skill-intensive than LARPs like NERO or Legacies, which are more roleplay-intensive. And I mean “skill-intensive” literally: their combat systems tend to be more athletic in nature, rather than built to support a roleplay framework.

So, in both environments I found myself playing what is affectionately called a “regenerating warrior”. In the case of Amtgard, this meant that I played the Healer class, but spent a ton of my skill points on weaponry (sword and shield, to be specific), eschewing all but a few healing spells that allowed me to keep moving after taking a wound.

I found myself leaning in this direction regardless of the game I was playing. I just enjoy the play-style. I spent a lot of time and energy becoming a decent fighter, and supplemented that with in-game abilities that let me repair or ignore an opponent’s attacks.

Q: What made you go a different route than the usual war/mages/farmboy route? Did you consciously try to write a book that was different?

A: Absolutely.

When I first had the idea, it was nothing more than “Artificial being with scrambled memories being chased for something he’s seen.” As time passed, the more I read and the more I learned about writing, I started thinking about the stereotypes I wanted to avoid, and how I wanted my story to progress.

I wasn’t – and still am not – looking to write “epic” fantasy. My books – at least The Chronicler Saga – aren’t about huge battles or ancient mages returning to glory or adventurers surviving amongst warring gods or the ascension of a lowly nothing to the ranks of legendary heroes. I want to tell more character-centric stories, and focus on some non-standard protagonists.

Hopefully I succeeded.

Q: How far are you on Book 2? Will it be out before George RR Martin’s next book?

A: Jesus, I hope so. 🙂

I’m definitely a slow writer by self-publishing standards, but I’m trying to work on that. I’m currently on chapter 4 of Book 2, and have ramped up quite a bit in the last week.

I was about to make a comment about when I hope to be done with it, but that’s just silly, so I’m going to keep my trap shut.

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Readers and Non-Readers

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Here’s something weird that I learned over the last year-and-a-half, while finishing and publishing my book: that “reader” – just the generalized term meaning someone who reads books – is a category label of people, much like “gamer” or “comic book fan” or “fantasy sports nut”.

Reading has been an absolutely integral part of my life for literally as long as I can remember. Before I could actually read words, my parents would sit down with me and a picture book, and have me “read” it to them – I’d basically just make shit up. As I grew, they’d start reading those books “with” me, teaching me the actual words on the page.

I could read at a very early age, and my reading comprehension was always well ahead of my grade-level. Reading for enjoyment has never not been a part of my life. I read The Hobbit when I was, I think, 8. I read the Belgariad around my 10th birthday, and I’ve been a fantasy nut ever since. I mean, sure, I go through phases where I’m not in the mood, but I’ve never just shunned books.

Which is why it came as a complete surprise to me that there are people who actively choose not to be “readers”. Nah, fuck books. Pfft. And I’m not talking about people who can’t read (learning disabilities, poor education, what have you), but people who can and choose not to. I have spent my whole life so hopelessly immersed in reading for pleasure that the thought never occurred to me that someone would just eschew it entirely. It just… it feels like someone saying “Nah, I don’t walk. I mean, I can, you know, I just… don’t.”

Whenever I have kids, I hope I have the same success getting them to be lifelong, fervent readers as my parents did with me. I hope, like me, they’re in their 30’s before they even realize that deliberate, intentional non-reading is even a thing.