Category: Thoughts

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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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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.

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My Playstation Life

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To adequately express the beginnings of my gaming hobby, I’d like to tell you about the first television I ever gamed on. It was the early 80’s, and my family had a Curtis Mathis console television. A floor-standing unit in a dark wood enclosure, with a flat top upon which sat other components. The whole thing was roughly three feet tall and slightly wider than that. It had actual click-dials on the front and a whopping 25-inch screen.

When I first started gaming, that top sported a potted plant and a pair of Rabbit Ears. Over the years a number of different components would occupy that space; everything from a turntable to a VHS deck to DVD players. Every console I owned as a kid was eventually hooked up to that TV, but it started with a Commodore Vic-20 in 1982, upon which the most commonly played games were Gorf and Radar Rat Race. It was fucking fantastic.

Throughout the 80’s, I was exposed to a wide variety of gaming systems, but my gaming was dominated by Commodore. My mother used our varying Commodore computers for work applications, but our Vic-20, Commodore 64, and Commodore 128 turned out to be absolutely fantastic gaming machines. At one point, I had over 500 games for our 64, all on 5 ¼ floppy disks. It was a pretty glorious time.

I got my first actual console gaming system – a Nintendo Entertainment System – in 1987. Having been a Commodore devotee (and only in single-digit ages), I was blithely oblivious to the rise of Atari and the industry crash. But the rise of the IBM PC was killing Commodore, so I was extremely happy to see dedicated gaming machines becoming a thing. Through the 80’s and 90’s I owned all manner of machines from an SNES, a GameBoy, a Game Gear, a ColecoVision, and even an Action Max, all of which my parents had bought (ostensibly) for me (even though my mom would steal my GameBoy to play Tetris).

I graduated high-school in the summer of ’95, and hadn’t yet decided where I was going to college. So, I was living at home and working at the local TV station (KTVZ21 in Bend, Oregon), and had – for probably the only time in my life – a ton of disposable income. I watched the chatter over the next couple of months about Sony entering the console gaming market with a system that used (gasp!) CD ROM’s instead of cartridges, and had this kinda funky-shaped control pad. When I saw some of the screenshots for games, I was in.

On launch day, I rushed out of work and into the local Fred Meyer about five minutes before they closed, and managed to grab the first gaming console I ever bought with my own money: A Playstation. I was SO FUCKING EXCITED. I rushed home, tore it open, and got it all hooked up to that very same Curtis Mathis TV. I grabbed the weird controller (no analog sticks on this one, yet), and it felt *perfect* in my hands. I emptied the box looking for the pack-in game…only to realize, too late, that there wasn’t one.

My first night with the first console I could call my own, and I was stuck with only Playstation Picks demo disc to play on it. I spent a good chunk of that first night replaying the demos for ESPN Extreme Games, Jumping Flash, and WipEout (I ignored Battle Arena Toshinden after one play). I watched all the videos on the disk of games like Destruction Derby, Ridge Racer, Warhawk, and Kileak, and went to bed having buried all of my original excitement in a heap of disappointment.

And yet, even with that kind of first impression, Sony had me hooked for life.

That Playstation survived my move from Bend to Seattle for college, the rise and fall of my first long-term relationship, and even an apartment fire. Over those years, games like WipEout, Rayman, Tenchu, Chrono Cross, the Oddworld games, the Street Fighter Alpha series, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, the Twisted Metal games, and Tony Hawk solidified gaming as an inextricable part of my life. Oh, and Soul Blade… I mustn’t forget how, for about a six month period, every Saturday afternoon became a SoulBlade party at my apartment, with between 4 and 12 people in attendance. Those were some good times, amongst which the relationship with my now wife of 16 years began.

It was a surprise to no one that the PS2 was the first consumer product I pre-ordered, and the first for which I waited in line. I entered the line at our local GameStop at 11am for a midnight launch, and I was about 100 people back. And all of these were people with pre-orders, with a separate line for those without. By the time the doors opened, the line was 4-5 people abreast and snaked across an entire floor of Bellevue Square Mall, out the door, and into the parking garage. There was a Babbage’s in the same mall with a similar line.

The PS2 amped up everything that had made me love my PS1. Even with a relatively weak launch lineup (I played a LOT of Frequency and Smuggler’s Run in those early days), it went on to have one of the greatest game libraries in the history of console gaming. It’s a library that’s still playable to this day, with games that stand the test of time better than I ever thought they would.

I had friends, at this time, who were huge fans of the Xbox. No matter how many times I played game on it, I just couldn’t bring myself to love it the way I loved my PS2. I had some great times at Halo LAN parties, but the system could just never compare to the experiences I had with some of my now-favorite game franchises like Jak & Daxter and Ratchet & Clank. If the PS1 was really what solidified me as a gamer, it was the PS2 that made me a true Playstation fan. I never owned nor cared about the Dreamcast, and Nintendo had become an afterthought.

Which is why it came as exactly zero surprise to anyone when my wife and I decided to get in line for the launch of the Playstation 3. Being such a huge Playstation fan was a tiny bit awkward at this point, since I was working for Nintendo at the time. Taking vacation days for the launch of a competitor’s console may not have been the smartest move, but I didn’t really care. This is where my fandom tipped from hardcore to a tiny bit insane. I got off work on a Tuesday night, picked up my wife, and headed to the local Best Buy, where a line had already formed for the 12:01 Friday morning launch. We brought a pavilion to keep the rains off and had an air mattress in the bed of my pickup to sleep in. Yeah, that’s right: we camped in line for two and a half days in the rain and wind for our launch PS3’s.

Through all of that, I honestly tried to get into other consoles. I’ve owned an N64, and Xbox, a GameCube, a Wii and an Xbox 360. None of them ever stuck. The worst was the 360, which we bought for relatively cheap about three years after launch, and it just… sat. I played a bit of Halo on it, and then never touched it again.

Even through nine years working at Nintendo, through the entire lifespan of the Wii, I was still a hardcore Playstation fan. Everything from their console and controller design to their video capabilities to their first-party game properties just drew me in and held on tight. Now, I’ve got a household with three backward-compatible PS3’s, a PS4, a PSP Go (yeah, I’m the guy that bought one), and two PSVitas.

Today, as Japan celebrates 20 years of Playstation, I look back at the 19 years I’ve had them in my life and realized just how huge an impact they’ve had on me as a gamer. Some of my fondest nostalgia still resides in the Nintendo of the 80’s and early 90’s, but as much as I loves me some Mega Man and Super Mario World, there is no gaming company that has influenced me nearly as much as Sony. Well over half my life has been spent gaming on Playstation hardware, and I can’t imagine gaming with anyone else, anymore.

Happy birthday, Playstation. Here’s to another 20 years of awesome.

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50 Books In 2014

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I’m a somewhat slow reader, depending on how interested in a book I am. If I love a book I can burn through it at lightning speed, but if I’m struggling, I can take forever. It took me over a year to finish the fifth book of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, Soul of the Fire, because I just couldn’t get into it (read: it was fucking terrible). And it’s a series I haven’t gone back to, even though my wife tells me that Faith of the Fallen is one of the best. Anyhoo…

I decided, kind of on a whim, that I would try to read 50 books over the course of 2014. I see a lot of people make huge claims about the volume of books they read in a year, some boasting numbers over 100. I even, recently, saw someone claim to read 350 books every year, upon which I thither summon “bullshit”. My own totals usually hover around 20, so my goal with the challenge was first to see what it would take to churn through a larger quantity in a single year, and simultaneously use the goal to read a number of books which I feel I should’ve read a long time ago.

I started out fine, setting myself a goal of one book per week, and sticking pretty well to it. I got tripped up on a couple of books that turned out to be either worse or just more dense than I was expecting, so now I’m WAY behind on the goal, having only just started my 31st book of the year. I’ve got 19½ books left, and only 10 weeks to finish them.

Here’s what I’ve read so far this year:

1. The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson
2. Summer Knight by Jim Butcher
3. Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
4. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
5. Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig
6. Kushiel’s Dart by Jaqueline Carey – This was the first book to set me back. I actually really loved it, but it’s way longer than I was expecting, clocking in at 934 very dense pages.
7. Vessel: The Advent by Tominda Adkins
8. The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers
9. Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
10. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
11. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
12. Death Masks by Jim Butcher
13. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
14. Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
15. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
16. Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas – This was my second stumbling block, this time because of quality. I know I’m in the minority amongst fantasy readers, but I just can. not. stand. the main character in this book. This one was a struggle.
17. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
18. The Black Company by Glen Cook
19. Gardens of the Moon by Steven Eriksson – Setback number 3. For the first time in a long time, this is a book that I not only disliked, but cannot for the life of me find what others like about it. It’s such a widely loved series that I thought there had to be something, but if it’s there, it eludes me.
20. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin
21. Mockingbird by Chuck Wendig
22. ‘salem’s Lot by Stephen King
23. Divergent by Veronica Roth
24. Alpha by Greg Rucka
25. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
26. Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
27. Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
28. Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey
29. Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
30. Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch – A minor slowdown, here. This book was fine, but I didn’t like it nearly as much as The Lies of Locke Lamora, which made it a bit of a struggle for me.
31. (currently reading) True Grit by Charles Portis

So far, of the books listed above, my favorites have been The Lies of Locke Lamora, Annihilation, The Handmaid’s Tale, Robin Hobb’s Assassin books, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

And, yes, this was the first time I’d read all the way through Hitchhiker’s Guide. When I was in high-school, I somehow read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe first and, only upon finishing it was I informed that it was the second book. I tried to start HHGTTG several times and never finished it, until now.

As big a fantasy nut as I am, I’d never read any of the Pern or Earthsea books, an error I will now rectify. I hope to finish both trilogies as part of this challenge. In addition to those series’, my TBR pile contains the rest of the Dresden Files books, the remainder of the first Black Company trilogy, Insurgent and Allegiant, Assassin’s Quest, Authority and Acceptance, the Mistborn trilogy, the rest of the Hitchhiker’s books, more Harry Potter, some Vorkosigan Saga, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, The Cormorant, Warlock by Oakley Hall, the first Expanse book Leviathan Wakes, and the ridiculous award magnet Ancillary Justice.

Not sure how many of those I’ll get to, but I only need to read 19 of ‘em to meet my goal.

Only.

::cries::

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The 10 Books That Stuck With Me

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I haven’t been tagged or challenged by anyone to post this list to Facebook, but I found the premise interesting enough to write a post about my list. I like the concept of books that “stayed with me” more than most other memes. And, yes, I’ve listed some series here rather than individual novels, but sometimes an individual entry is inseparable from the series it’s a part of. So, here we go:

1. Where The Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls – A huge formative book for me as a kid. An adventure story of the finest order about a boy and his two favorite dogs. Growing up around dogs made this book super poignant for me.

2. Rising Sun by Michael Crichton – I read every single Crichton book in high school. This was the first one that wasn’t really a high-concept sci-fi story, instead it was a tense murder mystery set amongst the clash of American and Japanese cultures. It was basically my introduction to thrillers that didn’t involve dinosaurs or magic.

3. On A Pale Horse by Piers Anthony – One of two Piers Anthony entries on this list, neither of which involves Xanth. On A Pale Horse was the first sci-fi/fantasy blend I’d ever read, and it’s still one of the best. If you’re wondering why I don’t list the entirety of the Incarnations of Immortality series, it’s because I think On A Pale Horse stands well above the rest.

4. Neuromancer by William Gibson – I came to this book way late in life, only having read it a couple of years ago. And holy shit. It’s a book that dumps you in the deep end from the get go and explains exactly nothing to you. “Here’s an extremely complex world,” Gibson tells his readers. “Go figure it out.”

5. The Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness – Here’s a series that stuck with me, but not in a good way. The world-building in the The Knife of Never Letting Go was some of the best and most unique I’d ever seen… then all the goodwill built by the first book is just shat away by the sequels. The third book in this trilogy has actually made me wary of all trilogies (well, that and Mockingjay).

6. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss – I was in the middle of writing my own book when I read this. It simultaneously inspired me to break out of a tough slog in the middle of my novel, and scared the shit out of me. Rothfuss’s prose is the kind of writing I aspire to, and I’m nowhere near there yet.

7. The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham – One of the most unique fantasy worlds I’ve ever read. The concept of magician poets manifesting physical incarnations of ideas as powerful beings, then trying to reign those beings in for the sake of commerce, is just wildly fascinating to me.

8. Bio of a Space Tyrant by Piers Anthony – Holy shit, this series. Hard sci-fi with a hyper-realistic bent, following the main character from child refugee to ruler of the known galaxy. One of the most brutal, intense opening books I’ve ever read. Who’d’a thunk the guy that writes punny fantasy would’ve been capable of this?

9. The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway – An intensely imaginative world and a fantastic, funny story set within it. I’m not sure I have the words to describe it, so just go read it.

10. The Belgariad by David Eddings – This was the fantasy series that birthed my love of fantasy. I’d read Tolkien prior, and it was fine, but it didn’t hook me. The Belgariad launched me into a love of fantasy that has, ultimately, led me to writing my own. You can try to debate the quality of Eddings’ prose and story all you want, but The Belgariad had a singular formative impact on my life, and is thus pretty much unassailable to me.

What are the 10 books that stuck with you?

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On Requesting Cover Blurbs

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This article was cross-posted to ChroniclerSaga.com

Probably one of the most nerve-wracking things I’ve done during this whole publishing process is send out requests for cover blurbs to several writers and artists I admire. I’ve been ten-fold more anxious about these requests than I ever was about querying agents, because the result is more direct and tangible, and is tied more directly to an appraisal of the quality of my work – by people whose work inspires me.

I’ve read a lot of horror stories about self-published authors contacting others for blurbs and being complete fuck-sticks about it. Making demands rather than requests, getting pissy at rejections or lack of response, and just being general asshats about it. Amongst the many things that baffle me about how some authors choose to handle their publicity, this attitude makes absolutely no sense to me.

Having a chip on your shoulder about cover blurb requests serves no purpose. Another author is under exactly zero obligation to endorse your work. What I originally wanted to say here was “You need them more than they need you”, but that’s such a monumental understatement that it just doesn’t fly. More accurately: “You need them… and who the fuck are you again?”

As a self-published author, requesting a cover blurb is not a two-way street. Another author gains nothing by having their name appear on your book cover or sale page. A blurb is like a literary remora, swimming along on the belly of the Bestselling Author Shark, catching all the half-chewed publicity bits that fall out of that author’s popularity maw. While not entirely parasitic, it ain’t exactly symbiotic, either.

It’s hard (at least, it was for me) to find the right balance for requests; to be respectful without coming across fawning, urgent without being demanding. I’m not the type of person who can fanboy all over my favorite author’s shoes; I try to be complimentary without being slavish. It’s actually a quality that has prevented me from capitalizing on opportunities to get to know some of these people, because I wasn’t just constantly in their faces at cons or on social media. That’s just not how I’m wired.

So it’s a weird gray area one needs to tread in order to do this right. Approaching another author as though you should be the center of their world, even for a minute amount of time, is just asinine. As a fledgling author myself, I am keenly aware of the amount of work and time I have to put into my own writing and promotion, so it’s easy to assume that I can just multiply that by five for an established author.

On top of it all, it’s most important to keep your expectations in check (I, personally, have none). The requester doesn’t have any right to expectations. Remember that whole one-way-street thing? I’m sure I’d be disappointed if I never received any responses, but one must reign that reaction into only mild disappointment. Getting angry over rejections is the path to the dark side. Wallowing through a pit of disappointment and misery only to build a shell of self-aggrandizing indignation is just a horseshit way to go about anything in life, much less trying to get your favorite authors to read your work.

And so, I wait. Receiving a blurb from any of the people from whom I’ve requested would be like my birthday and Christmas all rolled into one, but not receiving one would be… well… a Tuesday. I feel like that’s the best possible outlook: don’t let the lows get too low, but let the highs launch like a sixteen-pounder on New Year’s. And, above all, don’t be a dick.

CONSTRUCT releases on September 18th on Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble.