Following Grand Central Arena, my next solo novel was Phoenix Rising, the first novel in the Balanced Sword trilogy. Originally called Fall of Saints, this story went back to my early grad school days in Pittsburgh, and the character of Kyri Vantage was derived from Kyrie Ross. a Paladin I played in a Ravenloft campaign run by Jeff Getzin.
In the game, a particular piece of music became associated with her in battle, and has stayed there in my mind, even...
2022-09-07 00:07:07 +0000 UTC
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It's been several years since I finished recording and presenting Polychrome to my high-tier Patrons. I've now made all of the recorded videos publicly available and assembled them into a single playlist.
Everyone can now hear what I sound like when I read!
2022-08-29 23:43:41 +0000 UTC
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... first, I have just tested positive for COVID again, so I'm looking forward to at least a few days of unpleasantness.
Second, in the wake of Eric's death, Ring of Fire Press is shutting down. This means I'll have to find another publisher, or start self-publishing everything.
2022-08-16 13:39:33 +0000 UTC
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I didn't have any music that specifically associated itself with Diamonds are Forever, and I think I'll do the Eric Flint coauthored works as a group, so that brings us to the Arenaverse's origin.
I built up a very significant soundtrack around Grand Central Arena, so this will be a fairly long post!
I have always "seen" the Arenaverse in my head as a TV series, often as an anime, and any series needs an opening theme. Ultimately, I ended up choosing the OP from Wild ARMs...
2022-08-07 16:53:13 +0000 UTC
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...I must tell you all that my often-coauthor, good friend, editor, and guy who started my career, Eric Flint, has passed away today. I am in shock and will be kinda wrecked for a while.
2022-07-17 19:56:34 +0000 UTC
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Last month I finished the series of "my favorite scenes". Today, I'm starting a new one, which is the music that inspired, or was a part of, my writing of each book. Some books only had a few associated tracks, others had entire soundtracks associated with them.
We start today with Paradigms Lost, the expanded version of my first book, Digital Knight.
The original concept of Digital Knight goes back to the 1970s, and as ...
2022-07-08 00:23:19 +0000 UTC
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With this post, we reach the end of my published novels, so this will be the last My Favorite Scenes (at least for a while).
Shadows of Hyperion is the fourth and currently last in the Arenaverse series. It was published following a successful Kickstarter, and starts us on the way towards completing the series itself.
In Shadows of Hyperion, I decided to grab the Hyperion bull by the horns; that fifty-year-old project had been one of the hidden driver...
2022-06-05 15:55:30 +0000 UTC
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Castaway Resolution, originally called
2022-05-11 01:29:30 +0000 UTC
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The third and final crossover idea that I've taken is to cross our heroes from Godswar with the world of Polychrome. Of the three, this is the one that really could have happened and would at most require only minor dialogue or thought tweaks in the published version of Godswar, as in Godswar: The Spear of Athena our heroes really are leaping from world to world with abandon.
So let's see what happens when Ingram, Urelle, Quester, and V...
2022-04-11 01:46:24 +0000 UTC
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The culmination of the Balanced Sword trilogy, Phoenix Ascendant obviously had a lot of scenes worth remembering, some I'd been waiting to write for twenty years. This is one of the hardest ones for me to decide on, because there's so many I love revisiting; Light Tanvol's magnificent death in the beginning, Condor winning the final battle against the Demonshard and becoming his true self once more, Kyri's rebirth to the true Phoenix Justiciar, and of course the culmination of Poploc...
2022-04-07 01:04:45 +0000 UTC
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The second of three, this one gave me a bit of trouble; I started it three times before finishing it. But I think it's fun. The basic prompt? Star Trek : The Next Generation intersecting with The Arena!
By its nature, this one should be limited only to Patrons; it is not and likely never will be publishable, and I have no rights for any of the non-Arenaverse characters or elements in this one.
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Anomaly
i....
2022-03-28 03:54:21 +0000 UTC
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Here's the first of the selected crossover concepts -- which was A.J. Baker of Boundary meeting up with DuQuesne of Grand Central Arena!
A.J.'s at his home, after all the events of Portal...
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"Holy shit!"
A.J. toppled from the stool he'd been sitting at, knocking the half-finished Faerie Dust dispenser off the workbench and sending it clattering to the floor, shedding tiny pieces.
That didn't matter to A.J. at ...
2022-03-08 18:40:26 +0000 UTC
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Back in 2008, I was driving home from work and had to pick up a few things. On my way, I saw one of the most magnificent double-rainbows I've ever seen, one which persisted for close to 20 minutes. And at one point it looked like the rainbow came straight down into the parking lot of Westgate Shopping Plaza.
And into my mind, as a very long-term fan of the Oz series, suddenly popped the image of Polychrome, Daughter of the Rainbow, dropping down into this absolutely different worl...
2022-03-06 18:06:31 +0000 UTC
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I am awed and terribly grateful to all of you for providing your support over these five years. You know that much of the money goes to producing things like the covers and illos shown at the Sketchy! level (and later seen on the published books). But it also has, at times, provided desperately needed help to bridge financial gaps here at my home. We all very much appreciate it, and hope I can keep providing you all with interesting, fun material for another five years!
I hav...
2022-03-06 17:19:57 +0000 UTC
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You can cross characters, locations, etc, however you like, as long as at least one of them is mine. I'll choose probably three of the suggestions to actually turn into a scene, a vignette, a short story, all to celebrate the FIFTH YEAR of this Patreon!
I've already got a few good suggestions, but more won't hurt!
(only for Patrons, because then it stays private and I don't need to worry about whether I *can* write a particular scene or not)
2022-02-24 02:06:28 +0000 UTC
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In this continuing series, we now reach my first epic fantasy release, the first volume of the Balanced Sword trilogy, Phoenix Rising.
This trilogy, just being re-issued now by Ring of Fire Press, remains one of the closest to my heart; it introduced my world of Zarathan, created in 1978, to the readers and was a story I started working on in 1991. As such, it has honestly a lot of scenes I really like -- Kyri's destruction of the portal through which abomi...
2022-02-06 21:37:10 +0000 UTC
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... as to what intersection between worlds might interest you! I've already gotten a couple interesting suggestions, but we can always use more for this special 5-year event!
Want to have Jason Wood meet Dana Kisaragi? Ask what happens if a Star Wars vessel enters the Demons of the Past universe? See DuQuesne meet his original? Have Legend drop in on Deku and his group from My Hero? Prefer to see someone give Khoros the dressing-down he deserves/ It's all possible. Think about it ...
2022-02-04 02:11:36 +0000 UTC
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Next month will be the beginning of the sixth year of this Patreon; many of you have been here from the beginning, and all of you have been well-appreciated supporters.
Inspired by a conversation I once had on my beta list, I am announcing a SPECIAL EVENT: X Meets Y, open to every one of my Patrons.
Here's how it works: you tell me -- either as a reply to this post, or by a direct message if you prefer -- a meeting between one character, group, etc. of mine and another; the ...
2022-02-02 00:25:45 +0000 UTC
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As most of you must know by now, I'm a long-term roleplaying gamer (since 1977). I've been playing in one or more games pretty much continuously since that time, with only brief breaks.
The current game began well before Corona began to rear its ugly head. The original campaign grand story arc took us from 1st through 20th level, and the second arc has taken us into the epic levels.
The world it's set in is ours, after a particularly peculiar magical and te...
2022-01-07 01:35:41 +0000 UTC
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Continuing this series of posts, we now move to my overall best-sellers. Following Digital Knight and Diamonds are Forever, Eric Flint gave me the opportunity to write a hard-SF novel in collaboration with him, and the result was Boundary.
Boundary is a much less action-oriented and far more thinking-oriented book than most of my other works. It is a classic hard-SF novel of human beings mostly opposed by the very nature of space exploration. Nonetheless, it has ...
2022-01-05 01:52:11 +0000 UTC
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I'll continue my Gaming-influenced posts later, but I can't find the box with key notes for some of that, so instead I'll do this little series until I do.
I often say that I don't write for a particular audience. That doesn't mean that I don't very much appreciate having an actual audience, but rather that I'm writing stuff that *I* would want to read, but no one else will write. And it's equally true that both as reader and writer, I see that all books have their b...
2021-12-10 02:02:00 +0000 UTC
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As of this morning the Kickstarter reached its 10k goal! Don't expect to reach the stretch goal, but I posted one -- to make theme music for the Maidens! (here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/420370544/the-apocalypse-maidens/posts/3378592 )
Holidays, and then being kicked by the COVID booster, slowed me down on the Read Me Something rewards, but I have all t...
2021-12-05 17:55:01 +0000 UTC
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... today I started posting the D20 Modern character sheets for the OSC agents seen in _On-Site for the Apocalypse_!
Kickstarter is going slowly, but it's not impossible for it to succeed! Please spread the word wherever you can!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/420370544/the-apocalypse-maidens/posts/3370264
2021-11-25 16:34:16 +0000 UTC
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It's no secret that my main world wasn't just built for writing, but for gaming, nor that many games I played influenced what I have eventually written. In this little series of posts I'll give you looks at some of those games, and the versions of characters that showed up in them that we later met in my books.
Today, it's everyone's favorite Toad, Poplock Duckweed. Poplock is a character with a long history, one in which I got to play him for about two or three sessions in three ...
2021-11-03 00:25:13 +0000 UTC
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And so it begins. Please spread the word!
2021-11-01 10:12:27 +0000 UTC
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(if you haven't read the short story "On-Site for the Apocalypse" you may be missing some details)
Shortly after the final battle...
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THE APOCALYPSE MAIDENS
Second in The Ethical Magical Girl
Prologue: Cleanup
"What the hellam I supposed to do about this?" Agent Dana Kisaragi demanded of the universe around her.
Twin Pines Mall, a two-section stri...
2021-10-31 14:56:13 +0000 UTC
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... of The Apocalypse Maidens kickstarter! This preview link should turn into the real thing on launch day!
2021-10-30 23:12:16 +0000 UTC
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With today's fifth posted chapter, Demons of the Past: REVOLUTION has been fully read and posted to the Read Me Something Reward tier. This makes three complete books I've read and posted -- Polychrome, Demons of the Past: REVELATION, and now REVOLUTION. Next up: Demons of the Past: RETRIBUTION.
(unless of course the people at that tier decide they want me to read something else)
2021-10-20 01:12:34 +0000 UTC
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As we may recall, this little sequence of posts showcases how Castaway Peril (later relaaed as Castaway Resolution) could have gone in a somewhat different direction. In very broad strokes they were no different -- the castaways discover there's a huge meteor on the way, it hits at the same time as the rescue mission arrives in-system, and after some trials and tribulations the castaways do end up rescued.
But the details were very different, because modeli...
2021-10-03 17:31:22 +0000 UTC
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I have posted all the Read Me Something rewards, plus an extra chapter to start to make up for the ones I missed!
Also, a welcome to some new patrons who just signed up in the last week or so! Thanks for joining, and hope you enjoy what you find!
Remember you can always send me suggestions as to new rewards you might like to see!
2021-09-26 20:16:48 +0000 UTC
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