This Tuesday at 8PM Eastern Time I will host a virtual launch party/reading for Godswar: The Mask of Ares, on Zoom! Here's the info:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87327952953?pwd=UzBhamFpOFQzRFNuNU0vb0p0ZkU4Zz09
Meeting ID: 873 2795 2953
Password: 824498
2020-06-13 03:18:19 +0000 UTC View Post... with microphone, that is, so I can record my Read Me Something Rewards this month!
2020-06-07 18:24:04 +0000 UTC View PostBack in the early days of this Patreon, I did a series of posts on "Things I Won't Write", discussing story ideas that I thought were kinda cool when I came up with them, but for one reason or another I had come to accept simply wouldn't ever be written and published -- at least not in recognizable form.
In this little sequence of posts, I'm going to discuss things for which I have a general idea, but for which there are also some challenges that make it uncertain as to whether I ...
2020-06-07 17:54:39 +0000 UTC View Post1) Based on law changes, Patreon has to charge tax on some things. It's unclear as to whether any of mine will be subject to tax, as in all but one case -- the 'Read Me Something" tier -- I am just showing you stuff that is, in the vast majority of cases, being produced for other purposes (cover art, advance looks at stuff I'm writing, old drafts, etc.), so it would be hard to argue you're getting anything that is "yours" in the sense that sales tax assumes. When July rolls around (which is w...
2020-05-22 00:01:09 +0000 UTC View PostTime to kick off this month's rewards with some more refs that few readers would (or, in some cases, COULD) catch!
1) In Phoenix in Shadow, the Wanderer gives Poplock a crystal -- specifically a doubly-terminated quartz crystal -- in this way:
He reached inside his clothing and took out a strange ivory colored cylinder with peculiar writing on it below an outline of a sailing ship; the cylinder – a container of some sort – rattled. He unscrewed the top and ...
... let me know if you have any suggestions for rewards that you have not yet seen. :)
2020-04-29 13:19:50 +0000 UTC View PostThese seem to be holding interest, so why not continue?
1) In Princess Holy Aura, Holly/Holy Aura sacrifices herself to save the world. Afterward, it turns out that her sacrifice wasn't entirely irreversible, although she certainly thought it was at the time. If I had had reason to expect that there would be a sequel in reasonable time, I might have left her dead at that point, to have her resurrection happen at the beginning of the sequel. Either way, however...
2020-04-10 00:26:48 +0000 UTC View Post... primarily those at the Sketchy! level and above, but responses from others are still of interest:
What kind of art do you want to see? Are there characters you specifically want pictures of? Locations? Objects? Obviously I'm already having art made, usually for specific purposes, but it doesn't hurt to find out what people would like to see!
We continue this series of glimpses into in-jokes, hidden Tuckerizations, and references in my various works!
1) In Legend, there are quite a few references and nods. One of ones that was probably more subtle is the character who calls herself "Natural Selector", who is referenced a couple of times and makes an entrance in the final battle with a crystalline portal that releases a trio of T-Rexes against Fenris. She is a direct reference to the series "Primeval", which ha...
2020-03-08 17:10:58 +0000 UTC View Post... I have now actually begun Shadows of Hyperion, and am a few chapters into my next Eric Flint collaboration, Fenrir!
2020-03-03 12:17:12 +0000 UTC View Post... got all the rewards up! Just in time for the next month!
A flu went through the house and basically took out an entire week of my writing-related time, so I didn't get to do the extra chapters or anything that I expected. Sorry about that. Hopefully no disasters this coming month!
2020-02-28 11:14:08 +0000 UTC View PostPeople seem to enjoy these little peeks behind the curtain, so let's keep going!
1) In Paradigms Lost, Jason Wood goes by the handle of "Mentor of Arisia" when online. This is of course a reference to the Lensman series by Doc Smith, which everyone knows is one of my biggest inspirations. However, as the interactions Jason has online are patterned in some ways on my own experience, so his handle is also a reflection of the fact that my very first online handle wa...
2020-02-12 02:34:02 +0000 UTC View PostHard to believe it's been another YEAR. This month we'll be starting the fourth year of my Patreon.
While things are really busy here, I'll have to see what kind of special thank-you I can give you all for sticking with me for all this time!
2020-02-07 01:06:06 +0000 UTC View PostI'm still getting positive feedback on these posts, so let's do a few more of these references!
1) In Challenges of the Deeps, we meet with the mysterious and sometimes frightening Vindatri. He is described as a tall, pale-gray skinned,, silver-haired, red-eyed, pointed eared humanoid who wields the same powers as the Shadeweavers, only vastly older and more powerful. Eventually, Ariane and her friends are forced to fight him; after their initial duel, when Vindatri ...
2020-01-08 02:39:55 +0000 UTC View PostWe're into January of 2020! Time to start the rewards for this year!
Since Polychrome is finally done, that means I'll focus on finishing the first Demons book from now on (unless there are other requests from the Read Me Something patrons)!
As always, if any of you have any suggestions for what you'd like to see in the tiers you CAN see, please send them my way!
Last month's post of some of the possibly-harder-to-catch references in my work seemed to be received well, so let's do a few more!
1) Exaggerated Aussie Bruce Irwin from the Boundary books has his last name from Steve Irwin, the Crocodile hunter; his first name, however, is from the animated great white shark in Finding Nemo, as the latter was given an Australian accent and "Bruce" is a common "generic" Australian name. (the animated shark go...
2019-12-08 18:08:20 +0000 UTC View Post... and the Read Me Something Rewards will be special this month and next. Instead of two chapters each of Polychrome and Demons of the Past, I will be posting six chapters of Polychrome in both months. By doing this, we will reach the END of Polychrome this year; I will have completed an entire book.
I will then start making the older chapters available to the rest of the Patrons.
I am wondering if there's a preference for which book I shou...
In a lot of my work, there are nods to the works of other authors, movies, games, and shows that have inspired me in one way or another. Many of these are pretty obvious, the most blatant being of course the character of Marc C. DuQuesne (from E. E. "Doc" Smith's Skylark series), and others somewhat less glaringly obvious but still pretty easy to pick up on, such as the strange world-reshaping method of travel Khoros uses when traveling with Kyri in Phoenix Rising, that he c...
2019-11-09 03:39:58 +0000 UTC View Post
PHOENIX RISING
Sixth on the list of my published books is Phoenix Rising. This is the start of my only published epic fantasy, called The Balanced Sword.
Phoenix Rising follows Kyri Vantage, a late-teens young woman whose family appears to be being slowly killed off (first her parents, then a couple years later her brother), and no one, not even the Justiciars of Myrionar -- direct servants of the god of Justice and Vengeance -- seem able to fi...
2019-10-29 11:23:53 +0000 UTC View Post
My fifth published book was Threshold, sequel to Boundary. The gap between the publication of Boundary and Threshold was quite large -- several years. This was due to the fact that while I had completed the first draft of the novel, but for various reasons Eric was unable to look at it and do any editing for a long time. Because of this, despite the first draft having been finished a few years before I'd written GCA, GCA actually got publ...
2019-10-22 10:53:45 +0000 UTC View Post
My fourth published novel was actually the sixth for which I was contracted; following Boundary, Eric and I got a contract for two sequels, later published as Threshold and Portal. But for various reasons (detailed in the relevant book discussion), Threshold got published later than Grand Central Arena.
My second solo novel, Grand Central Arena (or GCA) is a huge-scale space opera novel that makes nods to pretty much everyt...
2019-10-21 10:23:13 +0000 UTC View Post
Third in my list of published novels is Boundary, my first hard SF novel, and one written as a collaboration with Eric Flint.
Eric had tried to write the story that became Boundary twice before, from two different perspectives, but felt that he didn't quite have all the writing tools necessary to make it work. Reading Digital Knight and seeing what I did with Diamonds are Forever, he thought I might be able to provide the tech...
2019-10-19 01:40:40 +0000 UTC View Post
My second published novel (barely a novel, at 43,000 words) was Diamonds Are Forever, published as 1/3 of the Baen anthology Mountain Magic, alongside Kuttner's Hogben stories and David Drake's Old Nathan stories (in ebook form, they had to replace the Hogben stories with, I think, John the Balladeer from Manley Wade Wellman).
This was also my first collaboration with Eric Flint. He wanted a modern-setting "backwoods" story to fit with the other two ...
2019-10-18 10:24:24 +0000 UTC View PostI posted this series of posts on my FB a bit ago, but it occurred to me that they would be perfect as a series of public posts on my Patreon as well, especially knowing how Facebook DOESN'T show my posts to everyone anyway. They are thoughts on my books, in order of publication. I hope you find them interesting.
My first published novel was Digital Knight, later ...
2019-10-18 00:38:36 +0000 UTC View PostWith these two short chapters, we finish the piece of this old draft that I had to post. There were older drafts, but they were either lost in computer transfer (written on an ATARI ST or even an ATARI 800) or destroyed in one of my two basement floods.
I think this series of posts has shown how I both had much of the overall concepts for Demons in place many years ago, and yet how I had yet to know how to properly WRITE the story.
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...
2019-10-09 01:41:29 +0000 UTC View Post... are now up!
Didn't get a chance to read chapters this weekend, but I should be able to on Thursday, so hopefully I can get the Read Me Something rewards out at a reasonable time and maybe get a few ahead.
This past weekend was Salt Lake FanX ComicCon, which went pretty well; this weekend it'll be Albacon!
2019-09-11 02:21:23 +0000 UTC View PostVaran had discovered he was a psi, but what did that MEAN?
In this old chapter, things work out rather differently in detail than the final version, but the basic elements are still there. And I noticed this time through that I had a symmetry in these last two chapters in their ending lines.
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viii.
One thing combat training is good for. You don't spend time fighting against accepting shocking or undesirable situations; you just take t...
2019-09-11 01:21:47 +0000 UTC View Post... one day late, but I should be back on schedule this month. I was hammered by a pretty nasty URI that went into my asthmatic lungs, so basically a whole week was killed off. I may be able to record the Read Me Something soundtracks while I'm at my hotel in Utah for the FanX ComicCon in Salt Lake, which would help a lot.
2019-09-01 18:21:10 +0000 UTC View Post... having a major convention (Detroit ComicCon) and then getting sick (I'm just starting to recover now) really took a bite out of time.
Just finished recording the audio for this months' Read Me Something; this Thursday, hopefully, I'll have converted them all to the postable video.
2019-08-28 02:13:35 +0000 UTC View PostThis short chapter again shows the similarities, and drastic differences, between the old and final drafts. Varan recovers and the same nurse is present, but his experiences that make him realize the treatment worked are very different.
The main reason for the change is that I felt it was better to have him simply awaken WITH the psionic powers obviously extant and have to fight for control. Also, the "inhibitor" bands didn't fit the technology I was coming up with, where dimensional te...
2019-08-09 00:31:43 +0000 UTC View Post