The New Blather

I finally created an account on Goodreads not long ago, so if you’re ever wondering what I’m reading or what page I’m on, you can find out there on my account. I’m usually reading multiple books at a time, and I’m a slow reader, so it can take me a while to get through just [...]

Here are a couple non-fiction books I’m looking forward to this fall: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb Taleb, author of Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan (if you don’t have them, I order you to go buy them and read them now), finally has his new book ready.  Antifragile [...]

I started a new blog called Catching a Dragon, which is where I’ll start posting anything having to do with my adventures in writing fantasy. It’s very much a branding decision. If I ever have the slightest possibility of getting a middle-grade fantasy novel published, would I want potential readers coming here, where there are [...]

This has nothing to do with anything, but I thought it was hilarious…

According to this article: Neal Stephenson, author of science fiction novels … has come up with a concept for a fantasy sword-fighting game called “Clang.” … and he quickly funded the project with $500K through a Kickstarter campaign: Looks very interesting, no?

I’ve got 11 more scenes left to write for my middle-grade fantasy novel. (Browsing the bookstore today, I concluded that my book is definitely more for the 7-13 year old audience than the teen audience. The main character is twelve years old, and I think the worst thing that happens to him is him getting [...]

Forgive me if this seems a preachy post. It is part confessional, as everything mentioned here are things I struggle with, so it’s not as if I am spouting some dark judgment upon the rest of the world from some lofty superior position of perfection. But we can’t get past our faults if we’re too [...]

This is, in part, a reply to this post made over on the Bad Catholic blog. While I agree with the conclusion, that God exists and that our life in this world is not the sum of all our life will ever be, I must admit that I do not quite understand the argument. As [...]

Donating stuff to the poor is not in and of itself a good deed. Caring about other people is the good deed, and so giving something to someone else because you care is a good deed. If you don’t have anything to donate, you can still care just as much. (Similarly, if you donate a [...]