The empire of Blackwood existed for almost 1,000 years before Derrezen the Dragon-God broke free from his eternal prison. Although the realm has held Derrezen’s attacks off for the last twenty years, each battle leaves Blackwood weaker while the Dragon-God only gets stronger. To finally defeat Derrezen, the people of Blackwood may need to look to their past.
Continue reading “Shadowslayers: The World of Blackwood”
Listen for the clock chimes in the Great City…When the clock strikes midnight, count the bells and make a wish. If the chime rings thirteen times instead of twelve, your wish will come true.
Most of the communities in Greystone Valley are small towns and villages where those trapped in the valley along with a scattering of natives farm out a living. The Great City is an exception to that rule, with a bustling population and a number of tall buildings. It stands in the center of the valley and seems quite out of place with the otherwise pastoral landscape.
Continue reading “Greystone Valley: The Great City”
The elevator reaches the bottom subbasement. General Lucas punches in another code to open the doors, followed by a voice prompt.
“Lucas, Robert B,” he says in a slow, clear voice. “Authorization 051962 Green.”
The door sticks a little bit, but slides open to allow us access. The long, sterile corridor features M-16s mounted near the ceiling on automated turrets, all leading up to a single locked door. Lucas leaves the elevator. I don’t.
“Are you coming or not, Miss Corson?” he asks.
“Unless those guns are programmed to shoot lawyers, I think I can find my way to the end of the hallway.” I gesture for him to return to the elevator. “I need privacy with my client. I don’t need you.”
He frowns deeply, but marches back into the lift. I step out as he steps in, and he salutes me sloppily as we pass.
“The room has security cameras, but the audio recorders will be left off as per court order,” he tells me as I walk toward the door. “We wouldn’t want anybody eavesdropping on your conversation with your pet monster, would we?”
I don’t give him the dignity of a backwards glance. “That will be all, General.”
Lucas punches a button in the elevator. The steel doors shut with a clang, leaving me alone and ready for my meeting.
Continue reading “Meddling Heroes: The Last Titan”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. His voice came out as a squeak, so he cleared his throat and started over again. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he repeated, louder this time, “I am sorry to say that we have a slight problem with today’s performance. As it happens, Dramadia the dragon has…well, she’s escaped into the mountains.”
An angry murmur ran through the crowd. Sarah’s own face fell in dismay. Dax, however, didn’t look surprised at all. If anything, his nod of understanding meant that things now made a little more sense to him.
“Please, please, please,” said Noron the beast tamer, patting the air in front of him in a desperate attempt to calm everybody down. “We know the show must go on, so we have found a suitable replacement. She isn’t quite the same as the great black-scaled dragon, but she is a dragon nonetheless. And it’s without any further ado that I present to you all, Keeley, the dragon of the Northwood Caves!”
Continue reading “Greystone Valley: Meeting Keeley”
My novel Reality Check has a publication date of 2008, but it began on the back of a receipt tape eight years earlier.
I worked the night shift at a small-town convenience store. That meant I spent about one hour of my eight-hour shift cleaning, two more dealing with the bar crowd, and most of the remaining five alone as the night stretched on. My home life at the time was a nightmare, and I didn’t get a chance to do any writing there. But I did have rolls and rolls of blank receipt tape at work.
Continue reading “Reality Check: A Tale from the Night Shift”
Originally published on BabyCenter.com April 15, 2014
My son has taken a strong liking to Dr. Seuss stories at bedtime. This is partly due to the fact that I have read them to him repeatedly since he was born. We’re in a phase now where he has a handful of books he really likes and wants me to read those books every night. If I’m going to have to read the same thing over and over again, I’d much rather it be a story I like, and Seuss books fit the bill.
Every tale has its quirks, and some of Dr. Seuss’s most popular tales leave me with certain impressions that I’m not sure were intended. For example:
Continue reading “Some Random Thoughts about Doctor Seuss”
This year marks the 20th anniversary of my first published novel, Shadowslayers. While the tale didn’t become the best-selling modern fantasy classic I hoped, it provided me with some very useful experience about the publishing world and helped shape who I would become as both a writer and a person. Here’s how I became a published novelist and what I learned from the experience.
Continue reading “Shadowslayers, Twenty Years Later”
As D&D moved into the 21st century, it started focusing less on trying to tell a broad swath of fantasy stories and more on trying to create a unique identity for itself as a brand. You could see that starting with 3rd edition ending the halfling-as-hobbit motif, and you can see it in the way the 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons presents its opening storyline compared to how 2nd edition’s Advanced Dungeons & Dragons did it.
This is the cover of issue #2 of Dungeons & Dragons, which kicks off the “Shadowplague” story. It could basically be a movie poster about a superhero-esque fantasy story, complete with the “edgy” half-smile of the main character. (In fact, this could basically be concept art for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.)
This is the image from “The Gathering,” which shows the part in a more straight-on fashion. There’s some personality there, with the dour dwarf, the serious paladin, and the smiling archer, but you could basically put it on the cover of any fantasy novel.
For better or worse, the “Fell’s Five” comics followed Wizards of the Coast’s vision of D&D as a brand, rather than as a vehicle for the fantasy genre at large. The 4th edition comics are faster-paced, full of sarcastic dialogue, and generally designed like an action movie. These work together well and make it one of my favorite RPG comics, but I sometimes wonder if the reason the comic didn’t last very long is because the good times it offers can be found in virtually any other action-oriented media of the era.
Continue reading “Comics & Quests: Shadowplague”
Originally published March 7, 2014 on BabyCenter.com
Thanks to the Internet, parents have access to a lot more data these days. The problem is that it’s hard for a lot of people to tell the good data from the bad data.
One of the big errors that people make when evaluating reports floated around various blogs and news sites is the mistaking of correlation for causation. I’m pretty sure that most people reading this have heard the phrase, “correlation does not imply causation” at some point. However, I think it’s worth going into again because so few people seem to realize exactly what it means.
Continue reading “Correlation, Causation, and Hope for Less Parental Sanctimony”
The roots shuddered and then became more flexible, bunching together and taking the rough form of a woman who stood just a little taller than Sarah and had a pronounced hunch. The treelike creature swayed from side to side but didn’t seem to have any feet with which to move. The two faeries darted to her side and landed on her wooden shoulders. The roots around the makeshift face twisted once more, leaving deep, empty sockets where the figure should have had eyes. In another moment, a pair of pale white lights in the shape of two crescent moons emerged from the sockets and looked at Sarah. The tree-formed face scrunched up and formed into a toothy smile as it saw her.
“Lovely little Linda. You look as young as the day we first met.”
“I’m not Linda,” Sarah said. She raised her wand defensively with her left hand and pointed toward her fallen mother with her right. “She is.”
The tree-creature shambled forward, leaving a raised trench in the earth where the roots pulled away from the ground. Bending her head, she smiled in a matronly way. “Of course it is. Well, this is truly, tantalizingly terrific. I didn’t know I had another grandchild.”
“Grandchild?”
“Not literally, of course. Great-grandchild, at least. Or maybe even great-great. It’s so hard to keep track, especially since I’m a spirit now instead of a person with a real body.”
There are a thousand stories about the wizard who created Greystone Valley, all of them referring to him as a man who disappeared into the mists of history ages ago. There are an equal number of tales about the witch Sabrina, who taught the Wizard his power, but those stories don’t describe somebody distant and gone. Instead, they speak of a spirit who haunts the valley still, stalking the nights for her own mysterious motives.
Continue reading “Greystone Valley: Sabrina”
Babbling Brooks 
