Jan 14, 2022
I have it on good authority that some of you are lurking my site! Creeping around THIS VERY WEBSITE looking for hilarious stuff. Disgusting.
But since you're here, demanding content, I do have something for you. For the last few years I've been hacking short stories into my friend Bruce's blog! It's a series about us doing cyber-business in the year 777,777.
Maybe that will satisfy your depraved needs.
Dec 31, 2019
Looking back on 2019 and attempting to evaluate my self-worth based on my creative output is a bad idea but I'm doing it anyway. Probably my biggest accomplishment was the company re-brand, but the stock market game was more fun, both to make and play-test. There are still ways you can manipulate the market in order to win, but I wanted to leave that mechanic in the game, for realism.
I also experimented with doing a Go live stream this year and worked out the kinks, some technical, and some with the format itself. 2020 is going to bring a different flavour of stream as well as more Go content and tools, but this was a solid start.
That was pretty much it for this year – not my most prolific, but now I've got some bigger projects in the works, and I'm carving off more time for creating. Please help by purchasing a Lifetime Membership.
Feb 24, 2018
Didn't do a ton over the winter, although I did spend January bringing a dormant project nearly to completion. In the next month or so, I should be putting out a new free game in the same style as Diamond Find.
I also figured out what my major project will be for this year, and it's a departure from my usual. It's still going to be a comedy, but it'll draw more upon real technical knowledge than my regular cyber-fantasies. More updates later.
In other news, I'll be selling books at the Spring Geequinox again this year, April 14-15th. Come down to the Halifax Forum and take a look at Volume 2 of Snapack, just released this fall.
I'll also have a new version of wolfOS, my proprietary convention-table operating system. If you didn't see its debut at Hal-Con, it granted coupon codes to whoever could hack into its secure datavault. Maybe this year it'll have a bigger screen? I haven't done up a realistic budget yet.
Dec 11, 2017
Not a lot to report re: new stuff, but now, just in time for gift-holidays, you can get all three of my books -- that is, Ghostcrime and the first two volumes of Snapback, in a bundle for just $40 plus tax. I'll even pay the shipping within Canada.
Buy buy buy buy buy buy buy read read read read read read read read read read read
Sep 26, 2017
The second instalment of the Snapback series is now available! It features 20 new illustrations from Dawn Davis, and, if you can believe it, even more laughs and Go intrigue than the first one.
Right now it's just in PDF, for logistical reasons (it takes less work to produce it from the print-ready PDF than an ePub) but I'll have the ePub up this week most likely. As always, purchasing the digital version gives you access to all digital formats.
Aug 5, 2017
A deal as hot as my wretched workspace -- a digital copy of Snapback: Fuseki is now free when you create an account on this site!
Of course, that's just one benefit of signing up. You'll also be given free access to ghostCRM, which will help you to prevent your life from falling apart around you, and you'll be able to save your progress (and diamonds) as you play through Diamond Find, the most comprehensive diamond-finding adventure ever built. Who knew.
If those aren't reasons enough, I can't help you.
Jul 29, 2017
This was a long time coming, but I made some upgrades to this very eBook store. Now there are specific pages for each eBook, featuring 3D representations of the books themselves with samples you can flip through! We're living in the future.
Things are also looking slightly better, which I'm hoping will improve sales. SPEAKING OF SALES, there is a discount if you buy Ghostcrime and Snapback Vol. 1 together. Do it. Come on.
You also might notice the new Digital Popularity Indexes above. These give you valuable real-time business insight into my digital publishing operation. Data, it's said, drives success.
Jul 16, 2017
I buckled down this summer and finished Snapback Volume 2! It ended up about 5,000 words longer than the first volume, and I think it's considerably better. But you'll have to wait for September to decide for yourself. I'll have copies at Hal-Con.
Writing one novella per year, I've found, is a manageable task. Even with a full-time job, I've been able to muster up the motivation, two years in a row, to produce something that's 20-25k words. It's not a lot, and in years past, I've produced far, far more.
Ghostcrime was different. I really got going in 2009, when I was unemployed, and I wrote about 40k before burning out and putting it away for half a decade. When my life stabilized, I picked it up again and wrote the second half in 6 months, producing the masterpiece that we all love. But it was a considerable effort that drained me, and in the ~7 years it took to fully produce, I had nothing to show for it until the end.
The idea with Snapback is to produce and release consistently. To always have something new to sell at the conventions, and keep improving my writing and publishing process with faster iterations. So far, it's been working. And in a few years, I'll even have something I can push together into a single volume.
What would it take me to write another novel? Money and time, probably, in large quantities. But even if I devoted all my energy to producing a novel, I don't see why I wouldn't release it in serial. There were complaints when the seventh Harry Potter film would be split up into two parts, but does anyone care that they're not a single work now? If you can watch them one after another, what's the difference?
So those are my thoughts on big writing projects. But who knows -- maybe you're more productive than me and more disciplined, and you can write a novel without having your life fall apart as you do it.
I look forward to reading it.
Apr 2, 2017
I'm sure winter has been hard on all of us here in the Maritimes. Between the biting cold & the hours of darkness, I wouldn't blame anyone for losing the motivation to write.
On that subject, I haven't been doing a ton of that this winter, but nevertheless, I'm going to be selling the books I've previously written at this year's Spring Geequinox. Why don't you drop on by? It's the weekend of April 22nd, and on the Sunday I'll be running a panel on Go.
I am still planning to have Volume 2 of Snapback done for Hal-Con this fall, though. If you haven't read Volume 1, the eBook is only $0.99. Or half-price if you also buy Ghostcrime! A whole dollar is pretty steep, I know.
Dec 1, 2016
On the subject of events that make me feel like a legitimate author, Halifax alt-weekly The Coast just published a review of Snapback! Thanks to Adam Fiske for writing those words.
The book is available now in paperback, ePub, and PDF. And there's still a $2 discount if you buy the digital edition along with Ghostcrime, a thing I wrote that also has reviews.
Buy them for yourself, or as solstice-holiday gifts! You... do know you're obligated to spend money on people you love, right?
Nov 13, 2016
Last weekend I showed up to Hal-Con with a table full of newly-minted copies of Snapback, and I tell you, did the occasional person ever stop to look at them! In all seriousness, I did move a good number, and it was a successful weekend.
But then shortly after, I succumbed to some November sadness, as is expected, and I only just got around to producing an eBook version of the damn thing. So the PDF is up here now, and if you want a physical copy, you can order one of those, too. There's $5 shipping on that link, so if you're local and just want to pick it up from me, let me know when you order and I'll reimburse you the $5. God I'm accommodating.
And as for the eBook, a deal mechanism is in place, so if you buy Snapback and Ghostcrime eBooks together, you get $2 off the purchase! I'm just throwing money away. For literacy, though.
Oct 22, 2016
It's exciting times here in the living room that has become my studio -- after months of writing and years of editing, dithering, re-working, giving up, un-giving up, etc., Volume 1 of Snapback has been sent off to print! I'll be selling it for $10 at Hal-Con in two weeks. The eBook will also be available, if I can muster up the energy to produce it.
The foundation of the story took a long time to get right, but I'll be able to 'churn out' further volumes much faster now, and publish them digital-only. Volume 2 is about 2/3rds done at this point, and will probably be available early next year.
I guess another reason I'm excited for this to be out is that I built a 'price combos' deal system into this online store last year, when I only had Ghostcrime for sale. But now, with more than one book, I can bundle them together and offer discounts, making use of carefully-written, well-tested code from last November! Why am I even a writer. It is clearly more torturous than programming.
Sep 9, 2016
Hello readers! If you do, in fact, enjoy reading, I'd be surprised if you didn't come down to the most prominent book festival in the region and elsewhere, Word on the Street.
I'll be at the Hal-Con table with some other local nerds, so head over, say hello, and maybe even pick up a copy of Ghostcrime. And if you don't actually enjoy reading, I'll know. I can sense these things.
Oh, and in completely unrelated badger news: I finally migrated my badger blog from its almost 7-year home on Blogspot to this site! Now's a great time to catch up on our adventures. What, do you not like badgers either? I find that hard to believe.