I've finished my most recent round of rewrites on the first Red Ice book, Murder on a Monochrome World and submitted it to a publisher. Well, the first three chapters, anyway. That should take a few months for a response.

I am now making another pass on the first Rise of the Automated Empire book, Final Assembly. I recently had an editor tell me I needed more conflict earlier in the story, so I performed a little surgery on one of the character introductions and will expand it a little as I go. I've been addressing issues people have had as I go, so ... [More]

So much is happening in the world right now. I have so many thoughts and feelings. So many things to write about. The war in Ukraine comes to mind first. As I write this, Ukraine is taking back land in what the media refers to as the south and the east. After pushing Russia out of most of Kharkiv (har-keev), they drove them out of a key city in Donetsk and then pushed into Luhansk. All the excitement made people wonder if their strategy in Kherson (herse-on) was just to pin down 25,000 of Russia's finest. We now have the answer. Pin down, and let starve, then push them off the land. ... [More]

May and I recently traveled to Minnesota for a family gathering. We were there to memorialize a recently passed cousin of mine. While we were there it slowly dawned on me, I was one of the oldest people in the room. It had also been about a decade since the last time we were up there. So a lot of the faces I was seeing looked too old. Kids had grown, young adults were now middle aged with children of their own. There were several that I hadn't seen since far earlier. One young woman I hadn't seen since she was a toddler. A few I hadn't seen since I was a toddler.

We mostly avoi... [More]

My phone chirps, then dings. My phone then rings and messages are everywhere. The chirp is the text message reminding me I have an eye appointment. The ding is the email reminding me of the same appointment. The ringing was also them, and they left me a nice message, reminding me of my eye appointment.

The Information Age has entered it's Overnotification era. My phone dings again, then yet another time. This time a popup from my security app telling me one of my cameras has a low battery, followed by an email telling me the same thing. I decide to try to suggest to the securit... [More]

I have just arrived home from the long awaited RavenCon, which is now in my neck of the woods. From now on, this is my home con.

Michael Pederson put together a decent convention in the face of far too many hardships over the last few years. Not to get into details, but the vast majority of people would have folded under the pressure. I heartily applaud his efforts.

Looking back I recall my trepidation at attending, and indeed, I managed to infodump my sadness upon Gay Rinehart before I could hold my tongue. The man is an angel, though. Instead of placating me wit... [More]