When you’re getting started with something, having a metric to measure your progress is important. At the lowest possible level, just your time devoted to the activity can work, but it’s better if you can manage a more sophisticated measurement than that. I’ve been trying to write commercially, and the ultimate measurement for that is […]
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Salaries Need To Be Part Of Job Postings
There’s been a disturbing trend in recent years that employers will post positions they want to hire someone for and omit the salary. This evolved into what is now, distressingly common, where they ask an employee their expected salary as part of the initial application. This needs to end. Why They Do It The reason […]
Merchant Magician Released
I’ve released an urban fantasy novella. This feels like it is, in many ways, my debut book. With Sunday Game Sessions I joined together all the web serial posts I’d made and put them on Amazon, but with this book I worked through the text with an editor, had proof reading done repeatedly, adjusted the […]
Beta Readers
I recently published what I consider my debut novella, “Merchant Magician”. As part of the process, I had a number of beta readers provide feedback on it. Overall, it was mixed experience. What is a Beta Reader? A beta reader is someone who reads your about-to-be-published work and gives you feedback from a reader’s perspective. […]
Styles of Role-Playing Games
Role playing games are interesting for many reasons, one of which is how difficult it is to actually explain the game and how it’s played. Often it’s easier to just play a session with someone and let them experience it, rather than trying to describe what can be a somewhat unusual activity / past-time. In […]
Players “Topping From The Bottom” in Role-Playing Games
I’ve been role-playing (with some large breaks) for decades. Often when I start a game, I’m introducing brand new people to the hobby, so I tend to set the tone and have found things run smoothly. A while back, I started talking to people about playing online (via Roll20 or Discord) and have found a […]
Recruiter Spam is a Waste of Everyone’s Time
Like many technical people, I regularly get e-mails from FAANG (Facebook Amazon Apple Netflix Google) recruiters starting “Your experience as a developer combined with your educational background could help us tackle some of our tallest tasks…” Without fail, the gist of the message is that they have a job posting that they want me to […]
Getting A Cover For Your First Book
With most activities there is a problem of “expert blind spots”. The idea is that once you start understanding a domain of knowledge, you forget what other people don’t know. When you talk about it, you assume a background similar to your own – other experts. USUALLY, it would be reasonable to listen to the […]
Dogma in Role-Playing Games
I’ve long been fascinated by the role of dogma in RPGs. As a child in the 80’s, role-playing was going through the Satanic panic, but was also quite a trend. Somehow my brother and I got a copy of the basic D&D box set and tried to have our babysitter play it with us – […]
Playing Dungeons And Dragons With Perverts
The following is a true story. Not in a, “hey, nudge, nudge, this really happened!” way, but in a “this is my best attempt at capturing the truth of these events” way. About six months ago, as the Covid-19 pandemic was dragging on longer than expected, I had the idea of running an online role-playing […]