Month: December 2018
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2019 New Year’s Resolutions
Last year I made a similar post. Before I set down my goals for 2019, let’s see how I did: [2018] In April, my wife is expecting our second son. I hope to make sense of life with two kids running around. [2018] I’d like to get back to the gym, or at least, feel…
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Silk Betrayal: minor characters
As I’ve mentioned before, there are many characters in The Silk Betrayal. I’m not going to go through and introduce every one of them. But I’d like to highlight a few here and introduce them to you:RashulRashul is pure charisma. He’s the Beto O’Rourke*…
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Song Styles
I’ve gone through a bit of a hibernation period as a harper. Not that I haven’t been performing and teaching, but before I started on my Christmas repertoire, I noticed that practicing had become a chore. I wasn’t looking forward to it the …
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Silk Betrayal: religions
The Religions of Eghsal ValleyI’m part of several different online fantasy writing communities. One topic that comes up periodically in worldbuilding discussions is how to handle religion in our imaginary worlds. I’ve always answered that I’m not the least bit interested in any sort of divine reality behind the stories—keep the story focused on the…
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Wednesday Wanderings
Happy Boxing Day, (belated) Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Wonderful Winter Solstice … whatever you choose to celebrate or ignore, I wish it all to you with a homemade candied cherry on top. I’ve been almost radio silence on this blog for mos…
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Silk Betrayal character: Jasfer
The third principal character I’d like to introduce is Prince Jasfer Talai, one of the Thirty Princes who rule the valley. That makes him one of the thirty most powerful people in the entire known world…but that responsibility rests light on him—for …
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Not a Prologue
When I began writing seriously, I was a prologue skeptic. Too many fantasy novels I’d read or browsed in the bookstore/library had unnecessary prologues, often prologues with a poorly written poem-cum-prophecy or with a dump of worldbuilding informatio…
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Blockchain without Bitcoin? No.
I’ve lost count of the number of headlines and interviews in the last year which lay out the case that Bitcoin may well be a bust, but “blockchain technology” will still transform the world. Here is a representative Forbes headline (but I am certain you’ve seen plenty yourself if you read financial headlines or watch…
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Silk Betrayal: cover art
Another break from my long-windedness today to simply admire the cover art of the novel. We went through a variety of suggestions for the cover. Usually I’m a fan of a more landscape-focused cover, and we went through a few possibilities in that vein, …
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The Silk Betrayal: Marankiya’s epic
Tolkien once gave a now-famous talk about how his impulse to create languages had always been a sort of secret vice for him—and he suspected for a small but passionate number of others. I’ve always admired Tolkien’s language creation, but I am also wel…