"Six Views of the Wall" in Dear Leader Tales anthology
I'm thrilled to have a story in this new anthology, Dear Leader Tales. Here's the write-up for the book:2020 has been a very trying year for humanity. In addition to a barely-checked viral contagion causing widespread economic distress, there are ......
A Jens By Any Other Name
My first name is incredibly common and yet most people I meet have never heard it or know how to pronounce it. I guess my parents wanted me to experience the double benefits of having a recognizable name and also deal with the constant battle of teaching others how...
On life in 2020
Hello, Long time no see. Sorry about that. It’s been an odd year — not just for me, of course. Life has a habit of getting away from me, and crazy times encourage that habit, so I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the state of the...
“The Huntress and the Conveyor Worlds” is out now in Mythaxis
"The Huntress and the Conveyor Worlds" is a story I wrote quite a while ago. It never found its right market, but I kept taking it back out of the trunk to revise, tinker with it, revisit its improbable world of lived-in technology that no one understa......
Reviews Tell the Tale
So … I entered Rumble in Woohollow into this year’s SPFBO (Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off). If you’re not familiar with that, the SPFBO takes in 300 books and divvies them between ten book blogs and review sites. Each blog picks a finalist and the ten finalists go head-to-head and a...
De-grading the AP Lit classroom
One of the first things I tell new students that come into my classroom each year is that I don’t care about grades. For years, I’ve worked to de-emphasize grades and so hopefully to promote learning. It works for some students, while others never quite get beyond that need...
The Mauler, out 28 Aug!
I’m a bit late updating this here (as I’ve done it on social media) but The Mauler, the second book of The Holly Sisters, will be available on 28 Aug (preorder for Kindle link here, paperback link coming). It’s the second book to have a cover done by Jessica...
“Assailing the Garden of Pleasure” in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly
My story "Assailing the Garden of Pleasure" came out this weekend in the latest issue of HFQ.This story has taken a rather circuitous path to publication. Some years ago, I participated in a challenge to write a story based on this image from the artis......
Keep plugging along
So … It’s been a while since the last entry. For various reasons, I haven’t been back to update. Some soul-searching, some real-life complications, and lots of writing. Yeah, I know I had a little whinge last time. I guess I got it out of my system. So, let’s...
The Sin of Making Academic Success into an Idol
It would be futile to try and count the sheer multitude of assignments I have completed purely to get the grade. I’ve written elsewhere about how I wasn’t really that great of a student when I was in school (I Was Not a Good Student) and my attitude towards...