Glass Maze Every jumbled pile of person

Unlikable vs Unbearable

I very much agree with what Robert Bausch has to say about likable characters:

You NEVER have to worry whether or not the reader “likes” your main character–or any of your characters for that matter. You only have to worry that the reader “knows” enough about your character to have an emotional investment in [...]

Occupation

Matthew Yglesias captures one of the most infuriating aspects of the way we talk about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in this country — the fact that so much of our rhetoric is premised on the notion that we’re disinterested parties in the whole affair. We’re emphatically not:

But as long as Israel is by far [...]

The Agile Novel

The arrival of the Agile movement was kind of a watershed event in the history of software development, because it gave the notion of iterative development a face, and a manifesto. The industry had historically focused on an aggressively monolithic, sequential lifecycle that relied on completely finishing one stage of the process before moving on [...]

Publications

I’ve added a publications page to the blog. Just a list of stories I’ve sold so far.

It was fun putting this together, a nice year-end what-happened-in-2008 survey. And I’m thinking about doing the inverse — compiling a list all of the year’s non-accomplishments: all the stories that were abandoned, or rejected, or left unfinished; [...]

Early Morning Awesomeness

Domestic scene, 7:00am, getting ready for work.

My Wife:What’s that?

Me: It’s a Dungeon Master’s Guide, of course.

My Wife: Why are you taking it to work with you?

Me: In case any attractive women try to approach me. [Brandishing DM's Guide] Begone, Attractive Woman! The power of geek compels you! The power of geek compels you!

My Wife: I thought 15th-level [...]