Monthly Archives: October 2016

October 26, 2016 · 6:00 pm

Endless Ages, the Vampire anthology, is now up for sale

Just a quick note: You can now head on over to DriveThruFiction and purchase your very own copy of Endless Ages, the anthology celebrating Vampire: The Masquerade in all its past and present forms, out today from Onyx Path.

Yes, this includes my short story, “Tiger,” along with stories from so many other fantastic writers — Delilah S. Dawson, Na’amen Gobert Tilahun, Bill Bridges and Richard Dansky, to name but a few — all edited by the awesome Jaym Gates. I’m honored to be among such a great mix of original Vampire writers and new voices.

Oh, and hey, if you do happen to click the sample link on the DriveThruFiction page, you’ll be able to read “Tiger” in its entirety. (I read it again today and, man, I’m really happy with how it turned out.) All I ask is that if you liked the story, please consider buying the entire anthology for more Kindred goodness!

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I have a short story in the new Vampire: The Masquerade anthology!

Yay! I sold another short story! And this one is near and dear to my heart.

I spent many nights in college playing Vampire: The Masquerade with my friends, and the game stuck with me through the years; I’d venture to say that it’s one of the influences that led me to eventually try my hand at fiction. So when Jaym Gates — an awesome person and excellent editor — said she was doing a V:tM anthology for Onyx Path Publications, I raised my hand faster than the know-it-all kid in the back seat of class.

I’m proud to say that my story, “Tiger,” leads off the new Endless Ages anthology, which includes fantastic stories from some of Vampire‘s long-time contributors as well as newbies like myself and other awesome scribes like Delilah S. Dawson. (Hi, Delilah!)

And what’s “Tiger” about? Well, the good people at Onyx Path posted a little intro I wrote, along with a brief excerpt. So click here to check it out. Endless Ages drops on Wednesday, and excerpts are running all the way up until Halloween. I’ll update with buying links and whatnot when I get ’em.

My thanks to Jaym and the whole crew at Onyx Path for letting me scratch another one off the authorial bucket list!

#SFWApro

Worldbuilding overload is a real thing

I had a colleague come into my office this morning with, as he put it, “a geek question.” Obviously, he’d come to the right place, but I couldn’t actually help. He was looking for a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, but mine went AWOL years ago. (Note to self: Get new copy of LOTR.)

We got to talking, as colleagues do when deadlines near and we don’t want to deal. He had just finished up The Hobbit and wanted to read the trilogy next, but was bracing himself for it somewhat. You see, J.R.R. Tolkien is absolutely the granddaddy godfather O.G. of epic fantasy writers. There is no doubt. But man, he loved his worldbuilding. A lot.

So much so, he kinda shoved as much of it into his books as possible.

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Tagged as Daedalus Trilogy

October 10, 2016 · 6:45 pm

Not the lesser of two evils

Fair warning here: This post is about politics, not something I normally do. If you’re sick to death of the Dumpster fire that is the 2016 elections, I wholeheartedly encourage you to bail, and hold no ill will. Good? Good. Also, all opinions are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, publisher, family, mail carrier or bartender.

I studied politics and government in college. I covered politics at the state level early on in my journalism career, and later on I covered the intersection of business, politics and the judiciary with some regularity, and let me tell you, U.S. politics is unique across the globe. Part of that really is American exceptionalism: Our founding fathers did a pretty good job of setting up a system of government.

But part of that is how the political class, across the ideological spectrum, is forced to reconcile the quest for personal political power with the need to show results and to be judged by the voters regularly. In other words, no matter how much you backstab, betray or belittle, you still need to go home and show your voters that you did something for them, and not just for yourself.

Some politicians take this dichotomy in the spirit which, I think, the founding fathers intended. You go to the state house or Washington and you roll up your sleeves and get to work. You compromise with other representatives and try to craft laws and create new initiatives to improve the lives of your constituents. When you’re up for reelection, you go home and you tell folks what you did, and your opponent in the election gets to poke holes in your record. The voters judge, and you go back or you don’t.

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October 6, 2016 · 6:45 pm

Inspiration where you least expect it

My day-job office is at Rockefeller Center, which is pretty awesome most of the time. (The Christmas tree is beautiful for about two days, then the throngs of tourists begin to wear on one’s nerves, admittedly.) I remember the first day I arrived, I saw this plaque in the elevator lobby.

Pretty cool, eh? The office itself is pretty unremarkable now, but it’s nifty to think that a critical piece of the Allied war effort played out on the same floor where I drink coffee and talk football with my co-workers. And yes, I revisited this plaque more than once as I was writing MJ-12: Inception.

Sir William Stephenson was a Canadian businessman prior to World War II. As war broke out in Europe, Winston Churchill asked Stephenson to open up the British Security Coordination office in New York. Room 3603 in Rockefeller Center was the place he rented. Officially, he was a passport control officer. Unofficially, he helped coordinate intelligence activities throughout North America.

Prior to late 1941, part of Stephenson’s job was to try to sway public opinion in the U.S. in favor of aid to Britain. After the U.S. joined the war, his office in Rockefeller Center became a hub of activity, coordinating U.S., British and Canadian covert action against the Axis. He was the one who set up Camp X up in Ontario, where O.S.S. and MI6 officers trained during the war.

Yes, the Camp X training manual was a real thing, and I used it in MJ-12: Inception as a guide to how Variants would be trained at Area 51. In fact, researching Stephenson led me to Camp X, which led to that key piece in the book.

Stephenson was also instrumental in the creation of O.S.S., which would later become the CIA.

After the war, Stephenson went back to being a businessman, and I haven’t found much more about him after that. It was sorely tempting to include him somehow in the MAJESTIC-12 series, but alas, I don’t think he’ll make in there. But it’s nice to know that a piece of history is right here in my office, and helped me discover more of the history that went into my work.

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