New home

Hooray, I’ve updated the site!

You can find me here now.

Dragon Assault

Currently working on a novelette for Symbiant Studio’s new game Dragon Assault. Beta starts in September and novelette should be close to follow. You can sign up for Beta here.

There’s a great line-up of award-winning writers working on seven novelettes, so it’s definitely going to be worth checking out. The four prequel stories will launch first, including my story which revolves around the Ogre race…so basically, mayhem ensues.

And now, some of the early artwork from Ryan Downing.

“The Paradise Aperture” on StarShipSofa

Got some awesome news this morning…

My story “The Paradise Aperture” is being read by Josh Roseman this week over at StarShipSofa!!! StarShipSofa is a Hugo-award-winning podcast hosted weekly by Tony C. Smith since 2006.

I’m joined by Will Mitchell’s story “Contact Authority”, J.J. Campanella’s Science News, and Darusha Wehm’s first chapters of “The Beauty of Our Weapons.”

This week’s special episode (No. 235) can be found here.

Tony and crew did a brilliant job, definitely check it out. Hearing my story read on his show was yet another amazing moment in a month in which I’ve been blessed with several such moments. Thanks to everyone over at StarShipSofa!

Paul Pederson’s Illustration

Paul Pederson is the artist who illustrated my story “The Paradise Aperture” for Writers of the Future Vol.28. And wow, what an illustration it was. I’ve looked at it hundreds of times now and I’m still blown away every time.

Paul’s illustration was the first time I’d ever seen my work translated to art and it was definitely one of the best moments of last week. Thanks again Paul and can’t wait to see more work from you in the future!

Check out more of Paul’s stuff here. It’s well worth the trip!

K. D. Wentworth

As I am sure most of you have heard by now, Kathy Wentworth passed away yesterday due to complications with pneumonia and cancer. Locus released information here. I understand that she has battled this for some time, but it obviously does not make this any easier. Rob Castillo did the amazing tribute sketch of her below.

Kathy was the first person to read and accept my stories (both my original non-winning finalist story and my gold award winning story). I owe her a HUGE debt of gratitude because without her decision I wouldn’t have been up on stage last week accepting an award.

I’m sad I won’t ever be able to tell her that or to meet her in person, but I’m sadder that her family (and the world) has lost her so soon. Sixty-one is far too young an age to depart this world.

Goodbye, Kathy. Rest in peace.

Golden Pen Award

As further proof of my exhaustion and lack of mental functioning, I forgot to mention my biggest news piece of all: I won the Writers of the Future Golden Pen Award!

I’ll get a better picture at some point, but for now this is the shot from my hotel room (Gold Award on the left and First Place on the right).

Anyway, what does winning the Gold mean? It means that a panel of judges (a large portion of whom are authors I grew up reading as a kid!) selected my short story The Paradise Aperture as best of the year. Pretty amazing, especially considering the awesome stories I was competing against from Marie, Will, and Bill!

That’s probably all I’ll say for now. I really don’t like talking this stuff up because it makes me feel self-possessed — even though I know I’ve never thought that about others who do the same — but I’m pretty sure I’d have quite a few people upset with me if I didn’t mention this…so there it is

Writers of the Future Workshop Week

I started writing this last night…and then I realized: I’m exhausted. Granted, it’s a good exhausted, but man do I need to SLEEP. My mind hasn’t quite adjusted and sorted everything out, so no promises on this making sense.

Back to reality today after a week of working/hanging out (I think 3:30 or 4:00 am was our record…a simple thing for a college student maybe, but not something I think many of us have done for awhile…) with my fellow writers of the future and some of the biggest names in Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Tim Powers and Nina Kiriki Hoffman were awesome workshop leaders and the panel of authors (Kevin Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Dave Wolverton aka Farland, Robert Sawyer, Sean Williams, Todd McCaffrey and more) were informative, supportive, and best of all, candid.

Our trusty guides for the week, Jordan Ellinger and Brad Torgersen, chronicled everything starting with Day One here.

Honestly, anything I could say would probably just be a repeat of what they posted, so I’m not really going to go into specifics. Bottom-line, met an amazing group of new writers (and illustrators!) this week who are all incredibly talented and also connected with some very friendly and down-to-earth pros who have been doing this for years.

Pictures and more random thoughts as they occur…