Two well turned-out Steampunks in the Vendor’s Room from last year’s Geneva Steam. I’ll be attending steampunk convention Geneva Steam Con the weekend of March 10-12. The convention is being held at the Lake Lawn Resort in Delavan, Wisconsin. I’ll be participating in two events at the convention, both on Saturday. At 3 PM I’ll […]
First thing that happens when you want to be a poll worker is you have to attend a mandatory training and swearing in session. The swearing in is important, as you are acting as a temporary government official when you work the polls. For each new election you work, you have to attend an additional […]
I’ve been hooked by several animated TV shows recently, and I find them just the right mix of goofy, immature humor, clever plotting, interesting character development, and sly, understated humor. The first one is Steven Universe, which I’ve written about before. The second is Gravity Falls, and the third is my most recent discovery, Star […]
Many years ago (back in the 1980s, in fact) I fielded a phone call. Me: “Pegasus Games, how may I help you?” Pause Him: “Do you have any airplanes available?” Me: “Yes, we do.” Him: “How big are they?” Me: (Measuring) “Oh, they range from an inch to three inches, nose to tail.” Pause. Him: […]
Glad to leave January 2017 behind, frankly – it was not my best month ever. It began with the death of my Mother-in-Law on January 9 — between my wife and I, this was our last surviving parent — followed immediately by having to euthanize my 17 year-old cat the very next day. Midwinter Gaming […]
Available from Drive-Thru RPG This question came from Facebook friend Shawn Leisure, during one of my “give me ideas to blog about” pleas over there. “Will there be gaming after the apocalypse?” Short answer: of course there will be gaming after the apocalypse. Gaming in its simplest form is escape: escape from problems, from bullies, […]
As many of you know, I work in a game store. Currently, I’m part-time, but I used to be the full-time manager of this same shop many years ago. I came back because A) being a freelance writer is not always so good for the cash flow, and B) a former co-worker convinced me to […]
From the title, this must sound like a desperately boring post, but please bear with me for a moment: I’d like to record a few summaries for future reference. First of all, I passed the 10,000 page views mark in the very last days of calendar year 2016. This represents how many pages were looked […]
Fellow author Chuck Wendig posted a very solid piece several years ago on his blog about why authors shouldn’t slag off other authors in reviews. It got me thinking: many authors don’t review the works of others at all. Amazon has a policy against posting reviews of authors’ work by other authors, which they enforce […]