Despite all blogular evidence to the contrary, I am merely buried, not dead -- and nearly emerged. Since last we met, there was Thanksgiving (driving to San Diego), Christmas (see "Thanksgiving"), my father's 70th birthday (flying to San Diego), three Escapist articles, a two-month-long still-in-action sinus infection ("chronic sinusitis") with accompanying horse-pill-sized antibiotics, a game careening toward launch, and assorted press wrangling -- I did mention that I was appointed to the Board of Directors of the IGDA in November, right? Maybe not. Pop my name into google "news" and you'll find a bit of what's been eating my brain the last couple of weeks. And -- I'm two thirds of the way through the novel, pushing toward a March deadline.

You read (well, a lot of you did) the ever-inflammatory "Why Your Game Idea Sucks" -- joining it in controversy is "Riot Grrrls Wanted", which I will have more to say about later -- much more, once I shake off this blog rust, but for now will just say it's very peculiar how threatened boy gamers are when you say women should be making more games. A bit before that, the slightly less controversial "Ditching the V-Word", discussing why the word 'virtual' is dead and should be stomped on until it stops moving. Today, the (I think) entirely non-controversial but hopefully equally (or more) interesting "When the Stars Align", a piece on the development of the completely fascinating 1986 multi-platform Starflight -- Greg's first game. One of the many reasons I took this job was the opportunity to learn from, I now feel confident in saying, one of the most unique and excellent game designers alive today, and in studying his work (in order to understand his design aesthetic better so as to be better at my job as well as learn) I discovered how shockingly underappreciated and under-remembered Starflight is. So this is my attempt to share a small piece of what I'm fortunate to have access to.

In fiction: the good folk at Electric Velocipede were kind enough to select "Darkest Amber" for this issue's web fiction, so take a gander while you can. This story was the product of a writing challenge from jsridler and justinhowe, and is cyberpunk set in a world I hope to do quite a bit more writing in in the future. It has a talking baseball bat and Greek philosophy -- what have you got to lose?

In poetry: I am told that "Oneness" will be appearing in the latest Not One of Us special collection, called Hidden. It is yay.

...I think those are all the updates. At least the topline, anyway. I do not promise to bring no IGDA/Rockstar troublemaking over here, all things considered, though I expect the flurry to remain mostly on Gamasutra. And this is assuming I don't think better of my rather aggressive current opinion.

Hope that you all are doing well!

Hallo again all -- I am still behind on comment replies to the Mac Attack!, but am on a plane again tomorrow so wanted to post this quickly.

"Why Your Game Idea Sucks", a short-order article I wrote for the Escapist a couple of weeks ago, popped up in my google alerts yesterday. By the time I got to it, it already had about 25 comments, and now it's up to 87 or so. Comments range from "brilliant" and "the most truthful thing ever written about game development" to "how dare you" and "a pointless article", so I suppose YMMV.

Comparison inevitably arises between something like this and Josh Olsen's highly contentious "I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script", and ensuing Harlan Ellison shenanigans, which I suppose is fair. Olsen's piece went up coincidentally the same day I got the green light from the Escapist, which made me groan. But thankfully a lot of people are reading the intended humor in the title and finding that it's less acerbic and hopefully a bit more helpful than Olsen's was for many a "butthurt nerd". In all seriousness, I had some anxiety with the piece, because I do think it's a valid criticism that releasing something negative into the world doesn't reap a good result -- but the proof is in the pudding here that people really don't listen when you tell them some things nicely.

But that's enough about that. I have also gotten wind that "Darkest Amber" will be running in the next issue of Electric Velocipede, debuting at World Fantasy, which is conveniently near home this year. It is a cyberpunk smashfest and those of you strange enough to be familiar with the Black9 world may recognize some homages.

But that's not all! Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values Through Play, containing my super-long "Sideways into Truth: Kierkegaard, Philistines, and Denying Death Through Video Games" as well as a coveted intro written by Henry Jenkins will be hitting shelves digital and otherwise this coming February.

You should also check out "Of Shifting Skin and Certainty" by justinhowe in the most recent Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and the very excellent "Between Two Treasons" by Michael DeLuca, aka boonofdoom, a continuation of his terrific centaur stories.

Finally, charlesatan was kind enough to request and then write up a very thoughtful interview with me on his Bibliophile Stalker blog. It is going into my profile as a general whowhat?! link. :)

Hey all -- long time no see. I've been reading my friends' page sporadically, and have a few posts queued up to finish, but travel has been putting me behind on LJ again. I flew somewhere different every week in June, and even then was still trying to catch up from LOGIN in May. Things should be quieting down a bit now, at least until TNEO in mid-July.

So I'm behind, but wanted to post a quick heads-up that "Osteometry" is in the issue of Asimov's currently on magazine shelves:

http://twitpic.com/8kuqt

Take a look!

I'm pretty sure several things I was going to post about have since fallen out of my head, but I thought I'd grab a couple of these because they are cool.

As you may have seen if you were watching time_shark's journal during April, the 10th anniversary issue of Mythic Delirium is out, with a quite wonderful poem by Neil Gaiman as well as terrific work from people like sovay, tithenai+mer_moon, dkolodji, ericmarin, and others (sorry if I missed others with LJ accounts!). And "Beauty Sleep", probably the darkest thing I've written. It's quite a terrific issue, and if you enjoy speculative things or poetry or (gasp) both, take a look.

There have also been several reviews. charlesatan reviews the whole issue here, saying "While there's a certain similarity to each of the poems (i.e. the aforementioned inclusion of an easily-identifiable narrative), they're diverse enough that they elicit a different form of satisfaction depending on the poet and the piece. 'Beauty Sleep' by Erin Hoffman for example tangentially refers to a popular fairy tale and subverting its common interpretation, combining bluntness with beautiful images.". erzebet in the recently redesigned Cabinet des Fees reviews the full issue also, with the kind (I think :) ) "Erin Hoffman works a fairy tale into a brutal collection of stanzas", saying as well for the entire issue "Issue 20 is, without a doubt, Mike’s mythic masterwork.". hooks_and_books devotes a full paragraph to each poem over in his review, separated by parts:

I like the twist of the tale that Hoffman presents, combining aspects of the princess and the evil fairy into one deep persona. The voice in this piece is deservedly bitter, but works will carrying that bitterness or anger all the way through. Also, Hoffman takes the tale back to it's Italian origins, which is nice to see. Some of the line breaks seem off to me--"A king, it happens; and when I" or "his queen is cold and empty as"--which creates a choppy rhythm to the piece for me. There is still a lot that is working in this piece, certainly enough to make it successful.

The sheer volume of reviews focused on poetry is unusual for the space, and likely largely thanks to one Mr. Gaiman, but it's neat to see nonetheless.

In the short story world, Lois Tilton does not eviscerate me for "Stormchaser, Stormshaper":

There is a lot of fresh and original stuff here, the gryphons and the sea magic, and the descriptions are well-crafted. At the heart of the story is Ruby's inner conflict between piracy—making her mother proud—and her inner magic, which involves a strong empathy for her victims. The author loads the moral balance by justifying the pirates' activities as self-defense, about which I have my doubts. Making your mother proud is not a good reason for murder.

The catching up continues...

Hi all. Behind on updates again, but just wanted to get in a quick update. More posts coming soon, including a Smeagol update -- he has a vet re-visit next Saturday. Overall, he's doing much better -- more details soon. :) Much travel ahead... NYC this weekend, Seattle next month (for LOGIN Conference, where erikbethke and I will be discussing BetterEULA's second year), NYC again in June for State of Play, TNEO in July, and of course many trips to LA in between... I've given up updating my Dopplr account.

So, writing stuff!

Here are some links:

• "Stormchaser, Stormshaper", in today's issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies
  
  
• "No Signal" and "Bag Man" in issue 10 of Farrago's Wainscot.

In Beneath Ceaseless Skies, also check out Marie Brennan's "Driftwood", and, if so inclined, her wonderful post about the magazine on her LJ. If podcasts are your thing, also check out the mag's audio fiction.

In Farrago's Wainscot, also check out other great stories by Bruce Boston & Lee Ballentine, Toiya Kristen Finley, Jason Fischer, Jason Heller, S. J. Hirons, and Matthew Kressel, poetry by Miranda Gaw, and a very interesting experimental word piece by Jeffrey Barnes.

Go forth and read!

I am slowly clawing my way out of internet desynch, having foolishly made an initial attempt right before the holidays commenced their usual brain-eating. 2147 mails in my inbox, but the good news is only 384 of them are unread!

jsridler has fallen full throttle into the livejournal thing, as I thought he would long ago, and so also made his one request before flying back to Kingston today that I manage an update, so here I am -- specifically with the news that Space and Time has purchased "Lightning Over the St. Lawrence", a poem of mine they'd been holding. It is much happiness. I picked up the summer issue of S&T at BookPeople in Austin last September, and enjoyed its poetry (and stories) greatly. In other Austin news, anguirel should, I think, be on the road toward there by now, and I have told him to hie himself to BookPeople upon arriving. I still don't have my Cold War Unicorns.

In other poem and story news, I quietly added this to my profile awhile ago, but never announced here -- I have my contract now, so I think it's officially official -- I also sold a poem, "Osteometry", to Sheila Williams at Asimov's Science Fiction, which of course I was ridiculously excited about but didn't know when I could mention it. Getting Asimov's wirelessly delivered is one of my favorite things about owning a Kindle, and it'll be decidedly weird but cool to be in its TOC. If you aren't a subscriber, you may want to pick up the current issue -- among its usual pleasing offerings it has a stirring story by Stephen King and "Lion Walk" by Mary Rosenblum, which may be the best thing I've read published this year -- I'm anxious to hunt down her Water Rites based on its excellence. After many back-and-forths, "Impress of the Hills", short hillbilly fantasy, was also officially accepted by Spacesuits and Sixguns last month or thereabouts.

Check out the new Ideomancer Livejournal group if you get a chance, too. I never mentioned largely because I wondered if we were supposed to be a sort of mysterious shadow council, but I've been reading slush for the magazine since May or so, and hopefully will be pitching in more as time goes on. Mentioned there recently is ecbatan's review of Ideomancer this year, which includes a nice note for George S. Walker's wonderful "Zorroid", the first thing I fished out for them (no credit to me; Walker wrote a great story, I was only fortunate to be a minor conduit -- I link it here mainly because you should go read it). I've always liked the magazine, from mission to content to staff and so on, so this is fun, and the LJ group is newly pretty and organized. Expect great things, if so inclined.

I'm half starved, so I think that's all for now. Hope that you all had a terrific holiday of your choice, and hopefully are still so having. I'm off until Friday, which is nice, and working on slowly un-congealing my brain. I have managed to keep fairly up on twitter, if any of you are there, and I updated dopplr with at least the next three months' planned travel. Inch by inch and all that. :)

I do live! According to recent reports, anyway. I've actually been trying to post this for a week, but am only just now getting to it. I have a lot of things to catch up on, and hopefully am getting to a portion of them this weekend.

The move, a high volume of chaos (and travel) that followed it, and then rocketing full bore into the new job have all conspired to eat my brain. Many things to catch up on, some of them sad, most of them happy. But since this is time-related, I'm posting that friend/editor/Homeless Moon co-conspirator scott_h_andrews's online fantasy magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies is now live, with its first issue featuring work from Chris Willrich and David D. Levine. It's a beautiful issue, and the first line of Willrich's two-part story caught my attention in particular:

One storm-lashed sunset in the Eldshore’s antique capital, beneath Castle Astrolabe’s crumbling perch and near the Zodiac Coliseum’s bloody stones, Gaunt and Bone scaled Heaven’s Vault, there to make a hellish deposit.

A very pulpy but fun story.

David Levine's "Sun Magic, Earth Magic" is a complementary pairing, smooth and clean but distinctive. Check them out!

With these, sneaking in a few sale announcements that I've also been remiss on... "Stormchaser, Stormshaper", an Of Fire and Sea universe short story, to Beneath Ceaseless Skies. As others will tell you, Scott has very exacting tastes, so I was thrilled that he liked this story. After many exchanges, "Impress of the Hills" is officially sold to Spacesuits & Sixguns, and Mythic Delirium picked up "Beauty Sleep", a short poem/alternate perspective on a fairy tale you can probably guess.

I also twittered about this, but didn't mention it here, that "We the Gamers" went up on the Escapist last week. It picked up a mention on kotaku, and even got (so far) 617 diggs, though mostly, it seems, because of a single quote that was pulled out by one of the journalists along the way and got them thinking I was talking primarily about DRM. The subcultures of these places are interesting -- apparently "meatspace" is a word one does not use around digg folk. I wish I could even claim I'd been using it to be pretentious -- it's actually part of my common vocabulary, which, given where I work, isn't surprising, but possibly is sad depending on your perspective. ;) The comments vary, as they usually do, from RTFA-bait to insightful, but it does amaze me how many in the gaming community persistently dismiss anything having to do with MMOs. Obviously because of where I work I have a biased perspective on this, but at the moment I'm convinced that not only is the MMO, in one form or another, the dominant genre (with WoW's subscription figures alone there's little disputing this), it's simply the future of gaming, end of discussion. And yet clearly there's a talking-point dismissal of MMOs as subject matter in gaming circles, which leads me to believe that there is a market gap in a definitive news and discussion source for these millions who actually play online games (The Escapist, much as I love what they do, isn't it, by its demographics, and TerraNova is too riddled with academics [no slight on academics, I love them, I'm just limited in my maximum dosage]). But thoughts for another time...

Item unrelated to the subject line #1: although I put a little icon of Clockwork Phoenix in my sidebar, I've been very lax about posting the terrific feedback the collection has been getting. time_shark rewards my indigence with bad-habit-training rescue in the form of the excellent website he posted recently, containing details on said fantastic feedback as well as guidelines for Clockwork Phoenix 2. Go forth in strangeness.

Item unrelated to the subject line #2: I have found two new (to me) philosophers recently, one of which I should have known about (Levinas) and one that I can squeak by for not knowing (Peter Singer). I post them mostly so I'll remember later when I am inevitably trying to backtrack a google trail. The second is fascinating particularly in the context of The Philosopher's Apprentice, a Jim Morrow novel I recently read (thinking that I would be going to ReaderCon). I also today downloaded five of Nietzsche's books to the Kindle, along with Fear and Trembling and the collected works of Bram Stoker. It would be reasonable to expect repercussions.

Now, the subject. I have sold two poems ("No Signal" and "Bag Man") to Farrago's Wainscot. This is particularly satisfying to announce right now because they currently have some fantastic stuff up by Bryan Dietrich -- you should definitely go check out "WWJD". But my path to publication in FW has come by way of the digestive tract of a chocolate lab.

About a week ago I got a response to a query that was so great I asked the editor if I could post it to my blog (so this is all with permission, o ye traumatized editor response letter carriers). He obliged, and gave me a photo to go with it.

Hello Erin,

Glad to hear from you. These poems were in a "second read" stack that was eaten by one of my dogs a while back. Came home to find a smiling Labrador atop a pile of poetry-confetti. Thought I'd gotten back to everything that was in there, but she must've ingested the bits with your name on them.

In any case, I've been busy at work the last couple days since you sent this email and am at work now, but will take another look and get back to you very soon. I'm off Wednesday and Thursday, so will definitely get to them by then. Many thanks for your patience

Cheers,
Aaron
--
Coeditor: Poetry
Farrago's Wainscot
http://www.farragoswainscot.com

I waited until the end of the week so that I could post this with the results of the submission to complete the story -- accept or reject, it makes an entertaining tale -- and this is Bailey:



...looking sad and guilty.

It seems she ate a copy of Hal Duncan's Vellum last week, too. My poems are in good company! And their digital ghosts should be up on FW sometime this year or next.

The five Odyssey grads who make up The Homeless Moon join together like a piecemeal mutant Voltron to bring you a cache of eclectic genre fiction.

Michael J. DeLuca, “Construction-Paper Moon”
Jason S. Ridler, “Impracticable Dreams”
Scott H. Andrews, “Colonized”
Erin Hoffman, “The Recurrence of Orpheus”
Justin Howe, “Welcome to Foreign Lands”

Pick up your copy at Readercon 19, or download the free electronic version here (print-quality PDF, 1.8 Mb). If you are so inclined, you can also send us $1 for shipping via the PayPal link below, and we’ll mail you a hard copy:

Read the reviews

Of the publishing variety. "Whatever Shall Grow There, Dear" is now live in the current issue of Lone Star Stories, along with other excellent fiction and poetry that you should imbibe immediately. Take a look at sovay's "Firework-Makers", and the poems of papersky and seajules. Everyone seems to be on LJ these days. ;)

While you're at it, head over to Schezerezade's Bequest, the online edition of Cabinet des Fees, and check out sovay's lovely "Bonny Fisher Boy". And before you conclude that I am stalking sovay, I say this as segue to the update that SB has recently accepted my poem "The Fall of Fairy Castle" for their September issue.

When you're done doing that, you should hie yourself out and purchase a copy of the first issue of Tales of Moreauvia, containing as it does jsridler's very excellent "Engine of Desolation", as well as a story by the habitually skillful and entertaining Rita Oakes. Can't lose.

Last but certainly not least, feast your eyes upon the snazzy page that is Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which will be debuting this Fall under the steady hand of Scott H. Andrews.

Being that I've been in Albany and New York City in the last week, I was in range of the Kindle's Whispernet, and boy did I use it. The Kindle can in fact be used to surf the web and check email, but what got me in trouble was the ease with which I could download free book samples. I've also downloaded books from Project Gutenberg and piped them onto the Kindle; I have not yet attempted boonofdoom's clever notion of reading slush on it, but plan to soon. It has already caused me to purchase three books I would not have otherwise, and sampled over a dozen I likely would not have picked up anytime soon. I suppose I should be lucky I was only temporarily exposed to Whispernet. In preliminary conclusion, the Kindle is not quite the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, but it is clearly Australopithecus to that line, and I remain both impressed and frightened.