My creative voice and vision are key to my identity, and they are the engine that drives my life.
For twenty years, I’ve published my own creative work, mostly fantasy and science fiction, mostly novels but also short stories and novellas.
I’ve worked in others’ sandboxes and my own: five of my novels take place within an existing IP (the Forgotten Realms, owned by Wizards of the Coast), five are totally creator-owned (Eye for an Eye, Scourge of the Realm, and my World of Ruin series), and one was written originally in a shared IP but is now creator-owned (Blind Justice). I am adept with both sorts of writing.
I’m a known commodity in the tabletop gaming industry, and have an array of credits to my name on such games as Dungeons & Dragons, Iron Kingdoms, Red Aegis, and others.
I’m also a lifelong gamer, on the console or computer or tabletop. I’ve run games since 5th grade, and my first creative writing exercises drew directly from those experiences. Unsurprisingly, my favorite games tend to be RPGs and action-adventure games.
I’m not a coder or a programmer.
I’m a writer and an editor.
I’m an ideas person. I have built dozens of worlds myself for my own use, and I’ve worked closely with others to build worlds, flesh them out, describe them, and bring their stories to life.
Dialogue, description, characterization, plot—all of these things are the fundamental building blocks with which we convey dreams from one mind to another.
I’m a Human Being.
I care deeply about my fellow human beings and the environment we live in. I advocate strongly for social justice and a progressive direction to our culture and politics. I will stand up and defend those who are under assault as best I can.
I believe in good and justice and kindness.
My work is built on a foundation of respect, representation, and truth. I know the power of my voice, and I will not shirk the responsibility that comes with it.
As you can see, I state and affirm my faith basically every time I post here. It may be a kind of costly signaling–i.e. it opens me up to abuse, usually from my fellow Christians–but it’s not very costly. Very, very few people think less of someone simply because they are Christian, but rather how they use that identity. What do they justify with their faith? What other, horrible positions do they defend with a cross-shaped shield?
If you say “I’m standing with God” but you really mean “I’m bigoted against LGBTQ people and no one should criticize me for it,” your standing with God means nothing. You are just a bigot appropriating a faith that does NOT support bigotry but in fact is PRIMARILY ABOUT ENDING BIGOTRY. We have seen a massive influx of bigots, abusers, and criminals claim Christianity in order to escape accountability, and we should all be getting exhausted of it by now.
Using Christian faith to justify bigotry isn’t just crass, cynical, or callous, but actively blasphemous, and all Christians should join together in condemning that practice.
Bigotry is cruel, hateful, and evil. It is the opposite of Christianity’s fundamental teachings.
And no, Christians are not oppressed. That’s baked into Christian identity from our earliest origins as a tiny cultic commune of weirdos who refused to be part of the state religion of Rome, and saw ourselves as being like Christ: a speaker of truth and thorn in the side of the powers that be.
Claiming to be part of Christianity does not make you a plucky underdog speaking truth to power or rising up against an unjust system. To be clear, there IS an unjust system and there ARE plucky underdogs, but WE CHRISTIANS are the ones in power, WE control the unjust system, and its our targets who are the plucky underdogs. Christianity has been in charge since Constantine, and that was over 1500 years ago.
Let’s not play the oppression Olympics, because we Christians–especially white Christians–won’t even qualify for the event.
An ideal Christian practices love, compassion, justice, and acceptance. They feed the hungry, give to the poor, heal the sick, welcome the stranger, and love their neighbors as themselves. That is the CORE of our faith.
Stop fawning over grifters appropriating our faith to increase their own standing in the right-wing griftoverse. Start doing the work.
Well, I can’t guarantee there’s no such thing, but it’s incompatible with the Christian god, and here’s why.
That God is thought to be an omnibenevolent entity on its own should make clear that the concept of hell is nonsensical, but let’s set that aside.
Let’s examine justice. After all, we have a perfectly JUST god, right?
If you stole a candy bar from a supermarket, would it be just for the cashier to pull out a 12-gauge and vaporize your midsection? Leaving aside whether it would be legal (it usually isn’t)—would your gruesome, extended, and painful death be a fitting punishment for shoplifting a few bucks?
Ok, maybe you’re a staunchly anti-crime person and have no sympathy for petty thieves. How about… if you forgot to add a jar of pickles to your grocery cart and asked to go back—not that you just left—would it be a just punishment for the cashier to blow you away with his sawed off Winchester? You inconvenienced him, and everyone behind you in line, even in a tiny way. He should be allowed to shoot you in the gut and cause you to suffer and die, right?
No. We consider “justice” to require a response that fits the crime. In the case of retributive justice (you do wrong, you’re punished), it’s only just if the punishment is a reasonable match for the crime.
So what crimes warrant torture? Not death, but cruel and unusual punishment. Like strapping you to a metal bed frame and electrifying it, over and over?
Now imagine if that torture lasts literally forever. Shot in the gut, electrocuted, water boarded, whatever creative thing you can think of. What crime could possibly warrant infinite punishment?
Being gay, right? Oh man, that’s so GROSS. A dude kissing another dude. UGH. How will I explain that to my children?
Dude. Cmon.
Infinite punishment for finite actions is fundamentally unjust, nor is it within the character of a benign being, much less an Omni-benevolent one such as the Christian god. By arguing that a good deity, much less the all-loving God, even ALLOWS such a thing, much less actively condemns people to a fiery pit for eternal torment, you are essentially supercharging the Problem of Evil. That god isn’t just negligent, incompetent, or weak, but actively malicious, sadistic, and evil.
You want to worship an evil god, that’s your prerogative. We have religious freedom in this country. But that’s not the Christian god, and I’d ask you to stop projecting your revenge fantasies onto God.
Regarding God’s justice, look up “restorative justice”—a much more morally benign form of justice, and more like the kind an Omni benevolent being would practice.
I’m a thoughtful, curious person by nature. I can’t help it.
You know what I’ve determined?
It doesn’t really matter what you believe. What matters is what you DO.
Do good in the world. Love your fellow humans. Help those in need. Feed the hungry. Give to the poor. Welcome the foreigner. Protect those under attack. Choose compassion and respect.
To paraphrase Marcus Aurelius:
Live the best life you can—do good in the world and help those in need. If there are gods and they are just, it’ll all work out.
If there are evil gods, then what you did in life doesn’t matter to them anyway, but at least you did good for your fellow people.
And if there are no gods, well, it’s the same thing—the good you did in life will continue to do good after you’re gone, and you will live on in the memories of those who loved you.
Tl;dr, the Bible never condemns LGBTQ people and it is our Christian duty to accept, affirm, and embrace our LGBTQ neighbors. Happy Pride!
Aboutthe Bible and gay people, again
It feels like I have to go over this every day, so here we go.
Leaving aside the fact that 100% of modern Christians don’t follow the law in Leviticus—and will often go to the mat arguing why it no longer applies to us, because we’re under a new covenant, and yes I mean SAINT PAUL HIMSELF said we don’t have to keep that law…
The passage in Leviticus is not referring to modern notions of homosexuality (which did not exist at the time), but of compromising a man’s sexual agency and dominance over women.
The practices it condemned were 1) use of penetration to humiliate and demean a man, 2) pederasty (ie what we understand today as SA of a male child).
It is not about modern homosexuality, which again, wasn’t even conceptualized at the time. That term doesn’t appear in the text until 1948.
And even if you’re going to ignore the Hebrew, the context, the logic, the analysis… even if that went entirely over your head or you don’t find that convincing… you’re still looking at the Bible for excuses to hate a whole subset of people you find icky.
You are blaming your petty bigotry on God. And that’s blasphemous.
Do you really think, when you stand before Jesus for judgment, that he’s going to say “sorry, you didn’t sufficiently HATE gay people”?
Or is he going to say, “as you did to the least of these, so you did to me—begone, I never knew you”?
Don’t be a goat.
Choose to be a better person.
…
Some common questions:
Is it about assaulting young boys or is it about patriarchy?
It is about both.
The primary intention of the passage was to prevent men’s sexual agency from being diluted, as it was assumed that being penetrated would do.
The example they would contextually have understood was pederasty, ie the common practice in the ancient world of adult men “initiating” adolescent boys into the ways of manhood. Which we today see (rightfully) as child abuse.
It has nothing to do with a homosexual orientation, which wasn’t even a concept to people back then. They thought it was weird so came up with all kinds of myths about what men might want to have intercourse with other men, and none of them were “that’s their sexual orientation.”
Basically, the passage is not about being gay or doing gay things. It is about abusing people in what was, at the time, considered a highly demeaning, anti-male way.
But the Bible Says “Man with Mankind” or “Homosexuality”
No it doesn’t, that’s a mistranslation. The phrase “Man with Mankind” dates to the King James Version, which was released in 1611, and the word “homosexuality” was added in 1946 in the RSV.
The original text says, more directly, “If a man lies with a male as with a woman…” using two different words for “man” and “male.” That’s because they weren’t referring to men generally with “male” but to very young men, ie pederasty, like I said before. Don’t rape boys.
But Paul said no “effeminate”/“homosexual” men…
Seriously, this again? Sigh.
Paul was clearly hung up on a lot of things, including a decided disgust with all things sexual. He advised people not to get married, you know—and only do it if you couldn’t hack celibacy and needed to “indulge your urges.” Sounds like a modern closeted pastor to me.
But remember, he’s referring to the Old Testament, specifically Leviticus. He didn’t even have access to the New Testament, which wasn’t written until AFTER his letters.
So he’s using the same source. Which wasn’t about gay people QED.
But it’s called Sodomy!
Incorrectly, as it happens.
Ezekiel 16:49-50 directly tells us that the sin of Sodom was INHOSPITALITY. It’s right there in the text. And the “sexual morality” mentioned there is “trying to rape angels/foreigners in the street,” not the fact that those angels/foreigners may have been man-shaped.
Simple critical analysis. Read your Bible. Sheesh.
“But being trans is a sin!”
No, the Bible never suggests anything of the sort, and only tangentially addresses people outside the gender binary.
Jesus says there are “eunuchs from birth” and he’s completely fine with eunuchs following him. (Not saying a eunuch is in the LGBTQ—only saying it’s tangentially connected in that these were people outside the binary.)
The Bible never mentions lesbians or genderqueer people, just like it never mentions helicopters or email. These are evolved concepts that didn’t exist at the time. Sure, there were people attracted to people of a similar gender to their own, but they were not recognized by society as a distinct group.
Also, being trans has nothing to do with sex, and isn’t that the core of your objection to gay people? A lot of trans people are straight, and yet STILL you’re spun up about this.
Stop scapegoating yet another minority for the sake of your own authoritarian identity politics. Choose Christ, not Trump.
But Jesus said one man and one woman!
Jesus was talking about divorce.
Polygamy was highly normalized in Biblical times. The scribes of the OT and probably the NT had multiple wives. Numerous Bible stories depict plural marriages and concubinage.
No one in the Bible ever advocated for one man and one woman marriage.
But but but…
No, man, give it a rest.
Stop looking to the Bible for reasons to hate people, and start practicing the love of our neighbor that Jesus preached.
That’s it.
Happy Pride!
Further reading:
Advice for Unclobbering, by Rev. Doug Hagler, First Presbyterian Church of Phoenixville, 2023-2026
A question I see regularly. Here’s my take, as a Christian (who is routinely embarrassed by my fellow Christians’ misdeeds).
A lot of us are raised to believe, explicitly and fervently, that doubt is an existential THREAT. And even if we aren’t explicitly taught to hate and fear outsiders, it comes across implicitly in a number of our practices, beliefs, and philosophies.
Which makes sense, when you think about it. It’s human nature to form groups, and for millions of years, the only way we could survive was to stick with a group and view outsiders with wariness and treat them with hostility as needed.
To Christians, this is what atheists and practitioners of other faiths and even different denominations are: outsiders who present a potential threat.
Practically, this threat is rarely physical, although plenty of churches (particularly insular/conservative ones) preach that atheists, etc, intend to kill us all or take over the country or replace all “Christians” (they usually mean white people).
The threat is more psychological.
Many Christians believe the only way to be a moral, good person is to be a Christian.
Which is, of course, nonsense that I’ve spoken about before. But this implies that non-Christians are inherently immoral and potentially dangerous, and someone who’s been indoctrinated from an early age to believe that will often react poorly when presented with such a person. They will try desperately to convert that person or dismiss them, because of the deeper threat they pose.
The symbolic threat.
For you see, if a non-Christian is indeed moral, compassionate, sensible, even kind, that shakes them to their core. That’s supposed to be impossible, and the fact that it IS possible means their insular church LIED to them. And what else did they lie about?
Encountering a kind, moral, upstanding atheist can be the thread pull that unravels the entirety of a Christian’s faith. That almost happened to me, in fact, but fortunately I hail from a fairly liberal United Methodist church that prepared me to accept and incorporate this new perspective.
Same thing happens when kids go to college, actually. They encounter new people outside their community, and the more insular their community was, the harder that culture shock is. College students come home at winter break with new ideas not because they’re being indoctrinated—but because they’re finally not living in an environment steeped in indoctrination.
And here’s the thing: when Christians from an insular, conservative faith community realize there are other ways to live, that might force them to confront the years they’ve spent sacrificing and costly signaling. If they meet an awesome gay person and realize homophobia is bogus (and blasphemous), what of the years they spent hating gay people and pretending the Bible told them to? All that hate and condemnation was not only a waste, but actively against Jesus’s will.
And gay people are only a slight challenge compared to atheists, who call the whole thing into question.
People are naturally inclined to double-down to protect themselves from cognitive dissonance. And keep doubling down, no matter how ridiculous their position becomes, or how logically twisted or distorted their arguments. Their very sense of self is on the line.
So… if you’re an atheist, be patient with Christians, if you can. You’re dealing with a fear response—where they feel the desperate need to reassert their faith in the face of a source of doubt. Some of us are flexible and can evolve. Some of us… it takes a little more work.
Further reading: some faith traditions actually use this process as a means of reinforcing the faith of their adherents, by putting them in mostly controlled confrontations with doubt for which they are as prepared as the church can make them. It’s a fascinating process.
Content warning about religion and stuff. Sorry about that!
The Issue
Christianity has a problem. We assert that our our god is a god of love and compassion, but also that 1) our god did a number of horrendous things in the Bible (such as destroying two cities for failure of hospitality, commanding Israel to not only wipe out a rival civilization but take their young girls as sex slaves, oh and drowned the entire world save one family that would then go onto do some incest and such… ew), and 2) condemn anyone and everyone who doesn’t believe in, love, and worship him to an eternity of torment in a fiery pit of some kind.
In the context of the Old Testament, that sounds a bit like a malicious toddler burning ants with a magnifying glass and occasionally getting out the hose. The New Testament makes it worse with the addition of the heaven/hell concept, making God sound a bit like a psychopath abuser bragging about his past crimes and warning that if you don’t love and submit to him, he’ll do even WORSE to you.
Obviously, these stories follow the cadence of other mythic allegories. The heroes are flawed, the gods are cruel and capricious and difficult to understand or entirely ineffable, and the stories are meant to illustrate lessons and provoke thought. But when you the go on to insist that the god who is the main character of these stories is Omni-benevolent, then you beg the obvious question: how is that supposed to make sense? No one would bat an eye at Zeus or Thor doing vile, destructive things, but no one is asserting those guys are entirely good and the epitome of love and compassion.
Thoughts from the Christian Gallery
This isn’t a pleasant thing for Christians to talk about or even think about.
When I suggest something like “these are mythic stories showing God making mistakes and learning, right alongside humanity, because they are showing us how we have evolved toward compassion and empathy for all people, in line with how human morality literally developed”, the response I get from a lot of my fellow Christians is “HOW DARE YOU! GOD MAKES NO MISTAKES!” or “YOU’RE NOT A CHRISTIAN!” or something of that nature. Typical flailing by people who are incapable of critical thought and/or don’t take their faith seriously enough to question it.
Christianity as a whole has yet to reckon with this dark history and problematic content. We cannot insist that ours is an unchanging, unchangeable, immutable, eternal, objective god of love and also assert that God’s atrocities took place as described. That leaves us with a logical conundrum: how to reconcile the evil God dos in the Old Testament and the threat of eternal punishment many, many, too-many Christians use to scare people into joining their denomination of choice and threaten people thinking of leaving.
To/From Hell
It does help that Hell—a place of eternal conscious torment, usually with a fire involved and maybe a pointy-eared devil with a pitchfork—isn’t real. It’s not even Biblical: not until Revelation does anyone even mention something like our modern concept of Hell, including Jesus, an Revelation is a coded political message of hope and perseverance to the fledgling Christian cult of 1st century CE. When Jesus spoke of Sheol or “The Fire”, he was using an analogy to refer to a specific at-the-time Jewish afterlife where everyone—good, bad, in between—would go and sleep eternally, more like a purgatory than a heaven or hell. It wasn’t until Christian thinking began to be heavily influenced by Greco-Roman philosophy and mythology (decades after Jesus’s death, we can see hints of it in the Gospel of John, the latest of the four gospels to be written) that we came up with this heaven and hell concept, based on the Elysian Fields and the underworld of Hades.
Also, He’ll doesn’t make logical sense. If God is omnibenevolent and loves humanity, why would God condemn anyone to eternal punishment for finite actions? These can range from as minute as swearing or stealing a loaf of bread to masturbating or having consensual sex without being married to your partner or being gay to horrendous crimes like murder, rape, and genocide. Obviously we as humans feel more comfortable with God condemning evil people who commit acts toward the darker end of that spectrum, but if we try to set aside our natural disgust reaction, how does even THAT makes sense? What manner of earthly evil can someone commit that would justify an ETERNITY of INFINITE punishment?
What is Justice?
Retributive justice, ie talionic justice, eye for an eye, ie vengeance—is the lowest, basest form of justice. It assuages our very human drive to punish wrongs done to us, an MAYBR it acts as a deterrent, but mostly the point is to satisfy our anger. And the Christian god isn’t an angry god by definition—but a god that embodies love and compassion and mercy. Surely this god represents a higher, more effective form of justice, such as restorative justice—wherein those who have done wrong work to make amends, not simply suffer punishment.
So. If God is an Omni-benevolent god—entirely good and just and merciful—then it makes no sense to inflict such harsh retributive justice on anyone, no matter how evil.
And if it doesn’t make sense to send a horrible criminal to eternal punishment, then it surely doesn’t make sense to inflict it on some poor horny teenager or someone who doesn’t believe in God. And no, it doesn’t make sense for God to condemn anyone for being whom God created them to be: gay, bisexual, trans, anything like that. No just or decent god would contradict himself like that, and remember: we’re talking about an omnibenevolent god they transcends petty bigotries and disgust. A god that chooses and embodies love.
A Long Digression about Homophobia, Sorry
Lots of Christians will, of course, object to this. Especially rightwing ones, but all across the church. Homophobia is a tragic, time-honored tradition in the church, even though the so-called Clobber Verses are dramatically misinterpreted and usually poorly translated. The Bible talks a lot more about adultery—Jesus actually directly condemns it when condemning divorce, which he says is more or less the same thing—than it does about pederasty, but y’all are bound and determined to hate gay people whilst electing a twice divorced, womanizing rapist and probable pedophile as president of the United States.
And now these self-identified Christians are getting spun up about trans people, even though the Bible says not one syllable about trans people. Because it’s a politically expedient culture war issue to trick Christians out of their faith and toward voting Republican. Very sad.
Such Christians are hypocrites who choose unfounded bigotry—who manipulate the scripture to justify their disgust response to LGBTQ people. Rather than treating such people as Jesus commanded us—love your neighbor as yourself—they go out of their way to pretend that God and/or Jesus endorses their fear of queerness and persecution of LGBTQ people
And yes, it IS a fear, no matter how many puff-chested bigots insist they aren’t afraid of gay people. They’re positively terrified that they or someone in their lives might be anything but straight. Look how they spiral out of control at seeing gay people in media or drag queens reading to children. They believe in some sort of “gay agenda” or “transing kids” and call LGBTQ a “social contagion” when in point of fact, we know sexuality and gender orientation are genetic. You can’t convince someone to be gay or trans, and you can’t just *decide* to be. It’s not a choice—it’s not a contagion. It’s just who you are.
Anyway, I digress.
What’s a Good God to Do?
The real issue here is whether God (again, an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being) would condemn or even ALLOW human beings to suffer infinite punishment for finite actions. And moreover, could such a God condemn people to Hell “as a sign of his love for them”?
The only honest answer is no.
Usually-conservative Christians may protest that God can’t be understood in terms of logic. That God COULD inflict eternal torture and have that be a good thing, because God is, by definition, the source of all goodness. Which at least solves the problem of evil… mostly by tossing out the whole concept of logic and meaning. Which is a pretty poor argument.
And if that’s your god—an entity that can show its “love” for weak little confused humans by throwing them into eternal torment—who despite any propitiation can and will condemn you for worshipping in not quite the right way, even though he refuses to clarify what that is or even that he even EXISTS, and there will be self-identified worshipers of that god coming out of the woodwork to tell you to “repent” and “read the Bible” and twist themselves into logical knots to justify their glee at your eternal suffering?
That’s an evil god. Not just one that isn’t omnibenvolent—but an insane, blind idiot god unworthy of worship. And neither I nor anyone else should waste our time on such an entity.
Conclusion
If we are to conclude that there is any value to Christianity—and I believe there is—we must endeavor to emulate goodness, kindness, and compassion. Practice empathy, generosity, and restorative justice. Do NOT demean our faith by resorting to threats about some imaginary hell that awaits people who disagree with our ideology and mythos. If you want to convert people to Christianity—if that’s something you want to do—show that it is a good, noble, fulfilling faith the exhorts us to love our neighbor as ourself. To feed the hungry, heal the sick, give to the poor, welcome the stranger, comfort the prisoner, and stand up for the weak, ie protect and support marginalized people rather than condemning them because you find them icky.
To my fellow Christians: do better. Endeavor to help those in need and work toward a better world.
To those who aren’t Christian: that’s fine. I’m not here to convert anyone, and you all have your own lives and perspectives, and I acknowledge and love that for you. Don’t listen to Christians trying to scare you with threats of hell or divine wrath. Protect yourself from such malevolent influences. Live good, fulfilling lives of kindness, compassion, decency, and respect.
And if you can, be patient with fire and brimstone Christians—who are confused about what it means to love other people. Who think they can justify it by twisting scripture to condone their own petty bigotries. Be patient with them, for they know not what they do.
They’ve got a lot of great folks coming to Norwerscon this year, and I’m on panels with a number of them! Also I’m reading from my latest JUSTICE/VENGEANCE novel, INFERNO, and possibly an excerpt from a certain forthcoming novel…
Also, check out my Nepal fundraising drive! We’re almost there and these are the last couple days!
For years, authors have been inspired by tabletop role-playing games, used game rules to determine the outcomes of fights, or even written novels inspired by the game worlds they create as gamemasters. These days there’s a whole subgenre for this: LitRPG. What’s the secret sauce that makes role-playing games a useful tool for an author? Join our panelists and level up! Randy Hayes (M), Jeff Grubb, Erin M. Evans, Erik Scott de Bie, William Alexander
Small Autograph Session Autographs Dealer’s Room, Fri. noon to 1 p.m.
We’ll be in the dealer’s room signing books! Schedule subject to change. Erin M. Evans, Erik Scott de Bie, James Sutter
Who Would Win? Fantasy Evergreen 3 & 4, Fri. 4 to 5 p.m.
There can be only one! Join a well-meaning, entertaining debate between characters chosen by the moderator and audience to see who would win in various contests. Ryan James (M), Kit Vander Voort, Sandra Rosner, Natalie Leif, Erik Scott de Bie
Guests of honor and attending professionals are available to sign autographs. PLEASE NOTE: So that as many fans as possible can participate, a three-items-at-a-time (or single-sketch) autograph limit will be enforced.
T. Kingfisher, Geneva Bowers, Summer Ash, Bradley Englert / Orbit Books, Dutch Bihary ContoursFx, Koji A. Dae, William Alexander, Thomas Ha, A. L. Kaplan, Alexander James Adams, Amanda Cherry, Andie Penn Romine, Brenda Cooper, Brianna Malotke, Carol Berg, Curtis C. Chen, Daniel H. Wilson, Daphne Singingtree, Dean Wells, Diana Ma, Dr. Mark Rounds, Erik Scott de Bie, Evan J. Peterson, Gabriella Buba, Gordon B. White, GregRobin Smith, J. L. Doty, Jack Skillingstead, Jeff Grubb, Jeff Sturgeon, Josef B. Wilke, K.I. Tolles, Kendare Blake, L.J. Melvin, Laura Anne Gilman, Lauren C. Johnson, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Leslie Lutz, Lily Meade, Lish McBride, Liz Argall, Lizzy D. Hill, Margaret Owen, Megan E. O’Keefe, Miranda Levi, Nancy Kress, Neena Viel, Perla X. Caballero, Remy Nakamura, Rhiannon/R.Z. Held, Rosemary Jones, Sandra Rosner, Sean K. Reynolds, Sebastien de Castell, Steven Barnes, Susan R. Matthews, Timothy W. Long, Tori Sharp, Virginia Black, William Boulanger, Diana Fedorak
Fantasy boasts many subgenres, each with distinct tropes that make them stand out and allow the stories to find their target audience. We will explore what those subgenres are and how to use them to find your own audience. Rhiannon/R.Z. Held (M), Rashida J Smith, T. Kingfisher, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Erik Scott de Bie
Many of the tabletop gaming products out there are based on someone else’s IP, be it a popular movie or TV series, fictional book series, or even a video game series. Our panelists discuss some of the franchises that successfully made the jump to an RPG, as well as the ones they’d really like to see developed into the next great RPG. Izzy G (M), Erik Scott de Bie, Carlos Cabrera, Luis Loza, Matt Youngmark
This May, I am heading to the Lower Mustang Region of Nepal, there to support a medical team servicing remote rural villages that don’t have access to hospitals throughout the year. I
Our moving camp will mix modern medical techniques (antibiotics, vaccines, etc) with traditional medicine (such as acupuncture, etc), and I’m looking forward to learning about all of that and interacting with people totally unlike people I know in America. Also, there are some amazing sights to see in Nepal!
But it IS expensive, and I’d love to have some help with all this.
As a shameless bribe, I plan to write a unique, one-of-a-kind story inspired by my time in Nepal, and if you would like exclusive access to this story, please support my fundraising effort for the trip! Anyone who pledges $50 or more will get their story in their inbox, as well as your name in the credits.
Tl;dr, I’m half-blind, health insurance sucks, they’re the villain, of course they’re the villain.
A story about vision.
I am basically blind without my glasses. it’s interesting how we think of glasses. For me, they’re a long-time disability aid, one I’ve used since I was ten. I consider them essentially part of my body. I tried contacts for a while, but they didn’t take. (My eyes are really sensitive to them.) They’re literally the most socially acceptable aid in our culture. Basically invisible.
About a year and a half ago, I noticed the vision in my left eye was blurry. I got my eyes checked in January of 2024 and got updated glasses… which did not fix the problem. Sure, they made it better, but not all the way. I went in again in July and got new glasses. Still blurry. No matter how we corrected my vision, it was still blurry. I went back in for a reassessment and…
Turns out I had a cataract in my left eye.
Apparently basically everyone in their 40s has these, but this one had developed quite a bit, maybe 70% of the way to total obscurity? Im young—I was 40 at the time—and we weren’t really sure why I my eye was deteriorating that quickly. Possibly it was physical damage? Unsure.
This is now July/August of 2024, to be clear.
My eye doctor at the time advised that it wasn’t really necessary to fix it just now. Something like “it might bot be worth the side-effects.” She also told me she was retiring literally the next day. The guy she sold the practice to *entirely disagreed* with her assessment. He said, “side-effects like what, being able to see?”
They taped my eye shut after the surgery. Sunglasses-free image below.
I went in for cataract surgery in late October/early November. That was an interesting experience, not least because I was the youngest patient I’ve ever seen there. They corrected my left eye to be clear around 14-18 inches. Y’know, reading and/or phone distance. But I’d still need glasses, obviously.
And I waited.
You see, you kinda gotta wait until your vision stabilizes and you’re not having complications from the surgery before you update your glasses. For about a month, I had a pair of glasses (the ones I got in July 2024) that corrected my right eye but not my left. My left was actually rendered useless by these glasses—can’t see close, can’t see far, can’t see anything. The month of November.
In early December, I got an eye appointment literally the day after the surgeon cleared me to do so. We found a clear correction for me. My insurance wouldn’t cover a new pair of glasses until January (because of course they wouldn’t, insurance sucks), so I ordered a pair that I intended to be my backup glasses, and I would order a new better pair in January, with the cool bifocal transition effect that would make reading easier. I put in that order first week of December 2024, almost three months ago.
Those glasses arrived toward the end of December (typically glasses take two weeks—this was almost four), and I knew immediately something was wrong. I could see basically nothing out of my left eye. My eye doctor’s staff recommended I give it a few days, because my prescription had radically changed and my eyes might need to get used to it. This was, of course, terrible advice, but I played along, gave it a week, and when it did not get any better, I went back in for a recheck, and… sure enough, there was a screw-up at the lab and they had put my OLD prescription in my left lens. I guess they assumed that the radical shift in my prescription (because of the surgery) should be in the NEGATIVE direction, rather than the positive, so they assumed the more powerful correction measurement was the one they should put in.
This. This alone was an unacceptable screw-up, but I could roll with it.
Now that it was January, my dead-beat vision insurance would actually pay for a new pair of glasses. And heck, I might as well get the progressive lenses that would help with reading. So I asked my doctor to refund me for the useless glasses and submit a fresh order for a new pair with the upgraded lenses, to which the money the lab essentially stole from me would then go. Apparently, the progressive lenses would cost significantly more than standard lenses, so I ended up with like a $150 net refund from the not insubstantial amount of money I spent in December. Which is, of course, bullshit, and my insurance should have covered the glasses 100%, but you know, health insurance sucks, so…
Regardless, I got my new prescription on Monday, January 6, and because their office manager was out of the office that week, it took a couple days to agree on what order we wanted to send (and all that payment info above) by January 9. They also had to do another measurement, which they didn’t tell me about until later that week before they could sent out the order, I came in Thursday that week, had a 2min measurement done, and then they would have to wait until the following Monday because the mail had already gone out that week, and they weren’t open on Friday, y’know, fine, whatever. So the order went out January 13.
And like I said, glasses typically take two weeks to be delivered. Possibly a little longer this time, because they’re complex and powerful and whatever, fine, I can wait three weeks. Sure.
It is now February 20, and my glasses are STILL not ready.
February 20. That’s going on SIX weeks from when I ordered my new glasses.
Apparently, the lab shipped my glasses to my eye doctor, and they’re going to email when they’re validated. Which, considering what happened last time, fair enough–my doctor doesn’t want to give me the wrong thing again. But unless that validation is complete TODAY and I can pick up the glasses TODAY, then because my doctor’s office isn’t open on Fridays, I won’t be able to pick them up until Monday.
Monday will be six weeks since the order went out. Seven weeks since we discovered the lab’s screw up. TWO AND A HALF MONTHS since my new prescription. THREE AND A HALF MONTHS since my eye was ostensibly fixed. More than a YEAR AND A HALF since my eye could see clearly.
I have literally not been able to see properly, either near or at a distance, since at least 2023.
There were times during this process when I despaired. There were times during this process when I worried I would have a car accident because while I could drive with one eye (my right), I wasn’t fully accustomed to doing so. There were times when I wondered if we should just cut out my left eye and be done with it.
The health insurance situation in this country needs to change. Not only is it a HELL of an inconvenience and a potential danger, but what happens when I finally DO get my glasses, and my eye(s) have degraded because they spent MONTHS uncorrected?
I’m also going to find out what lab my eye doctor uses so I can *never patronize them in any way, ever again.* Might file a formal complaint. We’ll see.
And I know medical professionals aren’t perfect, but it’d kinda be nice if AT LEAST they could put a rush on fixing their mistakes.
With my very adventurous wife out of the country, chilling with gorillas and lions in Africa, I took myself on a valentine’s date to see Captain America: Brave New World. 🙂
This poster really makes Esposito look like a major threat, doesn’t it?
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I *definitely* did not expect “in this movie, we’re going to resolve some loose ends from The Incredible Hulk (2008).” And yet…
Anyway, I mostly loved it. It’s kind of in the same vein as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, hitting a number of the same beats. Government corruption, diplomatic/international incidents, a brain-washed ally whose innocence needs to be proven, appeals to empathy are the solution, etc.
Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson is a worthy heir to Steve Roger’s legacy as Captain America, and it’s clear that while he operates in a very DIFFERENT manner, he is no less EFFECTIVE at the job. He’s actually STRONGER than Steve in certain regards: his empathy is higher, his stake in this world is greater, and he’s much more invested in those around him. I am happy to watch this Captain America.
Sam and Thunderbolt Ross (now the president) are like Steve and Fury in The Winter Soldier: uneasy allies, rivals, and two different philosophies. And just like that first time, Captain America has to go off the grid to do what’s right.
Sam and Ross have an excellent arc together
Harrison Ford brings some real gravitas to Thunderbolt Ross, and his performance is great. Cap’s sidekick Joaquin is pretty solid as a scrappy and somewhat reckless techy Miami kid trying to prove himself. And who wouldn’t want to watch Carl Lumbly whenever possible?
Giancarlo Esposito had a glorified cameo in the movie, but it was still good. I’m always here for casting that manny.
I hadn’t been following the controversy about the movie, so for me, Ruth Bat-Seraph was an unexpected addition. In the comics, that character is the controversial Sabra, and she’s basically Captain Israel, and they softened both her character and her allegiance. Here, she’s a former Black Widow who happens to be Israeli. I didn’t see any use of her forename from the comics. There are basically no other markers of her original character. Her height (she’s very short, like, 5’0” maybe? 4’10”?) was a bit distracting, but since I’m a giant, I have no room to talk.
I also appreciated that the characters really feel like superheroes. They’re trying to minimize loss of life, they don’t kill the baddies if they can avoid it, etc.
All in all, pretty solid. 8 of 10.
Did y’all think I was kidding about my wife being in the jungle with gorillas, btw? She sent me this pic. She’s basically a superhero in real life.
Worldswalker 