Breaking Addictions

If you've seen my previous post about quitting smoking, I make something of a hobby of breaking addictions. I am now 15 years without cigarettes, 6 years without Coca-Cola.

Now I am one month without chocolate, and it has been teeeerrrrriiiiibbbbbllllleeeeee. The other day, I was buying some ice cream and realized, I can't have chocolate ice cream. I can't have a chocolate eclair. I can't even have a chocolate donut. Never mind the dark chocolate that I love. I have given it all up.

Why? For years I have had this pain in my right side. When it first appeared, a doctor checked me for gall stones and liver disease and there was nothing there. But the pain was always there, sometimes bad, sometimes not, but always there. About a month ago, I had the idea that maybe it was something I was eating.

What is the one thing that I eat every day? After thinking about it for a long time, I realized that the only thing I ate every day, or almost every day, was chocolate. As an experiment, I quit eating chocolate. After about a week the pain in my side went away. I still get twinges, but for the most part it is gone. I also feel better overall.

But dear God in heaven, why did it have to be chocolate?

Across World Bubbles - Dragonlance/Nehwon Crossover Fan Fiction

I've just posted the first part of a Dragonlance/Nehwon crossover fan fiction story I wrote almost 16 years ago. Do take a look.

The rejection letter for this story, which I still have, is dated February 28, 1994. Why do I still have it? Because it was the first rejection letter I ever received in which I got a hint that a story of mine, under different circumstances, might have been published. It reads, "TSR doesn't own the rights to Fritz Leiber's characters for new fiction, only for games. The resulting legal hassle (sadly) makes the story unpublishable."


Sadly, it says. Isn't it amazing how one kind word can inspire a frustrated author to keep trying? Later that year, the same editor bought an adventure of mine for publication in Dungeon magazine, and thus my writing career heaved itself up from the unappreciated muck and shouted to the impersonal heavens, You like me! You really do like me!

hey doorknobs, how about some dragonlance fan fiction?

Before I became a Dragonlance author, I was a Dragonlance fan fiction author. Back then, there weren't any websites for fan fiction and we carved our stories on stone tablets and left them in temples for monks to copy and illuminate.

I've just posted one of my first Dragonlance fan fiction stories, written in the early 90s. It's about one of our most favorite characters - Tasslehoff Burrfoot. I think it captures the pre-Summer Flame innocence of the world of Krynn. If you're a Dragonlance fan, I think you'll like it. Go take a gander. Just make sure you put it back when you're done, or the geese will be sore.

Legally Dead


BTW, I have another bit of fan fiction I will be posting soon. It's a Dragonlance-Nehwon crossover once again involving that incorrigible kender, Tasslehoff.

so let it be done

Now that I am finally finished writing The Sword of the Prophet, I've been doing some of the administrative work today, trying to recall everything that went into the writing of it. So here are some facts.

The current word count is 124,500, 71 chapters, 432 MS Word pages in 12-point double-spaced font. That will change with revisions, but it gives you some idea of the size of this work.

I got the original idea for this story many years ago. I don't remember the exact year, but do know the exact circumstances. Dungeons and Dragons 3.0 was in beta and I was a beta-tester DM. I began to design an adventure that gave birth to the idea for this story, and to one of its main characters - Paragon d'Ironwood. I queried Dungeon magazine with the adventure and they were interested in seeing the full treatment, but alas I never finished writing it.

Some time later I met Jolly Blackburn at a convention and he told me the Kingdoms of Kalamar people were interested in doing a Kalamar novel, so I wrote out the adventure idea as a novel outline, set in Kalamar. That never went anywhere, so I decided to reset the novel during the Crusader period of earth.

But instead of writing the novel, I wrote a screenplay that came out at a whopping 180 pages long. So I cut it down, eliminated some characters, and submitted it to the Bluecat competition, where it received a very favorable review and some excellent pointers on ways to improve the plot.

In 2006, I began writing the novel based on the screenplay. Then I stopped and wrote a different novel. In 2007 I picked it up again, then stopped and wrote a different novel. Then I rewrote the 2006 novel, then in 2008 I rewrote the 2007 novel. Finally I picked it up again in 2009 and have been working on it unsteadily since about April.

This is not only the longest novel I've ever written, it has taken me longer to write than any novel I've ever written. Hopefully the next one will come a little quicker. Now comes the editing - after I've had a break from it.

do I have shit on my nose?

Reading agent blogs is usually quite enlightening. You get into the mind of the agent to find out what they really think, and that can help (I suppose) to finally land that particular agent for your novel. Grain of salt alert - what one agent proclaims as law may not be what another agent believes at all. Improve your situational awareness before rolling in on your target.

But reading the comment sections of agent blogs is usually an embarrassing tour through the museum of total ass-suckery. Two recent examples of advanced salad tossing evolutions here and here. It really is enough to make you ashamed of the human race.

so let it be written

Just finished writing my magnum opus, the greatest work of heroic fiction I have ever attempted - a 125,000 word epic called The Sword of the Prophet. This novel has been years in the making and I have just written its last word.

More on this tomorrow. For now, I am utterly unspooled. Must find bed.

Happy Birthday, Bilbo and Frodo

I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Dan Brown Attic Again

So after ripping off Baigent and Leigh's Holy Blood, Holy Grail to write The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown is back, ripping off Baigent and Leigh's The Temple and the Lodge to write The Lost Symbol.

Seriously, though, Baigent and Leigh published their books as nonfiction, therefore any fiction based on it is fair game, just as I can write a science fiction based on science research or fantasy based on archaelogical or historical research.

However, if Baigent and Leigh had admitted their work was fictional in nature rather than scholarly, who could honestly say that Dan Brown didn't steal all their best ideas? And he's still doing it.

Dan, thy name is R.F.Chutzpah.

behold! the week of cats

On the first day, there was an itch. It was scratched, and it was good.

On the second day, there was the stalking of bare feet. And it was good.

On the third day, there were cats in the laundry. And it was good.

On the fourth day, they moved to the ironing board and pretended to be sphinxes. This, too, was good.

On the fifth day, they relocated to the underwear drawer. And it was good, though not so good as the ironing board.

On the sixth day, there was smugness. And it was very good.

On the seventh day, they rested. Verily, unto the noon.

False Advertising

If you have the Yahoo toolbar on your browser, have you noticed lately that it says you have new emails waiting when you actually don't?


At first I thought it was just a bug. But after clicking on it a dozen times or so and finding no new email messages, it finally dawned on me what Yahoo is doing.

They're driving traffic and spinning their hit counters. The toolbar equivalent of phishing.

I wonder if Yahoo's advertisers realize they're paying for empty clicks.