Next week is a big one folks!

Not only will I have the conclusion to all of my exams from this semester of school, but The Phoenix Fallacy Book 2 will also be releasing on Thursday.  There’s a lot going on around here, but so far things have been going well.  My cover artist, Roman Mindek – who created the first cover – is making a final push to get the art together, and then I’ll be shipping the work over to Thea Kennedy to get the cover lettering and polish together.  It’s a tight schedule, but I think I’m just going to squeak by!  I’ll post the cover here as soon as possible, and post the map soon after.

As far as school goes, I’ve got finals this week, as well as the test run for our team’s robotic car...

Hey folks,

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  Mine was a mixture of mad-scramble and occasionally being a bit more lazy than I should have.  As some of you know, I didn’t end up travelling home this year, which marks it as the first time I haven’t spent the holiday with my family.

Fortunately for me, I’ve met plenty of wonderful people up here in Seattle, and a few of them were kind enough to invite me over to join them!  I ended up eating Thanksgiving dinner with the family of one of my project teammates.  It was a great meal, with delicious homemade fixings and a truly memorable apple pie at the end to finish it off!  All of it was made from scratch, which makes the feat of cooking it all even more impressive.  Many thanks to the Street family for the wonderful meal.

Wh...

Hey folks,

Things are coming down to the wire now, both for my book and my school projects.  On the book front, I’ve seen several covers so far, and although the final isn’t quite ready yet, I should have a version in the next week or so.  While I’ve been waiting for that, and when I haven’t been directly editing, I’ve been adding some extra content to Book II.  This includes a brand new appendix with some extra lore for those who really love to dive in, and some resources for those who want to be able to flip to the back for a quick refresher at any moment.  Early signs suggest it really helps out and adds to the quality of the read, so I’m pretty excited about showing all of that soon.

On the school front, we had our Alpha presentations this week, and overall, it went pretty well...

Hey Everyone,

As I said last week, it’s been super busy the past month, and I’ve spent a great deal of time working on school projects.  I’m loving the work, but it’s resulted in some really long hours.

Fortunately, I’ve still managed to have some fun outside the school here and there.  On Halloween, I had a chance to catch up with my Aunt Shelly and Uncle Jay, who were staying in Seattle.  They were kind enough to take me to a fantastic restaurant called “The Brooklyn Seafood, Steak, and Oyster House”.

The food was delicious!  Oh, and it was great to see them too! : )

We had a wonderful time catching up and trying different dishes.  Unfortunately, my phone was dying by the time I remembered to take a picture, so I don’t have any photos of the food...

Hey folks,

The past few days have been really busy.  I’ve been working on my GAM100 project Robo Knight Rusty all week and had a major feature presentation on Friday.  I’ll fill in the details on that next time, but for now I wanted to say a belated Happy Halloween to everyone!

Next week should be a little less rushed, so I’ll see you then!

Hey Folks!

I don’t know about you, but the last week went by extremely quickly.  Maybe it’s my self-imposed deadline with the book closing in, or the fact that my game project just seems to be moving up faster and faster, but the days are really short right now.

Of course, it might have to do with the fact that the days themselves are literally getting shorter, too.

I’ve never lived in an area that had a true ‘Fall’ season before, so seeing the colors change here in Redmond has been pretty remarkable.  Funny enough, I didn’t even notice the change happening at first.  As a testament to at least my nature (if not human nature), I spent every day of the last week riding back and forth to school and apparently never looked up.

Just by accident as I was riding one morning, I adjusted my hel...

Hi again, folks!

The past week has been pretty action packed, and the semester is only getting busier.  We’re in the middle of midterms, and starting the really intense phase of the courses. I’m now learning Assembly (essentially, the language that we actually use to talk to computers, that the computer then translate into the binary language), and all of my courses have really stepped up their workloads.

Fortunately, I’ve still found time to have some fun now and then.

Last week saw the campus-wide game of Outbreak take over the school.

Official ‘Outbreak’ Poster – all credit to DigiPen and its artists!

Outbreak is essentially glorified zombie tag, but it’s a big event here every October.  So much so it’s not uncommon to see people planning their days and class events around it.

The gam...

Hey loyal readers!

It’s time for a book sales update, with some of the major lessons I’ve learned from the past month.  First off, let me give you some straight sales numbers:

– Last month (September), I sold just over 500 books.  Amazon has a delay in releasing the exact numbers, so I have to use my own tracking (which has a couple weaknesses I will get to in a moment).

– Amazon Prime members borrowed 12 books, which means they get to read it for free through my participation in the program (more on this in a moment, as well).

– 6 people returned the book (this number was already factored into my total sold above).  Why on earth would any return such an awesome book, you ask?  All I know is, there are a lot of strange people out there, my friends.

Now onto the juicier details, includi...

Hey folks,

This week ended up being even busier than anticipated with the start of our group project at school, so that’s why I’ve had such a delay with my post.

I’ve been meeting a bunch of people at school, and fortunately, was able to find a group for a game team really quickly.  The team project makes up the majority of our grade in our GAM100 (project) class that we have this semester, so it’s important to quickly establish a rapport and get started.  Since we’re all still so raw in terms of programming ability, GAM class is more about team development, communication, and cohesion than anything else.

Of course, we still have to make a fun game.

As part of the process, however, we all had to transfer our GAM100 class into the same section so we could present together, work together d...

Hey readers and members of ODIN’s army!

I just wanted to give a quick update on Book II release progress.  Despite the heavy workload from school, I think we’re still going to make the October release window.

I made some good progress this weekend on edits, and I’ve got my original cover artist hard at work on a new cover.  The cover should be ready in early October, and so I think it will be possible to get a final version by late in the month and prepare the book for release.  There’s still plenty to do, and school is definitely pushing it to the limit, but you can bet I’ll be putting in the overtime to get the book out the door.

My goal is to have a sales update on Book I by the end of the month...