Get some poetry in your Thursday, AKA the opening lines off TS Eliot’s Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock: Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats 1/2

This week in “apparently old guy hurts himself” - Juno, our little dog that sleeps in the bed, appeared (false alarm) to be puking. In my effort to take her off the bed I almost dropped her and could only compensate by instead falling off the bed myself. Fun fact: I walk with a small limp now.

Get some poetry in your Saturday

I’m embracing my ADD and working on 4 writing projects at once. Will this be the new paradigm or will it be a burning failure and huge waste of time?

The simplest answer to the Fermi Paradox is simply that there is no paradox.

Thanksgiving was good this year. Hung with family and met my brand new niece. Babies really are something, aren’t they?

Unboxed Neon Citadel ARCs today - the cover looks even cooler in person 💖

My third book, Neon Citadel, is now available for pre-order!! Want to support an amazing small press called Spaceboy Books, or a small-time author with big dreams? Please consider spreading the word to folks you know who might love cyberpunk/fantasy fusion. readspaceboy.com/portfolio/ne...

Of all the unhinged things happening in the current era, the casual revelation that UFOs are real and the completely indifferent response of the public might be the most unhinged.

My current phase of old age is: “excited when I remember which cabinet the plates are in on the first try.”

They may take our lives but they’ll never take our em dashes! Who’s with me?!?!

I’ve been logged into my laptop for 3 minutes and Microsoft has already advertised to me twice. Which circle of hell is things we bought and own advertising to us?

Sometimes life is a parade of rejections

Footage of me trying to decide whether to continue work on my current WIP or follow my heart this month and start working on an epic fantasy series.

Very overdue, but here is my review of @moewanders.bsky.social's amazing book, The Winds of War. A wonderful gem and an absolutely stellar show for an indie book (and yes, comparisons that readers are making to GRRM's ASoIaF are very apt!) zenandblade.wordpress.com/2025/11/15/b...

Used car salesman voice: But don’t take it from me, take it from the lead writer of hit video game Helldivers 2. “…Open your heart to the darkness and let in the grit–I know I did, and I don’t regret it one bit.” — Russ Nickel, lead writer of Helldivers 2

My third book, Neon Citadel, is now available for pre-order!! Want to support an amazing small press called Spaceboy Books, or a small-time author with big dreams? Please consider spreading the word to folks you know who might love cyberpunk/fantasy fusion. readspaceboy.com/portfolio/ne...

Love love Nnedi Okorafor’s Noor! No idea what it captures about “the female experience” but it’s an incredible sci fi work with amazing world building…

#bookvember 2 - I talked about it a little already, but the first book I remember falling in love with is Salamandastron, of the Redwall series by Jacques. The drama, the warfare (brutal for a kid’s book!), and Lord Urthstripe’s valiant death prepped me for a lifetime love affair with reading.

Hello #Bookvember - I’m a sucker for a hashtag and an excuse to talk about myself, what can I say. I was a reader from a young age but really fell in love with it when I read Salamandastron by the late great Brian Jacques.

Just finished a dark cyberpunk short story I was writing, set in New Orleans’ last days as the flood waters rise that will never fall… and somehow ended with a tentatively hopeful solarpunk ending?

This is the life cycle of capitalism. Tech industry just speed-ran it.

Less than a full minute after declaring that I’m pretty sure my injured back is on the mend, I feel the tingling of light referred neuropathy in my left leg. This getting old thing is no joke.

A part of me is still waiting for that “final straw” moment where everyday American Republicans say en masse “okay, he’s gone too far this time.” He’ll be waiting forever, I suppose.

When my poetry/short story submissions get over 10 and I can’t stop compulsively checking my email 😭

This week my fridge died and I apparently threw out my back? I’ll probably win the lottery next week right?

In honor of the pending cover reveal for Neon Citadel, here is a pic from when my wife helped me get a pop socket for my phone using the cover design from prequel Cold Wind Blowing…

Hello current administration, I would love to have some more anxiety but I’m currently all full up. Maybe you could take a couple days off of being in the news cycle for being terrible?

Happy 10 year acceptance-iversary to my story “the Mother’s Fury,” which was accepted for publication in Space and Time magazine in Sept 2015. This story was rejected 13 times before finding its home the 14th. A friendly reminder, in other words, for writers to forge ahead through rejection.

It’s 3:30 AM and my wife is asleep and I need SOMEONE to know that the universe just pranked me. Taking my dogs out because Zelda had to pee, and when I closed the sliding door behind me, there was a slug on the INSIDE of the handle, so that I couldn’t see it until after it clung to my finger. 🤬

A novel project from among the 7 has risen to “should finish” status. 20k words in on untitled work “grimdark cyberpunk apocalypse,” which I guess means I have a type 😭

Me out here every day trying to decide if today’s news is bad enough to get involved and risk my mental health.

I’ve been thinking about this for a very long time. I come from the school of “push through it,” but it’s clear to me in my older age that I have some neuro-divergent diagnoses lurking within. I’m a bit scared to pursue official diagnoses. Any 30+ adults with experience - good or bad - to share?

Let’s talk about 18 year old Matthew Silverstone, who was killed by a white supremacist child (radicalized by the likes of Charlie Kirk) on that same Wednesday. Let’s mourn him and give him all our social media oxygen instead.

So basically it’s our job now to forget him as fast as the right forgets every assassinated school child

It doesn’t matter who shot him or how much we abhor violence. Men who instigate violence for personal gain and then become subject to that violence themselves are NOT martyrs.

Hi! I released an album and it would mean the world to me if you gave it a listen and followed me on your favorite music platform of choice. open.spotify.com/album/35bq4q...

Well, after a three day road trip from Maine to Missouri, one thing is clear: we live on a giant, beautiful piece of land. We’re lucky to have it, from the coast of Maine to the hills of PA to the sunset on the plains of MO. We need to be better stewards.

I think I have mentally started 3 separate novels on this road trip. Should I go high fantasy or space opera with my next book? I can’t decide 😭

So I often get restless legs and or weird night anxiety and can’t sleep. Among the perks of being in Maine is the ability to go down to the dock and enjoy stars. Snapped a couple phone picks an hour before dawn. Pretty sure the bright one is Venus, and you can see Orion near the tree.

Getting ready to play my first round of golf in a year - I am terrible and this will be terrible, but the Belgrade Lakes course in Maine is incredibly beautiful so it’s all worthwhile.

It is Day 3 of The Suffering after I slept on my shoulder wrong 😑. I’m only 40 but does this qualify me for an early access AARP card?

There comes a time… in every man’s life… when he receives significant injury to his person… because he slept funny.

I’ve been editing short stories of old and working on a new one after almost 10 years out of the game. Is it normal now for half the pro-paying magazines to be almost never accepting submissions? It feels like something seismic has changed while I wasn’t looking at these markets….

You can take my em dash out of my cold dead hands

The greatest tongue in the universe

Today is the beginning of the weekend, a time for relaxing and recharging and RUSHING TO CRAM AS MUCH IN AS POSSIBLE BEFORE MONDAY.

Welp, thanks to Romantasy for finally getting Barnes and Noble to put science fiction and fantasy on their own shelves

One of the perks of being on a lake: when the dog has an urgent 5 am bathroom outing, it comes with incredible views.

Road trip night 2: there is no room for Greg at the inn.