First, I apologize if you are getting this update twice.

I’ve been out of touch with Inkshares for a few days and thought I’d give my followers an update. A week ago I ran a Spartan Sprint. The heat index was over 100 and the event was held on a ski resort. It was…challenging (?). Character building. An experience I can draw on for future stories and obstacles. Ok, it was just hard. Although on the plus side most of the places on my legs I tore skin off are healing.

The next day I left for the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) conference. There are always things there that inspire me and remind me why I do my full time job. The main plenary speaker was Lisa Jackson, Apple VP of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, and former Administrator of the EPA. The takeaway from that was helping students find ways to be engineers without having to sacrifice who they are.

And I suppose I should mention the conference was in New Orleans, a very cool place to get inspired for new story ideas. The French Quarter, St. Louis Cemetery #1, Lafayette Cemetery, the Garden District (yes, walked past the Anne Rice house). Also spent some time with my wife looking at local artists’ work and stopping through some galleries. Some very interesting work by both street and gallery artists.

And while none of this seems to directly relate to the science fiction worlds of Fortunes of the Space Sloth or Stage Clear I believe all experiences are valuable. We’ll just have to see where these end up taking me. Now…back to the stars. 

First, I apologize if you are getting this update twice.

I’ve been out of touch with Inkshares for a few days and thought I’d give my followers an update. A week ago I ran a Spartan Sprint. The heat index was over 100 and the event was held on a ski resort. It was…challenging (?). Character building. An experience I can draw on for future stories and obstacles. Ok, it was just hard. Although on the plus side most of the places on my legs I tore skin off are healing.

The next day I left for the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) conference. There are always things there that inspire me and remind me why I do my full time job. The main plenary speaker was Lisa Jackson, Apple VP of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, and former Administrator of the EPA. The takeaway from that was helping students find ways to be engineers without having to sacrifice who they are.

And I suppose I should mention the conference was in New Orleans, a very cool place to get inspired for new story ideas. The French Quarter, St. Louis Cemetery #1, Lafayette Cemetery, the Garden District (yes, walked past the Anne Rice house). Also spent some time with my wife looking at local artists’ work and stopping through some galleries. Some very interesting work by both street and gallery artists.

And while none of this seems to directly relate to the science fiction worlds of Fortunes of the Space Sloth or Stage Clear I believe all experiences are valuable. We’ll just have to see where these end up taking me. Now…back to the stars. 

Greetings Squad!

As one of the top ten in the Video Game contest I was asked to answer two questions for the Inkshares/Nerdist blog. I’ve been waiting to send out this update until that posted because I wanted to talk a little bit more about it.

The questions were “What was the first video game whose narrative captured your imagination?” and “How has the introduction of literary elements…improved video gaming?”.  You can find my answers in the requested 200 words or less on the blog at http://blog.inkshares.com/

If you’ll indulge me what I want to do here is use a few more words to talk about the games that came before “narrative”. I put that word in quotes because I think there are different types of narrative. There is the story in the game and there is the story OF the game. I think the narrative of the early games was actually behind the scenes, in the making of the games.

When I started writing “Stage Clear” my inspiration was the limited storylines (i.e. Invaders from Space!) and the mechanics of the gameplay. What I’ve ended up with is something much more though. I realized that more than anything my story has been shaped by the people, the technology, and changes in the video game industry during its first two decades. While the book is science fiction its plot elements are inspired by video game history. And I think that’s kind of cool.

I’m not sure what sub-genre that would be though. It doesn’t match the Goodreads definition of historical science fiction. Historically inspired science fiction? Recent history inspired plot science fiction? RHIPSF? Hmm, gonna have to work on that…

PT