About the Author 4: Publications

GAMING
WorldWorks Games:
"Dinas Ffordd: The Seeds of War" Adventure Module
"Coins of the Realm", "A Maiden's 20", "Citizens of Himmelveil" gaming supplements

Steve Jackson Games:
"General George Armstrong Custer" — GURPS Who’s Who
“A Long, Strange Trip: Scenes from the Life of a Weirdness Magnet” — Pyramid Magazine

Shark Bytes/Shark Nibbles Magazine:
“Casting Without the Cape: Spells from Superpowers”
“On Bows: Savage-style Bows and Arrows”
“No Dumping: Interesting Charisma Effects for Savage Worlds”
“Savage Traps” (co-author)

Inside Mac Games:
“A Spoiler-Free Cure for Fear of MYST”
“A Beginner's Guide to Tony Hawk 2”

Fan work:
Advanced Dungeons & Savages: AD&D in Savage form


FREELANCE JOURNALISM
The Onion
“Hook Brings It Back” – Interview with Chef Barton Seaver
Capsule dining reviews: Dino, Jackie’s, Le Paradou, Minibar at Café Atlantico

Washington Life Magazine
“The Complexity of Spike Lee” – July 2008

The Washington Times
Party Lines society column:

• "Brass, Beauty Celebrate Youth Program Graduates" – February 2008
  
• "Jeté Society Shakes & Stirs" – January 2008
  
• “Best Buddies Celebrate at Shriver Estate” – October 2007
• “Curtain Rises on Long-Awaited Bethesda Theatre” – October 2007
• “Goals Accomplished at Smithsonian Polo Match” –September 2007
• “NFL Gala honors players for off-field behavior” –April 2007

CD review: Velvet Revolver, Libertad – July 2007

DC STYLE Magazine
“Anthony Bourdain on How I Learned to Cook” – Special interview
“Spring Harvest: Restaurant Openings You Shouldn’t Miss” – Web special, 2007
“DC’s Ten Hottest Chefs” – Cover article, Winter 2006
“Sonic Secrets: DC’s specialty record stores stock hard-to-find music” – Winter 2006
“Be Your Own Brewmaster” – Winter 2006
“Listen Locally: Washington bands to watch” – Spring 2006
“Live Dives: Where to get your rock up close and personal” – Spring 2006
“Places We Drink: Domku” – Spring 2006
"Dining Guide" restaurant reviews


MUSIC
Mr. Joel's DC Shows List – Bimonthly list of recommended small-club concerts to see in the DC area, June 2002 through January 2008. 12,500+ hits monthly.

Creator and booking agent, "Music Underground" concert series, 2006 – present

CD reviewer, Big Yawn, 2004 – 2007

Contributing Editor, On Tap Magazine, 2005-2008. Selected articles:

• Mr. Joel’s Music Picks – December 2004 to present
• Four Play: Local artists that should be on your radar – December 2006 to present
• Venue Spotlight – January 2006 to January 2007
• “A Dam Good Time: The District’s Awake! Music Festival” – October 2007
• Neighborhood Focus: Silver Spring – July 2007
• “Slick with a Brush: A Rock n Roll Survivor Turns Visual Artist” (Grace Slick) – January 2007
• “Mountain of Fun: Local TV Show Celebrates Rock’s Next Generation” – January 2007
• “The Homes of Rock: House concerts in DC” – August 2006
• “Women of DC Music” – Profiles of Jenny Toomey, Alice Despard, Beth Baldwin and Amy Domingues, July 2006
• Interview: The Old Ceremony – January 2006
• Interview: Andrew Bird – November 2005 (music issue)
• Interview: Karl Straub – November 2005
• Interview: Pagoda – November 2005
• Quickie: The Evens – November 2005
• Quickie: Exit Clov – November 2005
• On the Spot with OK Go – August 2005

ADVERTISING & PUBLIC RELATIONS
Freelance writer, Cenarios Public Relations, 2003-2007
Freelance writer, 3I Ltd., 2005
Contract web author, National Institutes of Health, 2001-2005
Senior Consultant, Reingold Public Relations, 2002-2003
Freelance writer, Fahey-Davidson Advertising, 1999-2002


TECHNOLOGY
“Toppling the Information Monopolies” — Keynote for James Burke of Connections

Government Computer News Magazine

iDefense.com (VeriSign)

About the Author 3: Dicemonkey!

I had some friends from England who were always bringing new nerdly things into my life, like Doctor Who, Flanders & Swann, and those little coloring books where every page was covered with tiny interlocking diamonds. In about 1977 they introduced me to a generic version of Dungeons & Dragons, played entirely without books or dice. The "Dungeon Master" drew up a series of traps and treasures, and each player had a penciled sheet that looked something like this:

LEADER
Sword, Shield

That was all you got, and a game took maybe half an hour, with a high casualty rate.

In '79 I joined an after-school "D&D Club" and bought my own Player's Handbook. I was 12 and not a serious player. But when I got my mitts on the Dungeon Masters Guide, it was all over. The idea that I could codify my own world, and other people would then sit down and enjoy it, instantly became the most powerful addictive experience of my young life.

The amount of time that I've sunk into gaming in the intervening decades dazzles me. As the answer to a Fermi question, I'd say 10,000 hours; the actual number is probably more. Even when I'm not actively gaming, it seems to be kind of like herpes, in that it could break out again at any time. And for me it's been, always, a writerly experience: immersive, expressive, personal, obsessive, and narrative.

In my late 20s I finally got around to writing some gaming material for actual payment, starting with a big fat $50 check from PYRAMID, the Steve Jackson Games newsletter, and most recently with my module and other writing for WorldWorks Games. It's nice to be a pro, but for me, gaming is really just part of being a writer.

About the Author 2: Crazy from the start

Long before writing novels or creating game worlds, let alone blogs, I still had that unfortunate kink of personality that requires me to make something, and worse, to direct my creation at someone and elicit a response. On many a show-and-tell day, the teacher had to turn off the lights so I could display a shoebox robot studded with glowing Lite-Brite pegs; Hallowe'en always meant another homemade, last second costume that required explanation at every door.

My poor younger brothers naturally qualified as the handiest captive audience. For our otherwise normal games running around the backyard or in the neighborhood, I had to make a book of rules and blueprints, secret hand signs, a logo, and a system of fireworks for emergency signaling. The middle brother, JT, lost his eyebrows to a slow-burning flare, his unenviable task being to alert the rest of us to dinnertime. He also had to drink water with batteries soaked in it, which I was sure would give us superpowers. Our father was not happy to find us adding that "secret formula" to the car's gas tank. Likewise when the water bucket trap on the door to the garage caught him instead of my brother; that was a mistake. Somehow I escaped most of the blame when I told JT that pickle juice would burn, gave him a huge glass jar of pickles and some matches, and was far away by the time he dropped the jar and covered the garage floor with pickles and shards.

The youngest brother was the real gift: a blank mind that I could manipulate at will. Together with a friend I built a table-sized UFO from scrap paneling, paint, a Battleship set and a flashlight. We told the five-year-old that we'd heard about UFO sightings on the radio, then together we "discovered" the glowing ship in the yard. I think he was truly awed. Many times we put him in a cardboard box "spaceship" which would take off (we shook the box and roared), fly to the moon, orbit, and return. Once, to better simulate takeoff, I decided to use fireworks. I taped a large "screamer" rocket to some BBQ tongs and lit the thing. As we were set up in the basement, the noise and smoke were considerable. JT ran away -- maybe he learned more than I did from the eyebrow incident.

I also figured out a way to turn sparklers into fireballs, but I don't want this to become a how-to for the risk-prone child of today.

Trash-can robots, "special reports" recorded on cassette and supposedly playing on the radio, secret doors cut through the drywall -- I suppose other kids were playing sports or learning to talk to the opposite sex, but for me every free day was a chance to weave a fantasy story out of the props of real life. With a pillow under my shirt, a giant PP logo taped on the front, a towel for a cape, and a wig and sunglasses, I became the Phantom Phatty, a superhero who swooped into view, posed and declaimed, then fled to keep his identity hidden from his little-kid fans.

I painted one wall of my bedroom with an eight-by-ten foot mural of the moon landing, complete with unlikely mountain peaks and metallic gold paint on the parts of the LEM that I knew to be covered in foil. I touched up the stars with glow-in-the-dark paint; soon the constellations spread to the plain walls and ceiling as well. When my parents had adult friends over, I'd offer to show them my room, then I'd prep the walls by shining a black light bulb directly on the stars for a few minutes. My poor mother would have to lead her friends in with their eyes closed; once I got the door shut and all the lights off, we had the big "reveal". Maybe they were just being nice, but I think it was actually impressive, if perhaps in an eccentric way.

JT got an undersea mural on his bedroom wall, so I nabbed some of the leftover paint to camouflage my "spy camera": a plastic box with a fake lens made from a model car's hubcap. I'd sneak in and stick that high on his wall with double-sided tape. He'd find it, yank it down, and throw it at me while I explained how we'd been monitoring his activities. Later I'd sneak it back into a new spot.

A friend and I wrote long sci-fi "radio shows" and recorded them; made comic books about computers and aliens; worked our way through the library. (Greatest short story title ever: "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones"!) I'd been writing poems and micro-stories since about age 5; in adolescence I expanded to short stories and started various longer works, all science fiction in imitation of what I read.

I got into model rockets, and quickly lost patience with the finicky balsawood fins, let alone paint and decals. Instead I experimented with ways to ignite the little gunpowder engines, then inserted them into any number of inappropriate objects that, who knows, might possibly fly. My favorite trick was to put an engine in the socket of a flex-neck lamp, which could then be aimed with some precision; I'd launch by flipping on a wall switch, and the missile flew in a very satisfying arc of smoke into our much-abused yard. Attaching engines to a big styrofoam glider met with less success, as did tying a small rocket to a spool of thread so we could be sure to find it later. That one went up a good ten feet before the thread got snagged, whereupon the still-firing rocket whipped around on its tether like the tentacle of a dying sea-monster.

The old neighborhood spy games evolved into a nightly ritual: a neighbor kid and I had to take a particular path through various yards and cut-throughs, up to the elementary school flagpole and back, all without being seen. Crouched in the bushes we observed, or imagined, peculiar patterns in the traffic, and inferred the existence of some kind of neighborhood watch patrol. If there was one, it probably started because people saw our shadowy forms darting through the undergrowth at night.

About the Author 1: Background

I was 10 when "Star Wars" came out, and unlike many fans I had already consumed as much science fiction as I could find: the three holy names quoted by Martin Prince on the Simpsons ("Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke!"), plus whatever the local library had, and even the Tom Swift books. (Greatest book title ever: Tom Swift and his Triphibian Atomicar!) In the wake of the adrenaline speed rush of "Episode IV", I ate up everything in reach: John Christopher, Andrea Norton, Doctor Who and Star Trek, and all the TV junk food like Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica.

I was an early subscriber to StarLog and Omni, later followed by Analog, home of some great short stories in those days; I also scoured through collections of Hugo and Nebula winners. In my early teens, Larry Niven opened my eyes to a new, ambitious vision of hard sci-fi, followed by high adventure with Edgar Rice Burroughs and Philip Jose Farmer. Right on schedule I flipped out about Hitchhiker's, worked through brief flirtations with Piers Anthony and Robert Aspirin, slogged through Stephen R. Donaldson, read and re-read John Varley, and dabbled on the dark, sticky shores of Philip K. Dick's fevered mind. In college I watched "Blade Runner" about 15 times, and found Vernor Vinge, the great Tim Powers, and finally the true master, Jack Vance, lord of the language. Neuromancer may have changed a lot of rules, and I still read everything Gibson writes, but for readers who love words, Vance remains the master.

In adulthood I've read more widely outside F/SF, but I continue to believe in the power of genre fiction. To me, sharp observations concisely inserted into an exciting narrative can have not only a reach, but an intensity, often lacking from the dilated musings of more "serious" works. That's what I try to do in my own writing, including Ordobat's Folly.