This is a huge question, but I like to try and keep these posts short, a little heart-to-heart that won’t take up too much of your time. Time’s precious, limited, blah blah blah.

So, the short version:
With my writings, I’m not here to impart any grand wisdom. Whether or not I actually have any to impart is a whole other story. I’ve been around, been through Hell and back a few times, and I’m sure I’ve got some great nuggets to share.

I’m also not really trying to impress anyone with my prose itself. I’ve got plenty to criticize, and I’ll be the first person to say that. Like many, I suffer from a lot of impostor syndrome, insecurity issues, and the constant fear that I’m not good enough. But I still put myself out there, and you can too. (There, your encouragement for the day.)

What I want to do with my writing, with almost everything I do, is to entertain. Like I said, time is short. LIFE is short, and why the Hell should we be suffering through it or just “getting by?” The world and humanity are full of so much life, beauty, wonder, and curiosity that you cannot tell me that we’re meant to let it all exist outside us. I don’t care your belief system, no one should be relegated to a drab life without smiles.

I live to make people smile. No, I don’t write exclusively comedies. I get deep. I go for the gut punch. I aim for tears.

But those are all part of life too.

My words are meant to grant escape. Whatever escape you might need, I hope I can provide it. I don’t need much. A moment of your time for a joke, an afternoon for a story, or days or weeks for a book. I pour myself into my words in hopes that a little piece of me might brighten your life, just for a moment.
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I can honestly not think of a nobler purpose for myself.

Oooh, this one sounds like fun. I have a fair few published works, so let’s just go through the list, shall we?
Empeddigo - This was inspired by two ideas:
The idea of a highly communicable disease used to exert power and control over the mass population.
A genre blend of science fiction and fantasy

The Trials of Hallac - Oh, my epic poem. This was largely inspired by the challenge itself of writing a 5000-line epic poem in 31 days, but my plot and story inspirations were The Odyssey, the thoughts of something similar to the Trials of Hercules, and… Final Fantasy Tactics.

Mere Acquaintances - This was originally referred to as “The Blogject,” because I wanted to write a story that was intended to be released in unedited, first draft form as a serial, sort of an homage to serial published authors like Dickens. I honestly don’t recall exactly how it was inspired, but I always described it as “A bunch of people in a mental institution have multiple personalities. And those personalities are delusional together.”

Starsigns - This novel is one that probably went through the most permutations. It was inspired in large part by Robin Hobb’s Soldier Son Trilogy of novels: Shaman’s Crossing, Forest Mage, and Renegade’s Magic. I loved her premise on birth order being formative for your role in life and wanted my own take on fighting the fate decreed for you. It was originally intended to be much more adult than it was, but I’m quite proud of the final product.

Criminal From Birth - There is no denying that this had a single source of inspiration: the movie Basic, starring John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. It’s a story told and retold a few times with new details revealed by different tellers, so it keeps changing just how events are reacted to, uncovering the mystery one layer at a time.
I’ll admit I did not pull it off as well as I liked in Criminal, but I’m still pleased with it. Obviously. I mean, I wrote a sequel and will be planning to wrap it up with a third book.
That’s right. I’m not making any promises on timelines, but that’s the long term hope. Book 2 is with my editor, so we’ll see when that gets finished and book 3 happens.

The Deadly Studies - I didn’t have a whole lot of say on inspiration for my novella series, since it’s a spinoff of John G. Walker’s Statford Chronicle series. It’s obviously inspired by a need to fit into the established world of its parent series. By dint of having me write it rather than John himself, it is already set in a Grappin-style flavor, making it a totally different experience than reading any of the Statford books. John says I more than did Luc justice, so I’ll take that with pleasure.
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Subscription: Life (work in progress, working title) - This is my current main project I’m outlining right now, a LitRPG novel that I hope will either be a standalone novel, or at most, a two-book series. A lot depends on how long the outline itself is and how the prose ends up. But this is inspired by the fact I’m a lifelong gamer and have been reading a lot of LitRPG stuff lately. Notably, Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman has been an obsession and huge influence.
S:L is not at all going to be any sort of DCC clone, though. I’m more original than that, at least. And like a lot of other projects that have been started and discarded, no promises that this one will come to fruition. I hope, though.

I was very fortunate to have gotten bitten by the writing bug at a fairly early age. I’ve talked about this a bit before. It was early middle school when it happened, so around age 11. By age 12, I was definitely mired in the written word. It was pure fortune that even though my writings were TERRIBLE, I got a lot of good support from the people whose opinions I cared about.
To be fair, at the time, I didn’t really know how bad they were. I read, yes, but I was not introspective, subjective, or anything like that. I was just having fun. And to be completely honest, that’s what writing should be.
It should be fun.
More than anything, that’s what I would (and do) tell children who want to be writers. Both of my goddaughters are artistic in some sense, and both do dabble in some writing. One of the first things I was proudly presented by one of them (a few years ago now, so the author was roughly age 8 or so) was— and I say this affectionately— the most derivative, poorly-written fanfiction I could imagine. The first half or so was pretty much just a written Cliff’s Notes version of the film they were “based off.”
I speak that openly about it because at this point, I know my own early writings were no different. I’ve already posted on this blog about some of the first works I recall: The Kung-Fu Cockroaches being one I particularly have in mind. It was derivative and more poorly-written than I care to claim these days. The support I got for it was encouragement, excitement over having written a thing, though… looking back, of course I never got any good actual feedback. But what do you tell a preteen who has the guts to put themselves out there like that?
The same thing you should tell anyone trying something new: that you know how hard what they’re doing is. You praise the effort, the passion, and the courage to do it. You acknowledge the hard work they’ve put into it, because effort is what’s going to help them improve.
With any skill, you get out what you put into it. You have to invest. For a child, it’s much simpler than trying to actually guide the improvement. Don’t criticize their word choices, plot, characters, any of that. You don’t have to lie about things being good. Praise the effort they put into it. Tell them to keep writing. ASK WHAT THEY PLAN TO WRITE NEXT.
Frankly, this goes for adults, too, and not just in writing. Any skill someone is trying for the first time, just encourage it. It doesn’t have to be super deep encouragement that analyzes what they do. If someone’s playing tennis for the first time, focus on the fun and immediate benefits. Be happy because they’re trying something new, not that they’re not already Pete Sampras or not making money off it. If your mother decides to take an airplane pilot simulation course, don’t shake your head and make it clear you doubt she’ll ever fly a plane.
You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by being positive and supportive. Even if that preteen spends the rest of their life writing and NEVER PUBLISHES ANYTHING, don’t stop encouraging. The sum of our skills is not based on how much money we make off something. It can and should be valued in the joy we get creating or doing a thing.
And if they never want to share them with the greater world, never publish their art, never play a game competitively, that’s not a “waste” or a “pointless practice.”
In short, there really is no reason to not encourage others’ hobbies. And it’s not that hard to be genuine about it. If something makes a person happy, focus on how happy they seem to be doing the thing. You don’t have to like or even approve of what they do, but… don’t be the reason someone stops doing something they enjoy.
Especially if it’s a child.

This being the first of the book reviews I’ve done in quite a while, I suppose I should clarify what my intentions are with them. In the past, I have written book reviews mostly with the intent of supporting author friends. I see no reason why I shouldn’t continue to support authorly friends, so if you have a book you’d like me to read and review for you, please contact me. I will warn that physical reading take a lot longer for me these days. Audio is better, mostly because of time and attention constraints. I have drive time that I can dedicate to listening where I can’t read a physical book while doing that. That’s a good 5 hours a week just listening to books. I also listen while cleaning, eating, cooking, that sort of thing. I can try physical reading again too, so please don’t let that deter you if you want my thoughts on your work.
I digress, as I so often do. What I intend with these book reviews: my own thoughts, such as they may be. Sometimes, it may be a lot of focus on plot and character. It could be on craft, voice, even setting. Knowing me, a lot will just be general thoughts. Anyway, in short, just know that I read widely and enjoy talking about books in general. So expect that from these reviews.
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This is not a first impression of The Handmaid’s Tale. No, I first listened to this audiobook probably 10-ish years ago. But I just finished a re-listen and it was better than I remember. And I remember liking it a lot then. That said, here are my thoughts on it as it sits fresh on my mind.
Atwood writes beautifully. Simply put, it’s wonderful prose that, at least in my opinion, perfectly encapsulates the protagonist’s mindset. It isn’t until the epilogue that we discover this story was “discovered” as a series of audio cassettes, but that one revelation makes the whole thing make so much more sense to me, from a technical standpoint. The fact that I have absorbed it through audiobook only drives that further home. The delivery of the version I have, read by Claire Danes, truly feels like half of a conversation, like the oral passing down of stories from elder to child a generation or two removed.
That’s what so much of this feels like to me: like a story told, not one written. Obviously I don’t know if Atwood intended that to be its format from the beginning, or if it came along during the process somewhere, but I like to believe it is intended to be heard more than read, in general.
I’m writing this on October 13, 2025 in the United States, and it goes without saying that this book very much hits hard right now. It’s well-documented that Atwood took a lot of inspiration from Orwell’s 1984, another dystopian fascist novel. It’s far too clear to see the parallels in Atwood’s prose and the current living situation of every human demographic other than rich, white, male Evangelical. What’s even more terrifying is that the things Atwood describes not only could happen, they are happening in the U.S. even as I type this. Speaking as someone who falls into a number of minority categories (being trans for one), it really struck my nerves and fears in a way it didn’t ten years ago.
What Atwood really nailed, at least to my listening this time through, is all the small ways so many people break the rules. The intense strictures of everyday life in the Republic of Gilead are no way for people to live. Even those who benefit from the rules know that. Even they: the Commander, Serena Joy, the aunts, they all have their own small breaks that give them more reason to go on. The Commander with something as simple as playing Scrabble, one of the Marthas (I forget which one, Rita maybe) cutting radishes into rosettes and other shapes, all the people with cigarettes, mentions of the black market, all these things build up. They are proof of humanity’s survival and constant desire to be more than a basic nothingness.
Yet somehow, Atwood always managed to capture the sense of hope. Hope buried, lost, found again, shared, kept, coveted, reveled in. Even at its darkest moments, those where the writings and rules of the government of Gilead are at their worst, Offred and other characters demonstrate that they are still people. At their basest, most primal state, they are still people with wants and needs and the drive to find ways to survive and achieve those wants. Something as small as a single match hidden in a bed frame is a symbol of something strong waiting to break free.
I can’t help but compare it to another media tale of “the beforetimes” transitioning to the current horrific situation, told in a horrid way from one sufferer to the next: Valerie’s autobiography in V for Vendetta. The single match being hope, Valerie’s “one inch” being the last thing that cannot be taken from us.
Seeing the country I grew up in turning into a world where threat of my being disappeared is very real makes those small hopes mean a lot more. That one inch of self is critical. That one shred of being unapologetically who you are, in whatever small ways you can, is a valuable way to fight back. It might not be a lot, but then, it might be everything.

October was very stressful in a lot of ways. I knew it would be, but it took its punches and didn’t pull any. So very lean month as far as writing is concerned.

Dungeons & Dragons: Bard Campaign - Just because it’s more personal and low-priority than other projects, and it involves the involvement of others, this will be the last regular update on this campaign.

D&D Single Adventure - I have two concepts I’m mulling over and trying to pick which one I want to be my first focus. I think I know which, I just need to do it.
Criminal from Birth sequel - Still with editor.

LitRPG book (working title Subscription Life) - Chugging along and still enjoying! Not a lot to say other than the outlining is progressing.
Current chapters in Draft Point Five: 20 (up 2 from last month)
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I’ve also gotten blog posts and writing exercises done, and I’ve got something new coming for all subscribers you’ll see starting later this month!