I’m overdue for some news sharing, and it’s fairly exciting.

First of all, I’m thrilled to share that a novel I co-authored with Mark R.A. Shegelski, Quantum Worlds and the Entangled Man, is now available on Amazon! This project has been a long time in the making, and it’s a real pleasure to see it make its way out in the world.

Secondly, this past summer I worked with Story City for their Edmonton launch, with my cyberpunk puzzle-adventure story A Hole in the Netaverse. It’s now available on their app to enjoy — best on-site in Edmonton, but there’s also an option to disable location restrictions to enjoy it anywhere. This project was a particular joy because it united my love of storytelling with my love of puzzles and escape rooms. I hope it scratches both itches for everyone who tries it.

A lot of work goes into every project, and if you’ve tried either/both of the above — first of all, thank you! Secondly, please consider leaving a review (on Amazon, Goodreads, or Story City). It’s one of the best ways to support authors outside of purchasing their works.

I’m excited to announce the upcoming publication of a novel I co-authored with Mark R.A. Shegelski: Quantum Worlds and the Entangled Man.

It is available for pre-order now through Amazon, and will be released in print and e-book later this month! Check out the link for more information.

The Fringe Festival is one of my absolute favourite things to do in Edmonton, and I was delighted to be able to experience it this year for the first time in an age. Between the food trucks, street performers and cornucopia of shows on offer, it’s a delight I’ll always treasure. This year was particularly marked because of its long absence due to the pandemic, my own absence from participating in public events, and the fact that I’d just gotten over Covid and was aching to emerge from isolation. I was therefore able to go to shows without the fear that I was putting myself in harm’s way — a luxury I know won’t last, but I’ll drink in as much as possible.

Planet B: Stories From Beyond the Stars

Our first show of the year, Planet B was a sci-fi improv put on by Grindstone Theatre. I hadn’t seen improv in approximately two decades by pandemic years, and it was great to be fully back in the uncomfortable awkwardness that improv can often entail. I’ve only dipped my toe into improv a tiny bit, enough to know how challenging it is. This performance suffered a bit from one or two performers not fully running with ideas their colleagues were putting forth, and so the story stalled a bit. Self-referential awareness on the part of some of the actors saved the show for me, keeping sufficient heart and giving enough of a wink to the audience that it was enjoyable. Improv is challenging, and the cast made do with what they could into a satisfying performance.

Away, Now – The World’s Most Desired Destination

Paul Strickland and Erika MacDonald shone in what was probably my most anticipated play of the Fringe. Having absolutely loved his punny-yet-heartfelt Ain’t True and Uncle False and Papa Squat of several years ago, I longed to be brought back into his whimsical-yet-purposeful and sincere worlds. Away, Now delivered on that front but was of a slightly different beast, being a travel guide and therefore constructed as a variety show and framed in a much more playful manner. While it didn’t quite strike me as deeply as Ain’t True and Papa Squat, I still loved the performance, ideas and play. The take-home message of recovering and empathizing after pain was sorely needed and greatly appreciated after the pandemic.

Plays by Bots

Rapidfire Theatre decided to feed an AI and let it come up with the starts of several plays. The actors were then given the AI-generated scripts and costumes at the start of the show, and had to act out the script as written until it stopped midway through a story. They’d then have to improv their way toward a satisfying ending.

The premise itself was hysterical, and a fair bit terrifying as we discovered the story was about a machine revolution, with a protagonist who loves machines more than humans. This is how it starts, people.

The writing was jam-packed full of non-sequiturs, illogical nonsense that was grammatically correct but wildly inconsistent plot-wise. It was full of sentences and exchanges that carried a hefty amount of emotion, but would swing wildly from one notion to another. It felt like watching a play written by a toddler who was just throwing things in willy-nilly with no real sense of plots or character arcs.

The actors did an incredible job executing the nonsensical melodrama. When the gloves came off and the AI’s part of the script was finished, they had to pull together a satisfying conclusion out of a deeply flawed premise.

They did so with aplomb and hilarity. This was one of my favourite performances of the Fringe, and is in no small part due to the world-class calibre of Rapidfire Theatre’s improv.

Epidermis Circus

A show by another of my favourites, SNAFU Dance Theatre, Epidermis Circus was an incredibly inventive puppet cabaret replete with physical comedy and captivating vignettes. Ingrid Hansen leads us through puppet displays using her hands, face, stockings, bodysuit, breast, mouth, and a disturbing can’t-look-away-from combination of a baby doll face named Tyler perched atop her dexterous hand.

It’s hard to describe the genius at work here, and I feel like describing it would rob you of the joy of being surprised by all the creative ways Ingrid presents puppetry. It is a shocking delight of a show that will leave your head reeling while a smile is plastered on your face. Visions of the insane worlds will float through your mind for hours afterward.

It’s held over this year, for very good reason — go see it if you have the chance!

Charlie and the Siberian Monkey Goddess

Charlie Chaplin is dead, but the protagonist in this story thinks they are Charlie Chaplin. This two-person performance is a long-winded argument between a therapist and a deluded patient. While there were some quirky and cute anecdotes shared along the way of this existential exploration, the play had one-note that was overplayed and ultimately went in circles. Its resolution was unsatisfying, and unfortunately the therapist’s attempts to expose their patient as a fraud resulted in some uncomfortable scenes that could arguably be perceived as gender conversion therapy and sexual assault. Those facets made a tiring play into one that was slightly offensive, even if I try to take a liberal and forgiving interpretation of the story’s events.

Let’s Go Back to the Phones: We Need to Talk

Put on by Peter Brown and much of the cast of the former Irrelevant Show on CBC, this improv show was set up as an old radio program where listeners could call in and ask experts questions on an audience-proposed subject. It was a riot to watch masters of improv at work, and a delightful mechanism for augmenting audience participation with the use of telephone-attached microphones roaming throughout the crowd. We listened to experts talk of Lloydminster, a town bordering Alberta and Saskatchewan, and air travel. Among the highlights were the origin story of the sister towns of Lloyd and Minster uniting after the tragic Romeo-Juliet murder-suicide (also providing the reason for the border’s red posts), a minister named Lloyd receiving all of Lloydminster’s mail, and Koala airlines using genetically bred marsupials for air travel in a manner even David Cronenberg would find disturbing.

Such a great way to finish off the Fringe, and the best part was that this format is likely going to reappear at some point on the Edmonton Theatre scene. It’s definitely one I’ll be keeping a pulse on. I felt so strongly pulled into the improvisation that I was wanting to call in and ask questions as alter-egos — a sure sign that the “Yes, And” philosophy had been deftly transmitted to everyone in the room.

Thank you again for an absolutely wonderful Fringe, Edmonton.

I love the Souls games. When I’d stopped by a friend’s house many years ago and briefly tried to fight a skeleton in DS3 before getting utterly crushed, I had no idea how much these games would dig their claws into me. Only perhaps in childhood have I ever found myself so intently absorbed and focused on a game that demands everything from you and offers such intrinsically rewarding experiences.

While the Souls games are known for their obfuscated storylines, the semi-linear paths of progress meant that milestones always felt like milestones. Usually you had some idea of why you were fighting a giant horned intestine. Or at least, what you’d achieved once you’d defeated it.

Elden Ring is a tremendous game. Open-world Dark Souls. What could be better for fans of the franchise and for new players alike, to let us off the guard rails of linear pathways, to truly go anywhere?

For me, the experience was, as the game might say, one of losing the path of grace.

From the start I found myself in a game-breaking situation that was plainly unfair and unintended: trapped in a high-level zone without the basic ability to level up. I thought I was a Souls veteran and that this must be the intended experience, because my past encounters with From Software games had informed me that they were carefully crafted to be difficult experiences from which you were expected to learn and grow stronger.

This trap situation didn’t really fit that category. It was poor game design to let the player go anywhere before they’d even unlocked the basic mechanics of the game. Like being let out of the tutorial section of a Mario game without the ability to jump. There’s nothing to be learned from this experience other than “don’t go everywhere in this world” which is directly at odds with every message the game sends you.

That sour taste in my mouth didn’t last, however, as I eventually unlocked the ability to level up and the incredibly satisfying rewards of “gitting gud” trundled in. The fights were intense and riveting, and I lapped them up.

However, as I progressed and put close to 200 hours into the game, I found my victories a bit hollow. Tarnished, you might say.

The plot in Elden Ring seems even more obfuscated than the Souls games, which is hard to believe after From Software has had so many years to iterate on the formula. A friend says this creates a game culture that transcends the game, causing communities to form and gamers to reach out to one another to share advice and stories on what worked and what didn’t.

There’s some truth to this — From’s obtuse and utterly baffling quest layouts do indeed require players to reach out to other forums, wikis and elsewhere to get answers to the game’s trickiest puzzles. However, this creation of community comes as a direct cost of player immersion.

This loss of immersion is a great shame, because Elden Ring is otherwise so good. The world is immense, with secrets in every nook and cranny and inventive dungeons that make you laugh even as you die for the 100th time.

However, as I reached some of the end bosses, they lacked the luster and impact that many of the Dark Souls bosses had had for me. I struggled to figure out why.

They were often quite challenging. They had interesting move sets. The set pieces and music were tremendous. By all rights, I should have been moved by these grandiose spectacles.

But there was the key for me. It was spectacle, without the substance. In the Souls games, I’d usually pieced together enough of the storyline that I knew, even if vaguely, the importance of what it was that I was fighting, and if not that then what they were guarding. The importance of either/both was enough to make me feel invested, and From Software’s trademark atmospheric storytelling worked well enough that the pace of highs and lows of the bosses and challenges rose to a satisfying crescendo.

In Elden Ring, although I’d read countless item descriptions and watched videos on its lore, I was still baffled as to some of the reasons and motivations of who I was fighting. One of the last boss fights in the game just felt crowbarred in — a character I was clearly meant to feel strongly about, but just completely lacking in any significant contribution or motivating reason as to why they were there or why I should care about them.

This is part of the problem with Elden Ring’s open world, of which I glimpsed a hint at the outset of my Tarnished journey. From Software has spent many years mastering maze-like metroidvania environments in such a way that the cadence of your experience and overall journey can more than make up for any uncertainties you may have in the storyline. Usually, the Dark Souls mazes would all come to a head in a semi-linear fashion, meaning much of the experience and some of the fundamental reveals along the way could be carefully honed for greater effect.

With an open world, much of that careful craftsmanship is lost. Because there are so very many ways to go, the path a player might take to the final boss might bear some similarities to others, but key beats in the story might have been missed or short-circuited. One might argue this gives players greater agency, and while this is true, this agency comes at the cost of a coherent narrative.

While I’m not saying that Elden Ring should have spelled everything out to an extreme degree like many other AAA games do, there was definitely opportunity for some middle ground.

Some quests result in NPCs appearing at random sacred sites (checkpoints) throughout the map. There is no way to know where they’ll appear next. Apparently with one of the game’s early patches they added the ability to see NPC locations on the map, but this is a weak fix for a game that should (and in almost every other respect, does) rest on the robustness of the self-consistent world it’s created. A hint, however small, as to where I might go next for the next part of the quest, would keep me hooked and immersed in the world.

In Souls games this lack of direction in quests was less problematic because there were far less possible paths one could take to reach the end, so the chances of a random encounter with a familiar face were high, and this often worked to good effect.

In Elden Ring, having an NPC disappear and randomly appear at another site of grace means that you’ll likely never see them again (unless you’ve read a walkthrough and are following it, clicking on teleports to fill out a quest). The robustness of the world breaks down, and you see the strings of arbitrary spawning/despawning at play, rather than the sense of a character actually going on a separate journey independent of you.

One might argue that these NPC quests are sidelines, off the beaten path, and so might be expected to be more obtuse and less obvious than the main quest. That might be true, but unfortunately the same sense of arbitrariness pervades many of the main quests as well.

Because Elden Ring intends to let players complete the open-world in whatever way they see fit, some of the moments that would otherwise be high points ultimately lack satisfying resolution. The first few main bosses felt incredible to overcome. However, I didn’t learn much of anything new after pushing past these obstacles. The world wasn’t changed, and the reward was often mismatched to my character build or simply not that useful.

Here again, Elden Ring faced a fundamental problem of too much choice, too many options, so that the reward options they present on the game’s biggest challenges have some shine, but not quite as much as they should compared to the mountains of possible gear and treasure in the game.

Ultimately, I was left with the recurring experience of overcoming a tremendous foe, getting rewards that were middling, and not having a strong enough motivation story-wise to feel strongly about what I’d just done. While there was some inherent satisfaction in having bested some of From Software’s most devious enemies, I felt disconnected from this world that no longer felt rich and self-consistent, but more and more like a Diablo-esque sea of looting and killing.

The game left a deep impression on me of being hollow. Whereas the other Souls games had felt like there was more behind the curtains, Elden Ring seemed like it was obtuse out of laziness; in other words, there wasn’t much behind the curtains. In Souls games I always felt compelled to dig deeper to learn the real reasons why a given boss was next on the list, and usually I’d find a good reason. In Elden Ring, perhaps because of the sheer immense amount of content they put in, those reasons were dilute at best.

Who knows, maybe years from now I’ll replay it and find parts of the narrative I didn’t the first time through, and the ending will become satisfying. (Maybe Internet Elden Ring experts will all tell me how I missed it all.) That would be lovely.

What I struggle most with is that I know From Software can do better. They have done better. Sekiro, while it was also plagued by some obfuscated plotting, still had a climactic ending and reasonably satisfying conclusion (spoiler alert: From’s games never really end well). So From Software has the chops to do it. Why didn’t they for Elden Ring?

Perhaps this is again a challenge of trying to take their atmospheric approach to storytelling and apply it to an open world. For me, this approach didn’t work out of the box, and it’s a shame From Software didn’t recognize it and try to make adjustments to bring out more of the richness of the world they created with George R. R. Martin.

If their goal was to make the player feel as dispirited about the world as so many of the Tarnished haunting the Lands Between, then From Software succeeded, but perhaps not for the reasons they wanted. I love so much of Elden Ring, from the incredible combat, breathtaking vistas, and great level design that beckon you to peer around just one more corner. But after nearly 200 hours invested in the game, I needed more out of its conclusion and story delivery than knowing I’d just bested another random video game boss.

Sadly, Elden Ring’s ending left me feeling like I’d beaten a programmed challenge rather than having completed an epic journey. Such a finish does a great disservice to the countless people who’ve worked to make this game as good as it is. I hope, in the future, that From Software’s managers and directors can find a better way of honoring the artistic software warriors who fought in the crucible, and ultimately conclude their games on a path of player grace.

For many years I’ve enjoyed Lindsay Ellis’s clever, well-crafted video essays, so I was delighted to discover she had a debut novel. “Axiom’s End” is a first-contact story that is sharply real in its theoretical treatment of aliens and genuine character honesty, combining to create a story with great emotional and existential impact.

To summarize without spoilers, protagonist Cora Sabino becomes a pivotal figure in first contact with an alien civilization, while her iconoclastic father looms as a cultural icon threatening to uncover related truths. This summary doesn’t do justice to what makes the book so interesting, however.

Let’s start with the aliens. From their physical descriptions to their language, Ellis makes it abundantly clear they are not human. At first blush this might seem obvious, but authors rarely achieve a true sense of the alien. Ellis steers away from comparisons to Earth animals, something that many other First Contact stories do to their detriment, because such comparisons inevitably just supplant the uniqueness the author’s attempting to invoke. With careful crafting, Ellis has given me a mental image of aliens like no other, and it will stick with me.

She takes a similar approach with alien language. Rather than just making a fictional phonemic language that might be indistinguishable from any language foreign to the reader, Ellis describes a truly alien vocalization we can barely grasp. The end result is that the aliens feel simultaneously real and other-worldly, instead of the cartoon dress-up effect you can find in many other works where the alien is more like a costumed drama student speaking Elvish.

There is a considerable amount of dialogue in the novel, but it’s infused with equal care and attention so it’s fascinating to witness the ripostes of vastly different philosophies. And this is where the real depth and complexity of what Ellis’s crafted really shines through. There were many poignant commentaries on what it means to be human, where we’re headed as a society, and the value of truth… but I won’t detract from their impact by trying to relay them here. The relationship between Cora and the aliens results in some painstakingly honest conversations that cause serious reflection on our moral and ethical assumptions.

The aliens are far from a monolithic culture, and their political complexities entwine with humanity’s with gripping results. What struck me hard was the insightful and careful layering of information. Typically when aliens have a hidden agenda or are withholding something in a story, it is for nefarious purposes. In “Axiom’s End,” however, the aliens are just as worried about competing interests as humans are, and are fraught with ideological differences, relationship struggles and trust issues.

Ellis starts with the premise of truth being a human right and through clashing perspectives and the selective exposure of truth, makes us ultimately wonder what higher end this truth is serving, and exactly whose truth is being told.

It’s rare that I read a book about aliens and feel so strongly like I’ve had a close encounter. “Axiom’s End” not only did that for me, but was suffused with such rich philosophy and honest humanity that I must advise you to go and get a copy. Thank you, Lindsay Ellis, for this wonderful experience.

I have some incredibly exciting news, which I’ve been meaning to share amidst the crazy busy summer times.

First of all, “Ad Me,” a flash story about a magical homework assignment gone awry, was published in the Centropic Oracle podcast. It’s a short but adorable listen, so check it out in the sidebar.

Secondly, my short story, “The Djinni and the Accountant,” published in Fire: Demons, Dragons, and Djinn by Tyche Books, is a finalist for the Washington Science Fiction Associations Small Press Award!

You might notice that it’s published under a different name. That’s my old pen name, but it is indeed me. It’s funny how this stuff happens almost immediately after making a branding change, but that doesn’t detract much from my delight.

I have to give a huge thanks to Rhonda Parrish, who edited the anthology (and always does terrific work), as well as Tyche Books for publishing the elemental anthology series. I’m very flattered and honoured to be recognized as a finalist. It can seem sometimes like I’m not making progress, or that I’m banging my head against the same wall, but moments like these are wonderful breaths of air to say that yes, the hard work is paying off.

The finalists will be honoured, and the award given out on Saturday, October 19th, at the annual WSFA convention, Capclave (http://www.capclave.org). I will unfortunately be unable to attend, but I’ll be paying close attention for the final results, and will share as soon as I know.

If you happen to be attending, send me a message and let me know how the con goes!

I love board games, and so I feel an unnerving pressure to attend local events. A good kind of pressure, a deep-tissue massage.

We only went for the last afternoon, but we experienced what happens every time I crack open a new board game: new paradigms, new lenses through which we see microcosms before total immersion. I lose myself in these worlds, loving the way mechanics can be reflective of our own rules, things we might strive toward, or just ways in which we can be something more than ourselves.

The best game we played this year was Naga Raja, a two-player duelling treasure hunt game that entwines betting, combat, Indian Jones exploration and the satisfaction of pipeworks grid puzzles. The game had the wonderful combination of multiple interacting elements and mechanics, while remaining easy enough to understand the basic structure and flow. I regret to inform you I didn’t win the match, nor did I win the raffled copy of the game. Somehow, however, I feel that a serpentine ruler will slither its way into my game cupboard nevertheless…

Another game by the same company (Ilo 307) was Planet, where you build a planet by attaching magnetic tiles to your very own dodecahedron. Animals will spontaneously emerge, or perhaps flock to, the planet most abundant in a particular type of biome. While the mechanics were simple, the three-dimensional tactile aspect retained interest as we flipped our own, and each other’s planets to try and plan the next moves. Trying to keep a mental model throughout proved a form of calisthenics for spatial reasoning.

Tiny Towns was an adorable game that showed how resource acquisition can be a double-edged sword, discouraging wanton hoarding or collecting of anything but what you need, a notion and theme that is perhaps an appropriate lesson for the young and old.

Then there was Tokyo Highway. Oh, Tokyo Highway. What I’d like to call String Railroad 3D. What a neat concept, but wow, do I wish I had surgeon’s hands to be successful. In a two-player version, I managed to demolish highways faster than a sharknado. I can only imagine the rich satisfaction a 4-player game would entail, which would no doubt harbour toddler-level joy through ruination of an established order.

Thank goodness we have such outlets as games, or who knows what the babbling, insufferably adorable destructoids might do to the world as we know it.