On top of the table, all covered with dice...

So, many thanks to the folks out there who have given "A Malady of Magicks" a shot. It's pretty awesome to check in on my ACX dashboard and see actual sales. I sincerely hope you enjoy my take on the story and characters.

But I'm writing this post about something else near and dear to my heart: table-top gaming. One of the things that I remember fondly from my childhood is that, every so often, my parents and I would take a night to sit at our dining room table and actually play a game together: Monopoly, Sorry!, Scrabble (sorry, Mom, that one was never my favorite), even once in a great while, Risk. Growing up as an only child, and a shy, geeky one at that (remember, kids: this was before being "geeky" had any cultural cachet whatsoever), I didn't have a ton of friends I could do that with, so I enjoyed it for that reason--and I also think it helped me feel closer to my parents, too. Now, sure, I was never going to get them to play D&D, or Avalon Hill's Magic Realm, but I'm pretty sure I got them to play at least one round of the original Dungeon.

That formative experience led to a lot of hanging out in game stores in my teenage years, and to a little too much take-home pay being spent on employee discounts during my brief stint in retail (at a game chain whose name I can't recall now). It's also why I instantly fell in love with Wil Wheaton's web series "Tabletop", on the Geek and Sundry channel at YouTube. Wil gets guests together around a (gorgeous) game table, breaks out a different game each episode--some more "mainstream", some slightly geekier--and basically has a blast playing the game, tossing jokes around, and (unfortunately for him), generally losing. If you haven't seen the show, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It is honestly one of the shows Alisha and I enjoy watching the most out of all the TV and web series we follow.

The show, along with the rest of Geek and Sundry (which was started by Felicia Day, of  The Guild fame), has been sponsored by Google up to now, as part of Google's efforts to encourage the creation of great YouTube content. Apparently, that sponsorship is ending, and Wil has taken to Indiegogo to fund development of Season Three of Tabletop.

I'm proud to be supporting that effort, and I hope at least some of you will consider doing the same.

Play more games!

(Why, yes, I) Want to be Starting Something...

So, this has been a long time coming. In point of fact, I've been meaning to start writing this blog since at least last August--but life, as always, has gotten in the way.

Folks who have only known me since, oh, let's say the early nineties, probably think of me as a software engineer. Hopefully a really good one, since I've made a pretty decent career of it, but that's about the extent of it. Folks who have known me a bit longer than that might remember that, in high school and college, I actually had a completely different set of plans for how my life was supposed to go.

I spent a lot of time training in musical theater, in dance (wasn't so great at that part), and voice--yeah, I sang a pretty mean aria for a while there. I had hoped to have some kind of career in performing, or failing that, at least in college-level music education. But, when I got married for the first time, I felt that I needed a steady income, and more or less gave up on those dreams to focus on software development.

(I feel compelled to add that those few who've known me since about the fourth grade will be aware that, in fact, computers and programming have also been one of my great loves... a fact that played no small part in that decision, and that has allowed me to succeed in this path)

So the last nineteen years have been good, in a lot of ways. I'm proud of what I've accomplished. But the last three years in particular have seen a lot of challenges, and I've been giving some serious thought to where I want my life to go from here.

About two years ago, I noticed a tweet from the prolific Neil Gaiman mentioning something called the Audiobook Creation Exchange, or ACX. It's a platform that allows authors and/or publishers to contract with individual narrators to produce recordings of their audiobooks. He linked to a blog by a man who had successfully started narrating books with some simple training, and I thought to myself, "Hey! I could totally do that!"

I kept the idea in the back of my mind, and as things at home and work became more and more stressful, I'd come back to ACX every so often. Finally, in June of last year, I decided to do more than just wonder. The original blog I'd read mentioned that this gentleman (whose name I can't recall now... sorry, my friend!) had gotten pointers and training from a fellow named Pat Fraley, who was--happily for me--based in the Los Angeles area. I sent an email to Pat, describing my situation, my hopes and dreams, and asking him for some advice.

As I now have the pleasure of knowing, Pat has to be one of the kindest, most genuine people you could ever hope to meet, and he responded with some encouragement and ideas for training that might be a good fit for me. To make an already-too-long story a tiny bit shorter, I've been able to attend several classes that Pat has held, and to learn from him and some other luminaries in the voice-over/audiobook worlds, and with a great audiobook demo "reel" under my belt, got my profile started on ACX.

I've been fortunate enough to land a contract to produce a book through the site, about which I'm very happy(and will doubtless be posting more soon). So a whole new chapter in my life is opening up--one where I have the opportunity to get back to being creative, to really performing and making art--and I frankly couldn't be more excited.

I hope to use this blog to document my journey, and to share large and small things about the process. If I'm able to pass on any useful information, or to inspire anyone else out there to take a step towards their dreams, then I'll count myself lucky indeed.