The third book of the Cortanis Trilogy, Soldier of Cortanis, is finally in completed first draft form. I finished the draft this past weekend, and this week I’m giving it an editing pass before handing it over to my editor for its first review. Hopefully Adria can find time to turn it around to me in a few weeks, after which time I’ll do another round of editing before sending it out to my beta readers. Assuming she doesn’t find[…]
Village Books
The first two Cortanis books are now available for sale at Village Books in Columbia! This is pretty exciting for me. It’s every author’s dream to see one’s work sitting spine by spine with other great books on shelves at a bookstore. Becky Asher is wonderful to work with; clearly she loves books and wants to support local authors as best she can. I had a great visit with her this week and am very grateful she not only agreed[…]
Paperbacks
The paperback versions of both books are now available on Amazon.com! Ghosts is here, and Demons is here. If you don’t have a Kindle, or just prefer having a real book in your hand to read, now you can start in on Naomi’s story. I’d really appreciate reviews on Amazon. If you read either of the books and enjoyed them, please do me the favor of leaving a brief review on one or both of the books. As a new[…]
Books 1 and 2 are up
At long last, after three years of work, I can finally make the announcement I’ve been waiting to make since, I don’t know, high school. My first novels are available for purchase to the world. Ghosts is here and Demons is here. I’d love for you to meet Naomi & Vanda, LEM, Jon and the rest of these characters that have been living in my head all this time. I’m excited to finally get to share them with you. Ghosts[…]
Chatbots being chatbots
Apparently, some people are still confusing chatbot output with sentience. Granted, this software is a little stronger of an A.I. than Cleverbot. But it still reads like a chatbot just doing what it’s programmed to do. io9: No, an AI Did Not Just “Lash Out” at Its Human Programmer Sorry I haven’t been very active here of late. But work on the first two books is proceeding. I’m now in the home stretch. Tomorrow I’m off to Indianapolis for some[…]
The three tiers
At my monthly (aspiring) novelists’ meeting, we were testing this Web site on various mobile platforms (Blackberry, iOS and Android) and the subject came up of the graphic icon in the Cortanis logo. I mentioned that the icon represents the Cortanis game world: the three tiers. No one in the group had seen this map yet, I suppose because I never got around to adding it to any of the selections I’d shared with them to workshop. So here is[…]
The unsinkable Kaitlin Donnelly
In early April 2015, I had a dream literally come true. (Click left and right arrows to advance the pictures. Click any image to see it large.) Meet Vanda…. I mean, meet Kaitlin Donnelly, the young woman I met a short time ago (thanks to mutual friend Pat Hanna) who agreed to be my model in a photo shoot for the covers of my three books. In April, after many weeks of planning, Kaitlin, myself and a small[…]
Practice Personalities: What an Avatar Can Teach You
(Wall Street Journal, Jan. 19, 2015) Your avatar may be the window to your psyche. Psychologists are discovering that the digital identities we create for play online, known as avatars, reveal more aspects of our personalities than we may intend to disclose and can change how we behave in the real world. As digital experiments in identity, our personal avatars mingle real and virtual worlds in ways that scientists are only beginning to analyze. While data is scarce, emerging technology[…]
Humans and Robots May Have the Same EQ Sooner Than You Think
The ability to understand, process, and express true emotion is what has traditionally separated man from machine — but that line is continuously blurring with the rapid advancements in technology and artificial intelligence (AI). As machines become more human, and vice versa, we find ourselves facing a fascinating and perhaps terrifying future — one that might eventually make us question how we define humanity. Full article at io9 I’m aware this is propaganda masking as journalism, to raise awareness for[…]
Ixxis-DE pistol
In the Cortanis books, Vanda has a very high-level weapon, a pistol called the Ixxis-DE. Since Vanda is going to be featured in photographic glory on the cover of Soldiers, and elsewhere on Cortanis promotional materials (like this Web site), I thought the Ixxis should make an appearance as well. I gave this project to a very talented and capable colleague of mine, Joy Page. Today she delivered to me the finished prop, including a custom-made case for it to[…]