Ladderback chairs pictured in the Fairfield, with a Cassidy Creations kitchen table that I built from a kit. Last fall I was looking for half scale ladderback chairs to use in the kitchen of my puzzle house and, unable to find what I wanted, I ended up making my own. I looked at designs in […]
Category: Writing (Page 3 of 3)
My hands-on preview of the upcoming Sam & Max season was posted this morning at Adventure Gamers. This was an interesting article to write, because for more than three years, I was the PR person soliciting articles just like this one. Tales of Monkey Island was already underway when I left Telltale, so even though […]
This week I finished cross-stitching a “Blue Kirman” carpet in half scale. It’s stitched over-one on 35-count linen. The finished size is about 2.75″ by 4.5″ (which would be 5.5′ by 9′ if it were life-sized). This design comes from a free pattern that I found online. Here it is in the Fairfield’s dining room […]
I wrote a behind-the-scenes article about Lori and Corey Cole’s Quest for Glory series, which appears in this month’s issue of GamesTM. It’s on newsstands in the UK now. Of all of Sierra’s Quest series, Quest for Glory was the one I knew the least about when it released. I only played the VGA remake […]
My review of Chronicles of Mystery: The Tree of Life went up this morning at Adventure Gamers. This is the first City Interactive game I’ve played, although I’ve been vaguely aware of their existence for a year or so now. They’re churning out regular installments of two adventure game series (The Art of Murder and […]
My friend Heather Logas is a game designer. We worked together at Telltale. Like me, she’s now her own boss… and also like me, she has big, creative dreams. In my case, that creativity is generally channeled into fiction. In Heather’s case, it comes through in games, and they happen to be the types of […]
This morning I was flipping through old notebooks as part of a writing exercise, and came across this snippet of dialogue: -Where has she moved to? -Guatemala. -Oh, what a pity. I mean, good for her, but I’ll miss seeing her around. But I’m not sure that’s safe? -Oh, I think where she is is […]
For several months, I was focused on revising my novel. Then I participated in NaNoWriMo, which was exhilarating and empowering and exhausting. I let myself take a little break from creative writing in December, with the goal of revisiting my NaNoWriMo novel in the new year. But now that January is here, I’m not sure […]
Adventure Gamers has just published my review of Agatha Christie’s The A.B.C. Murders for Nintendo DS. I can’t say I enjoyed this game. (Luckily, the year is still young…) It feels very much like an attempt to channel Professor Layton, but starring Hercule Poirot. And unfortunately that attempt didn’t work out too well. In fact, […]
Maybe I picked the wrong time to get into this business. Freelance Writing’s Unfortunate New Model was printed in the LA Times yesterday, taking a look at the current state of freelance writing. It talks about how well-paying journalism jobs are scarce and all people want to pay for these days are short, SEO-friendly articles […]
An article I wrote for Miniature Collector, entitled “Cheap & Easy Fish Scale Shingles,” will appear in their February issue. I received my sample copies a few days ago and I’m guessing the issue will show up for subscribers in the next week or two, so if you subscribe, keep an eye out! This article […]
This morning Adventure Gamers posted my review of Runaway: A Twist of Fate, the third game in the Runaway series. While I was working at Telltale I stayed away from reviewing PC games to avoid a conflict of interest, so this is my first PC review in quite a while. My first draft went into […]
As of this morning, my NaNoWriMo word count is 45,458. I’m right on schedule for hitting 50,000 words by Monday. There’s just one problem: I don’t know how the novel ends. It’s definitely getting there. About two-thirds of the way through I hit that “point of no return,” the crisis moment where the story has […]
As of this morning, my NaNoWriMo project is up to 18,714 words—that’s 64 pages. Writing that many pages in just over a week is a pretty amazing feat for me, so I’m excited. The most interesting part of this process has been the routine. Every morning I write a scene or two, usually totaling a […]
I’ve considered taking part in National Novel Writing Month for the past few years, but never took the plunge. This year I’m actually going through with it. The goal is to write an entire novel, of at least 50,000 words, between now and November 30. This kind of goes against everything I believe in. When […]
Adventure Gamers has just posted a feature I wrote about Scribblenauts, a unique game that released this fall for Nintendo DS. I don’t really remember the big uproar Scribblenauts received at E3 this year. I was closed up in a small meeting room most of the time demoing Telltale’s Tales of Monkey Island, which had […]
The current issue of GamesTM magazine (issue 88) has a profile piece I wrote about Scott Adams, the developer of the very first commercial adventure games. Since the magazine is only available in the UK, I haven’t seen it yet, which is driving me crazy. Infocom and Sierra are usually credited as being the pioneers […]
My writing books. Most with unbroken spines. Having recently left my job to pursue writing “for real,” I’m finding myself with an unprecedented amount of free time. Seriously, the last time I had more than ten days off in a row was in 2001, when I was laid off over the summer (and I spent […]
My review of Miami Law has been posted at Adventure Gamers. Sorry to say I didn’t like it very much. The story was weak, the characters generic, and the game relied too much on tedious dialogue and repetitive timed mini-games, with too little enjoyable gameplay to carry it. On the plus side, it comes with […]