If you’ve reached this page, it’s probably because you used a QR code on one of my business cards! Thanks for coming!
My personal website is primarily for posting pretty pictures (which I capture using my telescope, from my back porch), and posting articles about leadership and being a good manager. This page, though, is about the books that I’m currently working on. There are four sections on this page: Twoshirts, the Wildwood D&D Campaign, The Model, and online writing.
I have been reading and writing since I was a child. Even though I started my college career at Brown University as a physics major, and even though I graduated with a degree in computer science, I also took every Shakespeare class that Brown offered. I have a copy of the Riverside Shakespeare, which I read cover-to-cover while sitting on the pool deck of a Howard Johnson’s Hotel in the summer of 1991. I was nominally the lifeguard, but nobody comes to a New Jersey Howard Johnson’s to swim in the pool.
I grew up on Asimov, Piers Anthony, Lewis Carroll, Baum’s Oz books, Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Tolkien, Philip Jose Farmer, and the Dragonlance books. I became a big fan of graphic novels by Miller and Moore, and then fell in love with Gaiman’s Sandman series. From that, I read all of Gaiman’s books, and eventually discovered Pratchett due to their collaboration on Good Omens. I then bought and read every single book that Pratchett ever wrote, and I would argue that Pratchett is my favorite author of all time (although Shakespeare is arguably better). In my later years, I’ve been a fan of Scalzi, Vernor Vinge, and Brandon Sanderson.
Professionally, I spent the last 25+ years as a software manager / leader, and the last 18 or so of those were with Amazon. Due to my writing skills, I taught classes on how to write effective documentation, including the infamous Amazon 6-pagers. While focused on technical and leadership topics, and targeting a technical audience, it helped me focus my writing style. It meant that I had to produce concise documents (6 pages! No more!), with compelling arguments and sufficient detail, that had to go through multiple revisions (with your boss, then the director, and so on) before you present it, for instance, to a VP or the CFO (which I’ve done). All while on a deadline! While I’ve not been a professional writer, I’m suspicious that these skills will be useful in that endeavor.
Twoshirts
The furthest along series has one complete book, one complete manuscript, and one book in development with an outline. The first book in the series, The Tale of Twoshirts, has completed two developmental edits, and my own end-to-end edit afterwards. It’s approximately 43k words, and is targeted towards older children, tweens, and young adults, similar to the How To Train Your Dragon series. The writing influences are primarily Pratchett and Gaiman, with some John Scalzi dialog (although not as colorful). There’s also significant influence from the world of Dungeons and Dragons, although it’s not directly tied to the franchise, nor uses any copyrighted material like classes, monsters, or locations. It could easily slot into a D&D franchise, or (for example) become part of the Exandira / Critical Role world, or remain as its own standalone universe (which is my goal). I think the world is large enough to become its own Discworld-equivalent (but smaller than Sanderson’s Cosmere); I have ideas for other potential characters & stories within that world, just like Discworld.
It tells the tale of Twoshirts, a young goblin boy in a fantasy world with “high” races like humans, elves, and dwarves, and “low” races like goblins, ogres, and a reptilian race called saurians. Years ago, as a young child, Twoshirts was shipwrecked alone on a desert island, met a genie, became his friend, and made three wishes: to always be warm when wearing two shirts, to never grow up, and finally, “maybe I could be like you, with magic and flying and stuff, and then I wouldn’t have to leave you behind.” As a result, when someone makes a wish near him, he’s compelled to complete it – and while he has some magic, he lacks the full magical powers of a genie. Prior to the book, Twoshirts was friends with Princess Reshii, who wished that Lord Frederickson would write her back; this compelled Twoshirts to travel to the city of Akri, where we start the book. The book then unfolds with him meeting some new friends, finding Lord Frederickson, and then getting trapped into not only fulfilling the accidental wish of one of his new friends, but the nefarious wishes of the antagonist, Gregor Münch. Gregor and his crony, a mysterious elf woman in black, have captured the genie, and Twoshirts has to figure out how to fulfill their wishes.
Each chapter is headed by quotes from in-universe articles or books, by different authors, illuminating the world, the conflict between those authors that see goblins as a “lower race” versus those who are more accepting, and the humorous history of a world with sometimes-chaotic magic.
Book two in the series is tentatively titled “The Tale of Twoshirts and the Sultana,” which has approximately 46k words written, is about 90% done, and has a full outline for what’s left. It will tell the tale of Princess Reshii and her mother, the Sultana, coming to Akri to continue the courtship between Reshii and Lord Frederickson. Early on, Twoshirts is accosted by the black-clothed elf woman from the first book, who wishes that he protect her from Münch and his cronies, who have turned on her. The Sultana is a false villain – while stern, and disapproving of both Twoshirts and Lord Frederickson to begin with, she ends up a powerful ally. Instead, the primary conflict is that someone is trying to kill Lord Frederickson, because they don’t want a Lord from Wildwood to marry a Princess of Koom (since the two nations are rivals). The story evolves as one of courtship, from a child’s perspective, with the overarching thriller/murder-for-hire mystery getting in the way. It ends with Twoshirts thwarting the plot, ending the threat to the elf woman, and Reshii and Lord Frederickson becoming engaged.
Book three is tentatively titled “The Tale of Twoshirts and the Evil Mayor,” which has an outline. It will dive into Twoshirts returning with Lord Frederickson and Reshii to the town of Kingston, in the goblin-hating country of Wildwood. Twoshirts is compelled to return, because at the end of book one, Münch’s wish (as he sailed off into the night) was to become Mayor of Kingston. Lord Frederickson and Reshii are going to certify the engagement by meeting Lord Frederickson’s family, and then plan and execute the wedding. The story will revolve around Twoshirts trying to bolster the political campaign of an obviously terrible person (Münch) while trying not to get killed. At the same time, Lord Frederickson and Reshii are trying to plan their wedding, with the standard shenanigans of their families meeting, coming to conflict, then eventually coming to accord. The book ends with both a wedding and Münch becoming Mayor, as wished – but at the same time, the Tyrant of Wildwood invades Koom, sparking full-on war between Fred & Reshii’s nations. This leads to an obvious 4th book, which has a preliminary outline, and the hook for book 5.
The Wildwood D&D Campaign
I was the DM for a 4-and-a-half year, level-1-to-20 Dungeons and Dragons 5e campaign with a group of 7-8 friends (some rotated out, others rotated in). My original notes from the campaign – descriptions of areas, soliloquies by the bad guys, notes on encounters, descriptions of secret societies, and so on – are split across 3 MS Word files (due to their size) and total of 457 pages and 284k words. It’s divided into 6 acts. I’m in the process of converting the first half of the campaign into a level 1-to-10 module, using a template similar to the standard D&D format. It already has 12 completed chapters, is 153 pages long, has just over 98k words, has 22 completed maps/images, and I estimate that it is 50-60% complete, in terms of maps and writing (not including art, as noted below). The main blockers to completion are:
- Converting my notes into the MS Word / D&D campaign format for the remaining chapters
- Completing the remaining maps (during the campaign, we were forced to move from paper and wet-erase grid to online, due to the COVID pandemic, and so I lost many of those maps, and need to recreate them)
- Somehow coming up with art, because there’s a lot of art in D&D modules. I have some AI art filler, but if I want to finish this & publish it, I need artists.
The campaign starts in the city of Kingston, in the Kingdom of Wildwood. The opening campaign handout starts: “One hundred and fifty years ago, the nation of Wildwood fell into chaos under the rule of a corrupt king. An ill-conceived invasion of the Sultanate of Koom instigated a war that would eventually last for more than a century. Trade wars with former allies led to economic ruin. River trade up the Djyp Ain and Dokk Ain stopped. Mines in the West Shield Hills were abandoned. The Ekkel Isles, formerly jewels of the kingdom, fell into anarchy and piracy. Its inhabitants eventually declared independence, named themselves Freeland, and mounted a massive invasion of the capital, Kingston. The king was killed, and the resulting civil war wracked the land for a decade.”
All of that happened about 150 years ago; the first 100 years were near-chaos, but the last 50 have been a slow recovery. The nation of Wildwood is rediscovering itself, and the party begins in a tavern (as many campaigns do), called the Ivory Pound, with the piano-playing proprietor, Rolf, and his son, Donnie. A minor noble, living near the Ivory Pound, died 9 months ago, leaving the manor to his son; in debt and in desperation, that son made a deal with an imp, and the result of his errors are now seeping into the sewers and driving the previous residents into basements.
Once the party saves the day, their exploits are noted by the new Minister of Trade, Lord Frederickson. He asks the party to investigate some caravans that went missing, down in the Wildwood (a deep, dark forest, from whence the kingdom gets its name). They go there, discover the cause, and stop the threat.
The campaign continues with the party gaining notoriety, and in so doing, raising the influence of their patron, Lord Frederickson. They’re eventually sent on a secret mission to the Sultanate of Koom. The rumor is the Sultan has died, and his daughter (now Sulatana) wishes to explore a thawing of relations. The party is to meet an Emissary, deep in the Northern Wastes, which are within the Sultanate. On their way, a goblin horde attack, and then a deus-ex-machina save by a giant (and gregarious) brass dragon named Gilgamesh forces the party and the emissary (Reshii) to work together.
This starts the ball on the big bad for the campaign – a Yuan-Ti queen, who seeks two artifacts: one, a book of necromancy that would tell her how to become a Lich; and two, the spirit stones – three sacred stones, religious artifacts to the nomadic tribes of the Northern Wastes, which Gilgamesh secretly hides.
The party race up and down the continent, try to broker an armistice treaty with Koom (leading to a full-blown murder mystery!), deal with the fallout of a nearly-murdered Sultana, be in Kingston during an invasion by undead hordes from the Ekkel Isles, travel to the Ekkel Isles (which have been under Yuan-Ti control for the last 100 years) to identify the cause, travel to the Lost City of Uru-Koom to find the Yuan-Ti’s book (and get it stolen!), and finally, return to the Ekkel isles to confront the Yuan-Ti Queen as she attempts to perform the ritual to ascend into Lichdom.
Side quests, throughout the campaign, include a necromancer’s tower in the Dark Marsh (and near a lizardfolk village), Gilgamesh’s cave’s infestation of orcs, the seasonal Fey Day Fairs, and a coven of hags on the island of Scrim.
The Model
The Model is a techno-thriller that I started writing in 2012, but haven’t been able to finish. In Act 1, the premise is that CS grad students at Brown University stumble onto an AI model that can predict near-future events. Initially developed to try to predict the stock market, they learned that – if given information from the news and other data sources – they could predict significant political and social events.
But there’s a catch – if they act on that knowledge, it changes the result. They learn this when they try to make trades on the stock market; sometimes, it works, but not exactly correctly; but when they make a bit bet, it goes wrong. The more they try to influence the event, the more stochastic the result. It’s the primary conundrum for the book – what if you knew something bad was going to happen, but also knew that trying to stop it might make it worse?
One of the grad students is a recruit for the CIA; he steals an early version of the model and is forced to kill one of the other students, who had suspected him. That student prepared, though; he secreted a copy of the model, and told his girlfriend what to do if something went wrong. She takes her copy of the model and escapes. Her name is Kitty, and in Act 2, she deals with the trauma of losing her boyfriend. She eventually re-finds her footing, creates a false identity of “Felicia”, becomes friends with another computer scientist, and together they found Athena Information Systems, and then Athena Financial Services, and secretly, the company’s security arm – with the goal of using The Model to try to protect the world while making it a better place. Her new friend, Anne, discovered the means to radically improve the model while reducing the impact of interference – a significant improvement that the CIA’s version of the model lacks.
In Act 3, the central conflict comes to the surface – a terrorist has plotted to import a nuclear device, and plans to blow it up within an American city – and Felica and Athena need to use every resource to try to stop the plot. In so doing, they learn that no only does the CIA have a model, but the Chinese have stolen a copy – and both are interfering with the progress of events, causing damage to Athena’s predictive ability and threatening a disastrous outcome.
Act 4 is unfinished, and will resolve the story. I have an outline, but I’ve never been happy with it.
The work is just over 84k words, with probably another 20k words to go.
The structure as written is linear – each chapter’s title is a month and year. It’s historical pseudo-fiction, running from February 1991 to February 2012; these dates could easily change. One thought that I’ve had, but not been able to model out and review, is to completely reorder the chapters. I’d have each chapter time-jump between the 4 acts; e.g. you might start with some event in Act 3, then have a chapter from Act 1 that illuminates, without revealing too much. It could create a level of imbalance and tension, as we learn that Kitty in Act 1 is actually Felicia in acts 3 and 4; that the CIA antagonist (Ray) in acts 2, 3, and 4 was a late addition to the grad student group that developed the original model. I think it could be an interesting way to increase the sense of discovery as the mystery unfolds, but I worry that it could create significant confusion with its non-linear presentation. I would need to first finish the story, and then model it out, to see what works, what doesn’t, and whether it’s an idea worth pursuing.
I came up with this idea back in 2012, long before the current AI craze, because my college degree is computer science with a concentration on artificial intelligence.
Leadership and Online Articles
If you browse the rest of this site, you’ll find not only the pretty pictures, but articles about Amazon and being a good leader. My goal is to publish an article a week. As of mid-September, I’m 9 articles in, hitting each week, and have about 20 topics (some written, some with outlines) in the queue. I don’t know if this would ever rise to the level of getting collected into a book. But with 30-ish articles sketched out, at 1000ish words apiece, that’s at least a start, maybe?
