Now that I’ve had a bit more time to sort things out here, I want to explain a few things.
This is, primarily, a professional site. It contains professional thoughts on professional things. But it is also my personal site, too. It will contain personal things that I am happy to have associated with my professional life. This means that there may be politics involved, sometimes. I promise to be respectful and rational in the commentary that I post.
This site is also a research site. Behind the scenes I’m working on practice-based research into the nature of transmedia. How does it work? Why does it work? What does it mean to write for multiple platforms to get a single story across? What are these platforms?
Which may lead you to the question of just who the heck am I? (Me as in me the writer, not you asking yourselves this question.)
I tell stories. Often not for a living — life just hasn’t worked out that way. But over the past fifteen years I’ve contributed to tabletop RPG supplements, helped publish a different tabletop RPG rulebook, published a few short stories online and in print, worked on webcomics, had a brief weekly web prose fiction serial, been a red pen for hire at a variety of publishing houses, and run and play tabletop RPG games. And I’ve also had plays produced off-off Broadway, in New York.
In other words, I represent the new kind of worker, the one who grew up just as the vaunted “work for 50 years for one company and get the gold watch at the end” era was truly buried and mourned. I’ve done day jobs at law firms and community centers, on tour boats and in newspaper bullpens. Thematically sort of related, but certainly not the kind of linear connectivity expected on old school resumes.
And in that sense, this current pursuit — a better understanding of transmedia — is a direct reflection of my life so far. Attention spans and work histories are fragmented now, illuminated by the sheen of jump cuts and readily available technology. This is the greatest era of human innovation since the Industrial Revolution. The old ways don’t work the way they used to. This does not mean they’re broken — on the contrary, there’s a lot we can gain from them. What really needs to happen, though, is a re-frame. A change of perpsective and interpretation.
Growing up on the south coast of Texas, I watched the few pines snap in the yearly tropical storms and hurricanes. The palm trees swayed and strained, but mostly held their ground. Same principle.
Cheers.