'What Defines You ?"

A long, long, long time ago — I’m talking as long as six or nine months ago, like way back — I was a fairly well-known blogger. I wrote posts with what my podcast co-host Dave calls “goth titles,” like The Universe Doesn’t Give a Flying Fuck About You. Those posts were my unique breed of motivation and inspiration (yes, “You Are Dying and Your World Is a Lie” was supposed to be inspirational).

The idea was to kick readers in the ass for their own good. Basically, I had a lot of non-sugarcoated things I wanted to say, and blogging was my outlet. I wrote things I thought the world should hear, but that few people seemed willing to say — such as the fact that life is hard, and that if you want to take advantage of the one you’ve been given, you have to stop being a pussy and grab what you want with both hands, rather than waiting for someone to come along and save you.

When I transitioned to writing books last year, I found myself wanting to spend my words telling stories, not writing blog posts. As I spent more and more of my time doing the former, I did less and less of the latter.

By the end of the year, I thought my blogging days were finished. Writing blog posts was that, I reasoned, and now I was doing this. Sean and I saw them as two separate things with no intersection.

We were wrong.

Blogging and fiction, for Sean and I, aren’t really that different. Readers crave meaning; what I once delivered with my posts, I now articulate through story. Sure, it looks different … but all I’ve really done is trade literal statements for allegorical tales.

The Realm & Sands stage hosts the same themes, but now the players are grizzled gunslingers and their abrasive unicorn partners, robots searching for the meaning of life, and citizens of a dystopian future.

Stories Define Us (Whether You Believe it or Not)

StoriesWhen you’re a fiction author, you’d better be a fan of your own work or you’re going to be miserable a lot of the time (cue joke about...