The Molsonite's Odd Fact of the Month(or longer, since I don't update this thing often): Despite the fact that Smoke and Ash has more hits(by a country mile) than any story other than the ubiquitous Road Less Traveled, it has the least number of reviews of any of my stories...

So now it's been fourteen years. I'm getting friggin' old.

So I'm married, have kids, have a job, run two campaigns, and somehow I'm still managing to get a little work back in on The Rising Fist, although in recent months Smoke and Ash has been my pride and joy(sort of). It still amazes me that The Road Less Traveled, which has been basically defunct for the past seven years, is still getting hits. If you got to me through The Road Less Traveled, I promise you that there's other good stuff in my repertoire as well. And some of it even has an ending. I don't know why, but I happen to like Unbridled Wonder. Maybe it was the fluff factor. Maybe it was the unlucky, plucky girl thief. I do know that as my writing progresses, it seems to be getting a little better in the dialogue and character development areas. And now, with my wife's constant, loving hounding, my writing has progressed to even loftier heights. Once I was teaching her; now she has been teaching me, and making me better for it.

I approach much of my New World writing, where Unbridled Wonder, The Rising Fist, and indeed all of my D&D stories are set, with a rather simple approach. These people are not heroes or villains. They are just... people. People with merits and flaws, people with hopes, dreams, and fears, people that fear death(well, maybe except the orcs, but they're not terribly smart). For some reason, approaching it in that fashion makes the characters more alive. Sure, you can have stat sheets and feats and levels and hit points and spell lists, but in the end, they're still people(even the elves). I think approaching it that way makes characters far more believable. Sometimes, all a character wants to do is get through the night alive.

I still have my Dungeons and Dragons quest, sort of. Since I wrote Climbing the Web(proof that simply putting drow in the story ups your hits by a factor of 3), I have deviated heavily from the 100 Adventure Ideas. Still, since I refuse to acknowledge the existence of 4.0(like many gamers have refused to), I have a lot of time left to work on them again. After all, I only have about 95 ideas to go. And I do have some interesting ideas for them...

Once, I had said there were two great evils in the world. They were R.A. Salvatore and George Lucas. Well, that hasn't changed.

I do still review stories, occasionally, but I admit to a bit of a spiteful streak when it comes to any good drow. If nothing else, if I have reviewed your story, there must have been something to hold my interest at least to the chapter I reviewed. I tend to be very critical, because plain and simple, enough people give the "U R kewl, rite moer soon!" reviews that my technical advice/suggestions should be able to fit in somewhere. If you can't spell, I'm going to call you on that(I learned to spell; so can you). If you have no command of the English language and the Mexicans I used to work with when I climbed trees have more of a grip on grammar than you do, I'm going to tell you(again, I learned it, so can you). At least run your spellchecker before you post. If you give me yet another drow renegade/Do'Urden clone, I'm going to call you on that, too(well, that's kind of a personal thing, as Salvatore's concept has been beaten over the head and is now more trite and/or cliche than anything else). But I do not flame, I do not pointlessly criticize anything or anyone, and in the end, my goal is to help you craft a decent story. I know Nevermore did the same for me(it hurt to see someone criticize my work, but in the end I became much better for the detailed criticism), and someone did the same for him before that, and so on down the line. Don't be discouraged by me; if nothing else, you can motivate yourself by trying to get back at me for being a mean old pedagogue.

In memory FDNY. Heroes are never forgotten.