“In fact, the violence that brought turn-of-the-century Clay County national notoriety as a land of feudists was a conflict between two families of highly educated, wealthy elites and their supporters.” — The Road to Poverty: The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia, by Dwight B. Billings and Kathleen M. Blee Apparently I live in […]
“Money had value if there was a place to spend it. Salt was life.” — Charles House in Blame it on Salt. Start your story where the action takes place. That’s how I tell stories, and so as I’ve told stories about Clay County throughout the years, they have oftentimes been about the infamous feud. […]
Today is my birthday. I awoke at 6 am, and made my way across the hall and into my den. The stress of raising money for a project through Kickstarter has ruined any chance I have of sleeping, or relaxing, or enjoying. So I retreat to my sanctuary where I’m surrounded. Books, files, and notes […]
At 8:30 am this morning, I clicked the Launch button and watched my Kickstarter project aimed at funding the completion of So Far Appalachia go live. The moment was both anticlimactic (no band started playing) and terrifying (the clock started ticking). Years of writing, researching, and editing suddenly became very real, and the fate of […]
A few days ago, my former boss and friend posted on Facebook that he considered the National Rifle Association’s rhetoric around the Second Amendment to be primarily driven by race. As you might imagine, this set off quite a debate on Facebook. I don’t want to recount the entire affair so let me summarize a […]
A few years ago, it seemed as if the MMORPG world had passed Richard Garriott by. He’d had two rather contentious breakups with corporations, Electronic Arts and NCSoft, and he seemed more interested in pursuing his dream of going to outer space. Two years ago, Garriott re-emerged at the SXSW Accelerator, an event I emcee […]
In 2001, John and I were approached by McGraw Hill with a book idea that explored the research behind video games and violence. As fate would have it, we were nearly finished with a proposal about games and communities. While we rejected the idea of a book based on violence, we did include a chapter […]
The more we do this, the more I think we sound like Axl Rose…but for the first time in a long time, I’ve blocked out 1/2 a month work exclusively on the Second Edition of Dungeons and Dreamers, which now also makes it likely the Tenth Anniversary Edition of the book. Regardless of delay and […]
I just saw this interesting tidbit about the lost treasures of Dave Arneson thanks to this piece by GeekDad over at Wired News. His original gaming dice. His original Dungeons & Dragons and Blackmoor campaign manuscripts. His first printing, woodgrain boxed set play copy of D&D. Letters from Gary Gygax. Other letters, notes, documents, artwork, […]
Greetings: I appreciate you stopping by the home of my little project, So Far Appalachia: An American Mythology. Throughout the next few years, I’ll be building creating a multi-media, interactive book about my family, The Bakers of Manchester, Kentucky. We have a long, colorful history and I hope you enjoy reading about it. I’m also […]
Today would have been Gary Gygax’s birthday. Gygax, one of the co-creators of the game Dungeons & Dragons, inadvertently helped create the massive computer game industry that exists by inspiring three decades of future game designers. There’s been much written on the subject [you can read our chapter on the D&D Creation Myth], and there’s […]
The Space Shuttle Atlantis touched down just a bit ago, marking the end of the Shuttle Space Age in America. Throughout my life, Americans have gone to space regularly. Now that is over. As I dug through the Dungeons & Dreamers yesterday constructing a draft of the Second Edition introduction, I was struck by how […]