Some samples of my writing.
Excerpted from The Anthology of New American Folk Tales - Volume 6 - Tales of the Southern Wetlands
Nana Scratch and the Catfish
The Devil has a godmother - a terrible old witch named Nana Scratch. She's as blind as a bat, and as tall as a stack of elephants. Her skin is green like moldy leather, and her teeth and nails are made out of iron.
Nana Scratch lives in a huge house deep in the swamp. The old witch loves her garden, and she tends it carefully, having no truck with pests, nor pilfering of any kind. In it she grows a great many things including spices, and poisons, and plants not seen elsewhere on Earth, nor in Heaven. Every night she tiptoes through it, singing strange songs and cackling.
One day Tom Bayou was hungry. He was more than just a little bit hungry - he was ravenous. Five-days-without-chow hungry. And he happened upon Nana Scratch's house.
Now, Tom was no fool. He knew whose house it was, and he knew old Nana Scratch would go hard on anyone creeping around her garden and stealing her vegetables. But he had a plan.
Nana’s garden backed up to a particularly dark stretch of bayou – deep and unknowable. And as anyone knows - there's some powerful dangerous critters under the black water. Tom was counting on that for his plan to work.
Tom waded out and began to splash around in the water. He was an expert swimmer, and so it didn’t take long for his ruckus to attract a big, hairy catfish – bigger than any you ever saw. The old fish tried to snap Tom up once or twice, but Tom was much to quick for the old fish to grab.
When the hairy catfish settled down into the water, staring at him with cold fury in its eyes, Tom spoke to him, “Peace, grandfather. I’m just a small fry – much too small to make a meal for you. But if you’re patient, I promise I’ll bring you a much bigger meal. Do we have a deal?”
The old catfish nodded and sank back into the black water to wait.
Next Tom crawled out of the water and filled his pockets with rocks - as many as he could carry. He picked big ones, and small. Round ones, and rough, until he about doubled his weight!
Finally, he strolled into Nana's garden, just as bold as brass, and began to help himself to whatever he could pick. He found radishes as big as your head, carrots as long as hoe-handles, and cherries bigger than your fist! Yes indeed, Tom was having himself a regular feast at Nana's expense.
As the sun sunk low in the sky, old Nana herself walked out of her house, and began to find rinds from her fruits, and stems from her vegetables. And at last she came across Tom of the Bayou, sitting on the ground - his belly much too full to run away.
"Ah ha, thief!" The old witch cackled, as she snatched him up in a fist the size of a wagon. "I found you, and now I'm going to gobble you up!"
Tom let out a deep sigh. "I'm so glad you said that, Nana Scratch."
The old witch hauled him up close to her ugly face and cocked an ear so she could hear him better. "You are?"
"Well sure," Said Tom. "I was afraid that you was gonna throw me in the bayou, and let me sink. You can feel how heavy I am, can't you?"
Nana Scratch agreed that she could indeed feel that he was a heavy load.
"There's nothing that scares me more than drowning in the bayou," said Tom. "So I'm powerful glad that you're gonna eat me and put me out of my misery nice and quick!"
Now, Nana Scratch was not one to do anybody any kind of kindness, even when it came down to how she would end their days on this Earth! And so she smiled a gruesome smile.
"Well, if you're so scared of drowning, then that's exactly how you’ll meet your end!" she cackled.
Nana Scratch made her way down to the water's edge, and hurled Tom Bayou out into the water with a satisfying splash.
Tom made quite a show of splashing once he was in the water. "Oh, no!" He hollered. "Oh help! I am drowning!"
Meanwhile, all the time he was thrashing, he was slipping the rocks and stones out of his pockets, until they were all gone and sunk to the bottom.
"Oh, woe is me!" He called out. "I'm a goner for sure!"
This went out for quite some time, Tom splashing in the water and hollering while Nana Scratch listened from the shore.
And after a good long while, she finally said, "Well, if you're drowning, you sure are taking your own sweet time a'doing it."
Tom guessed that she might say that.
"Well, Nana, while I'm sure to die, I've run across a bit of luck. You see, I've hit a patch of mud, and though I'm sinking, I'm going down real slow!"
"Mud, you say?" Nana Scratch grit her iron teeth, which made a sound like the sharpening of knives. "Lucky, you say?"
Nothing in this world made Nana Scratch more miserable than the good fortune of others.
"Why yes indeed!" Tom hollered back. "I just hope you don't swim out here and push me under yourself."
Naturally Nana Scratch made up her mind to do exactly that. The old witch hitched up her dress and began to wade out into the water, searching for Tom, supposedly stuck in shallow mud.
But as she came into the water, Tom slowly paddled a little deeper into the bayou. "Oh no, Nana!" He hollered. "You're a'coming right at me!"
It gave old Nana Scratch a great deal of pleasure to hear the fear in his voice, and so she came deeper into the water. So deep that she started to swim.
"You've almost reached me, Nana!" Tom hollered, all the while swimming into deeper and deeper water.
Each time he hollered, Nana would swim a little deeper, reaching for him with her horrible, clawed hands. And each time she reached, Tom swam a little further out and hollered again.
And just then Grandfather Catfish swam up from the muddy bottom and saw Nana's wiggling toes. And he decided to have a little taste.
"There's something a-biting my toes!" Nana Scratch said aloud.
Tom heard that, and said, "Oh, it's nothing to worry you, Nana. Just a curious bluefish is all."
Nana Scratch swum deeper, and the gigantic catfish gobbled up her legs.
"Now there's something a-biting my legs!" She said.
"You've almost reached me, Nana!" Tom volunteered. "Don't give up now!"
So Nana Scratch swum deeper still, and the catfish gobbled her entire body, except for her head.
"That ain't no bluefish!" She hollered as the giant fish pulled her into its mouth.
"No, Nana," Tom admitted. "It is not. It's the grandfather of all catfish, and he's done for you for sure!"
Nana Scratch let out a terrible screech. But just as the fish pulled her under, Tom heard her vow, "This fish won't be the end of me, Tom Bayou. You mark my words - I'll be back!" Then the old witch disappeared beneath the black water.
At that, Tom Bayou paddled back to shore, and helped himself to all the goodies that he could eat from Nana's garden.
And that, dear reader, is the story of Nana Scratch and the catfish as it was told to me. I hope you have enjoyed it.
Below is a short story I wrote about a character that appears on an NFT that I own.
The concept behind the Nibiru is that they are aliens who inhabit the Metaverse, and have the innate ability to merge with inhabitants that are native to whatever worlds they visit in the growing metaverse.
Next is an excerpt from my novel - a new American Folk Tale about a little girl who finds the courage to jump over the moon!
The book contains several folk tales told in the traditional manner to help set context for the action, and introduce a number of the main characters.
The example below introduces the main villain.
Zur-Se-Ron slumped against the cool stone of the boulder, staring out into the darkness as his fingers trailed over the bloody slashes in his side.
This chainworld was strikingly beautiful – billowing purple blue clouds blew across the night sky, briefly obscuring the two moons that hung over the horizon.
“Beautiful, but deadly,” He thought
As a Ranger, Zuro was one of the select Nibiru warrior caste charged with scouting chainworlds where the explorer caste had encountered dangerous lifeforms.
The Wayfinders had discovered pawprints on this world that indicated large natural predators, and so a cadre of five Rangers was dispatched to assess the danger.
Zu-Se-Ron, or Zuro, as he was commonly called, was the only one left alive.
He pushed himself off the rock, scanning the rocky terrain. Zuro was blessed with the gift of thermal eyes, and so his vision ran to the infrared spectrum. Plants and mosses glowed faintly on the side of the hill where he was hidden, but there was no sign of the huge feline predators that hunted in these hills.
Not that they were the danger Zuro feared. The real danger here was the Spyte.
The squad had been on edge when they first arrived, but after four cycles under the local sun the Rangers had grown comfortable with the rhythms of this world.
They discovered that the big cats who lived in cliffs on the mountainside were predictable. They would sleep in the cool shade most of the day, leaving their caves at night to hunt the smaller herbivores and birds that thrived on this world.
After determining they were in no immediate danger, Zuro and his team wandered far into the foothills gathering specimens and testing soil and water for possible toxins, or hidden bio-threats. And it was there – unexpectedly – that they stumbled across stone ruins.
The remains were ancient. Whatever intelligence built them had been gone for so long that even the thick stone foundations of the buildings were wearing away under the weather. But there was no mistaking the deliberate placement of the stone foundation slabs, or the crumbled sections of walls half-buried beneath sprawling vegetation.
“I see evidence of some sort of power conduits,” Said Day-Sa-Yan as she walked through the rubble. “They were an advanced species.”
Daya was the second-most senior Ranger in the cadre, and had seen twice as many chainworlds as most of the team.
She pointed, and Zuro followed her finger with his gaze. “See that big lump there? I’d guess that was some kind of local power junction.”
Daya walked closer and began to pull the vegetation away from the cube shape. Beneath the vines was a glyph – circular, with multiple jagged lines running from the center of the shape outwards.
“See,” Daya said with a wink. “Told you.”
Zuro shook his head. Daya loved showing off.
“I bet this substation controlled the power for all of these buildings.” She said as she reached out and brushed her hand over the glyph on the stone.
And that action doomed them all.
The state of the ruins did not suggest that the ancient systems would be active or would in any way respond to her touch. But arcs of energy leaped from the Maven Guards on Daya’s wrist, playing over the lines in the stone. A moment later, more glyphs appeared on the foundation in the center of the ruins - pulsing with a white light.
“By the Legendai!” Daya exclaimed, rubbing her wrist.
The other Rangers heard the thrum of power and had come to see what was happening. The white light grew in intensity, forming a shimmering field in the air. The Rangers glanced at each other as the ball of energy grew. They had travelled the chainworlds for long enough to recognize a portal when they saw one. As the shimmering field resolved, a portal appeared. Beyond lay what appeared to be a red, dusty landscape - dry and lifeless.
“Stay back,” Said Gal-Se-Bor – the most senior Ranger. “We don’t know what’s on the other side…”
In the time it took Galbo to turn his head and speak, red mist flowed through the shimmering gap and the Rangers immediately knew what it was.
Many forms of meta-life had evolved the ability to merge with bioforms they encountered on worlds attached to the chain. In fact, many Nibiru scholars believed that the ability to blend with other forms of existence was a requisite of higher forms of intelligence, and culture.
But the Spyte took a different evolutionary path. They were a colony intelligence – a viral pestilence that seized the bodies of life that it encountered, dominating them as the virus spread. Some said there was even a Master somewhere – a malign being that directed the viral legions of the Spyte in their infection of the chainworlds.
“Spyte!” Daya cried, stumbling away from the growing cloud.
But it was too late. The acrid smoke roiled around her and moments later she collapsed to the ground. As the Rangers watched, they could see her skin begin to redden with the infection as the dreadful collective intelligence of the virus took control.
Galto whirled and pointed back towards the hills. “Run!” He screamed.
But the Spyte that had once been Day-Sa-Yan leaped at him, tackling him to the ground.
“Too late. You belong to us, now!”
In the battle that followed, the other Rangers quickly fell - not because they lacked the skill to fight the Spyte, but rather because none of the Nibiru could bring themselves to kill those who were once their friends and comrades.
In the end, only Zur-Se-Ron escaped.
For the last day and night, his cadre had been hunting him. The four Spyte moved like automatons, with none of the grace and skill that his friends had possessed in life. But they were still armed with powerful artifacts and gear from their many journeys. The wounds on Zuro’s side had been delivered by a Spytebreaker blade, welded by Jal-Se-Ko with a terrible glee just before he narrowly escaped a trap set by the squad.
Zuro needed to reach the portal back to Mira Prime. But he couldn’t face the Spyte alone – he needed an edge.
As the night cooled the rocks, Zuro scanned the craggy cliff face until he spotted what he was looking for – a den where the big feline predators made their lair. Zuro carefully worked his way across the rocks to the top of the cave mouth. As he crouched in the dark, a hunting pair began to exit the cave – a huge male and female. Zuro’s thermal eyes flashed as he tracked their motion. As they exited the cave, he launched himself off the rock outcropping - spreading his arms wide as he fell. He landed on the male’s back, wrapping his arms around its throat.
“I am sorry to do this to you,” He grunted, squeezing with all his strength. “But the chainworlds need your strength.”
And he began to meld with the predator.
Zuro could feel its life force subside as he folded himself over its essence. The great cat – it’s ferocity, its instincts became a part of him deep inside - while the creature’s body became his own.
The female’s hackles rose as she roared in defiance of the melded creature before her. But Zuro – or rather the new melded Zuro-predator roared back, and she flattened her ears and backed away.
Zuro-cat flexed his sinews and leaped up onto the rocks, scanning the darkness. His own thermal vision augmented the keen perception of the great cat, and he could see the four bodies of the Spyte fanned out in a skirmish line, hunting him through the foothills.
Four Spyte stood between Zuro and the portal home. Four Spyte versus one Nibiru Ranger backed by 200 kilos of muscle and claws.
Zu-Se-Ron flexed the corded muscles in his forelimbs and curved claws extended from his paws.
He liked those odds.
Below is an example of my more technical writing, excerpted from my book Video Game Careers - Ultimate Edition.
The diagram may be funny, but it also illustrates a point. The game development industry has a lot of interconnected pieces—so many that it's impossible to keep track of them all. As technology and tastes change, the industry grows and contracts to meet the evolving demands. Companies whose core business is game development must constantly evolve to keep up with the rapid pace of change, or else become irrelevant and go out of business.
So instead of trying to map the whole thing, let's just focus on the foundational business relationship: the one between publishers and developers.
How the Game Development Industry Works
In this section, I will explain just enough about the game development industry to allow you to follow along in a conversation about it, or to ask intelligent-sounding questions.
The phrase “game development industry” describes a complex ecosystem of companies that work together, and whose core business is making video games. The actual studios where games are made fall into that description, but so do the massive publishing companies, independent animation studios, contract software testing companies, advertising agencies and other related companies. If we tried to show the complexity of how these companies are connected, a diagram of the industry might start to look like the following.
Publishers
Publishers are large companies whose core business is funding the creation of video games and bringing those games to market. They are the business people. They have all the money.
Top-tier publishing companies like Electronic Arts and Mattel, often hold the rights to high-profile licenses like NASCAR, FIFA, and Barbie. Other companies, such as Microsoft, Activision, and Ubisoft, also own major game intellectual properties (IP) outright—mega-hits like Halo, Call of Duty, and Assassin's Creed.
Some publishers specialize in creating products for particular markets, but the largest companies look to leverage their IP in any way they can. They will fund development for games on every kind of gaming platform—from home game consoles and personal computers, to social media and mobile platforms.
Developers
Game development companies (developers) specialize in actually making video games. Developers are the talent. They make the games.
Developers often identify themselves as "studios," a reflection of the creative terminology used in the movie business and advertising. They range in size from small teams up to massive organizations with hundreds of people, all working on a single megaproject. Some notable development studios include the following:
• Bungie: Creators of the Halo series of games and, more recently, Destiny.
• Rovio: Makers of Angry Birds.
• Supercell: The geniuses behind the mega-hit games Clash of Clans and Hay Day.
Internal Development Studios
Some publishers also have internal game-development studios. Often, large publishing companies buy successful game-development studios with hit games, ensuring that the intellectual property and the team responsible for it become part of their portfolio of games. Alternately, publishers might try to create their own studios from scratch, ensuring that the company owns any hit products that come out of their work.
How They Make Money
Traditionally, developers come up with an idea for a game. Then they take money from Publishers to pay for the costs of building it. When the game is finished the publisher puts the game out for sale and gets their money back (and more) through selling the game. The developers usually get a royalty percentage of the sales of the game which means that it's in their best interest to try and make a hit.