How Traveller RPG Inspires My Writing
Traveller taught me to build worlds from constraints, not wishes. Jump drives, hex maps, and character creation that can kill you shaped how I write science ...
Writing on craft, history, and the worlds behind the books.
Notes from Ben Wilson and Troy Buzby — on the making of the stories, the history underneath them, and what genre fiction is for.
Better than the Book?
It’s a cop out to say the book is better than the movie. There are times when the movie is far, far better. But readers insist the book is better? Why is that? Tribalism. Or, “I read the book and you didn’t”-ism. The first time I ran across something like this was when I was listening to a popul...
May at the Desk
A monthly dispatch from Merovex Press. May brought a Blue Angels air show, a Strand novel that ground to a halt over a stubborn character, two reader magnets...
Why Fantasy Keeps Getting Religion Wrong
The clergy became fantasy's new black hats. Three mistakes the genre keeps making with faith, and why belief that holds weight is the live position now.
How Fantasy Authors Hide Real History in Their Worlds
Most fantasy worlds borrow a few names from history and call it done. The harder way is to extract the forces underneath and let them produce a world of thei...
Writing the Silver Lining of Dark Fantasy
Why I'm writing a 16-book dark fantasy series that treats faith as the engine, not the villain. Company of Heretics is dark fantasy with conviction, not nihi...
Why I Wrote a Quartet, Not a Trilogy
Three books satisfy marketing. Four satisfy story. The three-act structure hides a fourth act, and a quartet is the natural series unit.
The Wars That Weapons Decide
Weapons constrain strategy more than generals do. From the tercio to the trenches, every arms-tactics mismatch cost a generation.
Why I Killed Ben Franklin
Franklin's genius would have dominated the story. Killing him was the hardest narrative choice in the Strand series, and the most necessary.
The Instrument Panel We Threw Away
A pilot died ten miles from safety with broken instruments. History is our instrument panel, and we stopped teaching people to read it.
The Great Fruitcake
Billions of years ago, an infinitely dense fruitcake got lonely and exploded into the universe. A tongue-in-cheek creation myth.
Period of Divergence
Kill Hitler and another dictator rises. History rarely hinges on one moment. Alternate history needs a period of divergence, not a point.
Why the Revolution Was Coming (With or Without Pontiac)
A century of self-governance made American revolution inevitable. What would it actually take to prevent it?
Pontiac's War and Why
The forgotten 1763 war that overran eight British forts, provoked the Proclamation Line, and set the American Revolution in motion.
Getting History Wrong (On Purpose)
How to research alternate history, why five books reveal the truth, and why story beats accuracy when the two conflict.
The Shot That Changed Everything
Today marks 250 years since someone fired the shot heard ‘round the world at Lexington Green. I’ve been thinking about that moment while working on my alternative history novel, because understanding what didn’t happen helps me write what might have happened instead. April 19, 1775. British troo...