10 Years of Self-Publishing

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I happened to notice that this July marks 10 years of self-publishing. I started out with just paperback books of The Little Book of Gold in 2009 and now I have more than ten books in ebook, paperback, and audiobook (plus even a few books in foreign languages). Checking the numbers… holy cow! I’ve sold more than 52,000 books! And on top of that, 2019 has been my best year so far (and I still have five months to go!). For as much as I’ve enjoyed the process, it’s a continual learning process. Here are some of the lessons I’ve Read more…

Why “Dune Peninsula” at Point Defiance Park?

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On Saturday, July 6, Metro Parks opened a new park in Tacoma. “Dune Peninsula at Point Defiance Park” was the culmination of years of work at Metro Parks. Hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of dirt moved… EPA cleanup… construction… and more. It was an amazing achievement that the voters of Tacoma, Metro Parks, and the many people who took on this challenge should be very proud of. And long-time readers know that the name of the park has been something of a quixotic goal for me since 2013. Along with some others like Katy Evans and Dan Rahe, we Read more…

Light the Night

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One of things that I love about science-fiction writing is that it gives me an opportunity to really write about how the legacy of past is still shaping our lives today. Back in 2014, I wrote about how from space you could still trace the divide in Berlin, even though it’s long since been demolished. How? Because East and West Berlin used different kinds of street lights, and even though the city is unified, changing them out was really expensive. So, 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the lights were different enough they could be used to Read more…

It’s not a blog.

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It’s been a year since I’ve blogged on my personal website. And it was six months before that since I’d posted and six months before that since the previous post. Three posts in two years, does not a blog make. I didn’t even remember to write about the completion of my sci-fi trilogy last summer (Hey! The Tin Whistle is out, the trilogy is complete! Read it now). So it’s time to face facts. For all practical purposes, I don’t have a “blog” anymore. I have a website. Once that was clear, then I knew I needed to spruce things Read more…

The new year

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It seems I mostly post about resolutions these days, with almost nothing in between. In 2016 and 2017, I had four main goals for myself. Read more. Write more. Play more games. Spend more time outside. How did I do? Read More I did terribly. I’m not sure what happened, but after reading 34 books in 2015 and 2016, I dropped to 22 this year. That’s a precipitous drop. Of what I read, I really liked Dark Matter, Sourdough, The Signature of All Things, Beneath a Scarlet Sky, The Name of the Wind, and The Wise Man’s Fear. For 2018, Read more…

2017: Tacoma’s Year in Review

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I always love the chance to sit down and talk with my good friend and Tacoma REALTOR Marguerite Martin, real estate matchmaker extraordinaire. This time we sit down and talk about 2017: the good, the bad, the Tacoma on her Move to Tacoma podcast. 2017 Year in Review! with special guest Erik Hanberg  

Parts of the whole

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I’m working hard to finish the first draft The Tin Whistle, the final book of the Lattice Trilogy. It’s close enough that I’m thinking back to how and why I began writing these books. This is in some part fueled by nostalgia, as I know that I’m wrapping up a six and a half year project (counting from the time I first starting typing). But it’s also necessary: finishing up a trilogy means closing a lot of loops and bringing the story to a close in a way that harkens back to the beginning. For example: right now I’m working on a major scene in Read more…

The Scorpion Extraction

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In the spring of 2015, a group of friends and I went to Portland, Oregon to “escape the room.” (An escape room, if you don’t know, is basically a chance to get locked in a small room with a group of friends or coworkers and have to figure your way by solving puzzles, figuring out clues, and then communicating with others in the room.) It was an absolute blast. I came away thinking that I wanted to create an escape room in Tacoma. The idea of an immersive experience with a ticking clock and lots of puzzles really appealed to me. Read more…