Stepping Up

            An interesting reoccurring occurrence in my life is that, while I very strongly dislike being in a position of leadership, I frequently seem to find myself filling a leadership role. Be it for work or play, it seems like I always end up as one of the people making the decisions – a very unfortunate job for a chronic fence-sitter.

            My most recent of such experiences took place over this weekend, but to understand just how often this has happened, we really need to go back quite a ways. I don’t know precisely when it started, but the first I can think of chronologically was in my highschool choir. In grade 9, there was a decent sized selection of male singers, but most of them were in their last year – including the one that informally led them simply by being such a strong singer. The following year, there were only 4 males in the 30-or-so person choir, and I happened to be the one who stepped into the empty leadership role – though I was thankfully replaced for part of the year when teachers were invited to join. However, the mantle fell back to me the next year, and eventually led to me being in the smaller jazz choir and even performing one song where I was the only person on the melody and everyone else was basically a back-up-singer.

            Also in my highschool years, I joined Amtgard, a Live Action Roleplaying Game. Three months in, I ran in the election for the role of the records-keeper and treasurer because at the time the records weren’t being kept up to date, and I held that role – which also assisted in other aspects of running the group – for three years straight (six terms), and then took six months in the primary leadership role.

After highschool, when I got a job, it quickly became known that if someone needed extra help, or called in sick, I could always be relied upon to come in – to the point where I had to arrange to be the last person called, because it was known that if everyone else said no, I could be relied upon to say yes because, well, someone had to step up and do it. I became one of the primary trainers for new employees, and ended up holding titles like crew leader and shift manager even though I had no interest in them.

            Then I started my own business. If I have to elaborate on that, you should do some research into what running a business entails.

            Over the course of July, I joined a community of people awaiting the release of a game called Chronicles of Elyria. I joined a Kingdom, then a Duchy, then a specific County, and I began working with the Count on helping with organization and lore writing for both the County and Duchy, making it clear all along that I had no interest in a leadership role. Then my Count went ahead and named me Chancellor of our county which essentially means I can speak for him when he’s not around to do so, both in the County and the Duchy.

            Then, this past weekend, an event launched for the Elyria community which involves a mini-game that will be running for the rest of the summer that allows people to control some of the lore for the world and – remarkably – affords people (like me) who haven’t already bought into the game to earn a free copy of the game for when it releases. From the moment the game was released, it was clear a great deal of teamwork and organization would be required, and my Kingdom quickly got to work on that. However, I soon noticed that everyone doing the organizing had a game package – and since the game works differently for those without game packages, I stepped up to share my knowledge and help out. The next day, some people in my Duchy were talking about Duchy-specific organization and, well, no one else was stepping up to the plate, so I did so and laid out the groundwork.

            And then it occurred to me that, once again, I was falling into leadership roles. So, I started looking back at my history, wondering what the cause was for this. Why was it that someone like me, who would much rather sit back and silently watch, who has a very hard time making decisions, and who really dislikes being a leader – why did I keep becoming a leader?

            The answer, it turns out, is remarkably simple. No one else was doing it, and so I stepped up to the task. Because someone had to do it. In each and every case, something needed to be done, and I did it because no one else was.

            And I realized that a leader is exactly that. Someone who steps up and takes the reins when no one else does. It isn’t something that makes me happier about being doomed to leadership, but it at least makes me more accepting of my fate.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Stories We Tell

            When I was six or so, my family was sitting around the breakfast table telling stories of the dreams we’d had. This wasn’t an irregular occurrence, but something different happened this time: my dad had a dream to share. Normally he only commented on how he didn’t dream, so when he commented that last night, he had a dream, he had our rapt attention.

            It was an extraordinary and hilarious tale about his encounter with an aggressive pink rhino, which he had eventually befriended. To this day I don’t know for sure if he made it up on the spot and wrote it down later, or if he’d prepared it in advance. It doesn’t really matter – what matters is that it was the start of something wonderful.

            I honestly don’t know how it happened, but it led to my dad coming into the grades 1-3 my brother and I both were in to tell the story of the Pink Rhino again, and the story was loved by the whole class – so much so that it became a regular thing. My dad began producing more Robert Munch-esque stories and telling them for my class. It wasn’t just the incredible stories themselves – it was the way he told them, which I would love to describe to you, but in truth it’s something you’d have to experience.

Some of the stories involved members of the class, like Pictures, a story about a talented artist in the class named Mallory whose pictures came to life when put on the refrigerator (causing no end of problems), or The Scratch – a story about the fight I had with Rotten Rosco, the most fearsome pirate to sail the Canadian highways, that he wrote over the weekend as an explanation for a huge scratch I’d gotten on my face from running into a tree. Others grew into massive class projects, like the Ordinary Story, a rhyming story about a boy and a girl who wander into the woods and befriend a troll – after this story, our class worked together to create an enchanted forest from plasticine.

            Looking back on that time, I find it incredible how many engaging and humorous stories he wrote, memorized, and told over the short three years I was in that classroom. It led to him joining the local storytellers’ guild and telling stories at a number of other venues as well – including an event for my wife’s homeschool group, before I even met her.

            Looking back on that, it’s no wonder that, with that in my background, I grew up with a passion for telling stories. However, there’s one conversation I had with my dad several years ago that has stuck with me ever since – it was the day he told me how impressed he was that I could write full length books. I looked at him in astonishment and told him that he could easily write a novel as well. I, myself, was (and am) still impressed with all his shorter stories. I’ve only written a few short stories in my time, and almost all of them leave an opening for more to happen – making them more like first chapters than short stories. Writing something novel-length is far easier to me.

            I think that was the first day I came to appreciate a key element of human nature: our tendency to be blind to that which makes us extraordinary because it comes easily to us. We think that, because we find it easy, everyone must find it easy, and that the things we find hard and that other people find easy means that those people are more extraordinary than us.

            We teach kids that everyone is unique and special, but we don’t go on to tell them what that actually means. It means that everyone has their own skills and talents, and those are what make them extraordinary. If something comes easily to you, that’s probably one of the things that makes you special. And those things you wish you could do that other people seem so good at, but that they seem to think it’s no big deal that they can do it? That’s what makes them special, and they just might admire you for the things you find to be easy.

            Sure, I’ll never be able to sit at the front of a room and captivate an audience with the way I tell a story – at least, not like my dad can – but I have my own ways of telling stories that are just as good. Not to mention, requiring far less energy to present. And quieter. Much quieter.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Make it Your Own

            One of the ways I survived the school system was by taking assignments and making the suit myself. I was always an incredibly odd person, and I tended to find projects boring and stifling. Most of them were along the lines of “Read these books and then tell us what they say in your own words”, which is stupid. It’s intended to prove that the student has learned from the material, but it’s really reaching how to find creative ways to reword things so you don’t plagiarize.

            So, whenever possible, I found loopholes that would allow me to make projects truly my own. In tech class, when instructed to make a boring mousetrap car, I made a mousetrap car that was conveniently a sword once I took the wheels off. In drama, when told to write a play about a situation that could actually happen, I time-traveled it back to a medieval setting so I could actually write something interesting. However, my crowning achievement in this was when I was 16 and I was instructed to make “visual essay”.

            This was in my Introduction to Sociology, Psychology, and Anthropology class (try saying that ten times fast). We were to research a nation of our choice and prepare a visual display that presented the information – the example we were given was a mobile with snippets of information balanced and hanging from threads. We were then to make a presentation on our research, and there were bonus marks for bringing in a snack from the researched culture.

            I started off annoyed at this project, but then an image for a project started to form in my mind – and I became delighted by it. I was pushing the boundaries a little, but that’s when I did my best work. Instead of choosing a country I was particularly interested in, I chose one that fit my vision: Fiji.

            Then I started to construct a paper mache palm tree. A 6 foot tall paper mache palm tree. It took a very long time, even with the help of my parents. From the tree hung several paper mashe coconuts. It was completed the night before the presentation.

            The next day, I stood before my class, with them and the teacher gaping at this monstrosity beside me (and munching on the Fiji-related coconut-based snack I’d brought in). I pulled out a knife, and cut open the paper mache coconuts, revealing inside the points of information and pictures on the required research topics. It was one of my strangest projects, and will always be one of my favorites.

            The favorite part of the story, though, came when the marks were being handed out. The teacher handed me my grading paper, saying that it was a really neat project, but there was no visual presentation of the information like there was supposed to be. I just looked confused and said, “The information’s all there in the coconuts.” She paused for a moment, a look of dawning realization on her face, then calmly changed the mark to 100%.

            And that’s how it came to be that I created a 6 foot tall paper mache palm tree. It sat around the house for years after that, until someone finally had the heart to get rid of it. But, in the intervening years, that tree did have one more glorious moment in the sun (so to speak). It was the middle of the winter, with some snow freshly fallen, and I looked at the tree in the house beside me and said to my friend, “You know what I’ve always wanted to do, ever since I made that thing...?” And he said, “Let’s do it!” And that’s how one of my favorite pictures of me came to be.

            I call it “Tropical Canadian Vacation”.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

D&D Brings People Together

            When Colleen and I signed up to start playing Dungeons & Dragons at a local board game cafe almost two years ago, I honestly had no idea what to expect. We’d played D&D with friends and family before, and enjoyed it, but the games had never lasted long. It seemed likely that a pay-to-play game with a set schedule would have a good turn-out. It was also a bit experimental for me because I find socialization to be extremely taxing, so it was a test to see if I could handle it.

            We were very surprised when we got to the game and discovered that we already knew one of the other players – a member of a home-school group we’d run some chainmaille workshops with. As more players came in, I was impressed to see such a diverse age range. Here we had a group of people with the youngest being twelve and the oldest in their forties. All had different amounts of experience (both with life and D&D), but we all had interest in the same game.

            The fascinating thing is how well the group got along, right from the start. We were a random group of people who had signed up for this game, and from the moment we started playing it was like we’d known each other for years.

            I may have passed it off as chance, but when we signed up for the follow-up game, the same thing happened. Two of the players from the previous game had been replaced, but the newcomers were welcomed in and got along well with everyone.

            Then, last spring, we signed up for the third game being run by the same Dungeon Master, and it happened again. We had one of the other players from the first game and three brand new ones, and this group got along even better than the others. And when, over the eight or so months that the game ran, two of the players had to leave, the players that replaced them fit in well and also got along with the group.

            Now I’ve seen it happen again, this time from the perspective of the DM – the one running the game rater than playing in it. A group of random people were brought together, from teens to forties. A few knew each other, but they were mostly strangers – yet here they were, playing a game together and becoming fast friends.

            It’s been amazing to experience and observe. We’re generally expected to only get along with people in our own age-group, and it’s supposed to be hard to make new friends – yet, here I have evidence that this isn’t the case. All you need is a set time and place, and a good tabletop role-playing game.

            Dungeons & Dragons brings people together.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Lonely Pets Club

            My in-laws were away this weekend, leaving me in my usual position as pet-sitter. Now I feel compelled to tell you about this atypical group of pets, because they really are quite amusing.

            First, there’s the dog. At least, genetically he’s a dog – we suspect that he may identify as something else. Possibly a sheep. Many dogs, he’s afraid of thunder, but he also takes it a step further – he’s afraid of rain. And just about any sounds, really, which is probably why he almost never barks. He’s very sweet and friendly, though, and is very good about not jumping up on people who have just come into the house – instead, he prances over and grins at them, truly happy to see them.

            When his family is away, I always get a little concerned about him. He misses them so much that he stops eating for several days – except for the treats he gets every time he comes inside from his walks. Of course, I use every a little loosely here; he usually gets a treat when he comes in, but I sometimes feel compelled to do a little training.

You see, my in-laws came into dog ownership later than many people do and, as a result, they aren’t as firm with the dog as they could be. Therefore, when going for walks, he’s used to his humans stopping and waiting for him every time he wants to sniff a tree or roll in the grass. Having grown up with a dog, I have an expectation that the walk keeps moving, and therefore the treat gets denied if I’m kept out in the cold too long. He learned very quickly that I would tolerate nothing more than on very short roll in the grass, and he may even have noticed that he got more treats when he didn’t hold me up at all.

            Then there’s the cat. The latest, and currently only, in a string of abandoned cats the family took in, he is always a bit “my way or the highway”. In other words, he’s a cat. Yet, once the family has been away for a day, he starts begging for attention. As I’m allergic to cats, he doesn’t get it from me, but it doesn’t stop him from trying. He spends the time I’m in the house following me around, meowing and pointedly rubbing against various objects and making me feel generally guilty about my allergy.

            He has, however, given up on trying to sneak out of the house. Due to tome feral cats he’s feuding with, he has been relegated to being an indoor cat, much to his chagrin. I think that’s his greatest sorrow about my in-laws being away. He’s used to a house full of people who are used to him, so they don’t pay him that much attention, making it relatively easy to slip through a closing door (luckily he can be summoned back into the house with the shaking of a treat container – which is ridiculous; I mean, he’s a cat! Cat’s can’t be summoned like dogs!). He has long since learned that this doesn’t work with me. He doesn’t even try anymore. But he does watch me very closely, waiting for me to slip up...

            And, finally, there’s my sister-in-law’s bunny. Now, apparently this bunny is pure evil and hates everyone other than my sister-in-law. It certainly seems that way when she’s brought out in public. She’s certainly very skitterish and ant-social. This is common knowledge.

            Yet, when the family away, she becomes the sweetest bunny in the world. When I check on her, she rushes right over to see me – she doesn’t cringe in corners or kick aggressively as her reputation would have you believe. In fact, she’s so happy to see me that she hops in circles!

            I guess it just goes to show that animals miss their families as much as they are missed. Except, perhaps, the bunny. It is entirely possible she’s just luring me into a false sense of security, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Different Ideas

            This week I came across a list of things writers are afraid of that they shouldn’t be, and at the top of the list was: other people stealing their ideas. And it’s true – I have yet to meet an author who wasn’t trepidatious about sharing their work because they were afraid of their ideas being stolen. It’s not just that someone could copy our work – it’s the fear that someone else might take our ideas and produce something with them before we do. Even worse, what if they produce something better than we do?

            There were to incredible arguments about why writers don’t need to fear their ideas being stolen. The first was that, quite simply, authors have so many ideas of their own, they aren’t about to go around stealing someone else’s. It’s true. Every writer I have ever met has had more ideas for what to write than they could ever write in their lifetime. I know from personal experience that for every book I write, I end up with two more book ideas – I’ll certainly never need to steal from someone else!

            I found the second argument even more compelling. Even when you share an idea with someone, their vision of that idea will be completely different from your own. We all view the world differently and, as a result, the way we flesh out ideas are all completely different.

            The reason I found that argument more compelling was because I have personal experience proving it true. Many years ago, a friend shared an idea with me. She said she wanted to write a story about a haunted piano. I thought this was brilliant! A ghost haunting a piano sounded absolutely fantastic to me and I was very excited to read the story.

            Once she had written it, however, I was very disappointed. The story was very well written, but it didn’t come close to what I had envisioned from the idea. It was a tale (as near as I can remember) of someone who acquired an old piano, and then the piano had possessed them and they proceeded to waste away their lives playing the piano – writing music and reaching for an impossible imperfection.

            I was so disappointed in the results that I wrote up a story of my own so I could share my take on the story of a haunted piano. This was a piano in a secluded alcove that could play itself. A person, coming upon the piano but not knowing how to play, played a few random notes. When they went to leave, the piano played the notes back – and then proceeded to build a marvellous song around those notes, to the awe of its audience. To me, it was such a compelling scene that I built it into the first novel I ever wrote.

            Both stories stemmed from a single idea, yet that idea took on extremely different shapes for each writer. How would a third person interpret the idea? A fourth? I couldn’t say, but I do know that I’m no longer as worried about people stealing my ideas.

            What about you?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Industrious Spider

            One day I was sitting in a chair, reading to Colleen, when this tiny spider drifted past in front of me, suspended from a web. It wasn’t close enough to bother me, so I went about my reading. Then it drifted past again. And again.

            At this point, I paused to pay a bit more attention to this spider, which was little more than a green dot. I discovered that it was, in fact, drifting around in circles, making use of the ceiling fan’s air currents. I don’t know if it was weaving a web or simply having fun – either way, it was quite amusing to see.

            Over the next couple days, I noticed a huge increase in spider webs around the house. At first I thought maybe I just hadn’t been paying attention to them before, but then I realized that many of them had to be new – because I’d recently vacuumed through those areas. A few more sightings of that tiny dot of a spider led us to the conclusion that it had been the one responsible.

            It was amazing to discover that this one itsy bitsy spider had webbed just about every desirable location (by spider standards) in the house in such a short span of time. There didn’t seem to be any other spiders around to help or compete, so it had to be this one.

            Even more interesting to me has been spotting the spider again recently and seeing that it hasn’t grown much. Which makes me wonder – is this industrious spider failing to catch food, even with all those webs? Or, perhaps, does it need all those webs because it needs the food to support its active lifestyle?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Swords & Wizardry

            Yesterday I had the delightful experience of playing Swords & Wizardry, which is essentially a revamped version of the very first version of Dungeons and Dragons (available for free from Frog God Games). Aside from being a lot of fun, it gave me a glimpse at what the game was like back in the day. Apparently, back then, Dungeons and Dragons was far more deadly for the characters.

            Before I get into some of what happened in the game, I think it’s important to note some major differences between Swords & Wizardry and modern D&D. The biggest difference is that the newer game is more about storytelling – you put a lot of work into your characters and their back story and the game, and there is a big focus on why the heroes are adventuring as they are. The older game is what we call a dungeon crawl – while there is still some story, the primary goal is to fight through dungeons and gather as much treasure as you can. The difference may not seem very big, but it leads into the second major difference: balance.

In modern D&D, when your characters end up in battle, it is almost guaranteed that you can win – because the game is designed to be balanced. S&W is not so kind. It functions under the more realistic assumption that, were you to go out adventuring, whatever you ran into was what you ran into – it doesn’t matter if you’re level one, you can still encounter something like an ancient dragon that you can’t even hit. This, combined with the third major difference, makes for a high mortality rate.

            In newer games, there are a number of abilities and skills to help your character detect traps, secret doors, and a variety of dangers. Not in the old games – no, you have to specifically say your character is looking at something for you to see it, which means it is way easier to walk into traps.

            So, essentially, in D&D you go into the game expecting to make a character that is not all that likely to die, whereas in S&W you go in expecting that your character will die, so you’re prepared to make a new one so you can rejoin. The way characters’ ability scores are rolled – in newer games, you usually roll four six-sided dice, add the top three together, and then assign that number to whichever ability you want it in. In the old game, you roll three six-sided dice and fill in the stats from top to bottom – making them completely random. As you can see highlighted in red on my character sheet below, that doesn’t always turn out very well.

            For frame of reference, the highest roll possible is 18. Anything below an 8 is really bad, and for something to be useful it needs to be 13 or higher. As you can see, this character’s only decent ability was charisma which, in this game, is almost completely useless. However, the one thing it is good for is having hirelings – extra people paid to follow your character around and do their bidding. And so begins the epic tale of Gorbon the Slovenly, the halfling thief – the character with the worst stats anyone had ever seen, and who, starting with only 3 hit points, we all thought would be the first to die (but we joked he’d be the only one to survive in the end).

            While the four other adventurers were spending their starting money on armor and weapons, Gorbon the Slovenly bought a push-cart, hired two men-at-arms and ten torch-bearers (the cheapest minions around, who can’t even fight – I later claimed many of them were hired from an orphanage). Gorbon paid all his hirelings a week in advance and promised them a share of whatever treasure they helped him carry back. He then climbed into his pushcart and sat back to relax as his minions carted him around.

            The adventurers were then sent to retrieve a book from a temple that had been taken over and desecrated by an evil cult. En-route, they stopped to investigate some desecrated shrines. The statues of gods within had been beheaded – only one head was still around. Gorbon promptly ordered one of his minions to put the head back on the statue. However, the moment the torch-bearer, lifted the statue’s head, he burst into flame and died.

            The amount of damage done by the magical trap – hidden on the bottom of the head an impossible to detect – was enough that it could have outright killed any of our characters except the ranger. It was an eye-opener for the players as to what kind of game this was.

            Gorbon the Slovenly, however, was unconcerned. He heaved himself out of his cart, wobbled over to his fallen minion, and looted the week’s advance pay. He then climbed back into his cart, ready to move on. One of the other players jokingly called the dead torch-bearer “Jimmy” and I resolved to name every one of my minions when they died (you can see the list on the righ-hand side of the character sheet).

            I think I’ve given a good idea of Gorbon’s character by now, so I’ll skim to some more interesting parts. In a secret tunnel, he lingered behind to steal four valuable tapestries that the “lawful” characters wouldn’t take because it would be sacrilegious. When some very powerful spiders attacked the group in a forest, six more torch-bearers died and a seventh (I named him Bilbo) fled into the forest, chased by one of the spiders. Gorbon stayed in his cart, shooting arrows, while keeping his men-at-arms at his sides in case anyone came too close. After the battle, he looted his money back from his dead minions and the adventurers moved on.

            At this point, I started doodling Gorbon being pulled in his cart, along with his dead minions, around the outside of my character sheet. Yes, there is a little corpse for each dead minion – they shall not be forgotten.

            They finally arrived at the temple, thanks to the sacrifice of Gorbon’s minions – of which there were now two torch-bearers and two men-at-arms. That quickly became one torch-bearer when to one Gorbon sent ahead into the temple was killed by another magical trap (on the ceiling we hadn’t thought to look at).

            From this point forward, Gorbon became more careful with his minions, as he needed them to pull his cart. The remaining three survived as everyone fought skeletons, wound their way through a secret passage and into tunnels. However, they came to a place that to proceed forward they had to climb over short walls – the cart had to be left behind. And as soon as they were in one of the parallel tunnels (both with the barricades), an enormous ogre attacked the party from behind.

            When the ogre crushed the group’s other (much better) Halfling thief into jam with one blow, Gorbon took his minions and ran – straight into the ogre’s lair. There he spotted treasure and paused long enough to order his men-at-arms to grab a chest of it, then circled back to his cart via the second of the parallel tunnels.

            By a stroke of luck (a critical hit, for which we had an awesome deck of cards to generate special results), our human fighter beheaded the ogre. Gorbon hid the chest on his cart and assured the others that he had been circling around to attack from behind, not merely fleeing.

            The adventurers found a great deal of treasure in the ogre’s lair, loaded it into the cart, but left it where it was and continued on foot (joined by the paladin that replaced the dead thief) down a side passage – much to Gorbon’s dismay, as he was counselling them to return to town to hire more minions with their treasure. They fought some skeletons, then came upon a wight – which cast a spell of fear that caused all but two of the adventurers to run away. One joined his fleeing companions, while the ranger (having been drained to level 1 by the wight which we couldn’t hurt without silvered weapons) stayed behind and sacrificed himself.

            The spell wore off when they were halfway into the woods. Gorbon convinced everyone to go back for the treasure, then go into town – they agreed on the condition that they run at the first sign of trouble. They collected the treasure and made it back to town without trouble, where they bought silvered weapons. Gorbon opened his secret chest to find three potions, one of which was poison and killed his last torch-bearer who was testing them to identify what they would do.

            Gorbon hired twenty more torch-bearers. All the other characters, being “lawful”, couldn’t bear the thought of hiring people and sending them to their deaths, so they set out again. By the time they reached the temple again, three torch-bearers had fled and another eleven had been killed by orcs and spiders.

            We then took a different route in the temple, that led us to a room that spawned four skeletons every two rounds that a “lawful” character was in it. Gorbon wisely told them to retreat, but the other adventurers decided that there couldn’t be that many skeletons. When the cleric died (leaving only two of the original adventurers alive), the remaining three decided to run to the exit on the far side of the room, the whittle down the remaining skeletons once they stopped spawning. Gorbon, still in the first hallway, had his minions pull him all the way back to the edge of the forest while he fired arrows at the two skeletons chasing them. There he was joined by the cleric’s replacement, who was a “neutral” character (he’d learned his lesson) that helped slay the skeletons.

            Back inside, the other skeletons were killed off, but not before one of the three was knocked unconscious. The new “neutral” character crossed the room to join them, but Gorbon the Slovenly stayed behind – his henchmen were all lawful, and he wasn’t going to go on without them (or his cart), and he certainly wasn’t going to let them spawn more skeletons. He did, however, go far enough into the room to loot the dead cleric.

            The remaining three adventurers carried on until they found a large glowing rune. The two “lawful” characters (one carrying their unconscious companion) stood back while the “neutral” character opened the secret door, breaking the rune and, in so doing, summoning an frog-demon which magically changed all but the fighter (the second last of the original adventurers) into its minions. The fighter dropped his unconscious companion and fled – but not fast enough. The frog-demon destroyed him, and walked deeper into the dungeon with its new minions in tow.

            And so it was that Gorbon the Slovenly, he with the worst stats anyone had ever seen, was the only one to survive the adventure. In the end, the game claimed the lives of five adventurers and twenty torch-bearers. A further three torch-bearers fled home, and one was lost in the woods, being chased by a giant spider.

            We still don’t know if poor Bilbo survived.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Different Obvious

            When I was in grade 10, my English class read Lord of the Flies. I can’t say I remember all that much about the book, but I do have a very distinct memory of the projects we presented in front of the class.

            We were split into groups and each group had to do a presentation on the same set of questions. I don’t know if all the other groups handled the project the same way, but my group split the questions up, making each member of the group responsible for presenting the answer to their questions.

            The questions I took asked me to define what, in the book, was the Lord of the Flies and the Monster that was frequently mentioned. I chose the questions because the answer was so clear and obvious to me.

            When it came time for the presentations, my group went last. So, before making my presentation, I first heard the question answered by several other people. I was astounded – every answer presented was almost exactly the same. They boiled down to, “The Lord of the Flies is the pig head the boys put on a stake, and the Monster is the dead parachuter stuck on the cliff.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Everyone had the same answer but me.

            When I stood up to present my answer, I started by saying, “Well, my answer is a bit different than what others have said.” I then proceeded to explain how the Monster, while personified by the dead parachuter, was a representation of all the fears of the group of boys stranded on the island. Meanwhile, the Lord of the Flies was all the anger, hatred and violence that was awakened in the boys by their need to survive and their desires to do whatever they wanted. This was, of course, given visual representation by the bloody pig head on a spike, swarming with flies.

            I remember the class staring at me, dumbfounded. I don’t recall if the teacher’s expression was shocked or impressed – and I have no memory of the mark I received on the project.

            But I did find a deep understanding from that experience. You see, to me, the answer my classmates gave was too simple – they were facts pretty much stated in the book. What was the point in even asking those questions if there wasn’t something more? But others stopped at that answer, because, yes, it was obvious.

            However, to me, my answer was just as obvious. It was simply more abstract, but it had to be what the question was asking about. On the other hand, the stares I received told me that what was obvious to me hadn’t been obvious to others.

            From that, I learned that different things are obvious to different people – and that, generally speaking, when people find something they believe obvious, they stop. It’s obvious – why would they think about it further?

            I learned that, just because something is obvious, that doesn’t mean it’s obvious to everyone.

Something being obvious doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Tunnelling Through The Snow

            Around this time of year, I always used to hope for a huge snowfall. Not just because it would mean school would be cancelled, but because I needed a lot of snow for my favourite winter activity: building snow tunnels.

            Of course, at the time, I didn’t call them snow tunnels – I called them igloos. This is a misnomer, because real igloos are constructed using blocks of ice (or packed snow), whereas what I made involved tunnelling out a mound of snow. Since we Canadians live in igloos year-round, it’s an important distinction to make. For the purposes of this blog, I’ll periodically call them igloos for simplicity’s sake.

            Anyway, the first time I made an igloo, it was a big family project. My parents, brother and I all worked really hard on it. To this day, I couldn’t say for certain how big that igloo was, because I was rather small at the time – in my memory, it was at least five-feet tall with a diameter of ten feet. Big enough for my entire family comfortably fit in, at least according to me. In reality, it was probably significantly smaller.

            After that initial construction, my brother and I got creative. We built a second, much smaller, igloo and attached the two with a tunnel. My poor mother nearly got stuck in that tunnel – it turns out adults are bigger than kids, but we were so proud of our accomplishment that we wouldn’t let her alone until she’d crawled through it.

            In future years, my brother and I became experts at tunnelling through the snow. This was, in part, for safety reasons. Around this time, there was a great deal of concern about kids getting injured in collapsing snow tunnels. One of my friends (you know who you are, and I know you’re reading this) was only allowed to play in our tunnels with us as long as she kept her head outside. My brother and I felt this was unnecessary because none of our igloos ever collapsed (unless we jumped on them or they melted) – we believe that the any that did were poorly constructed.

            Here are the guidelines we used for making our tunnels:

-          First, only use snow that packs decently. Light, fluffy snow won’t hold together well enough to form a solid structure. It is a good idea, once your pile of snow is ready to be tunnelled, to ensure it s sufficiently packed. To do this, carefully (so as not to leave footprints) climb to the top of the pile and roll down the hill. If the pile isn’t too high, it is also possible to jump lengthwise onto the top before rolling down. Repeat this until the hill is sufficiently packed on all sides and feel free to continue for as long as it’s fun.

-          Second, when tunnelling, make sure the walls are the correct thickness. If they are too thick, they could collapse from the weight. If they are too thin, they won’t be strong enough to hold up the structure. The ideal thickness is right before the point when you can see sunlight through the walls. The best way to achieve this is to tunnel until you can see a bit of light – then pack some snow over top of that and use that location as a guide for the continued tunnelling process. It is especially important to focus on getting the roof the right thickness, since that is the most likely part to cave in if there is a structural problem. In that event, a thinner roof is less dangerous.

-          Third, the don’ts. Don’t freeze your igloo – the process of freezing it will make the structure weaker and, in the event of a collapse, more dangerous. Don’t fill the walls with windows and doors – one entrance is enough, maybe one or two tunnels if you have a complex structure. And whatever you do, don’t jump on top of it – especially if there is another person inside.

Using these guidelines, my brother and I crafted many interesting snow tunnels. From a triplex of interconnected igloos to an igloo fort with a tunnelled outer wall, we had a great time every year we got enough snow (right up into out twenties). It helped that we had a large driveway – big enough to hold 6-8 card or 3 (friendly) dogsled teams. The snow needed to be shovelled anyway, so why not put it all in one place?

            So, if you’re stretched for things to do this winter, and you happen to get a lot of snow, try tunnelling. It’s a great deal of fun – just make sure you stay safe.

Disclaimer: To the best of my knowledge, that driveway has never had a dogsled team parked in it – and no, all Canadians don’t actually live in igloos.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

A Most Interesting Game

            So, a few years back I was in a restaurant with part of my wife’s extended family. At this point in time we hadn’t been dating very long, so I didn’t really know who anyone was. Across from me sat my wife’s uncle, a man with a bushy, black, grey-streaked beard and a brightly coloured beanie (yellow and red, if I remember correctly).

            Partway through the evening, after losing interest in the conversation of the rest of the table, this man (who I hadn’t spoken to at all, since I’m kinda the shy quiet type) gathered together two salt and two pepper shakers and put them in the center of the table. He then gave me this serious, considering look, and very deliberately moved one of the salt shakers on an angle to rest beside a pepper shaker.

            Not entirely certain what was going on, or what the intended rules for this game were, I decided to play along. After a moment of consideration, I moved a pepper shaker to make the pattern of all the shakers relatively symmetrical.

            My wife’s uncle made an impressed face, nodding, as if this was a very cunning move. Then he moved a salt shaker, and I followed up with a pepper shaker. This went on and on, for probably half an hour or more. We never said a word to each other. We just kept moving shakers, playing by whatever rules were implied by the other player’s actions and aiming for imaginary goals that we weren’t entirely certain of.

            The game came to an end when someone else at the table finally asked us what we were doing. Playing a game, we replied. What were the rules? Oh, we’re just making them up as we go along.

            The magic of the silent game was broken, there seemed no point in going on with it or restarting now that it had been defined. But to this day, this was the most unique – and I’d even say profound – way I’ve ever been introduced to someone. Strange as the experience was, it was incredible – and the memory of it will stay with me forever.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Fish in a Jar

            Today I shall share with you a story from my LARPing days. Earlier this year, I told you about how I sometimes make joking suggestions that people take too seriously. This is a story about that, too.

            Firstly, for those who don’t know, LARPing stands for Live Action Role Playing. The one I was involved with is called Amtgard – a fantasy themed game (surprise, surprise). If that still means nothing to you, once a week my friends and I went to a park in costumes and beat each other up with pool noodle swords. Kind of like Dungeons and Dragons live. It’s significantly more awesome than it sounds.

            So, as part of this game, sometimes quests are run – usually only during events with guests from other groups because more people is better for quests and they take a lot of energy to put together. During a quest, people are split into two groups PCs and NPCs. NPCs are the people running the quest – the monsters and characters that tell the story – while the PCs are the players who try to solve the puzzles and defeat the monsters.

            Now, for years, as core members of our group, my best friend and I were usually NPCs, if not the people writing the quest in the first place. This time, however, we were PCs – which, to us, was an opening to have a lot of fun.

            For a few months, we’d been planning a couple of new characters to play – a pair of eccentric gnomes. These characters had no interest in solving the quest. No, they just tended to be around, sometimes helping, sometimes throwing a wrench in the gears. We planned all kinds of antics, such as fishing in a pile of leaves or setting up a “machine” that enchanted weapons (which really had one of us inside casting the spells). The overall intent was to mess with people enough to make them think we were NPCs rather than PCs and have them wondering what our part was in the quest.

            Well, we got word in advance that this quest was taking place during a fair scenario – where there would be games to play and prizes to be won. How perfect was that? All we had to do was come up with some items that we could trade to people, or give them as prizes, with the hope that they’d be fooled into thinking they were some significant part of the quest.

            I have no memory of how the conversation led to it, but this is where – after the laugh I have that indicates my idea is to ridiculous to do – I made the suggestion I never thought would happen.

            Fish in jars.

            However, as usual, I underestimated my best friend’s willingness to run with my crazy ideas. The idea stuck. Why? Because it was perfect for the scenario. In a quest situation, why on earth would there be live fish if it wasn’t an important part of the quest? We would hand them out to people and they’d go insane trying to figure out what they were for. What more could we wish for?

            So, the project began. We went and scouted fish prices, then went to the grocery store and bought four jars of baby food. It was while my friend was eating his way through these jars that I giggled and said the next thing I shouldn’t have.

            I said, “You know, people might ask what the fish is for, and if they do, you should do this.” I proceeded to mime drinking the contents of one of the jars.

            I should have known. He looked me in the eye and declared that he would do it. He then said that he hated me, because he didn’t want to do it, but it was too perfect an opportunity to miss.

            And so, on the day of the event, we went out and bought our fish. We bought feeder fish because of a combination of them being cheap, and that they were intended to have short lives and we had no idea what would happen to them once they were given away. My guilty conscience – still protesting at the plan to swallow a live fish – hoped that they might end up living a better life than that of a bigger fish’s meal.

            We sorted out four fish into their four jars – leaving the lids loose when we could to keep oxygen in the water – and headed for the quest. The game started, and we set to work. One by one, we went up to random people (one of them even an NPC), asking riddles or offering trades – then presented them with live fish.

            They had no idea what to make of them. The expressions on their faces were priceless. Luckily, no one asked what they were for.

            We were having so much fun messing around that I honestly have no idea what was going on with the rest of the quest. At some point, monsters attacked, and the carefree gnomes hopped inside a protective circle and watched the battle. Then the quest was over.

            The best part, though, is that during the quest, one girl had traded her way into owning all four of the fish. She told us how delighted she was with them and that she planned to take them home to the states with her and keep them as pets. It was wonderful – if not for that, I would likely still feel guilty about those fish to this day.

            At the same time, I’m a little sad that no one asked what the fish were for.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Squeakers the Black-Ops Mouse

            You may remember that some time ago, I told you about how spider assassins want me dead. Well, it seems they’ve upped their game. They hired Squeakers, the black-ops mouse.

            It all started at 5:00 am last Wednesday. I awoke to this scrabbling-scratching sound. Never one to jump to conclusions, I waited and listened carefully. The sound came again. It sounded exactly like the sound they use for unseen rodents in movies. The third time I heard the sound, I was convinced and I woke my wife to inform her we had something skittering around our bedroom.

            We turned on the light to search, but couldn’t find the intruder. We did, however, find confirmation that there was, indeed, a mouse in our bedroom. Squeakers had left a calling card in the middle of my bedside table, not a foot and a half from where my sleeping head had been a moment before.

            That was when I realized that Squeakers was no ordinary mouse. No. The sounds that came in the middle of the night, in our bedroom where we feel safe enough to sleep. The dropping, placed so perfectly to assure us that those sounds were real, not a figment of imagination or the result of branches brushing the house on a windy night. These were deliberate actions, intended to instil terror. Clearly, Squeakers had to be a black-ops mouse, skilled in the use of asymmetric warfare.

            Since the spider assassins have unsuccessfully sought my death for years, it was easy to guess that they were the ones who sent Squeakers. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep the rest of the night. Squeakers was an expert. Every time I came close to drifting off to sleep, there came a sound of one sort or another. Colleen somehow managed to sleep through it – but then, she can sleep through anything, whereas I’ve been woken up by someone silently looking into my bedroom before.

            Well, the next night was a little worse. My mother-in-law (living in the other half of the house) told us she had mousetraps, but with it being so close to Christmas she hadn’t gotten around to setting it up. The sounds were less frequent this time, but I was too tense to get any sleep until the sky started to brighten with the coming of morning. Even with then, I doubt I got even two hours of fitful sleep.

            That day, the trap was set. It was the night before Christmas, and all through the house, every creature was stirring, including the mouse. From downstairs, I heard the mouse scurrying in the ceiling well before going to bed. Yet, when I did go to bed, I was so tired from the previous two nights (and secure in the knowledge that the only food available for the black-ops mouse was bait), I dropped right off to sleep. Until...

            SnapThump! A sound woke me up at 4:00am. The trap, perhaps? Indeed, when we shone a light down the hole in the floor (it was extremely obvious how the mouse was entering our room), it was clear that the trap had been set off. It didn’t look like Squeakers was in it, though. It seemed like the cunning black-ops mouse had gotten away.

            I managed a fitful half-sleep the rest of the night. In the morning, I declared that in spite of getting such poor sleep for the past three nights, I was sort of glad Squeakers had survived – and received a Christmas dinner, to boot. Of course, later, when the trap was actually checked, there was Squeakers – a mouse small enough to be missed.

            It’s nice to be able to sleep soundly through the night again, but I can’t help feeling sorry for Squeakers. We suspect that this talented black-ops mouse was quite young, separated from his/her family when they were chased out during recent renovations. Lost, alone and unable to find food, Squeakers wandered through the foreign upstairs of the house, seeking the means to survive. There, Squeakers fell under the influence of the spider assassins who, ultimately, led him/her to his/her demise.

            Here’s to you, Squeakers! The most talented black-ops mouse that ever there was. You may no longer be with us, but your memory shall live on – thanks to the internet.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Moving with the Times

            As the colder weather moves in, so do we. Some outdoor activities must be cancelled, others can be moved indoors. Such is the case with the exercise routine my wife and I finally got in to this year.

            Some of you may remember me talking about Zombies, Run! earlier this year, which helped Colleen and I get into a regular routine of running. Sadly, that has had to grind to a halt as temperatures drop more and more.

            Exercise is important, though, so we’ve shifted to a new indoor routine! Now, on every morning we would normally be running, we’ve switched to playing Dance Dance Revolution and Just Dance games.

            It’s a good combination for exercise because Dance Dance Revolution is a video game that focuses on foot movement, while Just Dance has an emphasis on arm movement. Together, they provide quite the workout.

            It also turns out to be a good combination for us because each of us is better at one of them. Having spent a summer playing Dance Dance Revolution all the time, I’ve gotten to be quite good at it (I’m a bit rusty after years of not playing. When I was still in practice, I went on a drama department school trip to England and astounded my classmates when we went to the arcade. I was quiet and reserved, so I really took them by surprise when I stepped onto the dance mat). However, for some reason, I just can’t seem to get the dance moves right on Just Dance (I suspect it’s the way I hold the Wii-mote).

            Colleen, on the other hand, lacks my Dance Dance Revolution experience, yet excels at Just Dance. It works out well because, with how competitive the games are designed to be, there’s no point watching how one of us always has a higher score in one game because it will switch when we change games.

            So, the exercise routine will continue indoors. I just feel sorry for my sister-in-law whose bedroom is below the room we’re dancing in.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

My Life and Times of D&D

            When I first started playing Dungeons and Dragons, it was with edition 3.5 (okay, that’s not entirely true, technically my friend and I invented our own version before that, but I don’t think that counts). At the time, I didn't really understand the mechanics of the game since I was being taught on the fly, but that didn't stop me from enjoying it. Because of the sporadic nature of our playing, though, I never really took the time to learn that version of the game, as much as I enjoyed it.

            Years and years later, I started playing 4^th edition D&D with my wife and a couple of friends. I was the only experienced player (except for the friend running the game), so to make sure I could best help my allies learn, I read the Player’s Handbook cover-to-cover.

            I now had an understanding of the game far greater than I could imagine. We played and had a lot of fun, but it didn't last very long because the friend running the game got very sick.

            The next time I played, it was with my family. This time, my wife was the only experienced player, as I was the Dungeon Master running the game. At this point, I’d still only read the Player’s Handbook (I didn't want to invest in the other two main source books until I knew we were going to keep playing) and the adventure I was running was modified from a free one online.

            I did end up getting the other books – The Monster Manuel and the Dungeon Master’s Guide – and I also read those cover-to-cover. Now I understood the game extremely well and my imagination danced with the possibilities of what I could do. Ironically, my family have never played again after that, largely due to how busy everyone has become.

            I did, however, start playing much later with my wife and sister-in-law (and occasionally her boyfriend). Through running a game with my new knowledge, I started to master my Dungeon Master skills.

            Then, over the course of last year, 5^th edition D&D was released. Extremely out of character for me, I bought each of the three core books as they came out. When I read these, my jaw dropped. In essence, it was the same game, but these books contained so much more.

            The 4^th edition of the game has received a lot of criticism – so much so that it almost killed the brand. It was extremely rules-based, designed so that every player would be completely balanced with all the others; no one would be powerful than anyone else. The rules also focused almost entirely on the combat side of the game, which isn't good for a role playing game where the goal is group storytelling. Not really knowing any better, I hadn't seen a problem with it.

            But then, 5^th edition. It went way beyond the mechanics of the game. It went in-depth into character development, world building and even plot structure that I would advise any writer (especially of fantasy) to pick up the Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide just to learn all they have to teach.

            More than that, simply reading the book made me desperately want to play the game. Normally when playing games I have particular classes I want to play (usually rogues or other stealthy roles), but this game made me want to play everything. It made me sad, because I knew that, as a Dungeon Master, I was unlikely to ever get to play as a character again.

            I did come up with a solution to that, though. My wife and I have started an experimental game where we’re running the game cooperatively and both playing characters. In addition, we’re using Minecraft to make our maps for playing on/in. So far, it’s working out quite well! In fact, we’re writing it all down, so I may end up sharing the interesting story with you in episodes as the adventure unfolds.

            In conclusion, Dungeons and Dragons is fun for friends and family, 5^th edition is amazing, and people learning to write should read those books. This blog was in no way endorsed by Wizards of the Coast. Thanks for reading.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.