Written

For Novels, see Couch, Sherwood Nation... plus others

Stories:

Idle, Inc, forthcoming inBourbon Penn

On the Sun-lit Side of Venus, in Apex Magazine (Nominated for a Pushcart!)

How We Won the Demon War - from a lovely anthology called Dreams For a Broken World

Crash Exodus, Typehouse Magazine (Nominated for a Pushcart!)

The Hole in the Reef, Reckoning

The Thesis, New Orleans Review

Bear Awakes, West Branch

Orcus and the Bookkeeper, Andromeda Spaceways #71

Excerpt from the in-progress novel: Asleep in the Streets of the First City – read it at Sliver of Stone Magazine

News of the Week, West Branch

The Ticket Taker of Cenote Zací – read it on Strange Horizons, also anthologized in Wilde Stories 2016: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction

The Colts, in the anthology The Long Hidden

The Ant Singer, Read it now on: Bourbon Penn

Los Pepenadores, anthologized in Cyberpunk: Stories of Hardware, Software, Wetware, Revolution and Evolution by Underland Press

Bear and Shifty, Lightspeed Magazine

Launch Night at Dante’s Ad Agency (Reading Local)

Hamlet published by Bellevue Literary Review

Birds published by Strange Horizons, anthologized in Dispatches from Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin

The Coder published in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #21

Couch excerpt published in Eleven Eleven

I did a live performance of a story written for the Hugo House in Seattle which included some server technology and text-messaging.

Poetry:

I am at best an infrequent poet, having mostly been an editor of poetry. That said, in August, 2024 I participated in the annual Poetry Postcard Fest again. You are assigned 31 addresses, and your job is to send a written poem to each on the back (front?) of a postcard. I decided to write all within a series, mirroring somewhat a very early, influential series by Jim Harrison, called Letters to Yesenin. See my series on Purpose here.

Essays, etc:

I have a very short essay and photographs on Brazilian Graffiti in Superficial Flesh. There’s also an interview with me in the same issue.

There are a few poems out there in the wild, too, though I haven’t written poetry actively since pretty much the start of Gumball Poetry in 1999.




This box is you.

Some adventures can be undertaken name-less. This is not one of them.


Go ahead! it'll be fine...

{{pseudonym}}

Hello {{pseudonym}}!

This is your inventory satchel. Your gathered items, new destinations, and any actions you acquire will all go here. Good luck questing!

(...what is this? Try the help button below)

{{detailTitle}}

Items ({{items.length}} of 18)

  • {{item}}

Destinations ({{destinations.length}} of 5)


Actions ({{actions.length}} of 3)

  

This is a game.

This is a game, built on top of a fairly boring straightforward author's website.

It's part scavenger hunt, part narrative, part fight-scene. The objective, of course, is to fight, and win, against the author.

Items are things you gather. They often look something like this: (←if you've already entered a pseudonym, try clicking on the ambulance...you should see a message 'item added to inventory')

Destinations are places you visit

Actions are things you can do

As you play, new items/destinations/actions will be added to your inventory satchel.

Look for the numbers next to your Items, Destinations,and Actions in order to see how far along you are:
Example
Example number of actions

If you lose the game or wish to become someone else, hit the 'start over' button.

Tip Explore! Many peculiar things are clickable, hidden, or require a certain amount of time to be spent somewhere, or require interaction to work. And as you get deeper into the game, places that were once normal begin to alter.

Fight scene

If you spot any bugs, irregularities, surprises, etc - drop me an email: ben@ideacog.net - thanks for visiting!