Guardians of the Galaxy is a Perfect “Popcorn Movie.” Here’s Why.

by Andrew | Aug 14, 2014 | Featured Articles, Featured Post, Media, Movies, Science Fiction

It’s taken me a while to process my thoughts on Guardians of the Galaxy. One big reason for that (besides finding the time to do it) is that this movie is a cinematic conundrum: GotG is a movie that works in spite of its flaws. If you’ve seen the movie, you may...

Power Under Pressure Nominated for a Chesley Award!

by Andrew | Jul 5, 2014 | Featured Articles, Featured Post, Fiction, Steampunk, The Society of Steam

I’m totally thrilled to see that the cover for Power Under Pressure has been nominated for a Chesley award! (Heart so Smoke & Steam was nominated last year.) Justin Gerard’s work is amazing, and he was open to collaborating with Lou Anders and I on the...

The Cruel Book Summer

by Andrew | Jun 12, 2014 | Featured Articles, Featured Post, Fiction, Media, Publishing, The Fool, Writing

I wanted to let everyone know about an exciting event that I’m going to be a part of tomorrow (Friday 6/13): it’s called the “Cruel Book Summer”, and it’ll be a virtual mini-convention on Facebook. A dozen Dark Fantasy, post-apocalyptic,...

Active Design Podcast Episode 11: Dahlia Schweitzer

5 Steps to Writing a Powerful Book Review

by Andrew | May 8, 2014 | Featured Articles, Media, Writing

If you haven’t written a web review before, don’t worry—there really is no wrong way to do it. Potential readers use your review to decide if a title is going to be their next favorite book, and to do that they need to know what you really think. It would be...

Active Design Podcast Episode 10 – Will Marshall

by Andrew | Sep 30, 2013 | Active Design, Active Design Podcast, Featured Articles, Media

I’m back with an interview with breaks DJ and music producer WIll Marshall. You can find his digital home at www.willmarshall.me We get into the deeper aspects of music and technical production, discussing marketing, performing, coding, and music! There’s...

Hardcore Anger: Grieving for Fictional Worlds

by Andrew | Sep 6, 2013 | Active Design, Featured Post

Ahh… That awkward moment when you realize you posted something to the wrong blog… Check out more posts like this one at Active Design. There’s been a fair number of discomforting events over the past few weeks where designers and developers that I...

Active Design Podcast Episode 009: Ken Levine

by Andrew | Aug 28, 2013 | Active Design, Active Design Podcast, Featured Articles

We’re back with the second half of my interview with Ken Levine. This week we go deep and discuss the relationship between interactive media and storytelling by way of games, movies, books, and every other media we can think of.        ...

AD Podcast: Episode 008—Ken Levine Part 1

by Andrew | Jul 30, 2013 | Active Design, Active Design Podcast, Featured Post, Media

[display_podcast] Okay. It took a bit longer than I expected to get this one up. But here it is, my interview with Ken Levine! We talk about old games, new games, and games that don’t even exist yet! If you care at all about where interactive design is, and how...

Warren Spector on Big Data and Game Education

by Andrew | Jul 9, 2013 | Active Design, Video Games

Warren Spector has some thoughts on the state of an industry in flux: Spector ultimately believes the people who actually make the games are going to make better decisions than the number crunchers. “We’ve got to be looking forward and any time you start bringing data...