Jul 8, 2026
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 fiction.
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Jun 23, 2026
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.
Read more →Jun 16, 2026
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 in plot, and worldbuilding that finally landed for Company of Heretics Book 1.
Read more →May 23, 2026
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.
Read more →May 10, 2026
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 their own. A fractured magisterium. Princes whose ambitions and convictions pull in different ...
Read more →Apr 25, 2026
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 nihilism.
Read more →Apr 13, 2026
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.
Read more →Mar 27, 2026
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.
Read more →Mar 7, 2026
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.
Read more →Jan 10, 2026
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.
Read more →Dec 16, 2025
The Great Fruitcake
Billions of years ago, an infinitely dense fruitcake got lonely and exploded into the universe. A tongue-in-cheek creation myth.
Read more →Nov 29, 2025
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.
Read more →Sep 11, 2025
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?
Read more →Aug 17, 2025
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.
Read more →Jul 1, 2025
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.
Read more →Apr 15, 2025
The Shot That Changed Everything
What if nobody fired at Lexington Green? The Revolution was inevitable, but one unfired shot could have reshaped two centuries.
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