Author: Travis

Author Interview Series #3 – Nalini Singh

Cat Links Author Interviews, General, Writing Posted on Travis

No one would think, upon meeting this quiet, smiley woman from New Zealand, that she would have such a romantic geek streak. But as evidenced by the success of her romance fiction, and the burgeoning success of her sci-fi/paranormal romance fiction, it must be true. Also true is that she’s not alone. With ten books under her belt, she’s built an impressive audience, making both the USA Today and NYT bestseller lists. As the publishing industry has discovered, there are large numbers of readers who want to read romance stories set in a non-mainstream universe. (By the way, far beContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #3 – Nalini Singh

Author Interview Series #2 – Rich Wulf

Cat Links Author Interviews, General, Writing Posted on Travis

This week’s installment in my author interview series brings us Rich Wulf. Rich is best known as being the long-time story scribe of Legend of the Five Rings, a collectible card game, roleplaying game, and fiction property that has been going strong since 1995. He has since passed the L5R writing duties to Shawn Carman, who might find his way into this interview series in coming months. These days Rich writes mostly for Wizards of the Coast in their Eberron series of novels. Rich’s brain is capable of containing vast quantities of encyclopedic knowledge, and be possesses a great talentContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #2 – Rich Wulf

Adventures in Microsoft Customer Service

Cat Links Culture, General Posted on Travis

So it’s been far too long since my previous post, but keeping up with the anti-Microsoft sentiment in my previous cautionary tale, here’s an addendum to the way things turned out with my Vista installation. All the horror and angst of those experiences were riding high when I was going through trying to install a new PC game on my Vista machine. Battlefield 2142 is a high-end first-person-shooter. For Windows XP. I installed the game. It ran for about five hours. Then I shut the computer down, went away for a while, and tried to play again when I cameContinue readingAdventures in Microsoft Customer Service

The Lovely Farce That Is Windows Vista

Cat Links Culture, General Posted on Travis

I’ve nursed a simmering distrust of Microsoft for many years, ever since hearing about the rank hubris and contempt that they displayed toward the Federal government’s antitrust lawsuit not so many years ago. I had dinner one night with a tech-head who was closely involved with the case, and the stories he told about the way Microsoft destroyed evidence, stonewalled, played games, and in general made a mockery of the whole proceedings still sticks in my craw, even though, sadly, most of the details are fading into the fog of my aging memory. But I use their products. And forContinue readingThe Lovely Farce That Is Windows Vista