I've actually learned something because of people's searching. I noticed that several people had ended up coming here by Googling "Todd Heap Mormon." I had Todd Heap on my fantasy football team, and I'm Mormon, so that was enough to make me relevant in Google. As it turns out, Todd Heap is Mormon, even though he played for Arizona State... read more »

I heard this joke once, I'm not sure where, and I can't find it through Google to link to it. So I'll tell it: An Englishman, a Frenchman, and an American are on a hiking expedition in some far-off part of the world when they are captured by a tribe of cannibals. The cannibals are going to cook them for... read more »

Another crafted writing assignment for my creative writing class. The reason it follows so close on the heels of another one is that I was a week behind, but I've now caught up. I started writing this yesterday and finished after midnight. So I got in my 13 lines for yesterday, and while I technically got 13 lines for today,... read more »

I just read Moses 1 for my scripture reading today (well, by the time this gets posted, yesterday), and I was intrigued by the concept of worlds without number (Moses 1:33, 35). Not that I have any great spiritual insight into those verses. I just found the concept intriguing. I don't think God is being literal; the fact that the... read more »

In 2003 I kind of let various things in my personal life slide. I got out of several good habits, and into some bad ones. So my resolutions are more about getting back to where I used to be than about becoming the best I've ever been. 1. This morning, I weighed 219.5 pounds, which is the most I've weighed... read more »

Assignment for my creative writing class: Show someone deciding not to tell something to someone else. Note: This is not a scene from my novel, but this might someday be a scene in the third novel in the trilogy. Crent double-checked every symbol he had translated, hoping he had made some mistake. He had not. This was Densulak's lost prophecy:... read more »

Over the past couple of months I've been working occasionally on the story I wrote during the Orson Scott Card workshop. I tried several new beginnings for the story, and none of them worked. On Tuesday, I wrote yet another beginning, and while I'm not sure that it works either, at least it feels consistent with the rest of the... read more »

1. Double the number of words written for my novel. (Currently about 40K words. Last year I wrote only 22K. That would get me about 2/3 the way through, so I could finish it in 2005.) 2. Write six new short stories. (Last year I wrote four.) 3. Write at least 13 lines of fiction every day, even if it's... read more »