Blog

Looking Back: Green Dragon Tours & Jungle Dome

Back in 2015, a random conversation with a coworker piqued my interest in visiting Belize and Tikal in nearby Guatemala. As a solo traveler used to booking everything myself, I splurged and took the more laid-back option of using a service. I found Green Dragon Tours and the Belize Jungle Dome, which both were (perhaps still are) operated by Andy Hunt and Simone Angel.

I wrote a review on TripAdvisor that provides a decent, albeit dated,...

Note: I have been thinking about this piece for a while and it seemed appropriate for Easter Sunday. Also, these concepts are at the heart of Raiders of Light.

Humanity defies entropy. We organize. We build. We live. All the while knowing defeat is imminent.

Systems degrade. Monoliths crumble. Life succumbs. We watch helplessly as friends and family pass on. We lament as civilizations implode and cultures vanish. We scour the stars for answers when we realize that Mother Nature will, like...

Dear America,

While I recognize that We the People are not all Christians, it is my firm belief that every American should understand these concepts regardless.

In earlier letters, I mentioned that mankind has always been involved in a spiritual war between good and evil. I also posed a vital question: What is the value proposition of killing God? This is my attempt to answer and explain.

On Equality and Equity: Life, Death, and Rebirth

We are all born equal under God. And life in this...

Dear America,

In order that We the People never again fall prey to a figurative foul witch as described in my previous letter, I think it is wise that we revisit the scene of the crime and examine how she managed to get us into her clutches in the first place. Since we were all under her spell, we should help each other remember the sequence of events that led to our near demise…

For the sake of creative expression, let’s assume “you” in the story that follows is We the People collectively....

Dear America,

What is our job as We the People? What is our role in society?

Answering these questions requires an understanding of our Founders’ worldview, which was built on top of Protestant principles and shaped by our geographical and political distance from the Old World. Given that all Protestant theology owes a great deal to Martin Luther, an examination of his views on the concept of vocation offers great insight into what the words “We the People” meant to our American ancestors.

...

Until 2017, I kept travel logs of my trips. Occasionally, I plan to pull from those for my blog posts. This one is from a trip to Busan, South Korea, I took in 2014 to visit a friend of mine (who I am renaming for privacy).

July 10, 2014

This day, a Thursday, I was set to check out of the hotel and move to Anne’s apartment, where I would spend the next four days. I woke up early again, this time to watch the Netherlands and Argentina play their semifinal match. It wasn’t very exciting, and I...

I remember distinctly a conversation I had nearly 20 years ago with a friend of mine—if she reads this, perhaps she will also remember. At the heart of our conversation was a question she posed: What is America? What is American culture?

In broad brush strokes, I would paint her politically left-wing and myself right-wing. While neither of us are zealots and both are reasonably intelligent people, we never could bridge the divide between us. For many years, I lamented this and wondered how...

Whether or not social unrest leads to another American civil war, we generations—shaped and scarred by the culture war of the past century—already inhabit the rubble of a once thriving civilization.

Thus, Finch Fries Press is founded on cultural restorationism, rather than political conservatism, progressivism, or some derivative. Evoking the great reformer Martin Luther, we seek to—through examination of the past and present and exploration of future possibilities—reestablish what it means...

Technology is a disruptive force. As a child of the 1990s, the internet grew up with me perhaps more than I did with it. For context, consider that personal computers reached ubiquity in American public schools only a few years before I entered kindergarten in 1992.

I have many memories of the early internet. The old AOL and Netscape discs, the iconic screeching of a dial-up modem, and the terrible design principles of early websites all stick in my memory. When I was eight or nine years old,...

In my 20s and early 30s, I would never have written and published this. But sports fans know: If you play it safe for long enough, you lose anyway…

Yesterday’s July Fourth celebrations, as they often do, stirred me to ruminate. My reflection is that we Americans share a great deal in common with one another, regardless of where or when we were born. Or we did up to a point in our history. Perhaps both things are true.

Like many Americans, my ancestors were not all born in this country. But...

I love competition, especially sports. All kinds of sports. I don’t think I’ve ever found a sport I didn’t enjoy at least a little bit. When I set out to write Light’s Shadow, I knew the Darktouched would need some kind of athletic contest at the heart of their culture. So, I created Abzuball.

Those readers who have played Final Fantasy X (FFX) will of course see some similarities to Blitzball. For those who have not played FFX, imagine a mashup of soccer, water polo, and ice hockey played...

Writing about science fiction in this politically charged era is extremely challenging. Why is that, though? Stories centered on technological possibility, alien cultures, exploration, discovery, and interplanetary conflict should be immune from controversy, right? Alas, it is not so.

But again, I ask myself, why?

I believe the reason is, more so than other genres, sci-fi functions not only as a vision of the future but also a mirror reflecting current power and belief structures (hereafter,...

Note: This is a reminder to the reader that “Bumbling, Stumbling” is the bucket of blog posts centered around authoring, self-publishing, and marketing.

*Small rant incoming*

There was a certain trend that really gained momentum in the 1990s and has accelerated in the decades since. I think it’s now more of a cultural norm in the United States, and that’s even more unfortunate in my view.

What is it? The celebration of “nerd culture.”

Were this a polite conversation (I hope it is), you might...

Disclaimer: Writing this month’s blog posts was like pulling teeth, and this piece somehow ended up with me playing the part of a video game apologist. Point: It may not be for everyone, and that’s okay.

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which “Escape” is now so often used: a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary criticism give no...

The Royal Game of Ur bridges the ancient past with the now. Mesopotamian citizens first enjoyed the two-person race boardgame over four millennia ago, and versions of the game persisted through the 20th century.

While excavating the Royal Cemetery at Ur between 1922 and 1934, Sir Leonard Woolley discovered gameboards like the one pictured in the cover image for this blog post. For perspective, consider that one of my grandfathers was born in 1922. In his youth, the automobile had not reached...

Despite a perhaps unfortunate name from an English speaker’s point of view, morón cleverly combines (kinda sorta) rice cakes and chocolate. Morón is a popular treat in Region 8 of the Philippines (Samar and Leyte), where at least half of my roots originate.

My wife, Jane, helped me heavily with this post. Future posts in The Yum category will follow a similar format. That said, the “Recipe” and “Things Readers Should Know” sections may vary slightly depending on the food item in question....

In my view of America—trying not to speak for the world, since they might resent it—dreams and chasing dreams are what define us as a people.

I grew up in the 90s in what I’d call a blue-collar working-class family. We were the rich family in a trailer park since our manufactured home was a doublewide. That kind of thing.

We were not poor, but not really even in the middle of the middle class. For the first twelve years of my life, we lived with my dad’s parents and one of his brothers. This...

Whether writing or just living life, I enjoy a little wordplay.

A few days ago, for instance, one of those notions that occasionally floats into my conscious thoughts blipped on my radar. The thought was: Sometimes English almost behaves like a tonal language. [A Finchly Flit: If you’re still hung up on whether that was a mixed metaphor one sentence back, know that I appreciate such pedantry.]

For those of you that haven’t had the pleasure, tonal languages pack a lot of meaning into slight...

Back in undergrad (Aside: EGAD! That’s almost twenty years ago!), I crossed paths with a guy postulating that superheroes were the American pantheon and comics our modern myths. I didn’t buy it then and I don’t buy it now, but the concept of the "American myth" stuck with me. As a boy, Greek mythology and the legends of King Arthur captured my imagination. When slightly older, the Lord of the Rings—J.R.R. Tolkien’s attempt at crafting a truly English myth—grabbed my attention.

Ever since, I’...

A picture is worth a thousand words. So goes the cliché.

Since 2022 or so, I’ve spent the holiday season wiling away my time digitizing old family photos. The process includes careful (one might say surgical) extraction of said photos from a prison of Scotch tape and photo album adhesive. More on that later. Then, for each one: I scan (often front and back, to preserve any notes, dates, names, etc.), digitally straighten and restore (via Adobe suite), back up via physical and cloud storage,...