Happy Birthday, Hector! Celebrating 5 years as an indie author
My very first book, Dead Reckoning And Other Stories was released five years ago today! There’s a little bit of everything in there: military sci-fi, time travel, fantasy–and Elvis! Not to mention the insane adventures of Hector Tren-Hump (“Toward the end of Dead Reckoning I was rooting for the bad guy!” said one reviewer.) If […]
Sci-fi Imagineering (July 2020)
As a writer, my weapons of choice are, quite naturally, words. But like many authors, I also find inspiration in various places, and one of my favorite sources is cool sci-fi images. This post kicks off a series featuring images that have resonated with me, for all sorts of reasons. There’s not going to be […]
New release and a spring makeover
It’s time to announce the official release of my short-story, Atoll. It’s not my latest story written. I’ve had it ready or a while but wanted to get my novel out before releasing this one. The story is loosely connected to my novel Mathematics Of Eternity, taking place a few decades before the events in […]
Blender Non-Destructive Panel Lines
I’ve been working on various models for my book trailer and have tried to find a good way of creating panel lines for projects such as spaceships. This can be done with materials, but I’ve had better luck creating physical detail rather than using texturing. Up to now, the method I’ve used has been slow […]
The Making of Ben
When I’m writing a story I build up a collection of images that act as references for what’s in my head. Much of the time these are things I find on the web, but as I write science-fiction sometimes I just can’t quite find anything that looks right. Or sometimes I want to work through […]
My Open Source Challenge – Pt2
A little while ago I set myself the challenge to only use open-source tools for all my graphics work. The reasons for this were varied. Some tools that I’ve used in the past such as 3DS Max are simply way beyond my reach, while some others (Adobe’s Creative Cloud)–while not completely unaffordable– are still expensive […]