You cannot break the contract with the reader without consequences. Is the book a troubling portrait of a psychopath?
Category: Writing Process
The Worldbuilding of Project Hail Mary, Part 1: Here Be Dragons
The worldbuilding fails in the exact direction that flatters the lone genius.
The Linguistics of Project Hail Mary
Project Hail Mary breaks the contract with the reader by pretending to show rigorous and accurate science in action.
Worldbuilding Through Universal Fantasy: Creating a Cozy Mystery Setting in Arthurian Oxford
What happens when you drop King Arthur's court into medieval Oxford for a summer? And how do you, as an author, find out? Using Universal Fantasy in worldbuilding.
Better Conlang Orthography: Inspiration from History
A reader suggested an excellent change to my constructed language's spelling system.
The Linguistic Legacy of Dragons: A Worldbuilding Case Study
A month or two ago, while writing Crown of Crows, I suddenly and unexpectedly found myself in desperate need of a language for dragons. Not really having time to come up with one completely from scratch, I asked myself if there were some quick way I could create something that sounded reptilian and exotic, but also grounded in linguistic theory and historical linguistics.
Summer Writing Sprint 2025
A bit of a curtain-peek, for those who like them. A little progress report, a little linguistic nonsense, and a few excerpts of recent writing.
Animist AI Manifesto
Everywhere you look, in every nook and niche, from art museums to zookeeping, artificial intelligence is the topic of the day. Should it be used? Under what conditions? Should there be industry standards? Guidelines? Bans? What is the environmental impact? Is it even avoidable anymore? And how can you get reliable information to guide your… Continue reading Animist AI Manifesto
A Discursive Lecture on Late Pizan: a Linguistic Revolution
Professor Eleinn Hahíns and Magister Errícc Cnohrmann discuss the evolution of the Pizan language post-Yḿboldhźh revolution. Late Pizan, known as Kamvlŕsâi, emerged as the official language, marked by significant phonological simplification and a shift from SVO to VSO grammatical structure, reflecting a society's transformation towards directness and efficiency in communication.
Creating Pizan: The Language of Conquistadors and Conquest
In my ongoing development of the languages of the world of my novel Crown of Crows, I've been working on Pizan, a language with a complex fictional history rooted in Spanish colonization and subsequent English influence.