Drenched in Data
My favorite word I hear bandied about at work these days has to be "data lake." Such as "put that in the data lake" or "look at the size of that f-ing data lake!" The term didn't exist in 1997 when House
Daniel Verastiqui
Author
Breaking Down the Raven
One of the best things about Stephen King’s On Writing is the way he breaks down scenes and tells you how they were constructed. Being told not to use adverbs is great and all, but really getting into the mind of a good writer and seeing the process behind the art can be an invaluable experience.
Deleted Scenes
Brigham Plaza Lost Epilogue
The irony of the situation wasn't lost on Parker.
The Artifact
Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom—and warfare. Ray wondered if that’s all the artifact was—a little statue to be placed on a bookshelf in a fancy home office. Code drops in the Net often took the shape of such objects, but when touched, they were supposed
Troll, Pease...
There’s a new troll in town, and she’s not here to bring us another crappy podcast or build an automotive affront to god on 130. I’m not sure what she brings, but she smells really good, and in today’s crazy world, that’s all that really
Continuity
Misawa Air Base, Japan. 1994. Nick’s dad has a fancy 486 computer running Windows 3.11, and instead of watching a movie with my friends, I’m hunched over its sunken monitor trying to figure out why Lieutenant Commander Data keeps warning me about a continuity error. I can’
House of Nepenthe: Draft 1 Complete
Prompt: an exhausted Hispanic science fiction writer vaguely resembling literary heartthrob Daniel Verastiqui at his desk after he just finished the first draft of his new book titled House of Nepenthe. If you’re into numbers, the draft clocks in at 170,000+ words and 400+ pages. It took more
Jester West
In a dorm room on the thirteenth floor of Jester West, a homemade immersion rig was whirring in the relative quiet. To his roommates, X appeared to be resting on his bed, reclined as if sleeping. Under that rig, behind those eyes, an entire world was spinning just for him.
Spring Break
Sugar, sparklers, and screaming. First day (night) of Spring Break in the books.
See Chy Swim
This is the face of a dog who does not know when to quit. Granted, it had been a long time since the last time she got to swim at the lake, but she absolutely would not stop. Not for water. Not for food. Not to chase the other dogs
For My Fellow Readers
The Broken Promise of Synthetic Transcendence
by Aiden Haefer | Banks Media Productions | 01.15.2035 There’s nothing special about the Plummer Tower on the corner of Fountain and Gardner in Hollywood, California. It has a modern design of black windows on a gray grid and stands fifty stories tall. From the outside, you wouldn’t
Books
Now I'm Everywhere, Josh
I no longer have a bookshelf. I still have many of the same books, but now they’re all digital. Assuming my Kindle is charged, the Internet is working, and Amazon hasn’t recalled the book or closed my account, I can read almost any title I want at any