Wayfinding - Page 2 of 2

Post date June 21, 2016
Categories AI, Science, Wayfinding

Why I Write About AI

My editor recently had me collect my short stories into a single place. This has never been done before. They had previously been scattered to the winds. Some were stories that I put up on my old blog and can’t be found anywhere these days. Some were published in anthologies here and there. Some were released as Kindle exclusives, and some of these very quietly. With all these stories in a single place, one theme became apparent. There were a lot of stories about artificial intelligence. Glitch, The Box, Executable, The Plagiarist, The Automated Ones, WHILE (u…

Post date February 10, 2016
Categories Wayfinding

Assume the Best About People

I learned something important watching the Superbowl this past Sunday (and not that defense wins championships, though it appears they do). What I learned came in the aftermath, as we collectively went crazy assuming the very worst about two quarterbacks. We seem to do this, assume the worst about people, when we could just as easily assume the best. I’ve thought about this a lot over the years, and I pondered it again for much of the day yesterday. I think I understand why this happens, and what we can do to fix it. You…

Post date January 11, 2016
Categories Boat, Wayfinder, Wayfinding, Writing

Don’t Wait

I’m sitting on my boat in Georgetown, Exumas, watching the sun rise. The last time this was true was seventeen years ago. My boat then was Xerxes, a 27′ Watkins that served as my home for five years. I dropped out of college after my junior year and sailed south. It was one of the defining moments of my life, that decision. I’ll never forget the terror I felt selling everything I owned and tossing my dock lines. It was petrifying, but I trusted that the rewards on the other…

Post date December 13, 2015
Categories Wayfinding

The Answer is Extremism

For ten days at a time, we didn’t see a speck of land. Nothing but the flat blue below and clouds of white above. The texture of both changed with the winds, the seas piling up, foaming and angry, launching us swiftly down their faces, then falling flat in moments of eerie calm, the clouds gathering with rain, before it all started over again. It is a life of extreme calm in many ways. Downwind sailing, the current behind us, logging two hundred nautical miles a day. We read, cook,…

Post date July 13, 2015
Categories Boat, Science, Wayfinder, Wayfinding

The Wayfinding Series

As much as I love writing fiction (and don’t worry, I’m not going to stop), these are the books I’ve always dreamed of writing. Literally. Before I wrote my first novel, I daydreamed about taking everything I was learning about myself, and all the nonfiction reading I do, and distilling it down into digestible bits that family and friends might enjoy. Make no mistake: I don’t consider myself an expert in anything. Not even in publishing. Certainly not in sailing. I’m struggling through life like anyone else. The one thing…