In The Mason of New Orleans, Martin, our titular character, builds a castle. (Well, sorta. It’s a bit more complicated.) To write about that (or write about it well, at least), it makes sense that I’d want to know something about castles and how they’re built. Fortunately, I lived in England for four years, and,

In a recent watching of the awesome Big Trouble in Little China, I was struck by how that movie went about solving a problem in very much the same way I did in The Mason of New Orleans. Here, let me (or, rather, someone else—I didn’t put this video together), demonstrate: You may ask what

So I wrote a novel. Naturally, when people learn that, they often ask, “What’s your novel about?” or, “What kind of novel is it?” or, “What are you, nuts?” And then I have to answer them. Ignoring that last question, I could call The Mason of New Orleans a fantasy novel. But there’s not really