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More Videogame Appreciation
After the excellent time we had last year, the AGO had me back for a second Videogame Appreciation Night in September 2025. I’ve been remiss in posting Dean Tomlinson’s excellent photos and...
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Black River Diamond
For Christmas, my sister-in-law Renée gave me an astrocartography reading. She asserted that while I was stimulated by cities, my nervous system suffered: instead, the stars said that I would thrive...
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Divestment December
It started with this photo. The leaders of the world’s biggest tech companies, standing together at Trump’s inauguration. Waiting patiently and performatively for their chance to kiss the ring. It...
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Wearing A Dead Man’s Sandals
I’ve come to appreciate summer wear late in life. For years I was one of those folks who wore the same outfit day after day, regardless of season: black jeans, black socks, black shoes, button down...
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A Shapeshifting Situationship
So happy to announce the release of my new sci-fi rom-com graphic novel, Zeroed Out! What if shapeshifting aliens came to Earth, but instead of taking over they just fix all our problems? Matias might...
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Join My Scheme Team
Last year, my daughter gave me a fun blank notebook with SCHEMES on the cover. I vowed to her that I would fill it with schemes. I now have close to fifty. Every week, I explore a new scheme on two...
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An Evening of Videogame Appreciation
Last month I curated a selection of nine games at the AGO, one of the largest art museums in North America. After the audience had a chance to play them, I went around to each game and explained the...
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Parallel Play
When I describe what I do in co-organizing Toronto Games Week, people often say that it sounds stressful and like a lot of work — as opposed to writing or creating stuff, which people think sounds...
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Professor Jim
So it turns out that “I don’t want to teach” is just another example of The Joy of Being Wrong, a series of self-limiting beliefs that I’m crossing off one by one. Turns out that with the right...
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An Abandoned Punk House
Is there a thing you know you should do, but don’t? With me, for years, it was paper prototyping. Paper prototyping is the process of sketching out a game design, literally, with pencil and paper, and...
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Raccoons In the Wild
Thanks to the many super awesome people who sent in #RaccoonsInTheWild pictures of themselves with their covers. While the unique hardcover edition of We Are Raccoons are all sold out, it’s available...
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Raccoons Released
My first full length prose novel in almost two decades is available now as a uniquely published hardcover. We Are Raccoons is about six game designer friends who get a non-player character to work in...
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Haunted by Ghosts With Shit Jobs
Ten years ago we released a strange little lo-fi sci-fi feature called Ghosts With Shit Jobs. In the future, jobs still suck — but in whole new ways. By 2040 the economy has flipped and North...
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Holding Hands with Anticipatory Grief
I was led to Men’s Work, as it is sometimes called, by my brother-in-law. He kept putting opportunities in front of me. More often than not I would sidestep them politely. Sometimes I would pick them...
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Life Is Bigger
I didn’t get a circle A tattoo, but I might as well have. One of the most influential things I discovered in books was anarchism: the idea that we could live without rulers. That it is our...
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Seeding Utopias & Resisting Dystopias
Credit: Annette Nedilenka After editing the sci-fi anthology Toronto 2033 for Spacing, the group of writers I’d brought together were interested in working on another project. We chose the name The...
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Nurturing, Or How I Like Starting Fires
Like lots of teenagers, I was obsessed with fire. I never smoked, but I always had a lighter. I would singe my (recently acquired) arm hair just to revel in the terrible smell. I had a pocket-sized...
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The Limits of Self-Discipline
I started to make movies out of spite. I had a number of exciting conversations around adapting my first novel that came to naught, and was left with an unsatisfied feeling. This idea of making a...
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The Cost of Avocado Toast
Dude, I was part of the precariat before it was cool. I have been putting little income streams together for decades now while most of my peers got regular jobs. I’m well suited to it, I like the...
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I Have A Guy in My Head
My first novel launched twenty years ago today. To mark the occasion I’m publishing the first of a series I’m calling the Fallow Essays, reflective pieces on art and cultural production from the...
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