The online home of Andrew Joyce
Being a cheerful (and human) defense of the Christian right and obligation to write, to read, and to create. We lay the sins and the struggles of the human race on the page as a prayer. In writing, we help ourselves, and touch others who are tracing the same thread. In reading we find the [ ]
I have a love-hate relationship with smart devices. I appreciate how much they do for me, but then when the power goes out half of them don t work without being reset. I recently switched routers and found out that Netgear is much worse than Google at papering over the problems that can arise with simple [ ]
I have a story that s been pushing on my brain for months now. It s about a board game, High Society, which automatically makes it a stupid story. But it’s also about friends, a house, plant over-watering, and a particular chapter in our lives. The chapter in question – five years or so – was highlighted [ ]
I ve started saving items that are worth seeing later because Cool URLs don t change. This is a commitment to keep these items online at these URLs wherever possible. How else can I be assured that they ll be available when I d like to access them? No guarantees that I update this list or ever do anything [ ]
Writing again after a long time away is like unsticking a drain; something I m familiar with after bailing wildly at four in the morning on the 4th of July, as water poured in over my basement threshold. In my case, the drain never came unstuck. It was up to me to move the water, and [ ]
Currahee is is a story about time travel and opportunity, set in the distant but imminent past-future of Northeast Georgia. And, after 7 years, it s finally available for you to read. Buy a Copy (Digital Only, for now) I m now selling digital copies of the novel right here on Into the Book. Payments are processed [ ]
I had not been to the mountain since she died. I was born in its shadow, and my mom was born in its shadow. Mimi was born someplace else in Currahee, but ended up here, when she was eighteen and carrying my mother. We’ve been here ever since. The mountain gave the town its name: [ ]
Read a blorp. Make a blorp. Be a blorp. The topic that runs through my head the most often these days is publishing on the web. That s what the web is about, at the end of the day. That s what it was created for. As a web developer and an author seeking to publish my [ ]
There are a thousand charybdi that I face each day. The whirling arms and tempestuous waters never stop swirling. The fear of Her was the unceasing activity, the waves that never rested. There was no relief from Charybdis, you are doomed as Aeneas to row until you escape, or until you are consumed. It feels [ ]
Reaching an audience, a surprise visit from Google s internet police, and the nuclear-robots.txt This story doesn t start how you expect. In fact, it starts with an adoption. Since it s part of the story, I might as well tell the world. It s okay, I don t mind if you know: we re adopting. It s been five years, and [ ]
I ve written a book (finally). Now what? Where we ve come from I first blogged about Currahee (then All Right) in 2016 and have written four drafts since then. Technically, the story first evolved from a short story I posted all the way back in 2012, now 11 years ago. Currahee is a weird book. Because [ ]
I first ran into Chris Martin through my work at Mere Agency. We work with his employer, Moody, on a number of projects, and shortly after that relationship began, my coworker tipped me off to his first book, Terms of Service, which quickly grabbed my attention. I work on the web: it’s a permanent part [ ]
The Font of God had stood at the head of the Bay Cerosa for as long as he could remember: it was here that the baptisms happened. A young woman had been the last one to descend those steps, between the stone bannisters, and stand on the sharp rocks of the base. The Priests of [ ]
The form of a blog doesn t matter. You might be reading this on the web ( as intended, as it were). But I also have RSS feeds, so you could be reading this on your smartwatch in 2039, or via direct visual projection in 2059. Heck, it s a blog post nothing but words so [ ]
I ve been thinking lately about how much my gaming hobby has changed since I got into things. In 2013, my then girlfriend s father (now my father-in-law) introduced me to Smash Up. Much to my new fiancee s dismay, we spent the two week visit with the family mostly playing the game. I didn t log plays back then, [ ]
I started work on Currahee — then known as All Right — in 2016. It actually wasn t the first book idea that came to me in a dream, which I then fleshed out, expanded, and drafted. To be technical, the idea for Currahee came about in 2012, when I wrote a short story called Decade, [ ]
Ever since I first came across Michael Mace s post Desperately Seeking the Info Pad, in 2007, I have also been searching for this mythical info tablet. I ve been using OneNote for about as long, and it s long been the hub of all my note-taking and information gathering. This sort of mythical tablet was a long [ ]
I had a dream, or maybe it was a waking dream, about running away and moving to London. For some reason I d seen a statistic: London confirmed to have the worst traffic in Europe, or maybe the world I can t remember. But I can just ride the Underground, I thought to myself, as if [ ]
2022 has been a weird year: it started so scattered and confused, and over time it s shaped up into a routine that has become familiar. But, we re standing on the doorstep of changing again, and life goes on. And, there s a new novel brewing. I had decided to start working on writing again in 2022, [ ]
We ve been talking a lot at Mere about how we can build better websites for our customers. For me, though I ve internalized mobile-first development and have been building mobile-first websites for about ten years, it feels like mobile-first design still has a long way to go. For better or for worse, what we show the [ ]
When you finish a really good book, or are particularly bowled over by the hand of God in your life, or you have a house and good food ready to share, you tell other people about it. That s how I feel about Big Creek Lakes in Colorado. It s a little spot, nothing special by the [ ]
I ve noticed the vibrant color of the growing leaves in a way I ve never noticed it before. Have you ever driven over the crest of a hill and had your breath taken away by the simple, fantastic glory of a chartreuse oak tree, lit up with a heavenly light? Or the impossibly brilliant purple hues [ ]
It took long enough, but I finally made good on my January 2020 promise to redesign ItB in the open. From fonts, to colors, to now, a new blog layout, everything is in a place that I m termporarily happy about. There s even some new content that s not redesign related! The Design: V6 mixes moody and [ ]
When I start the sound track, all the feelings come flooding back again. Instantly. That s how powerful a hold on me this game has. I ve never been much of a video gamer, if we re talking shoot em ups or whatever else is hot these days. My only exposure to the medium tends to be tycoon-type [ ]
It was a long, winding road to get me to this point. Growing up, we played the typical games. In Brazil, we had Taboo, Rook, Pit, Chutes and Ladders, Settlers of Catan (it will always be Settlers to me, rather than Catan. We even bought the expansion back in 2003!) On visits home to the US with the family, we [ ]
I m in the process of redesigning Into the Book in the open. Thanks to COVID, work, life, and other vagaries, this process has taken longer than I expected. Last time we checked in, we d settled on a basic typeface pairing. We re still logo-less and color-less, but I have modified this Twenty Twenty-One template enough to [ ]
For a website built entirely on the written word, there may not be a more impactful design decision than the choice of a font. Type is the dressing around every one of the words on this site, and the typeface of a site sets the tone, if you will, for the content that readers will [ ]
This post was originally published at mosaic.ws. It s reproduced here for permanent posterity. Now, I have the privilege of working for Mere Agency and my freelance business has closed down. Looking back at ten years of web design “Every website tells a story,” my homepage proclaims. Well, here’s a story for you. I can only [ ]
The word blog just means web log, a collection of posts that are unrelated, except for the author or authors who composed them. The word is temporal a log is a collection of entries. So how to organize a blog (or any website, really) is an open question because the format provides no default [ ]
This post was hosted on my freelance web site because I assumed it would last there. But, a hosting move and closing my freelance business left it orphaned, so I am re-posting it here. In the spirit of Designed to Last, you can expect to find this here for years to come. March 1 My [ ]
Into the Book is getting a redesign. If you re new here, Into the Book was a book reviews website that I started when I was a teenager. We published almost a thousand book reviews from dozens of different people. We gave away several books, we interviewed authors, and we even reviewed debut novels. It was [ ]
The Pandemic Legacy games have always been polarizing. To some, they are the best games ever made: a masterclass in game design, an innovation in the field, and a shining example of the future of board game design. To others, Legacy games are indicative of the excess in game design today, they re no repayable, and [ ]
The events of this essay may be dramatized or fictional. Names removed where possible for the sake of privacy. On my fifteenth birthday, I first kissed a girl. And while I was still fifteen, my family moved to Central Asia, ten hours away by time zones. I thought I had remembered the break-up correctly – [ ]
There is nothing I want to do less than write today. After a long weekend, I’m back in the swing of things with a messy house, overdue projects at work, a lawn that needs mowing, and a tight deadline to hit by Friday. I lost my wallet, and had to go to work without it. [ ]
In January this year, I tried to write a rough draft of a novel. Fullblood, a sci-fi story about escaping a dying earth, was the story I picked. It has been rattling around in my brain since 2010, and I ve even produced one partial draft before; better make that two partial drafts now. Things did [ ]
Looking back on January and forward to more writing January was going to be perfect. NaNoWriMo and All Right had gone so well. I told myself that it was different this time: that I d get writing and stay writing. But from the start, obstacles started to pile up. We drove home on New Year s Day, [ ]
I wrote a novel last November (yup, I finished it!). It s a huge mess I haven t touched it since November 31st. It s 44,006 words long. NaNoWriMo was definitely a success. And then, big plans, right? I can write another novel, he said foolishly. Never mind that this was the first one in ten years [ ]
Writer’s block is a lie, you know. What people mean by “writer’s block” is really “The right thoughts aren’t coming to mind at the moment.” That’s why everyone tells you to just start writing when you’re stuck – sooner or later, the wanderings of your mind make their way around to what it was you [ ]
The first verse of this poem is actually over two years old I wrote it back in October of 2016, and fiddled around with the meter and rhyme scheme until I was happy with it. But I was never able to finish the poem, and my poetry in general tailed off drastically in 2017. [ ]
All Right is finished – at least, the first draft is finished. It’s not the last I’ll see of it, but for now, it’s time to put my focus on a new project: and December is beckoning. It’s time for a new challenge. I’d like to introduce you to Fullblood, and the world of Esparan. [ ]
Well, November ends in 4 days (four days!). And that s counting today, to boot! No, I m not in panic mode why should you ask? NaNo has been fantastic-ish. I may or may not be putting off writing the ending, but that s none of your business! First, an update: The Status Update All Right is [ ]
A poem: Sisyphus, take thy rock again,Up wooded hills and down the glens.Tarry not amidst the valley;Bear thy stone, with valor fit thee. Sisyphus, run thy race again,Do not dismay when hope wears thin.Push thee forward, till the morn;And trust for strength when thou art worn. Sisyphus, start thy day again,Do not weep for pain [ ]
It s November 7th, and we re officially into one week of NaNoWriMo. I m reminded (again) just how ridiculous the assignment is: to write a full-length novel over the course of November. And I even cheated, by starting with about 10,000 words of pre-written draft. So how s it going? Well, it s going. As of this writing (before [ ]
Ever since I realized (last week) that All Right has been somewhere in my head for over two years, I ve been a little bit ashamed by how long it s taken to produce a draft of the story. After all, 10,000 usable words in two years is not exactly a blistering pace. I m trying to do [ ]
I couldn t believe it when I realized that All Right was nearly two years old. But thanks to the record here on Writing Life, I realized that All Right came into being during May of 2016 over two years ago at this point. I wrote plenty of columns about it, too: here, here, here, [ ]