Ha! Got you! What are you doing here anyway? I can't believe anyone reads these introductions. I certainly don't recommend it. Whatever you do, don't read any farther. What are you doing? I just told you - stop - STOP - STOP NOW! What's wrong with you? That's the trouble with people today. They just won't listen.
Anyway...I have a variety of interests - I rebuild cars and motorcycles and actually raced a Fiat sports car for seven years (built it myself). I played the guitar and piano vigorously at one time (slacked off in recent years) and have dabbled in writing my own novel (finally published). I have studied the Theory of Relativity extensively and am now studying how electronics work. My main reading interest is sci-fi/fantasy but I am not an easy reader to satisfy. I also used to love movies, but they seem to have gotten really bad the last decade. I hate the reliance on "special effects" now - these fantastic special effects sequences seem boring after you have seen a few.
Books have a similar problem. Too much reliance on the same plot devices over and over. How many times can someone rewrite "Star Wars" and expect to entertain. I suspect many young people start reading (science fiction being a natural direction for many), but lose interest as the years go by. I understand why. This is why the publishing industry is almost dead. As publishing continues to lose money, publishers rely on the good old standby's that worked so well in past years. So you have "series" and "sequels" and "trilogies". But only a small percentage of readers care to revisit the same worlds repeatedly. No one in publishing dares take a chance nowadays on new authors, so the same well-known authors publish their same familiar characters in familiar "series" as publishing continues to strangle itself. Ergo, self-publishing flourishes. It's a brave new world out there now. Only the strong will survive. Are these my sour grapes? Definitely.
But, enough about me. No...wait...this is an introduction...I'm supposed to talk about me. OK. David Stag is a malcontent. The battles of his writings are not imagined, not fantasies of a lazy spirit that never came to grips with real villains. I have been slaying dragons for 40 years now, and have chosen to put these epic battles into sacred tomes so that future generations will know what miracles have been wrought. Now retired, I have spent my life battling the despots who rule the intransigent bureaucracies of several major US corporations. With a Master's Degree in Engineering and a dozen patents, I am not a mere magician's apprentice. I have seen first hand the terrors of the meeting rooms and have witnessed the injustices of the test data. Their balance sheets could not protect them, and the sorcery of their emails could not conjure up the insolvable maze. I have taken the dragon's tongue and spit fire on all the surrogates of the great all-knowing CEO's. I am now gone from their Empires and they rejoice in my departure. Fie on you, great Demons! I have new worlds to conquer! Oh...sorry, dear reader...have to go now. My hot chocolate is almost ready.
Anyway...I have a variety of interests - I rebuild cars and motorcycles and actually raced a Fiat sports car for seven years (built it myself). I played the guitar and piano vigorously at one time (slacked off in recent years) and have dabbled in writing my own novel (finally published). I have studied the Theory of Relativity extensively and am now studying how electronics work. My main reading interest is sci-fi/fantasy but I am not an easy reader to satisfy. I also used to love movies, but they seem to have gotten really bad the last decade. I hate the reliance on "special effects" now - these fantastic special effects sequences seem boring after you have seen a few.
Books have a similar problem. Too much reliance on the same plot devices over and over. How many times can someone rewrite "Star Wars" and expect to entertain. I suspect many young people start reading (science fiction being a natural direction for many), but lose interest as the years go by. I understand why. This is why the publishing industry is almost dead. As publishing continues to lose money, publishers rely on the good old standby's that worked so well in past years. So you have "series" and "sequels" and "trilogies". But only a small percentage of readers care to revisit the same worlds repeatedly. No one in publishing dares take a chance nowadays on new authors, so the same well-known authors publish their same familiar characters in familiar "series" as publishing continues to strangle itself. Ergo, self-publishing flourishes. It's a brave new world out there now. Only the strong will survive. Are these my sour grapes? Definitely.
But, enough about me. No...wait...this is an introduction...I'm supposed to talk about me. OK. David Stag is a malcontent. The battles of his writings are not imagined, not fantasies of a lazy spirit that never came to grips with real villains. I have been slaying dragons for 40 years now, and have chosen to put these epic battles into sacred tomes so that future generations will know what miracles have been wrought. Now retired, I have spent my life battling the despots who rule the intransigent bureaucracies of several major US corporations. With a Master's Degree in Engineering and a dozen patents, I am not a mere magician's apprentice. I have seen first hand the terrors of the meeting rooms and have witnessed the injustices of the test data. Their balance sheets could not protect them, and the sorcery of their emails could not conjure up the insolvable maze. I have taken the dragon's tongue and spit fire on all the surrogates of the great all-knowing CEO's. I am now gone from their Empires and they rejoice in my departure. Fie on you, great Demons! I have new worlds to conquer! Oh...sorry, dear reader...have to go now. My hot chocolate is almost ready.
