Joshua A. Johnston's Blog, page 5

From the Nintendojo Op-Ed Vault: Games and Education

I wrote this piece way back in August of 2008, during my early years with video game site Nintendojo, on the relationship between gaming and education. Like many articles, the march of technology makes many of my comments at the time seem vintage. Also, because of the age of the article, some of the links are broken; nevertheless, I present it as is. The original link (hopefully) can be found here.

 

Cerebral Gamer: Games and Education

It’s mid-August, which means that schools are either bac...

Nintendojo: I’m Not Sure Nintendo Cares About Third Parties

I stirred the pot over at Nintendojo. You can read it right here.

The post Nintendojo: I’m Not Sure Nintendo Cares About Third Parties appeared first on JOSHUA A. JOHNSTON.

State of the Writing: July 2017

On the last day of July, some big news to share.

Let’s talk first about Into the Void, the second novel in the Chronicles of Sarco series. Originally it was due to release on May 15, 2017. It didn’t. I wasn’t at liberty to talk about the reason, but now I can. Gilead, the publisher that acquired my publisher (Enclave) in the spring of 2016, suffered an unexpected loss of funding back in September when Gilead’s primary investor decided to renege on its contract. The heads of Gilead searched re...

A Long Way From Home: Some Thoughts on Distance in Fiction

[image error]

Last summer, my family departed on what is, as of now, the longest single road trip of my life: 8 days, 9 states, and 2000 miles. At some point, about the time I drove across the state border from North Carolina into Virginia, I realized that I was pretty far away from my house, which is in Missouri.

Now, it isn’t the farthest I’d ever been from home. I’ve been to both Florida and Colorado by car, and my wife and I traveled to the United Kingdom by plane for our first anniversary. But there...

Mumbling Mommy: When No One Shows Up To Your Party

I wrote a piece for Mumbling Mommy on when I came face-to-face with America’s overbooked lifestyle. You can read it here.

The post Mumbling Mommy: When No One Shows Up To Your Party appeared first on JOSHUA A. JOHNSTON.

From the Nintendojo Op-Ed Vault: Pokémon STOP

I originally wrote this for Nintendojo during the early days of the Pokémon Go craze, in the summer of 2016. You can find the original story here.

Pokémon Go is a hit. We’ve had geocaching and we’ve had Ingress, but that all pales in comparison to this social phenomenon. Players are literally everywhere: if you haven’t seen them roaming parks, converging on church parking lots, or doing slow drive-bys of municipal buildings, then you’ve probably seen their many updates on social media. (Or,...

An Unofficial Guide to Shopping at Aldi Is Now Available

While science fiction is one of my major passions, I’ve been writing nonfiction for a decade now. Last summer I piloted a blog devoted to Aldi product reviews, aldireviewer.com. As the blog has grown, I decided to collate some of my Aldi thoughts into an eBook.

That that is now out, and it’s available on Amazon. To make things even more interesting, I’m making the book free for the first two days: today (Tuesday) and tomorrow (Wednesday). So hop on over, pick it up, and, if you feel so inclin...

A Free Short Story: A Little Research Trip, Aborted

At one time, May 15, 2017 was scheduled to be the release date for the second novel in the Sarco trilogy, Into the Void. For various reasons, that didn’t happen.

This doesn’t begin to qualify as an adequate substitute, but today seemed as good a day as any to release a short story. The title of the story is “A Little Research Trip, Aborted,” and it was originally pitched to a magazine in the early spring as a work of flash fiction. It didn’t make the cut, so — as is sometimes my habit — I’m m...

From the Amazon Review Vault: The Last Jedi

Not to be confused with the title of Star Wars: Episode VIII, a novel by the name of The Last Jedi made its way into paperback in 2013. Set between Episodes III and IV, it followed a Jedi who had survived the Purge. This

From time to time I’ll be dredging up some of the old reviews I’ve written of novels on Amazon. This was written about the 2013 Star Wars novel, The Last Jedi. Star Wars was acquired by Disney not long after, relegating this novel to “legacy” status, but it’s still a good rea...

Edge of Oblivion: The Anniversary Giveaway

Edge of Oblivion turns one on April 15, 2017. To commemorate the milestone, I’m giving away a signed copy of the book over on Goodreads. The giveaway runs from April 1st to May 1st:

.goodreadsGiveawayWidget { color: #555; font-family: georgia, serif; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; font-size: 14px;
font-style: normal; background: white; }
.goodreadsGiveawayWidget p { margin: 0 0 .5em !important; padding: 0; }
.goodreadsGiveawayWidgetEnterLink {
display: inline-block;
color: #181818...