And let’s face it. No matter how ambitious (or unambitious) my goals are, no matter how many people that I tell, the only person with any skin in the game is me. This is terrible, demoralizing, and causes the death of almost every ambitious self-improvement program.

So why improve? Well, hopefully these goals matter. Actually matter. Otherwise, it’ll stick like a New Years’ Resolution. But the second part is a little tougher. The second part is turning that care into execution. Quit thinking and start doing. Thinkers don’t get an awful lot done.

This is hell for me, personally. I’m a thinker by temperament. How many times have I thought something that I should have just said? This lack of assertiveness is common enough, and it holds me up in every facet of my life. Every time something’s improved for me, it’s because I’ve spat that thought out as words, or been proactive in some other way. And most of all, since I’ve started the whole self-improvement kick, I’ve never let the fact that I don’t believe any of this will actually improve me to stop me from trying. That’s right. About half the time that I’m doing all of this stuff, I’m just going through the motions, but eventually, I’ll truly believe that this stuff can truly change my life. Actually, when I look back on it since I’ve started this program, it has changed me. Drastically.

I guess it’s easy enough to rationalize away, given my writing history. When I first got heavy into fiction writing, I wrote blogs as my MMORPG characters. There were a few underlying assumptions: I was writing for other fans, my writing wouldn’t undergo much critical scrutiny, and anything really could go. I’d come in from a crappy day of studying Physics or Computer Science, open up the blog software and hammer on the keyboard until I’d forgotten how much I hated the Modernist, beehive architecture of my dorm room. Once I was finished, I’d press “Publish” and away it went, off for other people to see. I’d get comments back sometimes within the day, driving me to write more, driving me to grow even more comfortable typing into a web-browser. My editing was looser and I wouldn’t overthink my words. I had fluidity on my side.

Even during this same period of time, I’d use MS Word for my academic writing. Then I started writing fiction for the academic crowd. For better or for worse, a writer will catch much, much more fire in a college Creative Writing class than on an MMO’s roleplaying community forums. Even my fiction became more abstract, more intellectual, more artsy. For me at least, that made it less fun to read.

I haven’t written into a browser window since I quit playing World of Warcraft. All of my recent works have been done in Word, and I think it shows. “Jalt’s Tooth” and “Elfsbane Tea” are intellectual and rather bare of meaningful action. They’re both pieces that show much better to a college writing crowd than to SF/F fans. Even though I posted them here, the entire writing and editing process was carried out in Word.

It seems odd to worry about such a hang-up, but there’s a really easy solution, I figure. So I want to recapture that passionate writing of the past? Write it up here with Visibility set to Private. I still get that nifty rush of clicking the Publish button, it’s easy to track daily progress, and if I want to publish it elsewhere, I haven’t already put it up here for all to behold.

And if I publish it here, then that’s fine too. My writerly goal isn’t financial gain; It’s creating something that people will want to read, and then having them actually read it. That’s the meaning of getting published elsewhere, the possibility of providing enjoyment to people whom I may never have met, but that might identify, just a little, with something I’ve written.

I started to become a staunch Science Fiction and Fantasy “reader” around the same time that I went to college. I put “reader” in quotes because it was around that time that I stopped reading all but my favorite writers, and even then, only the works of my favorite writers’ favorite series. I spent much more time watching anime with a paranormal bent, and most of my time playing fantasy MMORPGs. It was during this time that I solidly decided that I wanted to be a writer, but as time went on, I knew less and less what that meant.

I became even more entrenched in my reading habits when forced to read the writing of such literary “greats” as Stein, Hemingway and Joyce, authors who, although skilled, brought no joy to me in the reading. So it’s realistic! Big deal. It’s dry and academic and stands diametrically opposed to my notion that reading should be fun.

So what did I do? I criticized it. I criticized unrealism where I found it, I criticized how boring it was, and I criticized anything else I could find. In the meantime, I’d avoid the obvious fact that fantasy and science fictions are oftentimes hundreds or thousands of times more unrealistic than the “real world” stories I’d criticize. My defense was easy. Those worlds are not the real world. My chosen genres do not attempt to imitate the real world. It’s not a fair meter to say that The Hobbit is unrealistic — of course it is. It’s Heroic Fantasy!

So a month ago when my girlfriend asks me to watch Dexter, I spent more time analyzing how it didn’t align to the real world than I did enjoying the show, never realizing that every story  is a fantasy world. Some just look more like this one than others do.

“I’ve been enjoying Shakugan no Shana,” I said. I am, as usual, late to the scene, but to my surprise my friend, with much more free time on his hands, had just finished watching the second season, so I was only one behind.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s fine, and all, it’s just…” He paused and then continued exactly as I expected, “They could have done so much more with it.”

He says this a lot, this friend of mine, and I’d always just nodded. It had always gone without saying that we could have done it better ourselves. But this time, when I heard it, it tugged on a recent memory, a memory brought up watching the first season of Dexter with my girlfriend.

It had only been two weeks before this conversation (Yes, again, late to the show). She’d been a long-time watcher, but I have a lot of trouble getting into shows that are set in the “real” world. (More on that later, maybe.)

“Come on, just watch the first season, it’s fully encapsulated,” she had said.

“Fine, just the first season.”

We sat down, we watched, I paused at any slight jarring inconsistency. I complained loudly at them. Never mind that it was actually a pretty good show, never mind that I actually saw a kernel of something I might enjoy in it, I’m a creator, damn it, and as a result, I must for the sake of my craft find flaws in the craft of others!

Flash forward back to the New Years’ party. My friend’s incredibly vague comment about how a show ‘could have been better’. I’d gotten more skilled since High School at articulating a show’s flaws. If I’d wanted to.

James Joyce’s epiphanies are a convenient work of fiction. Any decent epiphany is brewing in a person’s gut long before the incident that tips the scale. Over the previous month, I’d read a work of pulpy high fantasy and genuinely enjoyed it (despite its editorial flaws), I’d read a suspense thriller set in a horse racing circuit, I’d watched a show about a serial killer, and I’d watched an anime about a tiny girl who fights to protect the balance of this world. What do they all have in common? Two things stick out to me.

1) Someone wrote them.
2) They are all flawed, in one way or another.

Why does that matter? Because my friend hasn’t written in half a decade, and I haven’t in three months. After the finish of my first novel, I briefly entertained finding an agent and getting it published. After one form rejection letter, I dug back into my hole to nurse my wounds. My friend never even tried to get that far.

These works are out there because someone believed in them. Because they resonated with many people. And because someone finished writing, and then finished the submission process. Compared to that, being a critic is easy:

1) Watch someone else’s show/Read someone else’s book.
2) Find a reason why it sucks.
3) Repeat until ego is sufficiently stoked.

As a writer, it’s undignified for me to tear apart a good show, or a good book, and say why it fell short. If I watch a show, or read a book, I should enjoy it like a reader or a watcher, and then get back to work finishing my story. If I thought there were flaws: Great. That’s fuel for me to do a better job on mine. Nothing more.

Well, it’s turned out as awesome as I thought it would be.  It’s the most amazing company that I’ve ever worked for, hands down. I wholly endorse them, but as a D&D and MTG fan, I’ve done that for quite a while already now.

Completing a novel-length manuscript finally gave me the sense of security to publish “A Jalt’s Tooth” and “Elfsbane Tea”, which can be found on this very site. Stylistically, they’re very different, and it’s shocking to me to look back on these, especially after having spent the last several months in Mierin’s head. She’s more confident than Wil by far, and less verbose than Barrett as a narrator.

I’ll have more updates as they develop on the Snowraven project as it moves forward. Once it’s been edited to my satisfaction, I’ll also be developing the short story “Sorceress’ Bangle”, intended for the same collection as “Jalt’s Tooth” (slated to be called The Adventurers). I’ll also be writing a just-for-fun short story and then launching into the next novel project: Soles Bay.

Lauren’s doing fine too, she’s now a full-time artist and in the near future, we’ll be putting more some of her beautiful artwork up on the site.

Citizens in Quen’Sathis have until the age of twenty to prove that they can use magic, or they are executed. When Mierin Ranxo-Fai fails the Soul-test on her twentieth birthday, she flees her homeland to escape her sentence, but she is pursued. She settles in Hrothden, where she struggles to fit into her new home and reconcile her own self-worth. But Hrothden is on the brink of war with the neighboring kingdom of Brilsturm. Pursued by her family’s agents, she journeys south to broker peace on behalf of her new friends.

Barrett stared forlornly out of the curtains. When the carriage stopped, he made no move to leave it. Why would his old home look like this? Surely the farmhands were coming out to work the land in exchange for their share. He shook his head and stood to leave the wagon before the coachman decided to encourage him. His cases greeted him at ground-level, and the shiny gold piece he flicked into the man’s hand was more than enough to pay for a bumpy, dusty ride with barely two hours of peace each day for sleep.

“How’re you gettin’ back?” the coachman asked.

A matter of professional interest, Barrett felt sure, but he kept his voice even. “A mail coach comes a week after Midsummer. I should be fine until then.”

“Yeah? Safe travels to ya then. Have a safe Midsummer Night.” The old man coughed up something from deep in his chest and spat a red gob. It flattened a daisy.

“May the weather be clear, and the bandits clumsy,” Barrett replied. The old man laughed as he clambered up onto the coach and cracked the whip over the team’s head. Barrett stood alone for a while with his luggage. He stared at the solid wood and the peeling paint taking deep breaths of forest air. Once he had braced himself properly, he lifted his pack and picked his way across stepping stones that shouldn’t have been almost covered in grass. Barrett felt his breath hitch near his heart.

No. He had nothing to be afraid of from this place. It was his home, and nothing would harm him. He raised his fist and knocked twice. He should have been able to just go in — the Wheelers never locked their door — but something held him back.

It took his mother a few moments to open the door. Barrett thought that she had never looked more like a widow. Her once-thick hair was graying and bedraggled, and bruised patches under her eyes looked so deep that he wondered if she’d been beaten. Her clothes hung too, as if she had recently lost weight.

“Who are you?” she asked, staring up at his face. At first he thought she was joking, but her blank expression forced him to doubt.

“Your son.”

She looked up at him, this wrinkled hag, and recognition dawned in her face. Ellis Wheeler hugged him, and all he could feel was bone and sinew. Barrett did his best not to pull away.

“It’s about time you visit. You’d think a woman’s son was dead.”

“I wrote.”

“Wrote? And I have coin for post and time to visit town?” She gazed owlishly as she stood on the stoop. “And it’s all a mess. You couldn’t write to tell me you were coming? Why are we standing out here? Come in. Don’t mind the mess.”

The inside was as sprawling as he remembered. In the poor districts of Saldien, two dozen people could live in this much space and consider it plenty. A bucket filled with water and rags sat atop the stone floor his father had hand-made with river rock and mortar. Barrett smiled, remembering how his mother had harried the old man about the dirt floors until Alden Wheeler had finally began work in late autumn.

Making a floor was not just backbreaking work. In addition to hauling in the sand, and the heavy stones, to make a proper floor like his father had, you had to be mindful also of the way each rock sloped so that water wouldn’t stand in the house if there was a leak. Each rock had to be set in place, allowed to settle in the dirt, then after it had shifted, it had to be gently lifted, more dirt shuffled under it, and then re-set level.

It took Alden through the winter, making this floor. Constant elbow pains from the tedious job of lifting a rock and shuffling only a little sand under it, dropping it, then lifting it again to remove even less sand, never stopped Barrett’s obstinate father. Ellis Wheeler was thrilled, of course. She had the best floor of any goodwife in Siltenglade, and every other woman was jealous.

All that Alden got from the menfolk was, “Must’ve been a damn sight of work.”

But Ellis quickly found fault with her husband’s work. The dirt may have settled more, or Alden’s elbow had gotten too sore to set the rock properly, but moisture had a tendency to collect under the dining table. Before the Spring Equinox, her mood toward her husband’s gift had darkened.

For the next season and a half, Alden looked at his wife with hurt in his eyes, and grumbled about his elbow when only the children could hear. Then, on Midsummer’s Eve, a night Barrett had blocked from his memory, Alden drank a poisoned draught and died of it.

Barrett stared at the stones again. His gaze drifted towards the ones underneath the dining room table. They were dry. His mother continued to ramble, but he couldn’t hear her. His fingers felt numb again, like they had every Midsummer since that one.

Air. He needed air. He turned towards the door and his eyes found the wreathes above the door.

“Why is that up there?”

“Eh?” Ellis followed his gaze. “It’s up there every summer. Just like it’s always been.”

“Take it down.”

“Why?”

His lips twisted. “Just take it down. It’s things like this that make city-men mock us. No reasonable person clings to these needless superstitions.”

“No reasonable person ignores ancient wisdom, and Elfsbane has hung on mantles every Midsummer for thousands of years.”

Elfsbane was an odd name for the kaleidoscopic bloom, Barrett thought. It made the flower with bruised purple leaves sound like something villagers laid out to poison their forestland neighbors. But Barrett had met solemn Harani scholars in Saldien, and he doubted that those learned beings would accidentally take poison. And if it was Elfsbane, then why was it so good at killing men?

“I don’t care. Take it down.”

His mother laughed. “No,” she cackled. “When you inherit the farmstead, you may do as you like to it. While it’s mine, you’ll do no such thing.” Her expression grew slyer then. “Oh, but you won’t be inheriting it, will you? You were written out when you went off to be a Mage… So tell me, son. Can you conjure fire? Can you summon devils and bend them to your will? Do even the angels fear your wrath?”

“I’ve learned much.”

“But for all that, you do little.”

He heard a loud crunch and felt pain reverberate up his fist into his arm. Shocked, Barrett put his hand down and only then realized that he had punched the doorjamb. Blood dripped down his knuckles and stained his father’s floor-stones.

“Excuse me,” he said in the thickening silence, and carried his bags up to his old room.

#

Barrett’s room hadn’t changed since he’d left it. The books he’d left lay untouched, the mattress smelled musty. Everything else seemed in good order. The first thing that he unpacked was Archmage Cogellus’s The Dawn of the Age of Reason, the very book that had guided him away from home. The book whose author, to Barrett’s excitement, would begin teaching him once he returned from this temporary leave.

As he shifted clothes from his bags into the dresser, he tried to ignore his hand’s dull ache and the prismatic wreathes above his window both. Neither were doing much for his mood.

Still, he didn’t yet regret coming back. He had grown nostalgic as the end of his General Studies had approached, but there was nothing nostalgic about this place. He had nothing in common with this bucolic clan but blood. He could never forget that again. Two minutes with his mother had woken him like a sleeper tossed, bedsheets and all, into a fishpond. When he left, he could focus again, freed from the delusion that he had left something behind that was worth returning to.

He slid the last of the clothes he’d packed into the dresser and stood. The midday heat burned his throat, so he opened the leaded glass window and gazed out upon the disordered fields.

#

He didn’t recall when he’d laid down and fallen asleep. The window let in moonlight, and a wind that had blown his door shut. His arms and legs tingled as he stood and closed out the cold air. He could hardly notice his hand aching through the numbness, and couldn’t remember what he’d dreamt.

Barrett turned away from the window, the flask half out of his coat before something stopped him. An orange glow glimmered between the trees. Torchlight. There were people out in the forest.

They wore goosedown-white robes that almost glowed under the resin-fueled fires. He counted ten of them: Four torch-bearers, four carrying some kind of stretcher, and two hard-eyed men with crystalline swords that caught and reflected the flames until they glowed like daylight.

No, there were eleven. She seemed little more than a child, as pale as her robes, both her hair and her skin. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she rested so peacefully that Barrett felt uncertain she still lived. The swordsmen’s spurs jingled with each step, but otherwise the procession was silent. Barrett’s flask slid from his fingers to the floor, and the clamor seemed to alert one of the swordsmen, who turned and stared towards his open window.

Barrett closed the curtains, feeling like a voyeur. He had learned much of the Harani, had even studied under a few Masters in Saldien. Siltenglade’s Harani neighbors had lived peacefully in this forest for ages, carrying on their timeless rites. Even when the villagers had torn up the ancient loam and cut it into fields, the Ancient Ones only retreated further into the forest. What business did he have gazing in on their timeless rites, rites, he did not doubt, that held more meaning than any tradition of the bovine lot that had spawned Barrett Wheeler?

He found the flask again, and almost choked as the venomous spirit burned his throat. After he had drained it dry, he threw the misused thing against the wall and then tore the Elfsbane wreath from the window mantle before falling on the bed. Sleep came quickly.

#

His mother snored loudly, so Barrett lay awake in the predawn. The early morning was a pleasant blur spent skimming the books of his adolescence: Beyond the River and What Marrick Found There, The Iron Hand, and Durgan Undermountain’s Gurodim Phrases of Wisdom. He had just gotten to the last phrase, “If it’s dead and yet moves: Kill it,” when his mother poked her head in.

“Get up, lazy. At least keep me company while I cook.”

#

After a breakfast of porridge flavored with dried apple, punctuated by his mother scolding him for reading The Age of Reason at the table, he retreated upstairs to dress. Barrett was not about to show himself as he’d been. No, even his mother ought to recognize how high he’d risen when he wore the broadcloth longcoat of a Saldien Magister.

He pulled on the khaki pants and buttoned it and the starched white linen shirt before buckling his vest at the catch behind his back. He was pulling the longcoat on as he plodded down the stairs.

“Feeling cold?” his mother scoffed as they walked out the door.

#

Ellis Wheeler walked swiftly, and by the time they reached the village, a full three hours later, Barrett’s breath came in short gasps.

Siltenglade had grown dozens of houses since he’d last seen it, and the muddy dirt road had spawned cobblestones like mushrooms in manure. Ellis quickly left him behind to trade gossip with the goodwives of what he now had to admit had grown into more of a town than the village he remembered.

He bumped shoulders with a stout man in a blacksmith’s apron and apologized before he fully recognized the man.

“Shil?” It couldn’t be. This dour, thick man couldn’t have been the snot-nosed teen Barrett had known: the boy who had released a greased pig into an autumn barn dance floor.

It took the man a moment to recognize him too. “Barrett?” he said finally. “It is! What strange clothes. Where have you been these years?”

Barrett tried to ignore the sting. Of course no one here would know what a Magister dressed like. “My mother didn’t say where I’d gone?”

“Truth is, she’s gotten worse every year. Since little Ellie married Kellen, she hasn’t come into town till today. People went to call out on your farmstead, but she wouldn’t answer the door. Place looks awful. Where were you?”

“In Saldien.”

“The City of Mirrors?” Shil glanced around, but they were relatively alone. “Why would you come back?”

Barrett’s expression must not have been pleasant, because Shil laughed.

“Look Barrett, why don’t you come with me. There’s a new pub. Well, new since you left. And I’ll buy you an ale. Is that a Magister’s overcoat you’re wearing?”

“Why, yes… Yes it is.”

#

By dusk, his mother had departed. Despite the festival lanterns in the streets, she had muttered some superstitious drivel about shutting out the Elves before she had gone. It was good, then, that she was not around when the Harani showed up.

All but the girl had traded the white robes for utilitarian tunic and breeches in browns and green. The girl wore an Elfsbane wreathe around her neck, and the over-saturated flowers encircled her wrists too. Barrett tried not to make a sour face at that.

The villagers grew restless, and none went near the Harani party. When the girl’s piping voice pierced the crowd, they drew further back.

“Which is Barrett Wheeler?”

He stood, a bit shakily, from where he and Shil had been drinking on the tavern’s stoop. “Me. What do you need, child?”

One corner of her lip pulled upward in a smirk. “Join me, Magister?”

“Now wait a second,” Shil began, but Barrett spoke over him, pleased that finally someone recognized his new clothes without prompting.

“Certainly,” he said to the girl, and then to Shil, “Thanks for the ale. It was nice catching up.” He was surprised to find that he hadn’t lied.

#

The girl led him down the road, left at a fork, and then out into the knee-high grass on the fringe of the town’s biggest pond. Her warders followed alongside him, but he kept his eyes forward on the whitewash pale girl. When she reached the pond’s edge, she didn’t kneel as he’d expected, but just stood, as solemn as a lone grave.

He folded his hands behind his back, struggling not to sway. He pressed his lips together and waited. He was no youngling, and would not speak first from impatience. The red moon rose, and then, behind it, the white moon peeked over the treetops, before she conceded the first round.

“It seems we have need of you, Magister,” the girl said. “I am called Kal Tala.”

He had won a small victory, but gloating would lose any leverage he’d gained. “I am always ready to help those who ask,” he replied. Did his voice sound slurred?

A cat-like smile crept onto the child’s face. “We do not ask. You have seen last night’s rites, and so you must be a part of tonight’s.”

He smiled back at her. “I was tired last night from weeks in a rickety coach. I saw nothing except my dreams.”

Barrett flinched back when one of the male warders raised a fist and almost struck him. “Do not lie. We’ve no choice, and you don’t either. If you don’t help, we all die.”

“Enough, Kal Meron,” the girl said. “You undermine our cause.”

The warder lowered his hand and his eyes, but not before Barrett caught the fear in the man’s face. Barrett’s mouth felt rough as pressboard, and he wasn’t sure if it was from the drink or his own fear. If something terrified the Elders this way, Barrett Wheeler dared not mock it.

“Forgive Kal Meron, Magister Wheeler. He is young.” Tala’s voice held no trace of irony in calling the much older man a child.

“Forgiven. But why the fear? Surely the Gods will protect us…”

The girl’s laughter sounded like wind chimes. “Piety from a Magister? How quaint. The Gods… they fight their own battles.” She cupped her hand behind one delicately pointed ear and craned her neck as if listening at a door. “Yes, we Earthbound cannot rely too much on Gods.”

Her words agreed with what he’d always been taught.

“Let’s end this banter, then. Why am I needed for this rite?”

“Because you are already a part of it. Just like another man of your house was twelve years ago.”

The breath caught in Barrett’s throat.

“My father…?”

The girl diverted her azure gaze. “Yes, but you are a Magister.”

His fingers and toes were numb. He could remember that night again: his father’s face bruised and swollen black as if he had hung in the sun for a week. The viscous stinking mess that leaked like sweat from his pores. The static like a thunderstorm hanging in the air, and the sense of wrongness pervading the house that night. Barrett alone had watched his father’s corpse, stared at the mocking wreathe around his neck, until his mother and sisters had returned from the festival well past midnight.

“Why should I help now? Didn’t you just admit to killing my father?”

Kal Tala, for the first time, looked pained. “Our rite did not kill your father. He ended himself. He had the Potential, but could not live with what he had seen of the hidden world. You are different, Magister. You seek that which is occulted.”

Barrett wondered what Tala knew of the Academy. Yes, it was true he had seen things he might have called Magic once, but that did not mean the Masters shared their methods with even a student as earnest and gifted as him. But pride, and twelve tankards of courage, could not let him admit that to this smug, old-seeming child.

His heart beat fast as his limbs grew number. He tried his best to sound the part of a Magister. “Of course,” he retorted. “I have cast wide the doors to darkness to slake my thirst for knowledge, and I will do so again before I am dead.” He looked at the ring of Harani around him. “I will do what my father could not.”

Tala’s owl-wide pale eyes blinked slowly. “Good. Then come.”

He followed them into the forest by the twists and turns of a deer trail. The moons loomed high in the sky by the time they stopped next to a slab of granite. The wind blew oak leaves and dried brown flecks off of it into the mulch.

“Rabbit’s blood,” Tala said, too quickly for Barrett’s comfort. “Don’t be afraid, you will be safe.”

“Like my father before me,” Barrett said, a crooked smirk spreading across his face. “What should I do?”

“Stand with me,” Tala said, “and place your hand on the stone.”

The stone felt cool under his skin, as cold as the black between stars. Tala’s fingers laced between his, less warm even than the stone. He closed his eyes, and his nostrils dragged in the forest’s musk.

Something seized him. Not his body, but his core — his essence — and shook. Then the thing gripped him, its arm reaching from across the cosmos to catch him, like a cruel child planting a thumb on an ant’s back. Random sensation overran him: noises, sights, scents, and feelings, flashing from one to another uncontrolled. His mind tore open…

…And his being splashed out like water, leaking into the void. The thing waited out there. It hungered for this world like a snake wanted mice babes. Barrett struggled, but free from form, a small blob swallowed by an ocean, how could he fight?

It surged and ebbed, and each onslaught crushed Barrett inwards. How to fight an enemy you didn’t understand? No time to understand. No chance to think. How had his father fought this?

His father had fought. And won. Someone could win, so he could too. It felt like chest-pressing a cottage, but Barrett gained a fingernail’s worth of space, enough to again sense something but the load of moods and sensations from the thing.

As if from across the valley, he heard Tala’s voice: “Remaz du levorik, balaz ku mal du.” At least, that’s what he thought she said. She repeated the strange words, and the presence ebbed just enough for Barrett to gasp a breath. His whole body tingled like it had gone to sleep on him. The power grabbed him again.

The sun through a looking glass. The depths of the Lake. All Barrett was, insignificant. Its grip strengthened. This thing would use him, whether or not he surrendered.

Barrett was bodiless in the void, but he realized suddenly that he still had form. The thing that he fought, though, had none but whatever it filled. It was everywhere, like a burning fog; indefinable, inscrutable. Did he fight a God? “Remaz du levorik, balaz ku mal du.”

The words did not lighten his burden. The thing had him deep beyond the River of Stars, where he finally saw it for what it was.

He balked, and in that moment of weakness, its presence burned what was him like acid scouring the inside of a gourd.

He screamed, but somehow held on.

“Remaz du levorik, balaz ku mal du.”

It would give him the world. If he joined to it, he could contain it, channel it, use it for his own ends. He would unmake this world and remake it again. Remake it into a place where his genius would be acknowledged. Remake it so that Academics wouldn’t hoard their knowledge like a wyvern on a clutch of eggs. Break the world to fix it. Be greater than the Gods.

He could.

“Remaz du levorik, balaz ku mal du.”

He heard his own voice this time. The thing pulled back, but only as a man might when pricked by a needle. Barrett’s disgust welled up within him. How had he thought he could control it? It was beyond control. But then had it planted that thought? How many thoughts had others planted, that he thought were his own? No. This weakness humiliated him. He would see this through.

“Remaz du levorik, balaz ku mal du.”

His voice and Tala’s. The thing fled. Harani chanted wordlessly behind them, and he drew strength from that.

“Remaz du levorik, balaz ku mal du.”

The numb receded from his body, and the thing finally lost its hold on him. Something itched around his neck.

“Remaz du levorik, balaz ku mal du.”

A wreathe of kaleidoscopic flowers, wet with dew. His voice rose.

“Remaz du levorik, balaz ku mal du.”

“Remaz du levorik, balaz ku mal du!”

#

The moons had set when Barrett Wheeler’s eyes opened. Cold sweat chilled his body, but his fingers didn’t tingle. Still, he felt abused. He wanted a bath to wash away the filthy feeling ground into every grain of him down to his bones.

“You did well,” Kal Meron said.

“Where is Tala?” Barrett asked.

“Bathing. The first time she performed the ritual, she lay curled in a ball crying through over a month.”

“The first time?”

“Yes, round ear, the first. This is her fiftieth, or close enough. Your father witnessed the last one.”

Six hundred years then, Barrett thought. Or close enough. How old was she, then? And why would she continue to do this if it hurt her like it had Barrett?

“Because we are what keeps it out,” the girl answered. Her pale hair hung limp and her eyes were red and swollen. “We are why the Elfsbane on the eaves is unnecessary. When the veil is weak, the Elf comes for us first. You did well, Magister.” Then she clambered onto the altar and kissed his forehead. “We must part now, but you have our gratitude. May you do many other great deeds.”

#

But as Barrett limped home, the Elfsbane wreathe hanging limp around his neck, he could not shake that feeling. The feeling that he was no different than the flies that clung to Ol’ Mag’s backside. Left a breath longer, that thing, that Elf as Tala had called it, would have burst from his body and ravaged Aemon-Tor.

And if that was one example of what lay hidden, waiting for proud and foolish men to entrap, then what good an Age of Reason? It could be only danger to strive, to seek, to know. Those things only offered holes for Elven claws to tear wider. Reason itself only gave Unreason more power.

A sour taste rose from the back of Barrett’s throat. His head hurt, just like a normal hangover, except that he wanted to drink this one off.

The ancient milking cow lowed as he staggered into the farmhouse just before sunrise. His gaze lingered on the little bit of water that had collected underneath the dining room table. A pot of laundry burned over the wood-fire and his mother’s snores rumbled from upstairs.

He filled an open-topped kettle with water and rested it on the coals. His fingers shook as he tore prismatic blooms from his wreathe and threw them at the water. Then he stood, and went to look for a clean cup. Archmage Cogellus’ The Age of Reason caught his eye from where he’d left it at breakfast. He sat and wearily opened its pages. It’d pass the time while he waited for the water to boil.

Curling tighter to keep out the cold only drew his mind to the aches. His hands clenched around a normal looking tooth strung onto a necklace. To him, the tooth seemed to shine through his fingers, but he knew that it didn’t.

The tooth was no bigger than one of Wil’s, and the same yellow hue. Nor was it sharp. Much less sharp than an alley mongrel’s fangs.

He smiled thinking about it. The man who’d given him this necklace had torn the tooth from a wild jalt’s mouth. No one in Oakbrook had anything like it.

Father snorted, and his steady snored disappears. He must be waking soon. Wil shouldn’t have stayed so late, long after Clem had let him off. He’d stayed, suds and grease on his arms, listening wide-eyed to Eisen the jalt-slayer’s stories. For the last fortnight, he’d risked staying twice a week. It had taken this long for his Father to notice.

Pot shards clanked, and Wil’s breath caught in his throat. The old man was up, shuffling around in the dark, and Wil tensed in case he had to run. The youth barely relaxed when his father found the window and relieved himself out of it into the alley. His tension didn’t dissipate even when once the old man fell heavily onto the ale-soaked rug.

How much longer would this go on, if he let it? Two years since his mother died, and it hadn’t stopped. Wil could see that fist too often in his future if he stayed. He had to go. Tomorrow. Before sunrise.

He cradled the jalt’s tooth until he found sleep.

#

When he woke, purple bruises were already growing on his bony frame. He hid the worst under his best tan tunic and pulled on a pair of brown breeches. The other pair, still dirty from yesterday’s work at the pots, lay discarded on the floor. No sense leaving them. As he balled the dirty clothes up, the ale pot nearest his father caught his eyes. That pot held the coppers Father stole from him each night. His tongue ran across his lips. That coin belonged to Wil!

He kept on his toes as he crossed the room, and crouched next to the jar. He used the spare clothes to quiet each coin that he took. A coin slipped, and his father jerked and snorted. Wil wanted to run, but he kept still, each muscle taut.

If the old man woke, Wil would miss Eisen at the fountain, and lose his chance to escape. He cursed himself for his insolent greed, even as his fingers clenched the lip of the jar. The pottery was thick and rough between his fingers, small, but heavy. One fluid motion, up, then down onto the sleeper’s temple would put this all right. He’d do it, if it meant getting away from here.

His father’s breathing calmed again, and Wil’s fingers relaxed. The three coins left in the jar went into the cloth ball, and he crept across the floor again, perhaps too quickly. In the hallway outside, he let his breath out. His fingerpads could still feel the rough pot, and his arm felt heavy, even though he hadn’t lifted it.

At the bottom of the stairs, their landlady pulled bread pans from the oven to cool. Morning patrons gossiped over her steaming rolls and sausages from the neighboring butcher. Wil smiled, remembering each face that he’d never see again.

As he struck out for the door, the landlady’s mitted hand caught his bruised shoulder.

“Where are you off so early?” Miss Tavi asked.

“Out,” Wil said, his voice nasal and reedy.

“Out? That can wait.” She slammed the oven shut. “You’re behind three months on rent. The only reason I haven’t called the Watch is for your departed mother’s sake. But this won’t go on forever…”

Wil’s hands curled into fists when she mentioned the Watch. She’d only brought it up now, in front of patrons, to cause word to spread. Soon word would be all over town, that Wil was good for nothing, like his father. His skin tingled under the stares.

He remembered the ale pot, and forced his hand to open. Any gossip died here if he paid her, and he could pinch this much back at the market, if he had time.

He didn’t have time. Eisen said to meet before noon. Suddenly, those coppers felt a lot more valuable. His hand stroked the balled clothes as he thought.

“What’s this?” she asked, reaching towards the bundle.

“N-Nothing.” Even if no one else smelled coins, he’d bet that Miss Tavi had.

Her fingers tore at the folded tunic and a coin flew from it. Wil’s hand snapped out and by some dumb luck caught it. “My potboy wages,” he said, trying to keep his voice even.

“My rent money,” she snarled. Even the heads that hadn’t turned yet were now on them.

His voice came out barely above a whisper, “No.”

“Come, boy. If you don’t, your poor father…”

His poor father. Those words put his back up. Grief was poor reason to bully and rob your son. The jalt’s tooth poked Wil’s hand before Wil knew he had clutched it.

“Kick him out if he won’t pay,” Wil said, the jalt’s tooth hot in his hand. “It’s not my problem anymore. You won’t see me around after today.”

His words echoed amongst the staring patrons. They would speak of this for days, but he didn’t care.

“Wil–,” she began, but he cut her off.

“That’s enough.”

She tried to grab him, but he shrugged past her towards the door. She spat a final curse at him, but didn’t follow. The slamming door shut her out for good, and Wil smiled. The warm roll he’d snuck from her pan into his spare clothes made a good breakfast. His pinched stomach’s thanks, and her rude treatment had outweighed what little remaining qualms he’d had left about taking the food.

#

He ducked into the crumbling façade of the Wailing Wench and greeted Clem, its balding innkeeper. The portly man sat mug in hand, fresh ale stains on his apron and ale-sweat already at his pits. His voice was already slurred. “Why’re you in so early?”

“Good morning, Mister Clem, how’s the ale?” Wil smiled ruefully. He wouldn’t have to come back here again, after today.

“Tastes like a stable.” Clem spat onto the sawdust floor. “Gets you drunk though. What’s this I hear about you stiffing Taveera’s rent?”

Wil barely wondered how the news had outpaced him. “Well, ah, Father takes my coin, and—,”

Clem’s belch cut him short. “Father takes your coin? At your age? Take a club and break his hands when he sleeps, unless he keeps your balls for you too.”

Wil’s fists clenched again, and it took real effort to unclench them. “I’m sick of Miss Tavi,” he hissed. “I’m sick of Father, and I’m sick of you. I’m leaving.”

Clem guffawed. “What, with Eisen?”

Wil hadn’t realized Clem had overheard the adventurer’s promise the evening before. “Yes. I’m going to be an adventurer.”

Clem’s laughter splashed ale on his apron. “That’s rich. You’ll be back within the month. That life’s not for a rabbit like you.”

“Even if you could tell fortunes, I didn’t come for one. Your pots’ll have to get clean some other way now.” Wil’s face wore a scowl as he left the inn behind him.

#

Eisen was waiting in the town square, leaning against a dusky stallion. The tall blond saw him in the crowds and waved.

What did Clem know, anyway?

Crystal-blue eyes followed Wil above a thrice-broken nose. Wil had never feared the mercenary, though he thought he should.

Eisen’s drawl filled the square. “Nice bruises. Forget to pay a wench?”

“Yeah,” Wil mumbled, “something like that.”

Eisen’s brow furrowed and when he spoke again, his words were sharp. “That damned drunk beat you, didn’t he?”

“It’s not–,” Wil protested.

Eisen growled, “I’ll destroy him.” His hand already blanched on the thin-bladed two-hander he favored.

A woman’s tenor voice rang behind Wil. “Yeah. Hack apart a helpless drunk. Valiant. I can hear the bards now.”

Wil glanced over his shoulder at a brown-robed old man and a stocky woman in tunic and breeches. They and their horses had snuck up on him during Eisen’s speech. He chided himself.

“Good to see you too, Almitsel,” Eisen retorted, his words now crisp. He avoided looking at her, but his hand drifted from the hilt to hook into his belt. “Break your fast on curdled milk as usual?”

“Ay, and as delicious as your presence,” she replied. “Filled that morning quota of meat-headed threats yet?”

Eisen made as if consulting an imaginary scroll. “Hnn, nope. Seems I’ve got one left for you.”

The old man’s voice, even deeper than Eisen’s, cut between them, despite its deliberate pace. “Cease this fool’s babble. You’re making a scene here like we shouldn’t anywhere. Are you ready to leave, Sir Eisen?”

Sir Eisen? Eisen was a knight?

Eisen’s voice lightened to a drawl again. “I’m prepared, Ranpa, as always. This young man is Wil. He’s coming with us.”

Ranpa’s eyes widened. “Is that so?”

“Yes Sir,” Wil said.

“I’m no Sir, I… no, let’s spare titles.” He hobbled closer to Eisen and said in a loud whisper, “You’ve not invited anyone along before.”

Eisen grinned and continued on at his usual volume. “I must have good reason, then.”

Ranpa nodded and said, “I shall trust your judgment.”

“And I shall not.” Almitsel mimicked Ranpa’s speech perfectly. Her brown hair looked like long spines, sharp like the arrows in her quiver. “Have you both gone blind? What muscles he has are toned, but he’s beaten to a pulp, and rangy as a starving wolf.”

Ranpa eyed Wil up and down, and then took an arm in a cold grip, prodding here and there before saying at last, “He has good bones, and his sinews are sound. We want a hungry fox anyways, not an ox, or a wolf. We have those already.” He glanced sidelong at Almitsel. “Forgive me, you’re clearly more of a badger. Think, with you guarding young Wil’s back, what ill could happen?”

Almitsel rolled her eyes. “Few of our kind live as late as you. He’ll die young if he comes with us.”

Death. Wil’s daydreams had included danger, but never that. It was safe in Oakbrook. As safe as it could be… hadn’t Barrick gotten crushed under a wagon axle just three days ago? Now that he thought of it, there was the outbreak of plague before that, so bad that even the Riannites had closed their temple doors. And two years ago, Mother, without a mark on her.

“Well, boy,” Ranpa said, leaning forward. This close, his pointed ears, creased face, and crooked teeth loomed in grimy detail. “Have you the grit? Can you rest cold and damp, eating hardtack or not at all, with only the glory’s call feeding your heart and driving your feet?”

Wil bit his lip. Even an obscure death sounded better than grey old age in wretched Oakbrook, if he’d make it that far, staying at home. “Is it bad like scrubbing pots?” he asked.

The three laughed, and he let out a relieved sigh.

“Oh, that’s rich,” Almitsel said through her laughter. “He can come with, if he can crack a joke like that. His wit might make up for the lack in you two.” Laughing like that, the stocky woman looked like Wil’s mother.

“Glad that’s settled,” Eisen said, jumping into his saddle. “Let’s be off then.”

#

As Wil mounted the brown and white gelding, he felt awe that his grubby coins could buy even part of such an animal. When Eisen paid the remainder, Wil protested, but the knight laughed him off. “You’ll be cursing me for your crotchsore by the end of the day.”

“What will you name it?” Almitsel asked him, as she patted his horse’s flank from her perch on a gray mare.

Wil touched the tooth around his neck. “Jalt.”

He couldn’t be sure from those faint smiles whether his new friends were approving or amused.

#

From horseback, he felt somehow apart from the drab crowds. As the group left Oakbrook’s stacked wooden walls, with Ranpa and Eisen discussing things Wil hardly understood, and Almitsel in silence, Wil marked their progress in relative tranquility. Oakbrook was soon just a gray speck in golden fields. Farmers waved and shouted for news as they passed, and Eisen smiled as he drawled his replies.

The farmers’ wheat might someday be in Miss Tavi’s bakery or the Clem’s ale, Wil thought, even as he paid more mind to Ranpa’s exotic tales. As the old man’s rambling became more complex, Wil had to interrupt.

“You’re a sorcerer?” he asked, his eyes wide despite himself. “Do you drink virgin blood to stay young forever?”

Ranpa rolled his eyes and grimaced. “Gods be merciful, do I look youthful? This is why I prefer the term philosopher. My craft is no magic to those who understand.”

If Eisen was a knight and Ranpa a sorcerer, what was Almitsel, Wil wondered, and what would be his role?

That thought held his mind until they neared the softwood forest. Seeing those woods worried him. Oakbrook, despite its name, had no proper trees. Once they left the fields, his real adventures would begin.

He swallowed hard.

#

“Where do we stop tonight?” Almitsel asked at the forest’s edge.

Not any place that could be called home, Wil thought glumly.

“The townsfolk mentioned an inn near a crossroads,” Eisen said. “Sound better than a bush?”

“I like bushes,” Almitsel replied. “Better question, should I scout ahead just in case?”

“What could range this close in without farmer’s hearing?” Eisen said to Almitsel’s back.

Wil wondered about his own role was while his fingers caressed the jalt’s tooth. He could almost feel the talisman feeding him resolve.

#

As the trees fully engulfed them, Wil’s fears had rekindled. Almitsel’s absence worried him too, but the forest’s chirps, buzzes, and howls were worse. Strange scents tickled his nostrils, and the darkening grayness held no hint of the sun.

Back home, he would be hearing the Wailing Wench’s clamor, even with his head buried in a pot. The kitchen’s warmth and firelight would have surely beaten those distant howls. Hadn’t Ranpa said they slept outside most nights, without walls to protect them? Maybe…

No, he would not go back. This was the life he had chosen.

Almitsel returned, her horse’s sides heaving, but her face calm.

“Any trouble?” Eisen asked.

“Only the usual.”

The usual? What was usual in the forest? Wil struggled to phrase that question in a brave way.

“How far out are those wolves?” he asked.

She snorted. “Far enough. Normal wolves avoid men. Are you okay? Your face seems even paler than usual.”

He tried not to think about unusual wolves, or how she could see color when he could hardly see her face. He dodged her question with one of his own. “Why’d you bring me along?”

She glanced at Eisen.

The half-grinning knight asked, “You sure you want to know?”

Wil nodded.

Eisen rubbed his chin in mock consideration. “You’re quick,” he drawled, flashing a mercurial grin.

That was it? Wil had hoped for something grander, that he was the last heir to a throne, or a great hero reborn.

Eisen’s next words fully dispelled Wil’s fantasies. “I’ll show you the little I know of lock picking, and I’ve no doubt you’ll quick surpass me.”

Wil bit his lip to bleeding. They wanted him to pick locks, like a burglar? Putting his idealism aside, the idea wasn’t wholly repulsive. They wouldn’t ask him to rob people who didn’t deserve it. His natural gifts made him a worthy addition to their group. That should cheer him.

Shouldn’t it?

#

Dusk had fled long before they reached the crossroads. Since Eisen’s words, the silence had grown overbearing. Initially, Wil had struggled with his new role, but now he felt strangely comfortable in its mantle. Even so, something still made his hand twitch fearfully. Besides the calls echoing amongst the trees. He felt like a scared rabbit.

The inn emerged from around a turn in the road, a squatting beast with square yellow eyes. Wil’s stomach seized, but he felt Eisen’s hand on his bruised shoulder, and he felt sure of himself again.

At the stables, Eisen said, “I’ll take the horses in,” as they dismounted, and took each bridle in hand.

“Very well,” Ranpa said. “I’ll engage the innkeeper for a night’s food and board.”

“An ale’d go down nicely,” Almitsel grumbled.

They all left, and Wil didn’t know who to follow. He stood at the crossroads with the necklace’s thread digging into his neck.

The whole world lay ahead him, and Oakbrook behind.

His fingers ran across the tooth and a nail caught in a crack he’d never felt before. He removed the necklace and held it before him. It felt heavier than it should.

He breathed ragged, misty puffs and wondered distantly when it had grown cold. His eyes went to the warm inn, then the necklace, and then the Oakbrook road. He stumbled one step towards the inn.

No.

He took another jarring step, this time towards Oakbrook.

Better to die.

He forced himself back towards the inn, but he didn’t want to go there either. A sob caught in his throat and he clenched the tooth so hard it bloodied his palm. He wanted this. He wanted adventure.

No.

He lurched again, towards Oakbrook, and forced himself to stop. The jalt’s tooth burned as his mind wrestled numbly with a choice that would define his life forever.

He didn’t know why he fought so hard, when he knew what he wanted. The inn’s door stood ajar, pouring out golden light, but he didn’t belong there. He knew where he belonged, like it or not. The jalt’s tooth snapped in his fist, and he fled towards home.

The broken tooth lay abandoned in the crossroads dust. When Wil heard Eisen calling out for him, he did not answer.

The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is a great gift for anyone that you know who like ludicrous amounts of gore.  This game is a fast-paced, action-packed side-scroller, but with so many vertical scrolls that it almost feels like it’d better be called just a scroller.  The story is zany and over-the-top while still keeping the gamer hooked, and the art style, especially in the cut scenes, is haunting.

The gameplay itself is incredible.  It has more difficulty settings than I know what to do with, but even the normal mode is challenging enough for someone unused to the difficulty that Dishwasher: Undead Samurai brought to the table.  Overall, I give the Dishwasher: Vampire Smile the following scores:

Story: 5/5
Art: 5/5
Gameplay: 5/5

Some might claim that the story is too over the top, but I think that’s Ska Studios’ whole plan.  After all, this is a game, not a Hemingway novel.  It’s supposed to be fast-paced and fun!

Oh, and if you didn’t know, an inactive second controller can press [A] to control the bird or the cat, depending on if you’re The Dishwasher or Yuki.  This makes this game have hidden four-player gameplay, even if two of the controllers are just laser-shooting pets.  I thought that was a great touch.

I really don’t like having only good things to say about a game.  The point of a critic is to criticize, after all, but I’ve scraped my brain and can’t think of anything I would have done differently that wouldn’t have been hell on the budget.  This game was perfectly executed, just like Yuki’s enemies.  I still wanted more by the end, and that’s what should happen in every series work.

To the members of Ska Studios, excellent job and looking forward to your next game!

My first mistake as a Senior Tester was to believe that I needed to be more professional.  Like Clark Kent professional.  Gone were the days of smiles and jokes.  I had always put on slacks and a button-down shirt, and my hair was parted from the side by the natural curse of my hairline.  When I get serious and I look like that, it’s hell waiting to happen.

As soon as I realized how unapproachable I was, I put my trenchcoat, slacks, and dress shirt away and wore T-shirts and jeans in.  That doesn’t work either though.  It doesn’t say, “I don’t care how I dress.”  It doesn’t say anything.

I grew up on a farm.  When you’re walking in fields, your best case getting muddy, your worst case getting manure-y, you wear junk clothes.  “Farm-Casual” isn’t fly, so save faded jeans and a T-shirt for the weekend.  Yes, I’m a guy, so I was stubborn, but image is part of any Entertainment industry.  Reinvent yourself, and think about what you’re trying to say.  I’d bet it’s something like, “I’m fun and I can get the job done,” not “I take myself very very seriously.”

I reserved the athletic shoes for the gym and bought some darker denims and casual sneakers.  Don’t overdress.  You’re managing testers, not Japanese Salarymen.  To fit in with testers, and (I suspect) the rest of the gaming industry, Casual-Business is the daily dress, not Business-Casual, or worse, like I was, Business.

But clothing can only help you so far.  Demeanor is important too.  If your nose is catching clouds then even if that’s justified, another person won’t do their best for you.  This should be obvious.  Cockiness in a Tester is cute.  Cockiness in a facility’s leadership is obnoxious.

“I can do your job better than you,” only results in the other party saying, “Oh yeah, then you can do your job and mine, smartass.”  Trust me, no matter how awesome you are, you can’t do it alone.

A better solution is to be friendly, and genuinely appreciative of good work.  Crack some jokes too, some of them off-color.  Of course keep it professional, and keep it you.  Don’t fake, but most work-personae are fake.  Are we like that around our friends?  You spend as much if not more time with coworkers than your buddies.  Show them your good side.  It won’t interfere with your work, or the work of your testers.

Here’s a thought.  Testers come in four varieties, which must by needs, be handled differently.  Remember, it’s not your desire for more productivity that matters, but what each group wants for themselves.  Selfish?  Not unless your desire for an efficient workplace is too.  Here’s each type and what they want:

1) The QA Professional: These guys are your smallest group, and your easiest.  They find some kind of poetry in a good bug write-up and test cases are their mystic koans.  They love test.  Not video games.  Test.  Just point them at the hardest stuff and reward them for their movement on the journey to Test Enlightenment.

2) The Gamer: These guys are probably your biggest group.  Your facility tests video games, so expect the LAN party to show up where you work!  Most Gamers are good at testing, but all of them care more about whether a game is “epic” than whether it’s “compliant”.  Play to their strengths: have them test gameplay and write Design Change Requests to improve the game.  Keep in mind that this is the product’s target audience! Your Gamers have added value to your client as a focus group!

3) The Slacker: Like the gamer, but with less drive.  The love of video games is there, but they are indifferent consumers.  Rather than form an opinion, they say, “Eh, it’s alright.”  Worse-case, they aren’t even gamers, this was just an “easy gig”.  Try to ignite their passion, but don’t get too hopeful.  They’ll probably remain bottom-tier and do your “easy” test cases.

4) The Creative: Creatives find their way into Testing because it is touted as the bottom-rung for a career in game production.  Promote them, but always talk in terms of how this will help their Creative career.  Don’t try to make them into a Type 1 QA Guy, because it’s not going to happen.  Creatives are often very good at Testing, but hoarding them like a dragon or pigeon-holing them into a testing role won’t motivate them.  One day they will be free, so be the one to help them fly.  Find them an “in” at a development house that matches their goals.  The Dev-House will love you, and your company, for giving them qualified talent, and the Creative will always remember who “broke them into their career”.

My latest big flaw to overcome was with pushing my best people too hard, and in that, I’m definitely not guilty alone.  If I think the world of someone, I assume they can handle whatever I dump onto their station.  If you have this kind of confidence in a person, don’t even come close to criticizing them.  It will only alienate them, and no tester will stay with you once you’re alienated.

Remember, a Gamer wants to game, a Slacker wants to slack, and a Creative… well… you get the idea.  The Gamer and the Slacker don’t care a fig for your projections and targets, but a clever manager can work around this.  The Creative just wants a good referral from within the industry, so if you push too hard, they’re going to find another place that will give them that referral.

Let’s say you have an issue with your all-star.  Imagine they take too long to finish a task.  Let’s say you’ve assigned them a project similar to that of their peers, only three times the scope, because you know they’ll rock it.  Then they take more than three times as long to do this task as their peers, so you bring the tester in and say:

“We’ve noticed it takes you an hour to do this task, when it takes everyone else fifteen minutes.  It shouldn’t take you that long.”

Wrong.  This tester is drowning in your expectations.  Depending on the task, tripling the scope could more than triple the amount of work on that tester’s plate.  If you held a job at that tier in the past, you ought to remember!

Besides, saying something like this will just shut the portcullis, and they’re a castle you can’t storm.  The scope of what you’ve assigned gives them the right, every right, to wait out this siege, or launch an offensive that your small force is ill-equipped to handle.  You won’t storm their castle, because it’s far too well-fortified:  They already wildly exceed the workload of their peers, and only receive the same pay that their peers receive.

Do not treat them like a precocious, but misbalanced child.  You wouldn’t like it either.  Rather, you could man up, be a leader, and help them with their problems.  Maybe it’s an issue of a process that, when scaled up, becomes too cumbersome.  Maybe it’s a matter of them having a terrible computer, or just a bad day.

The least likely case is that your superstar, that you’ve heaped tasks upon, is suddenly trying to slack off.  As a manager, you’ve identified the slackers early and kept them from these honor spots.

So assume that the tester is doing the best they can, and ask if you can help.  Maybe examine the task and see if you can find better.  Never tell the tester to “Fix it.”  Brainstorm with them.  Give them ideas and alternatives.  Treat this like a team effort, because it is.  If a tester is genuinely having trouble, then learn the causes of their problem and find out a resolution.  Yes, it will take time out of your day, but that’s why you’re Management.  Absolutely do not delegate the task of fixing this problem to the person having the problem.  That’s as bad as saying, “You suck, fix it.”

Never forget, the Management sets the tone for the workplace.  It’s in the power of the Management, not the testers, to set the tone in the lab.  Would you rather your lab sound like a mortuary or an outlet of the bustling industry that you’re a part of?

Please, unless the suits are in, let the testers do their job and have fun.