After taking a B.A. in English and Latin at the University of Alberta and an M.A. in English Literature at York University in Toronto, I worked through the 1970s as a proofreader, manager of a small bookstore, and editor of a major resource study by the Alberta Forest Service, while taking enough time off to explore that interesting decade and to work on my own projects. I then spent some years as an editor of debates and proceedings at the legislatures of Alberta and British Columbia. (Here I gained a thorough contempt for parliament, an institution that exists solely to give the appearance of democracy, while lavishly rewarding a crowd of sycophants to keep power in the hands of a very few.) I then helped design some unsuccessful adventure games for a venture company, before finally ending up at Microsoft, where I spent a decade or so writing documentation for software development kits, focusing on DirectX, common controls, and accessibility technologies.
To contact me, mail “peter” at this domain.
Publications
Books:
- Hsiang Ch’i: The Chinese Game of Chess (Wargames Research Group, 1974)
- Inside DirectX (Microsoft Press, 1998, with Brad Bargen)
Board games:
- Decline and Fall
- Middle Sea: Empires of the Feudal Age (with the late Wilf Backhaus)
- Sorcerer’s Cave
- Mystic Wood
Commercial computer games:
- Awesome Adventures of Victor Vector and Yondo (wrote scripts for three episodes)
- Ripley’s Believe It or Not: The Riddle of Master Lu (adventure game for PC; developed story and puzzles)
E-books: see Skookum Editions.