I’m Jonathan Lovelace, a 2009 graduate of Calvin College in computer science. This is the online home of my three major works: the Shine Cycle, my science fiction/fantasy series-in-progress; Strategic Primer, a unique strategy game; and my growing corpus of poetry.
I never introduced myself properly when I began this blog in December 2008, so in July 2011 I reintroduced myself, the Shine Cycle, and Strategic Primer at some length; this page (like the “Welcome” post) is intended to serve as a shorter introduction to me, my work, and this blog.
The Shine Cycle is my magnum opus (with “great” merely meaning “very large” here), a story that primarily spans two continents (though at times stretching to other worlds and even other universes) from the beginning of that world for over two hundred years. I won’t be posting most of its text publicly, but much of the background material and is posted here.
I also write poetry. I’ve posted most of my presentable poems on this blog, one nearly every Friday since November 2009 until I ran out, then more as I wrote them. Because the full archive is so large, from mid-2011 to January 2013 I posted links to small, more manageable groups each week. I have also self-published a collection, of about sixty poems, A Year in Verse, on Kindle and in paperback. But I’m still interested in readers’ opinions as to which poems are my best, and how poems might be improved, as I consider preparing a second collection.
My second magnum opus (again merely meaning “very large work”) is a strategy/simulation game called Strategic Primer, which began as the experiment in my eighth grade science fair project (”what effect does age have on performance in a game of strategy?”) but within the year had grown completely out of hand. During high school I conceived of turning it into a computer game, but as that too snowballed with every idea I’d ever had about how a strategy game should be I dropped it for the time being. I am currently running a preliminary campaign of the “pen-and-paper version” over the Internet—which still needs players!
In addition to these three major projects, which I try to write about weekly, I also write essays about various topics.
Hi, nice to meet you !
LikeLike
I’m offering you The Dragon’s Loyalty Award. I love your poetry. Haven’t gotten a chance to read your other stuff, yet, but plan to. Blessings to you!
LikeLike
Thank you, Jeff.
My response to this “offer” is, I’m afraid, the same as I gave in the comments on my Contact page when Maria “nominated” me for the “Versatile Blogger Award” a few years ago: my habitual instinct is to avoid passing on anything like a chain letter or “viral” meme, so it’s doubtful I’ll “accept.”
If you’re interested in learning more about my other work, I’m currently revising and updating the Archive pages; the lists of essays are essentially up-to-date, and I’m in the middle of the Shine Cycle pages at the moment.
LikeLike
No problem. It turns out the Interwebs ate my entry, anyway, so it never got published. I was almost finished and had been working on it for two hours. I couldn’t go back and recreate. For some reason, WP had not saved a draft for the whole two hours.
LikeLike