I was obsessed. I wouldn't quit. My grades suffered. I didn't care.

Everybody uses pop culture as a shorthand.

I watched a lot of YouTube videos of cute geeky girls playing '80s cover tunes on ukuleles. Technically, this wasn't part of my research, but I had a serious cute-geeky-girls-playing-ukuleles fetish that I can neither explain nor defend.

I wanted to be able to write in the voice that I talk to my friends and assume that everybody would know what I was talking about.

My favorite video game of all time is called 'Black Tiger'. It's a Capcom Dungeons and Dragons game from 1987. I have the actual arcade version sitting in my office.

It is on!" Aech shouted into his comlink. "it is on like Red Dawn!

In the far reaches of the world, under a lost and lonely hill, lies the TOMB OF HORRORS. This labyrinthine crypt is filled with terrible traps, strange and ferocious monsters, rich and magical treasures, and somewhere within rests the evil DemiLich.