Curriculum Vitae

Jason A. Clark

9538 Metcalf Road

Avoca, MI 48006

(810) 956-2973

bocanorme@gmail.com

OBJECTIVE: To leverage my creative talents to further my career with a company that understands the value of language and of family.

EDUCATION

2002-2004 Bachelors of Business Administration

Double Major: Marketing and Human Resources

Baker College

Port Huron, MI

2000-2002 Associates of Computer Science

Major: Computer Networking

Baker College

Port Huron, MI

EMPLOYMENT

Metal Masters Construction - (810-824-4523)

Marketing Director

Kimball, MI

May 2016 – Current

Sales Manager – Aaron Matthews

Set appointments for potential customers. Maintain integrity of both current and historical sales leads. Work in tandem with Office Coordinator to route sales team to appropriate appointments during the day. Perform minor computer repairs as needed. Reprogram corporate Excel workbook as needed. Direct and manage results from direct marketing team. Design company advertisements and ensure distribution to proper markets.

Barnes and Noble - (810) 385-4849

Merchandise Manager

Fort Gratiot, MI

November 2014 – May 2016

Store Manager – Arianne Burgdorf

Plan merchandise displays and execute in a timely manner. Coach booksellers on proper procedure and best sales practices. Build relationships within the community and assist in hosting author signings, book drives, and bulk sales orders.

Sears - (810) 385-8108

Consultative Sales

Fort Gratiot, MI

August 2013 – April 2015

Supervisor – John Wages

Commission sales of consumer electronics. Attained Employee Of The Month my first full month. First month of full commission attained highest level of “Best of Blue” sales recognition. Focus on solutions based on customer needs.

Auto Plus - (941) 639-8791

Driver

Punta Gorda, FL

April 2011 – July 2013

Store Manager – Eric Fleming

Responsible from prompt delivery of customer orders, handling of returned merchandise, as well as collections.

Domino's Pizza - (941) 637-8887

Delivery Expert

Punta Gorda, FL

January 2007 – April 2011

Supervisor - Robert Jedrecyzk

Responsible for prompt delivery of customer orders, friendly customer service, and accurate phone skills.  Regularly one of the quickest and most reliable of our delivery experts.

Circuit City - (941) 925-3050

Sales Manager

Sarasota, FL

May 2005 - November 2006

Supervisor - John Buck

Guided department's sales staff.  Reduced returned product on shelf by 35% through retraining. Personally responsible for largest single non-commercial sale in Florida.  Recruited IT technicians for Firedog Installation Services.

J.C. Penney - (810) 385-9800

Basic Logic Assistant

Fort Gratiot, MI

October 2001-April 2005

Supervisor - Maryann Mathis

Led sales staff to increase sales in basic merchandise by designing and implementing floor plans for basic merchandise.

Writing Credits

Advice Column

Adventures In Random Roleplay 1-15 - November 16, 2017 to May 1, 2017 (series ongoing) - Dashing Nerds


Journalism

Syndicated Reruns: A First Look At Assassin's Creed Syndicate - May 15, 2015 - Your Nerd Is Showing

It's The End of The End of The World - May 20, 2015 - Your Nerd Is Showing

Dreaming of a Rainbow I Can Follow - Aug 18, 2015   - Your Nerd Is Showing

High Noon: Feathers, Dice, and a Curious Yellow Kickstarter - Aug 20, 2015 - Your Nerd Is Showing republished at Graphite Universe here

Kicking Puppies: The Promise of Sci-Fi vs. Anti-Inclusivity Brigade - Aug 27, 1015  Your Nerd Is Showing republished at Graphite Universe here.

Putting Ourselves To Our Fullest Possible Use - Sep 10, 2015 - Your Nerd Is Showing

Serial Fiction

Chrysalis Falls: Five Ongoing Serials - Aug 2004 - Originally published at HTTP://www.chrysalisfalls.com, republished at Wattpad

E-Books

The Sons of Adam: A Boy Named Nod Collection - June 18, 2012 - Available through Amazon

The March Of The Pallbearer: A Rate of Decay Collection - June 18, 2012 - Available through Amazon

Red Letter Days: A Rue Collection - May 17, 2016 - Available through Amazon

References

            James Gentile - 941-457-9335

            Craig Bellofatto - 239-671-8516

            John Wages - 770-335-3174

The Chrysalis Falls E-Book Collections

Hello there Chrysalis Falls readers! Now, not only can you read the Chrysalis Falls serials on Wattpad but also as e-books for your Kindle devices.

The Sons of Adam https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008CQ8X44

(Psychics, Cyborgs, Living Dreams)

The March of The Pallbearer https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008CQAQKS

(Mechs, Genetically Modified Clowns, Corporate Warfare)

Red Letter Days
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FTV201Q
(Detectives, Legends, Ghosts, Serial Killers)

2 Free Kindle E-Books!

This weekend, I'm giving all of you wonderful readers the gift that keeps on giving.

No, not money.

Free e-books! That's right. This Saturday and Sunday both
The Sons of Adam - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008CQ8X44
(Psychics, Cyborgs, Living Dreams)
and
The March of The Pallbearer - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008CQAQKS
(Mechs, Genetically Modified Clowns, Corporate Warfare)

Tell your friends, tell your family. Scoop up both and give them as a Mother's Day gift! (Make sure your mother is into violent dystopias, mechs, clockwork cyborgs, and homicidal animal people, first though, that's just being considerate.)

Enjoy!

Enjoy!

Writing Credits

Advice Column

Adventures In Random Roleplay 1-15 - May 13, 2015 to Oct 11, 2015 - Your Nerd Is Showing


Journalism

Syndicated Reruns: A First Look At Assassin's Creed Syndicate - May 15, 2015 - Your Nerd Is Showing

It's The End of The End of The World - May 20, 2015 - Your Nerd Is Showing

Dreaming of a Rainbow I Can Follow - Aug 18, 2015   - Your Nerd Is Showing

High Noon: Feathers, Dice, and a Curious Yellow Kickstarter - Aug 20, 2015 - Your Nerd Is Showing republished at Graphite Universe here

Kicking Puppies: The Promise of Sci-Fi vs. Anti-Inclusivity Brigade - Aug 27, 1015  Your Nerd Is Showing republished at Graphite Universe here.

Putting Ourselves To Our Fullest Possible Use - Sep 10, 2015 - Your Nerd Is Showing

Serial Fiction

Chrysalis Falls: Five Ongoing Serials - Aug 2004 - Originally published at HTTP://www.chrysalisfalls.com, republished at Wattpad

E-Books

The Sons of Adam: A Boy Named Nod Collection - June 18, 2012 - Available through Amazon

The March Of The Pallbearer: A Rate of Decay Collection - June 18, 2012 - Available through Amazon

Red Letter Days: A Rue Collection - May 17, 2016 - Available through Amazon

High Noon: Feathers, Dice, and a Curious Yellow Kickstarter

(This is an archival writing sample from the now defunct YourNerdIsShowing.com)

As far as drugs go, storytelling is one of my favorites. Weaving a story for anyone listening, carving out a space for shared experience that is as deep as we care to make it. Layer by layer, off and falling down the rabbit hole, we all come to a vaguely consensus based reality. It should be no surprise then, that when I heard that Ravendesk Games had launched a Kickstarter to turn British author Jeff Noon's trippy Vurt series into a tabletop RPG, I wondered what color feather I'd idly had in mouth.

Vurt (the first book in the series, as opposed to the full series of interwoven stories) was the bonkers story of drug addict Scribble. The drug of choice is Vurt; color-coded feathers that whisk you into shared “vurtual” reality. Things get complicated when Scribble and his sister/lover Desdemona share a trip to English Voodoo, and Scribble comes back with an amorphous blob one of his gang members calls “The Thing From Outer Space”, instead. The whole affair has a very Orpheus into the Underworld feel to it, filtered through the lens of Neuromancer. Or possibly The Matrix, if The Matrix had been equal parts Jodorowsky and Aronofsky, with more jumping through realities and less nutrient gruel. Noon's Manchester is bizarre and surreal, a world where incest, bestiality, animal hybrids, and all sorts of other abnormalities are commonplace. Being a plain old human is boring and looked down upon. This is the world that still isn't enough for the addicts, and so they turn to their reality hopping Vurt.

Now, coming back to the beginning... Ravendesk Games has actually gone off the rails enough to put together a tabletop experience for Vurt. It apparently took a four year effort to convince Jeff Noon, but their persistence won out. Furthermore, they're going to be using the Cypher System currently found in Monte Cook's Numenera. The Cypher system is the wild, unkempt cousin of d20, in many ways. Monte Cook reinvented a great deal of RPG terminology in the current write-ups for Cypher, but you still roll a d20, still have levels, still have classes. The actual math for difficulty is based on multiples of three across ten steps of difficulty, which sounds odd but functions cleverly. Added bits like “Focuses” which function almost like a subclass are pretty interesting. On the negative, Cypher also dabbles with systems like “GM Intrusion” which (on top of being horribly named) forces a FATE-style “spend x or be subjected to badness” but gambles players' XP. I'm eager to see what the Ravendesk team does to tailor Cypher to Vurt.

What? You're still here? Go! Go on! Go read about Curious Yellow feathers, and shadowgirls; about mathemagick and cybernetics. While Ravendesk Games made their first goal and Vurt: The Roleplaying Game WILL be coming, there's no reason not to support them further as the stretch goals include pregen adventures, a sourcebook, and five language support for the core rulebook. In parting, I leave you with one my favorite lines from Vurt; “Expect to feel pleasure. Knowledge is sexy. Expect to feel pain. Knowledge is torture.”

Kicking Sad Puppies

(This is an archival repost from my work at Your Nerd Is Showing.)

Kicking Puppies: The Promise of Sci-Fi vs. Anti-Inclusivity Brigade

Warning: This article has some frank discussion about racism, sexism, homophobia, and transmisogyny.

I don't know if you know who the Sad (or Rabid) Puppies are. I don't even know if you're familiar with the Hugo Awards. You are reading a site about nerds by and for nerds, so I'm pretty certain you know of the genres Science Fiction and Fantasy, yes? The Hugos are an award given every year voted on by the attendees of WorldCon. Purchasing a membership to WorldCon grants you eligibility to vote for two years. You also take part in nominating those pieces of fiction, be they graphic format, dramatic presentation, novella, or other formats. This year, a voting bloc led ostensibly by author Vox Day, organized itself to push back against what they felt was a dearth of political correctness and diversity shoving straight, cis, white men out of eligibility. Since the Hugo voters are not usually very organized about their voting, this allowed the “Sad Puppies” to dominate the nomination process, filling multiple categories with their slate of nominees, and claiming almost all spots in many others. That's the situation as it stood Saturday August 22^nd as the Sci-Fi and Fantasy community watched and waited for the results.

In the months before, there had been a great deal of discussion as to how the voting would look. The Hugo Awards allow a vote of “No Award” if an eligible voter feels that none of the nominees deserve the award or if they feel the category should be abolished. Many voters spoke publicly of their plan to use votes of No Award to fight back against what they felt was bigotry and disingenuous behavior on the part of the puppies. In response, the puppies lashed out that people were just being bitter and not wanting to follow the rules.

I sat and watched the Hugos Saturday night, waiting to see how this struggle would pan out. You see, I'm a firm believer in the “Promise of Sci-Fi” and to a lesser degree, what I call the “Hope of Fantasy.” I'm not the world's best example of someone with nothing who found inspiration in Science Fiction and Fantasy. However, I have always been a believer in the idea that with rational thought and an open mind, humanity can reach incredible heights. Even cautionary Science Fiction, like that beginning with Mary Shelley, doesn't doubt the incredible things we can accomplish. Instead, it astutely asks us to evaluate whether or not we SHOULD take these actions. Even the grime of Cyberpunk has this promise at its heart. While humans may still retain their distinct flaws in the face of the future, the potential is there for many other hopes and dreams to be realized. This ties directly to my belief about Fantasy. Fantasy lets us hope for worlds where no matter how strange we may seem, we are normal. The same wonder we may achieve looking at the stars, we can also achieve imagining ourselves as boy shepherd who one day becomes an Archmage, speaking the tongue of creation. In these places, the marginalized can find purchase because in these fictional worlds, they are no longer marginalized.

So as the awards unfolded and the Twitter feeds rolled on, I watched with anticipation. Would the institution of the Hugos be shaken by No Awards? Or would wings go to authors like John C. Wright who have openly attacked equality of marriage activists asking why they don't support racism as both are “malfunctions” (for validation of these claims, http://www.thebacklot.com/orson-scott-card-isnt-the-only-homophobic-wackjob-sci-fi-writer-out-there/08/2009/, but again trigger warnings for all listed at the beginning of the article and general bigotry.)

When the awards began, they began innocently enough, with a touching tribute to Jay Lake. The next awards to be given are the Fan awards. Julian May and Ben Yallow received the first awards, both positive members of the fan community. Then, after much pomp and circumstance, the rest of the awards ceremony is underway. And I watched, eyes drooping from a deficit of sleep, as award after award was called and the Sad Puppies received no succor. John W. Campbell award? Wesley Chu. Then came Elizabeth Leggett and Laura J. Mixon in the fan categories. There was deference to the marginalized and the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Then came Galatic Suburbia Radio, Journey Planet, and Lightspeed Magazine's awards. These were prominent Feminist organizations. The words “I'd like to thank the patriarchy” were spoken by Christie Yant as she accepted for Lightspeed. By this point, Twitter began to stream with jokes asking if the Sad Puppies had intended this all along or if sad reports were being made to Vox Day about the crumbling of the war effort.

And then the No Awards began. This article is not a definite list of the winners. The Hugos have that themselves as well as many far more respected journalistic establishments. I'm only going to tell you the sweeping emotion that began to take me as I started sending messages to friends, colleagues, and acquaintances to tell them the results. I was taken by the solidarity of the thing. There were many tolerable candidates on the Sad Puppies slate, but still, the voters hold firm. They would not negotiate with what they felt were bigots or terrorists. They would not put up with the kind of people who would leave a stack of vile papers on the freebies table, hoping to insult as many groups as possible while referring to the SFWA as the “Socialist Fiction Writer's of America.” Overall, five No Awards were announced that night, bringing the total of No Awards given in the history of the Hugos to five. The Sad Puppies were almost entirely shut out, with the singular exception of “Guardians of the Galaxy” winning long form presentation. It was a category completely full of Puppy nominees and yet, enough voters had intended to vote for it regardless, that it still won. It struck me, sitting there, as the Sad Puppies' greatest loss. It was the one that proved that voting weren't just there to spite them. They were protesting the Puppies' methods and tactics, certainly. But they weren't beyond voting for a option that they agreed with.

Now, in the days after, I've watched social media ignite with spin from the Sad Puppies camp as to how this was a victory for them as it shook the validity of the awards. After all, what point is an awards assembly that doesn't give out awards? To this nerd, it validated the Hugos all over again. I have never been prouder of the Science Fiction and Fantasy communities as I was watching the awards happen. The community came to together in way that, sadly, my gamer community hasn't dreamed of yet, and told the bigots that they would not be argued or reasoned with. They would simply be shown the door.

The Sad Puppies have already vowed to try the same stunt again next year. We can only wait and see if they wear folks down by attrition, or if they'll be more Sad Puppies sent to the shelter again next year.

The Secrets of Heroes: Campaign Hook #2

And here is Campaign hook #2 for the IRL game crowd.


The Secrets of Heroes

“Over two hundred years ago, on the plains of The Greenfields, a great battle was fought.  The Prince of Beasts, Baphomet, carved open a gateway between planes.  His forces erected a metropolis in their dark master's honor and from it, their terror spread.  Until, that is, the great Archmage Ardath Krell came and felled the forces of Hell.  Legend has it, he fought Baphomet atop the great brass tower in the center of the labyrinthine city and threw down the Demon Lord.  Once the stain of darkness had been purged from the land, Ardath himself lay down on a small island in the heart of The Greenfields.  As his life flickered out, the Archmage simply... faded away.  A memorial was erected on the spot.  In time, a small town grew where Ardath left this world.  Ardath's Rest, they call it.

And I believe I've found something; a secret Ardath went to his grave keeping.  If I'm right, I'm going to need some... specialists... to assist me.  Whatever we find, we'll split evenly as partners.

Are you in?”  -  Sage Setra Blackhands

An expedition with the promise of ancient treasure becomes a race to uncover the source of a festering evil in the heart of The Greenfields.