Writing

Why I Built Byline.pub

Owning Your Books Beyond One Website

The importer: WXR, dry-run, idempotency, and why slugs are sacred

A practical guide to migrating WordPress content to an AT Protocol PDS

Why AT Protocol, and Where WordPress Ran Out of Road

The architecture call behind the rebuild: what a decade on a CMS taught me, and what I'm betting on instead.

Thirty Years Online, and I Never Owned the Ground

From Windows 95 to the AT Protocol, and why this is the last time I rebuild this site (at least the backend).

The Win Was Never Bluesky. It Was the Protocol.

The better question is whether we can stop rebuilding the same landlord model with a different logo on the door. Right now, our social graphs are corporate hostage files. One model lets you leave a platform and take your world with you; the other forces you to download your history as a static zip file and start over from zero.

Testing a Plugin by Writing About Not Knowing What to Write About

There’s something beautifully recursive about installing a publishing plugin… then immediately not knowing what to publish with it.

Behind the Pages of Pejorative: With the Author

Every story starts with a spark. For Pejorative: Echoes of a Nation, that spark was a question I asked on my blog, just a few “what if” scenarios about Alberta leaving Canada. At the time, it felt like speculative fiction. But the more I followed the rhetoric, the clearer it became that the lines between reality and fiction were blurring. What started as a thought experiment grew into something much deeper, a layered story about propaganda, memory, and the quiet erasure of national identity. In ...

The Gander Passport: Why a Sovereign Node Beats a Digital Bunker

Why is Gander connected to Bluesky, and why should you care? Explore the architectural shift of the AT Protocol and how Wingspan is building a "Third Way" for Canadian data residency. This is an early adopter’s take on the infrastructure required for true digital land back and the end of vendor lock-in for the human experience.

Gander Social Community Based New User Guide

This is a community-created guide, not official, not corporate, just here to help new folks get oriented and get comfortable faster. Gander Social is a Canadian-built social platform focused on Canadian conversation, civic literacy, and community-first interaction. It is currently in a closed BETA.

Rage Bait Disguised as Patriotism

How It Spreads, Why It Works, and Why It Hurts Canada

Wearing Too Many Hats (and Writing Anyway)

There’s a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from context switching—jumping from writing fiction to analyzing sales dashboards to scheduling posts.

The Alberta Sovereignty Crisis

Alberta’s sovereignty movement has entered a new and more dangerous phase. What began as political rhetoric has evolved into legislation, policy, and a coordinated challenge to the foundations of Canadian federalism. With the passage and repeated use of the Alberta Sovereignty Act, ideas once confined to activist manifestos are now shaping real governance.

I’m not a Patriot

Why don’t Canadians call ourselves patriots? Because our pride sounds different. Born from Loyalists, peacekeepers, and quiet builders, Canada’s strength has never been in shouting, it’s in showing up. From Confederation to Canada 150, our patriotism has stayed humble, civic, and collective. In an age of loud nationalism, that restraint isn’t weakness, it’s wisdom.

Chronicle #011: Post-Launch Signal Drift

It’s been a month since Pejorative left my desk and entered the noise. The algorithms have already decided who should see it and who should not. Every click feels like a vote of confidence, or a funeral rite.

Pejorative: Echoes of a Nation

Pejorative: Echoes of a Nation is a hauntingly plausible speculative novel told through a fractured archive of testimonies, smuggled documents, corrupted broadcasts, and the reflections of a vanished resistance archivist. Set in a near-future Canada quietly annexed under the banner of continental “unity,” the story unfolds through recovered files curated by the last person who tried to remember out loud—Jason Butterfield.

The Grievance Gateway

When outrage is the invitation, manipulation is the goal. The Campus “Conversation” Defence Guide helps students and educators recognise emotional hijacking — how frustration, fear, and belonging are used to turn dialogue into recruitment. Learn how to spot the playbook before it plays you.

Shadow Diplomacy and the Slow Erosion of Democracy

The Alberta Prosperity Project isn’t a gov’t. Yet it claims “cabinet-level” U.S. talks on independence. No names. No proof. This is theatre, not statecraft. Shadow diplomacy like this erodes trust and feeds disinfo. Democracy leaks by a thousand cuts.

Why Information Literacy Matters in 2025

“Canada is broken.” “Project 2025 will save America.” “Memes are the new news.” Those lines have probably flashed across your feed in the last few months. They’re not just headlines, hashtags, or jokes — they’re weapons.

Memoir Fragment #010: Uneven Dystopias

Dystopia isn’t arriving, it’s already here, just unevenly distributed. For some, it’s daily survival; for others, a new shock. This memoir fragment explores how silence becomes complicity, why endurance is not apathy, and how writing can stand as witness.

Dispatch #009: Guardrails

The road wound higher than I remembered, climbing through high hills with just enough guardrail to suggest safety. On one side, forested hills stretched into layers of green and shadow. On the other, a drop, sharp and unforgiving, reminded me of gravity’s patience. Above it all, a clear sky stretched like a promise.

Memoir Fragment #008: While the Cottage Slept

Coffee in one hand, edits in the other, the rest of the cottage still asleep.

Transmission #007: Red Marks & Heatwaves

Proof copy in hand. Red pen out. Beta readers circling. This book’s a risky one, fractured timelines, testimonies, and media scraps stitched into a story I hope makes sense outside my skull.

Dispatch #006: Chapter One, Take Two

Hit a wall, and tore it down. After finalizing layout and hitting the halfway point in edits for Pejorative, I circled back to Chapter One and knew it had to go.

Transmission #005: Between Edits and Empires

Dispatch #004: Signal Received, Doubt Pending

Dispatch #003: Smoke, Slogans, and the Signal Beneath

Memoir Fragment #002: Fall-in-May, Discipline-in-Chaos

May dressed up as November. Damp chill, grey skies, and the scent of fall. I stayed knee-deep in Chapter 20 edits while coffee pulled double duty, fuel and hand warmer. The world spun loud, but I stayed quiet. Some weeks, discipline isn’t loud. It’s just the act of showing up. One page. One fix. One sentence straighter than the last.

Chronicle #001: Fog Over the Week – Dispatches from the Threshold

Somewhere in the blur between code and fiction, I launched something small but personal: a direct storefront for my books. No noise, no gatekeepers, just my work, finally on my terms.

Fractured Futures - Alberta Conundrum

What happens when provincial frustration turns into separatist ambition? In this piece, I explore three stark what-if scenarios for Alberta’s future, each rooted in real grievances, legal limits, and the fragile fabric of Canadian unity. From constitutional brinkmanship to foreign interference, these aren’t predictions, they’re warnings. And they all point to the same truth: Canada holds together only if we choose dialogue over division, clarity over chaos.

Hope in the Code: Love, Loss, and Disunity

I wanted to write a story that tackled what it means to be human—when the person asking that question isn't one.

The Poet, the Soldier, and the Haggis: A Legacy of Resilience

The connection between Burns and the military isn’t merely philosophical. At its core, it reflects shared values such as resilience, loyalty, and a belief in the power of collective identity. Burns’ works often touch on themes of unity and human dignity, ideals that resonate deeply in the military ethos before transitioning into the practical examples.

Echoes of Redemption: 4 Short Stories of Sacrifice & Redemption

Short Fiction: Hyperopic Dissidence

Short Fiction: Dust off

Short Fiction: A.D.A.M.

It's all a ruse or is it real /end program. You decide. Do we actually live in a computer simulation?

Short Fiction: Disunity