BOSSES

Heeba Fahad — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 11:21:13 +0000

I have to talk about bosses. I know many people have had bosses from hell. Nick is different, he’s a terrific guy to work for. He gave me a chance when no one else would hire me. I jumped very quickly from coding to designing the actual games. I think he’s pretty pleased that the first three I designed for him have sold so well. It took a lot of persuasion for him to let me create games for women to play. Let’s face it, men don’t understand that women like games as well, but the ones that have been the top sellers are so full of violence (particularly toward women) that the female audience avoided them. Plus the language sucked.

Women love seeing great men’s bodies in the games. We can window shop like crazy, but we don’t always have to buy.

We are not averse to fighting, but we like subtlety and sneaky moves to allow us to win

Once Nick understood this, I think Karen, his wife, finally persuaded him about my ideas, and he gave me cart blanche. There were only a few others working for him, and Carlo, his chief coder, was the best I had ever seen. The other three guys were all weird, but incredibly talented. I don’t think they noticed I was female. I told you they were weird.

We were the company who others thought were losers, until we began winning awards. I only went to the first convention near us. It was horrible and quite frankly scared me, and not much normally scares me. The other gaming groups were filled with guys who thought that only men could design games. They went out of their way to make sure they insulted me and the sexual harassment was so bad, I left after two days and never went back to another convention.

I loved the company though, and Nick, Karen, and their two boys sort of became my family. I’m not big into kids, but those two were a riot. They could be incredibly naughty, but always managed to rope me into their mischievousness. We often pranked Nick. Karen was too important to mess with. She made the cookies, and packed great lunches. However, she used their full names when she caught them in a prank. Let me tell you, any kid who hears his mom use his full name, instantly knows he’s in trouble.

What began my challenges with Nick was when he sold the company to a huge Japanese gaming concern. The Japanese have a concept within their companies of being similar to a tight-knit family. They hired more men and expected us to adhere to their team concepts. They insisted Nick stay on for two more years to keep the company running smoothly. If they had not kept him on, I would have left long ago. The challenge with the new hires was that they hated me as a female working in a man’s world, and did their best to mess with my designs.

I loathed this new team thing and avoided it like a plague. Unfortunately, the new owners jumped all over Nick for my disobedience. He had no option but to give me a choice of working within the current system, or finding a new job.

When he sent me off on a vacation to the BVIs, I was bloody mad, but also I didn’t want to lose my job. I loved working with Nick as my boss.

I was not expecting what happened there.

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Kat’s First Post

heebatk — Fri, 29 May 2026 19:00:10 +0000

Good morning, world. I am Kat, and I’ll let you in on a little secret. J.M. Tibbott thinks she created me. Big fib. Loads of authors believe they create the characters in their books. I am convinced this is also a load of bull. I think we are already fully formed somewhere deep inside the writers’ psyches. We’re just waiting for the opportunity to spring forth and show ourselves to the world.

Now that you know this about me, I hope you can relax and enjoy this blog, without having to suspend disbelief in me and the rest of the folks in The Pridden Saga.

Let me give you a bit of my background.

My last name is Karim, which was my father’s name and is Arabian, although he was Omani by birth. It was a good name, as it means ‘noble’. I’m convinced it suited him, big time. I adored him, because he always spoke to me as a person, and taught me amazing things about the world when I was young.

Mom was a Scot, and I know her maiden name was Craig, which was also appropriate, since it means ‘rock’. She was definitely the rock in our household.

We travelled to so many different places, many of which I have no memory. The reason for our travel is that my father was part of the Omani diplomatic corps. I am led to believe he was highly respected in diplomatic circles. I figured out he was the sort of fixer who travelled from embassy to embassy ironing out problems, Because of that, we never spent much time in any one location. Mom much preferred traveling outside Oman, because, particularly as the wife of a diplomat, in Oman she had to wear the hijab. It was always required in Oman, and often at some very posh affairs in other parts of the world. As a fiery Scot, she hated the hijab, but she loved my father, and I guess she accepted this as part of his job.

I’m telling you this, because I often use phrases from these countries in my speech, and you may be confused by the words I use, and wonder if I was born in the middle of an ocean somewhere. I wasn’t. I was born in a perfectly respectable hospital in Canada, ‘cause father was fixing something at the embassy at the time. As a result of being exposed to so many different countries, I’ve been told I have a mid-Atlantic accent. Although we were never in one place long enough for me to learn the language of each country, I do know a few words of most of the languages where my father was stationed.

My parents died shortly after I turned thirteen, so most of this information I have learned since, from both research and from my brother, who lives in Australia. By the way, Australia has some of the best names for things, and I love their accents.

Now you know a little about me, hopefully we can have fun together as I write and publish this blog on a regular basis. What I would like to do, is travel through the books and give you my thoughts about the timing of things that happened in my journey.

Skal! That’s the one word I picked up in Denmark. I think it had something to do with drinking.

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