He is forthright, passionate, honest and totally uncompromising. This can come as a shock to writers from other sites who are used to unspecific praise or harsher words wrapped in niceties. He has an enormous depth of knowledge and teaches from the base of being an active (and very good) short-story writer himself, and he puts his own work up anonymously for critique by the group along with everybody else’s. He has always been generous in helping beginners, both in running Boot Camp for many years without payment until his own circumstances forced him to start charging, and in contributing to other writing sites, though shaking people out of complacency is sometimes seen as unwelcome.