Author Archive: admin

August Recap

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So here’s what went down last month. I:

  • Attended GenCon as part of the Writers Symposium, where I moderated 8 panels, met and hung out with lots of great folks, and had a wonderful time. Also, I got to go on a small private tour of the Ray Bradbury Archives and was able to both touch his writing desk and hold his (replacement) Emmy for The Halloween Tree.
  • Started a Patreon. There’s free content, there’s paid content, there’s all sorts of content!
  • Went down to local festival Pop!-Con and had a great time. Sold books, talked to folks, and met a tiny owl named Galadriel who had apparently ridden against her will from Nebraska to North Carolina trapped in the front grill of a semi. That’s one tough bird.
  • Got published in issue 1o of legendary noir magazine Dark Yonder with my first true non-supernatural noir story, “Competitive Advantage”. I’m pretty sure that’s also the only piece of fantasy baseball-themed noir ever written, much less published.
  • Set up a couple of talks in New York State for September, one at RPI and one in Utica.
  • Agreed to speak at IGDC in Chennai, India in November.
  • Did the launch party for The Video Game Writer’s Guide to Surviving an Industry That Hates You at Yonder Cocktail Bar in beautiful Hillsborough, NC, Had a full house of wonderfully supportive friends and readers, and I am thrilled with how it went.
  • Launched The Video Game Writer’s Guide to Surviving an Industry That Hates You to what is apparently a really strong audience response. Last I checked, it was the #1 New Release in Game Design at Amazon, and was top 10 (as high as #2) in one specific category and top 50 in two others.
  • Finally got the ongoing piddling refrigerator saga dealt with.
  • Attended and sold books at legendary local music festival ProgDay, where I got to hang out with, among other people, the guy who’s played keyboards for Renaissance for the last 8 years.

Pretty sure there was other stuff in there, but I think that’s a good start.

Now, deep breath, and then September.

Oh Look I Have A Patreon Now

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Big news!

I just launched a Patreon!

Here’s a sample of what you can find over there. Content will be pretty much steady at least five days a week, with me talking about everything from game development to Sasquatches to writing to, well, pretty much anything.

Looking forward to seeing you over there!

 

Podcastmania!

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Every so often, someone invites me onto their podcast to talk about some flavor of writing or other. I always enjoy doing this sort of thing, and it’s a real pleasure to have these sorts of conversations.

This past week, I had the rare distinction of having three podcasts episodes where I was a guest drop, one after another. Here are the links:

First up, the mighty Brian Kindregan had me on at Game Story Basics. Here’s part one

And here’s part two, where he called me a “narrative wild man”.

Switching gears a bit, here’s a three-headed conversation on what was the most ambitious piece of work I did back in the White Wolf days, Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah.

Coming up, I’ll be making appearances on a few more, most notably the Corner of Story and Game. Will keep you posted!

 

 

 

Necon 2025

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Just got back from my annual trip to New England for Necon, which was, as ever, a delight. This year I had the privilege of serving as Toastmaster, and was thus tasked with delivering the opening toast to the convention, as well as hosting the welcoming dinner for the Guests of Honor and interviewing the Writer Guests of Honor (Cynthia Pelayo, Errick Nunnally, and Eric LaRocca) onstage. I also moderated a panel on writing local horror, MCed the improvisational humorous writing competition Write Club (where I was gloriously sandbagged onstage by my girlfriend), co-hosted Necon Update (a humorous look at the con and various campers), and hosted a new event where first-time Necon attendees got to give a reading. Oh, and Ellen and I also hosted a late night unofficial Scotch and Cheese party, which was by all accounts a smashing success.

And there was some other stuff that went on that I will talk about later.

But it was great, I promise. Already planning for next year!

 

A Slight Change of Plans

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As part of the recent Microsoft Massacre, I find myself with a lot more free time on my hands. The project I was working on at Romero Games was canceled, and as a consequence of that, I’m out of work at the moment.

I feel terrible for my team, who are a fabulous bunch of people, and I am sad that the project we were working on might not ever see the light of day. Because, well, it was going to be awesome.

But, time to go forward. The leadership of Romero Games is reaching out to publishers to see if there is interest in bringing the game to market, so with luck, that will be a thing. If not, well, I am lucky enough to have a bit of a cushion – you don’t work in games for a couple of decades without planning for the unexpected – and I am going to take some time to decompress, recharge, and work on personal projects. I’ve got Necon coming up in a week, I’ve got GenCon and Pop!Con and ProgDay after that, I’ve got a brilliant and lovely girlfriend who lives far away whom I’d like to spend more time with, and there’s a whole mess of stuff around here, both in terms of my house and just things to do in North Carolina that I have never done, all of which will keep me busy for the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the plan for now. I’ve got all that to do, and some personal projects happening, and then there’s the launch of The Video Game Writer’s Guide to Surviving an Industry That Hates You, and the graphic novel is ongoing, and I should be getting edits on my novel Nightmare Logic from the publisher soon, and….as the marvelous Ellen says, “How did you have time to hold down a day job anyway?”

But stay tuned, there’s more news coming.

Second Sale of the Week

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More good news! This week also saw the fine folks at Starship Sofa agree to publish my story “Footsteps Among the Stars”. The best way to describe the story is “What would happen if a Lovecraft protagonist went to a beach party on the Outer Banks?”

Needless to say, hilarity and cosmic horror ensue.

In any case, do give Starship Sofa a click or two – they do great work – and when I have a pub date I’ll announce it here.

 

 

 

Now At Horrific Scribes: “Scheduling Issues”

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Today marked the publication of my story “Scheduling Issues” over at Horrific Scribes!

This is a story I first wrote a version of maybe 20 years ago, when I had just ascended to the management group at Red Storm and was really uncomfortable about certain aspects of having done so. The draft I wrote then was overlong and overwritten and lacked a certain maturity, in that the core of the story is the conversation between the protagonist and his wife, and at that point I was freshly married and honestly didn’t understand how marriages worked years into the arrangement.

So I messed with it for a while, and then I moved on to other stuff because I couldn’t get that one where I wanted to go. It faded into an old working folder that got passed along from computer to computer over the years and pretty much lost in the process, until a couple of months ago, when in a burst of procrastination I decided to tidy up my hard drive and accidentally found that lode of long-abandoned fiction.

Like a fool, I opened it and started reading the 20-odd stories in various stages of completion in there. Some were absolutely terrible. Some were very much “product of the times” pieces that would no longer speak to anyone. And a few still clearly had good bones, and if I could polish the language and cut about 30% (mostly adverbs), I might have something.

This was one of those stories, largely because of that quiet conversation between loving husband and wife in the middle. There’s no fight. There’s no fireworks. Just a moment of raw, painful honesty that opens the door to both liberation and destruction.

So give it a read. And think twice before your next meeting.

 

Tally Sheet

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Last year was a little bit of a lull for me, writing-wise, as I concentrated on laying the groundwork for new projects and personal matters. But, I vowed to hit the ground running in 2025, and I like to think I have done that.

So far, I have done the following:

  • Started a new job as Narrative Director at Romero Games, and I am having a blast doing so.
  • Written the bulk of the manuscript for The Video Game Writer’s Guide To Surviving an Industry That Hates You, and done edits and final proofs.
  • Finalized the concept and wrote the script for my first graphic novel, a 124 page horror comic for the French publisher Delcourt, done in conjunction with the legendary Matz.
  • Finalized the contents of a new short story collection, including an all-new Reb Palache story.
  • Wrote 7 short stories so far and counting.
  • Managed to pump out 2 essays a week on game narrative and writing over at LinkedIn
  • Laid the groundwork for a few more upcoming projects.
  • Promised to kill at least one person horribly in a story or novel for charity.

I’m now gearing up for starting another novel, and I have a few more stories in progress I need to complete. And there will be at least two big announcements coming up before the end of the year.

No rest for the wicked, or their typing fingers.