VAPORWARE Is Back!

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Ten years ago I unleashed my video game ghost story VAPORWARE on the world. It’s the tale of a video game project that gets cancelled – but doesn’t want to go away. The cover is by the amazing Lynne Hansen, who did a great job of capturing the personality of the book!

VAPORWARE was actually born at Necon in a late-night discussion with, among others, best-selling author Douglas Clegg. He riffed on the idea of writing what you know, and what did I know? Video games, and how they’re made. But I was tired of stories where either A)the video game monster gets loose and starts eating people or B)the hero gets trapped in a video game and something starts eating people. I wanted to do something different, to write a story about the real horrors of game development, the toll it could take on the people making the game and the passion and love that went into the process.

Thus, VAPORWARE was born.

It originally came out in 2013 from JournalStone. I ran a wacky promo called People Doing Terrible Things To My Book, wherein I posted people doing awful things to copies of VAPORWARE. There were chainsaws. There were knives. There were copies of TWILIGHT and milkshakes and many other things. And it was a lot of fun.

But that was ten years ago. Now it’s back, and I hope you enjoy it.

 

Busy Weekend

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This weekend I’ll be at the uber-spooky Carolina Fear Fest, selling books and hoping to get a glimpse of Tara Reid before the Sharknado descends upon her. You can find show info here, so if you’re in the Triangle area, come by and say hi!

And if that’s not enough, Sunday night I’ll be chatting with the lovely folks at The Thing In The Labyrinth about FIREFLY RAIN. Event details are here!

 

A Meeting In The Devil’s House and Other Stories

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Big news! Coming in July from Twisted Publishing is my second short fiction collection, the diabolically titled A MEETING IN THE DEVIL’S HOUSE AND OTHER STORIES. The cover is by the vastly talented Errick Nunnally, and the foreword by the legendary James A. Moore. It’s a dozen and a half stories about magical pirate rabbis, cosmic vending machines, zombie frogs and more, and it will be available soon!

Speaking of that cover…

Swing Batter Batter at PseudoPod

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I am very happy to share with you the news that my baseball-themed horror story “Swing Batter Batter” is live over with the fine folks at PseudoPod! It’s a fun story and I’m very proud of it. Hope you enjoy it!

Up Next – ECGC

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GDC has come and gone. So, too, has Scares That Care Authorcon II, both of which were lovely and exciting experiences. Returning to GDC in person was wonderful. The Narrative Summit, which I sit on the advisory board for, was excellent. The student presenters who had won the competition I judge were superb and in one case, extremely moving. And my three round tables were full, with lively discussion and good back-and-forth from a wide range of attendees. I got to see too many friends there to recount, and made some new ones along the way.

AuthorCon II was a very different show, being devoted to (surprise) writers and all things writing. Again, saw a great many friends and was introduced to new ones there. I caught up with folks like Maurice Broaddus and Tim Lebbon, whom I hadn’t seen in seven and thirteen years respectively, as well as many others. I also ran a four hour workshop on writing for video games that had good attendance from sharp students who asked good questions. I went home tired but happy.

So with that done, time to rest, right? Wrong! Next week is East Coast Game Conference, for which I help wrangle narrative content. It’s a wonderful show – low pressure, high content, and very friendly – and I’m glad to be a part of it. If you can get to Raleigh next week and you have an interest in gamedev, check it out! I’ll see you there!

 

GDC Incoming!

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Next week is the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. I’m going, in part because I’m part of the advisory board for the Game Narrative Summit (which runs Monday and Tuesday) and in part because I’m running narrative round tables during the main show Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and in part because my employers at Crytek are kind and generous people.

Part of the Game Narrative Summit will be the presentation of the winning entries from the student narrative competition that I judge each year. I am honored to do the judging and happy to see what each year’s crop of up-and-coming game development students think about the narratives of their favorite games.

I’ve been going off and on, mostly on, since 2000. My first talk was about believability versus realism in Ghost Recon; since then I’ve spoken on various other topics and run my roundtables, and it’s always a pleasure and an honor.

GDC is also a wonderful opportunity to catch up with friends and professional peers. I’m looking forward to seeing folks I see maybe once a year, but whose voices are loud and clear in the narrative and design communities. And if we have a few drinks to celebrate each other, that’ll be fine, too.