Tag Archives: Vaporware

2024 Roundup

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This….was a very busy year. A lot of stuff happened that was very important and yet utterly not germane to this discussion, so I’m going to skip on over it. I do, however, want to do a rundown of all the writing-related stuff that happened, largely for my own sake so I can convince myself it really went down. To wit:

  • I pitched and sold a non-fiction book on being a video game writer titled The Video Game Writer’s Guide To Surviving an Industry That Hates You. That should be out in 2025.
  • I sold my horror novel Nightmare Logic to Falstaff Dread, and that will be out in 2026.
  • I energetically resurrected, playtested, and revised my card game Squatches and Scotches, and am engaged in getting that in front of publishers now.
  • I am engaged in pitching my novel Ghosts of Smoke and Flame to agents and publishers, and have high hopes for it.
  • I was engaged on several top-secret creative projects, one of which we are final contract negotiation stages for. I can’t say more about it yet, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and I am really excited that this is happening.
  • I sold five stories: “Against the Siren Song” to Sudden Fictions, “Kicking Santa’s Ass” to Interdimensions, “Paws” to Black Cat Weekly, “Used Sleep” to Space and Time, and “Last Supper” to the fine folks at PseudoPod.
  • I wrote or revised a double fistful of stories, and have them all out in submission as we speak.
  • I commissioned and released audiobooks for my novels Firefly Rain and Vaporware.
  • I did a twice-weekly series of posts on game narrative at LinkedIn, drawing thousands of readers.
  • I spoke at numerous schools and conferences, including GDC, SAGA Writing Workshop, the GenCon Writers Symposium, DigiPen, RIT, and many more.
  • I did readings and appearances across North Carolina, from Wilson to Raleigh to Morganton to Arden, and even did a reading as part of the legendary Noir at the Bar series at Yonder in Hillsborough.
  • I continued to serve on the advisory board of the Game Narrative Summit, and to judge the Student Game Narrative Analysis Competition at GDC.
  • I was announced as the Toastmaster for Necon 2025.
  • I pitched an anthology concept that is moving forward with me as co-editor.
  • I wrote scripts for and voice directed the musician Post Malone as part of my work on the video game Hunt: Showdown 1896. I also did extensive other narrative work on the game before wrapping up my time at Crytek at the end of the year.

And there’s probably some other stuff that I am forgetting, but still, that’s a pretty full year.

Now, onward to 2025!

New Year, New Post, And A Recap

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Hello everyone! Welcome to 2024! I want to talk a little bit about what’s coming up, and also do a rundown of the year that was 2023,

Let’s start with the latter. 2023 was a busy year for me. I launched re-releases of my first two original novels, FIREFLY RAIN and VAPORWARE. I also had my second collection, A MEETING IN THE DEVIL’S HOUSE, published in July by the fine folks at Twisted Publishing. It got kind words from lots of readers – solid five star ranking at Amazon – as well as great reviews from places like HorrorDNA and PseudoPod. New short fiction included two stories at PseudoPod – “Swing Batter Batter” and “Billy’s Garage”. I also managed to get a story in the star-studded SWORDPLAY anthology, which was my first attempt at hard-core sword and sorcery. And I wrote two essays on films I may have seen too many times in this life, ZARDOZ and GREMLINS 2, for Ghost Show Press.

The Official Website of Richard Dansky — Meeting in the Devil's House

 

2023 was also a year of a great deal of conventioneering. Leaving aside the shows I attended for video game work (there were four), I also made it to, among others, AuthorCon II, my very first StokerCon, Necon, and GenCon. And in a late surprise, By Night Studios invited me to join their inaugural Vampire: The Masquerade LARP event in San Antonio, where many people were incredibly effusive with their appreciation for my work at White Wolf and what it had meant to them.

And lest we forget, I also got to give a reading in conjunction with the death metal band Eldritch Horror at Moon Dog Meadery in Durham. That was a thrilling event and I had a ton of fun – thanks to the folks at the Durham Public Library for putting it together! I also gave a reading in Rocky Mount in December, pulling up a story from SNOWBIRD GOTHIC to regale the audience with.

So, from that perspective, a pretty darn good year. And like I said, that’s without mentioning the video game side of things, which is pretty durn important to me – my excellent first year at Crytek after over two decades at Red Storm, multiple trips to Frankfurt wherein my luggage got sucked into a cosmic vortex, the pleasure of joining an exciting panel at LudoNarraCon, many GDC adventures, and of course the hometown fun of ECGC (and the mysterious post-ECGC thing We Do Not Speak Of).

But on to this year. There’s nothing officially in the pipeline for publication, though I have a novel, some short stories, and a card game design in submission to various spaces. Fingers are crossed. I also am looking to wrap up the edits on work in progress NIGHTMARE LOGIC, which has proven surprisingly resistant to finishing. There are at least three short stories I’m working on at the moment that I hope to turn around and submit soon, and I am looking at an exciting new project in a new medium that I can’t talk about quite yet.

And oh yes, I want to write the next novel.

Conventions will hopefully be a little less hectic, but I’ve said that before. Thus far I seem to be going to:

Ret-Con
ConCarolinas
AuthorCon III
Necon
GenCon
StokerCon
GDC

Still debating Carolina Fear Fest and a few others – we shall see how Teddy and Goblin feel about my frequent absences.

I hope to see you somewhere along the way in 2024, whether at a con or online. Here’s hoping you enjoy my work, and please, if you do read something of mine, do me the kindness of leaving a review. It really is a tremendous help in getting the work seen, which is what really matters to me.

 

 

 

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.