Hi there. I'm Richard E. Dansky, horror writer, game designer and writer, and general cad. Welcome to my website, which is intended to provide updates on my published work, my current projects, and other events that may be of interest (or morbid fascination) to the world at large. The theme of the site is something I call "snowbird gothic," a mixture of the classic Southern gothic with the sensibility of a relocated Yankee. Below you'll find news, updates, interviews, and whatever else catches my eye. Enjoy!

Upcoming Appearances:

NanoCon - November 6 & 7, Madison, SD
Game Developers Conference - March 9-13 2010, San Francisco, CA

Current News:

November 4 2009: Halloween Pics

Courtesy of the incomparable Badger.

November 2 2009: Linkosity!

Book Reviews - here! (and here, and here, and here and here...)
Storytellers Unplugged Essay - here!
An interview with Christopher Golden - here!

Five for Writing: Norman Prentiss

"He seemed like such a nice man." "He was always very quiet, and very polite." "He never seemed like the sort of guy who would hurt anyone."

These are the sorts of things you generally hear about serial killers. They're also things that could be used to describe the estimable, charming, and talented Norman Prentiss, whose debut work of long fiction, Invisible Fences, is getting hosannas from the critical sector. A man of many talents, Norman also served for two years as the first line of defense (read: slush pile reader) for Cemetery Dance Magazine, and works as a high school English teacher. Here, now, are his thoughts on the insights of the slushpile, the world's biggest book, and why you should read Thomas Hardy along with your Thomas Ligotti. It's Five for Writing with Norman Prentiss:

1-You sat on the other side of the slush pile for Cemetery Dance. Did that experience affect what and how you write? And did the fact that you're writing and publishing cause you to attack the slush pile a little differently than you might have otherwise?

It may be a different situation for other markets, but most of the unsolicited stories for CD are decently written--not as "slushy" as you might expect. That makes it harder for a particular story to stand out, obviously. I don't know if I attacked the submission pile differently because I'm a writer - maybe some days it made me more sympathetic, and other days more impatient? But it's definitely a learning experience. I'd read a story and say, "Hey, I've used that same plot device! And I don't like it!" - so it helped me be more critical of my own writing. Slush reading helps develop a more critical ear, so it's a useful job for a writer to live through. Even if you're not on staff with a magazine, it's an interesting exercise once in a while to pick up an anthology or magazine and skim it for one hour as if you're deciding "yes or no" on the stories. Maybe do it for an anthology outside the genre, where you don't recognize the names. How long are you willing to wait for a story to grab your interest? What, for you, defines a professional writing style? A distinctive voice?

2-You're a big fan of Thomas Hardy. What can Hardy bring to the table that's relevant for today's horror reader - or writer?

Well, a lot of Hardy's short stories are horror, based heavily on folk superstition. "The Withered Arm" is a favorite of mine. The major novels, all tragedies, have memorable scenes of horror: an old man in The Woodlanders identifies his own health with that of a tree outside his window ("The shape of it seems to haunt him like an evil spirit. He says that it is exactly his own age, that it has got human sense, and sprouted up when he was born on purpose to rule him"); after a man in Tess is stabbed to death, his blood seeps through the floor to blot the image of an ace of hearts on the downstairs ceiling; and in Jude the Obscure, a child says to his mother, "It might have been better if we hadn't been born," and she actually agrees!--and worse things follow. They're tragedies, but Hardy's world view can be so bleak that they often read like apocalyptic novels. In his poem "The Darkling Thrush" he writes, "The land's sharp features seemed to me, / The Century's corpse outleant."- not a huge step from there to I Am Legend, The Stand, or The Rising.

3- Invisible Fences is your first long publication, and it's getting rave reviews. It's also getting compared to the work of Charles L. Grant in several places. How do you feel about that comparison, and do you think your work is "quiet horror"?

I've been really lucky with the reviews so far, and with a lot of nice comments from readers too (especially considering the book hasn't been published yet--people got advance copies as part of Cemetery Dance's book club this year). The Grant comparison is particularly gratifying, since his brand of atmospheric writing was the kind of thing I was going for with the book.

When I think of "quiet horror," compared to other types, I like the analogy of channel surfing. Some horror movies, when you flip to them, you can identify the horror instantly: you hear the sting on the music track, see the monster or the drips of Technicolor blood. With quiet horror, it's like you've flipped onto a normal movie, and yet something's not quite right. You still sense it's a horror movie, but can't always pinpoint why: maybe it's a shadow in the wrong place, an odd camera angle, or the way an anxious character glances offscreen. That's the kind of effect I went for in Invisible Fences. Some readers have said it seems more like a mainstream book, in places, but I think it's horror all the way through.

4 - There's a lot of concern and internet chatter about "the death of the reader". By day, you're a mild-mannered™ high school English teacher, which means you're sitting down every day with the people who theoretically are going to be the readers of tomorrow. What do you see from them in terms of reading - or not reading, and do you think the doomsayers are right?

The Internet is the world's biggest, unedited book, yet people don't seem to mind reading that thing one screen at a time. Even people who balk at reading a .pdf file onscreen will still read a detailed online news story or a multi-screen message board thread, as long as it's about something they're really interested in. From the teacher's perspective, I've had some students who would admit (sometimes proudly!) that they don't like to read - and yet, I've seen some of these same students eventually enjoy particular books or stories. So the optimist in me says, people will always read, as long as they can find something they really like - although it's true there's a lot more competing for people's attention these days.

5-How exactly do you explain to the parents of your students that despite the fact that you've been published in Tales from the Gorezone, you're not going to warp their kids' minds? Or do you…

It seems the word's gotten around in our parent community that I'm a writer, but they don't always know what kind of writer I am unless they ask me in person. When I say that I write horror, sometimes I get "the look"--the same look you get from anybody who's not interested in that genre - but really, most people have been very supportive. I am pretty mild-mannered™ in person, as you said earlier! :)

Mild-mannered enough to put up with these questions, at least…Many thanks to Norman for taking the time to do the interview. You can find him online at his website, and you can order Invisible Fences here (or in a special deal on the Cemetery Dance main page with two other novellas - limited time only). You can also read my review of it over at Green Man Review - and I'll give you a hint: I liked it. Coming up soon - Jess Hartley and French graphic novelist Henscher - among others. Until next time…

September 29 2009: Not Tuesday, Not Belgium

Lots of news to get to, folks. First of all, a big thanks to everyone who attended the Writers' Summit at the Austin GDC. It was a fantastic conference for lots of different reasons, with the people attending being one of the most important. If you're interested in game writing, want to hear how it's done from some of the best pros in the business, and a general good time with professional peers, I'd highly recommend checking it out. (The fact that I'm somehow now the co-chair of the Advisory Board for the Writers' Summit has nothing at all to do with my endorsement. Honest.)

Splinter Cell: Conviction has a release date: February of 2010. For more Sam-related goodness, check out the Tokyo Game Show trailer here.

Melinda's Manga Math books are out and gorgeous. You can find reviews of them here, here, and here. Or, you can download a sample chapter here.

Also, look for me at NanoCon in Madison, South Dakota, along with Jeff Tidball and Chris Sims.

Up next: a Five for Writing with the estimable Norman Prentiss. Seriously. I've been sitting on this one for ages, and I'm glad I can finally run it. Keep watching this space...

Five for Writing: Thomas Sniegoski

Any man who puts together whisky and dinosaurs is a man I admire. In this case, the man in question is Thomas Sniegoski - comics writer, author, and generally cool guy. From his collaborations with Christopher Golden (The Menagerie) to his YA work (Billy Hooten, Owlboy) to his original fiction, Tom specializes in taking readers into hidden worlds that are hidden beneath the skin of our own: Angels working as private detectives, creatures out of myth safeguarding the world from evil, and of course, a kid who turns into an owl-themed superhero. He shares his thoughts on daring to write that first novel, how he got to work on Bone, and why there's no love for Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy. I give you Five for Writing with Thomas Sniegoski.

1-A Kiss Before the Apocalypse was your first adult fiction novel, but prior to that you'd done extensive comics work, young adult fiction and collaboration on adult fiction. What led you to finally taking on fiction on your own, and did the path you took to it affect the way you approached it?

Chris Golden! He did it…blame him! Seriously, I'd always planned on eventually tackling a novel, but I just never seemed to be ready (or so I thought). It was Chris who got me to take a dip in deeper waters when he proposed that we do (along with Stephen Bissette) Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Monster Book. This was a pop culture history of all the monsters that appeared on the Buffy show at that point...we sort of traced all the origins of these beasties, and gave the reader an overview of what they were, where they came from, and the other places they had appeared in pop culture. The book was a real chore, but the editor that we worked with really liked what I did, and asked if I wanted to pitch an Angel novel (based on the Buffy Spin-off) Not really thinking that anything would come of it (oh silly me) I did, and Angel: Soul Trade became my first solo novel. Phew!

I approached the whole novel thing with very much fear. It was terrifying. What if I couldn't do it? What if I couldn't meet the deadlines…crap like this went on and on…and still goes on till this day.

2-Lots of writers have horror stories about dealing with Hollywood. On the other hand, your YA series, Fallen, was (monstrously) successfully adapted by ABC Family for television. What are the keys to a successful adaptation that leaves everyone - especially the author - happy with the result?

Basically, you sort of have to remove yourself from the equation. The less you think about it, the less that it will bother you. You have to learn to separate YOUR work-meaning the book(s) itself, from what the Hollywood guys are doing. If you don't, you will lose your freaking mind. Honestly, my experience was pretty darn good. They actually tried to keep me somewhat in the loop, and would send me the various scripts to read and comment on. This was only the first of the films though…after that, things got a little less inclusive.

3-You've got two ongoing series that feature paranormal protector protagonists and a hidden supernatural world: the Remy Chandler books and Billy Hooten, Owlboy. What is it that attracts you to this sort of material, and how do you modulate it for your different audiences?

I think the love of this stuff comes from my love of comic books, books, movies and television. I live and breath this crap…it's what makes me happy, so of course that's going to show up in my work. Owlboy is me as a kid finding a monster world beneath the cemetery next door to my best friend's house, and learning that I can be a superhero there…the Remy Chandler stuff is me (much cooler though) walking the mean streets of Boston flipping over rocks and finding horrible things squirming there. These two series are just slightly different reflections of what I love and who I am.

As far as modulating, one is just written in a younger, more goofy tone…I'll let you figure out which one.

4-With Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails, you became the only other writer Jeff Smith ever trusted with his Bone characters and universe. How did that come about, and what was the appeal of writing in the Bone setting?

First let me say that I think BONE is probably the greatest comic book achievement of my lifetime. Yep, there's Watchmen and Dark Knight floating around, but BONE is just pure genius.

I'd met Jeff a few times at various conventions, and we really hit it off. Out of the blue, his lovely wife, Vijaya, called me up and asked if I would be interested in writing the prequel to BONE which eventually became known as Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails: The Adventures of Big Johnson Bone. After I picked myself off of the floor, I of course said yes.

The BONE universe is this amazingly rich and fertile place. Jeff has put his fingers all over it, and showed us how wonderful it is…but there was still so much that he didn't show us. The Valley (where the BONE stories take place) is a VERY big place, and I think there are countless stories to be told there. In fact, I'm currently writing brand spanking new BONE adventures for Jeff and Scholastic Books that will be released sometime next year. These will be novels…a trilogy called The Quest for the Spark. Should be very exciting.

5-Your website mentions your work on The Menagerie, The Brimstone Network, the BPRD, Bone, the Remy Chandler books, Fallen, and more - but not your work on Devil Dinosaur. Why this persecution of DD, who, after all, is the greatest Kirby-derived dinosaur character ever to grace the pages of comics?

No Devil Dinosaur?!!! I'm going to need to fix that at once! Seriously, if there was one comic book project that I'm completely proud off, it's my Devil Dinosaur book that I did with Eric Powell. When writing this, I was intimidated by Jack Kirby's shadow, that I would down a great big tumbler of scotch (12 year) before I would sit down to script. For some reason this helped me get into the proper frame of mind to write about a monkey boy (Moon Boy) and a bright red Tyrannosaurus Rex. I wonder why?

Honestly, I'd figure absinthe to get in the mood for Devil Dinosaur - or possibly to see him hanging around the house. Many thanks to Tom for taking the time to answer these. You can find him online at his website. Until next time!

Five for Writing: John D. Harvey

How do you kill a man with time-traveling unicorns? Ask John D. Harvey. In a position to be mistaken for either a supervillain or a two-fisted pulp adventurer - how many folks do you know who live in a Revolutionary War-era manor home - he's also the author of The Cleansing, one of the most interesting werewolf novels of recent memory. So what does a man who rescues pit bulls and studied with David Gerrold have to say about Arkham House, living in a museum, and how to kill Jack Haringa? Read on and find out. I give you Five for Writing: John D. Harvey.

1-Most writers dream of having a fascinating, unique place to live and practice their craft. You live in a museum, which definitely qualifies. Does living in that kind of space help fuel your writing? Can you draw inspiration from those surroundings, or are they a distraction?

It is a very unique living space. I live in the former manor home of a Revolutionary War hero, James Mitchell Varnum. The house was built in 1773. It's a eight room Georgian mansion on a nice stretch of property. I don't just live there. I provide the services of curator and business manager in exchange for rent. The fact that it's a museum doesn't really inform my writing at all, but the fact that it's quiet is helpful. Also keep in mind that I have my responsibilities at the museum in addition to working a full time day job. So, the museum gig adds another hurdle when it comes to time management and writing goals.

2-You had a very impressive fiction debut with The Cleansing. Having your first book appear in hardcover from Arkham House is definitely not an everyday occurrence. What was the route The Cleansing took to publication that led to such an auspicious appearance?

The route to publication is a bit of an anti-climax. My agent at the time had been shopping the book to all of the major publishers with some nibbles, but no bites. We came close a couple of times. I'd been asked by various publishers to do everything from subtract 100 pages, add 200 pages, split it into two books, and more before they'd tell me they just weren't sure if it had a market.

At that point, my agent suggested that we shop it around to some of the smaller presses. She didn't have a ton of experience with small press horror publishers so I sent her a few places where she could do some research. About a month later, she called and told me that she had a offer on the book, but she wasn't sure if I'd like it. The advance and print run were relatively small, but it would be in hardcover. I asked who the publisher was and she replied "Arkham House." Well, that just about knocked me down. We got the terms worked out and the book was published in 2002. .

Here's the other edge to that sword, though. Even if it's an Arkham House book, it's not easy to get people to part with $35 for a first novel from an unknown author (and the book got some great reviews in all the right places). So, looking back, I think I would have preferred a less auspicious paperback deal that would have gained a wider readership. I'm not knocking Arkham House; it's an honor to be published by them. April Derleth did a lot of work to promote The Cleansing and I'm very happy with how the book came out. Still, a high-priced hardcover with a low print run may not be the most efficient way to springboard a new writer's career.

3-These days you're moving into comics and screenwriting. What about these forms attracts you, and what does it take to move from fiction to these new formats?

Actually, almost all of my foundational education in fiction writing was in screenwriting. I majored in Creative Writing at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA. The writing program there was very much geared toward commercial fiction. My adviser was Dr. Michael R. Collings, which is a name that should be familiar to many folks in genre fiction (particularly Stephen King fans). Meanwhile, my screenwriting teacher was David Gerrold who is best known for writing the "Trouble with Tribbles" episode of Star Trek, but he's also a prolific novelist. So, I earned some pretty decent geek cred early on in life. David ran an extremely challenging screenwriting course and his teaching continues to influence me today. .

I like screenwriting because it strips a story down to very basic elements, plot and dialogue, and does not give you the leeway to ramble as much as prose. I also conceive of stories very visually. So, when I write a screenplay, I'm really just putting down a description of the images playing out in my head. When I write prose, I actually have to work harder at teasing out all of the texture that good prose writers put behind the action and dialogue..

One of the biggest challenges for prose writers moving into screenwriting is knowing what NOT to put in their screenplay. I read a lot of scripts by inexperienced writers where they go into great detail about elements that will almost always be the domain of the director, set designer, costume designer, actors, etc. This includes camera angles, minutiae about wardrobe, hand gestures, and a lot more. If a detail does not directly hook into a plot point or a key bit of dialogue, then cut it. If you don't, then someone else will..

I hear a lot of writers say that they're intimidated by the format. I can see why; it looks intimidating at first. Learning the format does require that you flex new muscles, but once you get the basics down it's all pretty intuitive. So, format should not be a barrier to entry. Software tools like Final Draft make it even easier, but that tool is not free. For anyone who wants to thrash around within the format without hurting their finances, I suggest Celtix. Celtix is free, stable, and very robust. That said, Final Draft is the current industry standard. If you start marketing scripts, you'll likely have to buy Final Draft eventually. A great book resource for formatting is The Screenwriter's Bible.

I'm so new at writing comics that I'm still shiny and in my original packaging. It's similar to screenwriting in that you primarily write action and dialogue, and leave almost everything else to the artists. That said, pacing by the panel and by the page is not something I'm used to doing. At this point, I'm reading a lot of comics scripts to see how the masters do it and creating a few abominations of my own along the way. I would not dare give advice to anyone on this subject as I'm such a complete amateur.

4-You're heavily involved in animal rescue, with an emphasis on work with pit bulls. There's also a definite canine-centrism to The Cleansing. Did one inform or inspire the other?

Yeah ... I'm definitely a dog guy. I've had a fascination with wolves (and werewolves) since early childhood. This continues on today. I find the pack dynamic and sociology surrounding wolves in the wild to be incredibly interesting. They're intensely complex animals and I think it's unfortunate that they're use in genre fiction is often so hackneyed. When I wrote The Cleansing, I tried very hard to stay away from the tropes and incorporate the real social dynamics that exist in a pack. I think I did a fairly good job at that. .

What attracted me to pit bull rescue (and dovetails with the status of wolves in the US) is that both animals face uphill battles in terms of rumor/disinformation versus fact. There's a lot of people out there who feel very passionately that wolves and pit bulls should be made extinct. For wolves, the battle is being fought against ranchers, the agricultural industry, and other politically and economically motivated groups (and Sarah Palin ... but I won't go into politics here). What it comes down to is that wolves are financially inconvenient for some people who have deep pockets. That makes preserving them in the wild a massive logistical and public relations challenge. .

For pit bulls, the battle is more visceral. The media as well as countless irresponsible and criminal owners (don't get me started on Michael Vick...) have made it very hard to convince people that pit bulls are not inherently vicious. I've worked with about 250 to 300 pit bulls and have not had a single bite incident. When I ran a rescue league, I adopted out scores of pit bulls and pit mixes (many to families with kids) and never had one brought back due to an attack or bite incident. Rather than listen to me natter on about pit bulls, I encourage people to visit Bad Rap Rescue and Pit Bull Rescue Central for accurate breed info.

5-You're in a writers' group with Jack Haringa. It is well known in horror circles that Jack Haringa must die. How does one go about accomplishing this?

Actually, I'm in a great writers group including Jack, Paul Tremblay, Paul McMahon, and Don D'Ammassa. Killing Jack is a lot easier to accomplish in fiction than it is in real life. At ReaderCon, I heard Jack referred to as the 'Keyser Söze of Dark Fiction,' but I actually think of him as Rasputin. Everyone in the group has taken turns slipping toxic poisons into his food and drink but he always shows up at the next session.

I'm going to take a different track and submit a short story to the group about time-traveling unicorns (two literary devices that drive Jack completely mental). Actually, I suggest that everyone reading this interview send Jack a story about a time-traveling unicorn. At some point, his head will explode with rage. .

It takes a village to kill Jack Haringa ... an angry, rioting village.

Jack Haringa hunters of the world, you now know what you must do.

Many thanks to John for his time and kindness answering these questions. You can find him online at his website, and order The Cleansing - and you know you want to - from Arkham House. Until next time!

Storytellers Unplugged: The Stories Are Where You Find Them

The semi-epic rant about the tyranny of word count goes up next month. This month, something a little different...

August 18, 2009: Come to Austin, Save Some Money, Hang With Awesome Game Writers

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July 5, 2009: On the Road Again (and Again)

Sam Fisher is kidnapping me up to Montreal this week. So, in the absence of any other updates, I figured I'd riff on something I saw on the mighty Cherie Priest's site and throw out a list of Top Five Sad Songs and Top Five Happy Songs. Why? Why not?
Sad:
Richard Thompson, "Meet on the Ledge", Small Town Romance - When a guy sings the song about losing his friends and girlfriend in a car crash live for the first time, odds are it's going to rip your guts out as you listen.
Fish, "A Gentleman's Excuse Me", Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors - Bereft of the anger that livens up Fish/Marillion's more extroverted stuff, this is the sound of a man falling out of love.
Drive-By Truckers, "Danko/Manuel", The Dirty South - The distilled essence of a too-hot, too-long, too-lonely night when you've long since drained the last beer in the cooler and you know there's not going to be any sleep coming.
David Gray, "The Other Side", A New Day At Midnight - You don't really expect much out of David Gray besides acoustic guitar-laden stuff that's obsessively hummable, but this is a little different. A note to his late father, it's a little too eager for that inevitable posthumous reunion.
Aimee Mann, "Fourth of July", Whatever - The thrown away lyric of "what a waste of gunpowder and sky" says it all, really.
Happy:
Oysterband, "When I Get Up I Can't Get Down", Holy Bandits - What they said.
Thomas Dolby, "Silk Pyjamas", Astronauts and Heretics - A friend of mine claims that she gave grades that were on average 20% higher when listening to this song. I can see why.
Eastmountainsouth, "You Dance", Eastmountainsouth - Just plain bouncy, in a down-from-the-mountains sort of way.
Boiled in Lead, "Rasputin", Antler Dance - The drummer for Boiled in Lead once swapped me a CD for a Changeling book. The CD later disappeared into the clutches of Mark Rein*Hagen. No, I'm not still bitter. But the song is irresistable.
Peter Himmelman, "Closer", Flown This Acid World - The live acoustic version off Stage Diving ain't half bad, either.

June 30, 2009: Random Bits

My short story "The Deep End of the Shallow Water" is now up at BlogNosh.
My first review for Fantasy Magazine can be found here.
Look! News on the Game Writing Summit at Austin GDC!
On the same note, congratulations to Red Storm's Jay Posey!
Less than three weeks until NECON!
And the inimitable Bob Booth reports that the arrival of The Big Book of Necon (which I had nothing to do with, but which I think is very cool) is nigh!
Some good thoughts and great news (though you'll have to read the whole thing for it) from my favorite writer here.
There's some news on the slasher movie essay collection Butcher Knives and Body Counts!
And look, it's Splinter Cell: Conviction box art. Shiny!

Five for Writing: Angel Leigh McCoy

Old-style White Wolf splatbooks were a special case. It was rare for a single writer to get more than one splat per game, simply because each one demanded a singular voice and sense of identification. For Changeling: The Dreaming, two writers got two each: me and Angel Leigh McCoy. In my case, it was most likely because I was available, fast, and cheap. In Angel's case, it was because she was that good.

Fast-forward to the present, and Angel's migrated into the video game writer ranks, by way of game journalism. She's also the driving force behind the Wily Writers project, a substantial contributor to the Forgotten Realms setting, and a generally cool person. Here she's kind enough to share her thoughts on writing about games as well as for them, the impact of her struggle with cancer on her writing, and why you'll never see an ACME Man-Bat outfit over at the Wily Writers site. It is my pleasure to give you Five for Writing with Angel Leigh McCoy.

1-What is the Wily Writers project, and what inspired it?

The Wily Writers project started first as a writers group. It birthed one auspicious Halloween afternoon. I had e-met Ripley Patton (an amazing writer who lives in New Zealand) at a critique site (critters.org). She had given me a mind-opening critique on one of my stories. We found we had much in common, and before we knew it, the Wily Writers core group was formed.

Quickly, we ascended to the idea of hosting a website where readers could download speculative fiction in text or audio format. The core Wilies and I talked about it a lot. We wanted a site that would help writers advance their careers. As with the core group, our primary goal was to support writers of speculative fiction. We hand-pick contributors. We want people who are serious about writing and publishing speculative fiction, who are kind and supportive of others, and who show talent and vision.

I have to admit that the Wily Writers site owes a great deal to Barack Obama and the feelings of hope, camaraderie and progress that came out of his election. We understood that for the site to mean anything, we had to give back to the community. We call the e-zine a cooperative effort because many talented people have contributed to it, including artists and musicians as well as writers. Each contributor brings his or her own audience of fans to the collective audience, and we share those eyes and hearts.

2-Like many former tabletop RPG writers, you've made the jump to video games. Do you miss the tabletop side of things? Are there aspects to tabletop writing you wish could make the jump into video games?

I loved writing for tabletop RPG games. What better job could a contract writer possibly want? I got to create fascinating and strange characters and locations. I had a great deal of creative freedom. It was a dream come true. Who would have thought that it could get any better? I never would have guessed. But, it has.

Writing for a video game has all the same perks as writing for tabletop, except that I get to see my characters come to life in 3-D instead of just 2-D. It's beyond amazing. If there's anything that I miss about tabletop writing, it's that the world evolves at a much faster pace. When you work on a computer game, you spend years working on the equivalent of the "Player's Handbook," "Monster Manual" and "Dungeon Master's Guide."
As a designer, I'm involved in more than just producing text. A lot more goes into building a computer game (design collaboration, programming, art, etc.), and it is all coordinated together. The development schedule is much longer. I'm impatient. I want it now! They tell me that patience is a virtue, and when it's all done, I'll be glad for the wait.

On the other side of that, though, I want to say that writing for video games has one very cool perk that freelancing for tabletop games didn't. When I was writing freelance for companies such as White Wolf and FASA, I rarely had face-to-face time with any of the incredibly talented people with whom I was collaborating. Contact was done via phone or email. Today, working at ArenaNet, I have the most inspiring people around me all day long. Oh, the conversations we have! My mind has never been so stimulated in all my life. I walk down the hall, just to go to the break room or to the bathroom, and I pass jaw-dropping concept art. I am one of six writers working on game dialogue, and a handful of times every day, we stop to share ideas and laugh with each other. I am blessed.

3-You've recently re-focused on your fiction work. What brought about the change in direction?

I have always been a fiction writer "on the side." As early as 6th grade, I was writing my first novel. It's in my blood. Despite this, I had never finished a novel and had not made an active push to publish my short fiction. I'd won awards, but I hadn't put any effort behind my fiction to get it out in front of people. In July of 2007, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My story has a happy ending, thank goodness (*kiss* of encouragement to all you folks out there who have been touched by the big C).

Getting cancer made me do some re-evaluting. For the first time in my life, I asked myself, "What if I'm not going to live forever?" My answer was that, if I were here for a finite amount of time, I wanted two things. I wanted to help people, and I wanted to become a respected fiction writer (in that order). I'm working on both.

For me, after the long and successful writing career that I've had, making it as a fiction writer will be the sprinkles on top of the cupcake--without them, it's still damn yummy, but with them... well, it's Heaven. So, here I go. We'll see if I make it or not.

4-You have a large body of work of video game journalism. How does writing about games differ from writing games, and did the one allow you to transition more smoothly to the other? What's the key to good writing about video games?

Excellent questions, Richard. Writing about games is very different from writing the game material itself. The former is technical. The latter is creative. One of the coolest things about writing articles for a gamer audience is that gamers just want you to tell it straight. A person reading a game article wants information, concise, clear and as down-to-Earth as they are. A person reading a gamebook wants to have their imagination tickled and supported with tools they can use to improve their games.

Gamers are a special and delightful group. They're smart. They're real, and they know their stuff. You can't bullshit a gamer. If you don't know what you're talking about, they will not only notice, they'll call you on it, in public. Rightly so. I learned enough about the games industry and its products during my time as a tabletop designer that it allowed me to write articles with authority. When you're a gamer, as I am, you immerse yourself in all kinds of games. It's a lifestyle shared by some of the most creative people I know.

5-Does Wily Writers have a sibling site called Wile E. Writers, which largely deals with the travails of authors who send their manuscripts to ACME? And if not, why not?

Another excellent question. Hehe. It's a long story, but I'll give you the short version. We've been attempting to set this up for some time, but every time we get it almost live, something blows up. We strongly suspect there's a saboteur out there stalking us. *beep beep*

Many thanks to Angel for taking the time to answer these questions. You can find her - and the rest of the Wily Writers - online here. Until next time…

June 16, 2009: Tidbits

David Niall Wilson! T-shirts! Killer Green! Here!
The official Splinter Cell: Conviction website! Here!
Dan Jolley's Redeemer's Law project! Here!
Cedar Creek Gallery's "Art of the State" exhibit! Here!

June 2, 2009: I Got Your Sam Fisher Right Here

The E3 trailer, for your amusement and delectation.

Five for Writing: Cherie Priest

The first time I read a Cherie Priest novel I was sitting in a laundromat on the Rue de Lappe in Paris. It was late on a Sunday, I was doing the preliminary reading for the Blooker Prize (which Four and Twenty Blackbirds ultimately won the fiction category), and there may have been a crepe mixte involved. I loved the book, did some digging online, and discovered that the author and I had shared at least one professional experience, a ping-ponging off a particular small publisher. (Though to be fair, her ponging was much less pleasant and much more protracted than my pinging.)

The second time I read a Cherie Priest book, I was in a hotel room in Burbank on a voice shoot for a video game, in tandem with the game's primary dialog writer. I'd gotten the book as a review copy for Green Man, mentioned this to my partner in crime on the shoot (the estimable Michael B. Lee, of Nagash the Sorcerer and Age of Conan fame), and heard him mention that he knew her, that she was really cool, and so on and so forth. A small world got even smaller.

(And then Mike asked if he could borrow the book once I was finished with it.)

All of which leads here, and the fact that Ms. Priest was kind enough to sit down and answer a few questions, which I have been unconscionably tardy in posting the responses to. So here she is - critically acclaimed author, a leader of the new Southern Gothic revival, and generally cool person. I give you Five for Writing with Cherie Priest:

You're at the forefront of what seems to be a reinvention of the Southern Gothic. Instead of moldering mansions hidden beneath Spanish Moss, with Four and Twenty Blackbirds you transplant the action to a more urban setting. What do you think of the new Southern Gothic revival and your place in it, and what's gained or lost by taking it out of the more traditional settings?

I'm a long-standing fan of Southern Gothic as a genre, but it didn't really occur to me that I was writing it until Four and Twenty Blackbirds hit the shelves and people started giving it that label. I certainly didn't mind, but as you said - I had a mental image of a more isolated setting - the mansions, the moss, the family drama, insane relatives who'd been hidden away, grisly murders - and then, well, I realized that I had absolutely all of that stuff in my book somewhere. Though most of the story happens in Chattanooga, Chattanooga isn't really a very big city; and it's easy to preserve that "rural" feel even as I wrote about coffee shops, museums, and malls.

I'm glad to see that the genre's making a bit of a comeback, and I wish I could participate in that comeback more than I'm presently able. Those Who Went Remain There Still will probably be my last southern-set story for awhile (though yes, it's Kentucky -- I still think it's a Southern Gothic in the old tradition).

The monster in Those Who Went Remain There Still is one of the more unusual-looking critters to haunt a book in recent memory. Where did the inspiration for that come from?

I was actually thinking of a traditional Greek harpy, for starters...but I made her less human and more animal. The illustrations that accompany the novella don't so much portray the creature I had in mind (though I think they're pretty nifty); but in the back of my head, she's a large, monstrous, owl-like creature filled with wrath and rue.

With the move to Seattle, have you found yourself moving away from the Southern themes of your earlier work? Will your fiction be following your personal path?

Sadly, yes. My heart remains in the southeast, but it's difficult to write about it when I'm so far away. I find that I've lost the cadence for the way people speak there; and I no longer have easy access to the small particulars that make the place so interesting to me.

I'd very much love to write more southern gothic material; but then again, I'd very much love to live there again one day. Although I've come to make some wonderful friends in Seattle, the northwest really isn't home.

Most of the horror influences you list are more classical ones - LeFanu, Blackwood, and so on. What do these authors have to say to the modern horror reader (or, for that matter, writer?)

It's always interesting to read the folks who wrote it first - and though some of those "classics" read as dated or cliche these days, I'd argue that they remain well worth reading. Especially to any fan of genre -- or any writer of genre - it's both informative and entertaining to get back to the roots of the field.

Why exactly would Dr. Seuss want to write about Michael Jackson, and is it more likely that he'd be taken out by the Star-bellied Sneetches or a vengeance-crazed Lorax?

For the sake of topical relevance. :)

You really can't argue with that logic, Sneetches or no Sneetches. Many thanks again to Cherie Priest for taking the time to answer the questions. You can find her online here, and her latest book, Fathom, is getting rave reviews and is available at fine bookstores everywhere. Until next time!

May 27, 2009: Roger Clemens' Pasty Buttocks

As mentioned in this month's Storytellers Unplugged essay.

May 20, 2009: Reviews in 3

Some more reviews are up at Green Man, specifically Wolverine, Camelot 3000, and The Big Book of NECON. Enjoy! (If, err, book and movie reviews are what you enjoy.)

May 17, 2009: A Man of Conviction

Here's a little teaser for what I've been working on, video game-wise. Enjoy!

May 16, 2009: I Am Wily

Specifically, my story "Small Cold Things" is up at Wily Writers for text and/or audio download. It's about a normal, loving couple who have a cat problem. No, really, it is...

May 4, 2009: New Work Digs and Reviews

Red Storm Entertainment, my employer of the last almost-ten years, has finally completed the move into its new digs. We've moved one exit over and two floors up, added a ton of space and amenities, and gone from brown walls to a lovely shade of blue. Everything got unpacked today; tomorrow we should be back up to speed.

There's a new speaking gig added. I'll be appearing at the Game Education Summit on June 17 in Pittsburgh, sitting in on a panel with Sande Chen and Lee Sheldon (who will be doing an upcoming Five for Writing, incidentally) to discuss the care and feeding of young game writers.

There will be a new Five for Writing posted later this week, with the victim being the ridiculously talented Cherie Priest. I managed to avoid mentioning to her that the first time I read one of her books, I did so in a Paris laundromat while going through the nominees for the Blooker Prizes. Do me a favor and don't tell her, OK? Beyond that, there will be bits from Henscher, the aforementioned Mr. Sheldon, Chris Klug, and others whose names cannot yet be revealed. Finally, I've got a small pile of reviews up at Green Man. In no particular order, there's JLA: Exterminators (Christopher Golden), The Map of Moments (Messrs. Golden and Lebbon), Angelic (Kelley Armstrong), Nightwing: Year One and Batman R.I.P. on the comics front, World's End (Mark Chadbourn), and Cemetery Dance's latest installment in the Shivers anthology series, #5.

Oh, and there's a new Storytellers Unplugged piece up. Read and be enlightened, or at least amused: Twenty-Five Things About Being a Writer.

Five for Writing: Bev Vincent

Bev Vincent knows pretty much everything there is to know about the writing of Stephen King. If that were all he did, that would be plenty to earn him a place of honor in the horror writing community. Of course, you could say the same thing about his burgeoning body of fiction work in both the horror and mystery genres, and you could make a tip o' the hat to his extensive book reviewing as well. Tirelessly versatile and creative, Bev took a few minutes to share his thoughts on why he gravitates toward crime fiction, writing for desk calendars, and the supernatural terror that is the Trans-Canada Highway. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Five for Writing with Bev Vincent:

1 - It is widely acknowledged that you are the world's greatest living authority on Stephen King (non-Stephen-King's-immediate-family division). It would seem to be a unique role. How did you find yourself in that position, and do you find yourself being bombarded with Stephen King trivia questions by random strangers?

I am but a humble Canadian who has ended up in an unusual and, some might say, enviable position. During the burgeoning days of the internet, I became active on USENET newsgroups, particularly the one devoted to King. I happen to have a fairly good memory. On top of that, I had a number of resources at hand, so when someone asked a question, I either knew the answer or knew where to look it up. So, I gained a reputation as a know-it-all.

This reputation, more than anything else, I think, led to my being offered the chance to write News From the Dead Zone for Cemetery Dance, something I've been doing for most of the 21st century. And so the reputation grows.

I'm not generally bombarded by trivia questions-except when we were taking submissions for The Illustrated Stephen King Trivia Book - but a lot of people do contact me about non-trivial matters. Often they have to do with first edition books, because I wrote the guide to identifying them for King's official web site. Others have questions about King's Dollar Baby program for amateur filmmakers, because I collaborated on the script for the adaptation of "Lunch at the Gotham Café". Sometimes people hope to use me as a conduit to King. It doesn't happen all that often, but it does happen. I decline all of those requests.

2 - You've been steadily building a reputation for your own fiction. Has the renown you acquired for your work on King affected how you've approached writing and publishing fiction of your own?

I'm not sure that it has. Oh, I've written a couple of stories that were clearly influenced by King. "The Lady of Lost Lake" from Dark Discoveries is one of those "four friends in the woods who encounter something strange" stories and "Special Delivery" in Cemetery Dance was inspired by King's "guys in the basement" - his metaphor for his muses.

Most of the time, though, I find that stories that I think will have supernatural elements end up going off in mundane directions. Most of my scary things are real people or situations rather than zombies or vampires or Lectroids from the 8th Dimension. My first published story, "Harming Obsession," reportedly disturbed a lot of readers, and all it has for a boogeyman is an active case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. When I'm not writing to someone else's guidelines, I tend to gravitate toward crime fiction more than anything supernatural.

I like to think that when I get an invitation to write for a closed anthology it's because of my accomplishments in fiction rather than because of my non-fiction work about King.

3 - In addition to writing, you also serve as a contributing editor for Cemetery Dance, one of the best-regarded horror fiction magazines out there. These days we're hearing a lot of conflicting reports of how this is either the best of times or the worst of times for genre short fiction. What's your take on it?

Every time I get a rejection letter for a story and I go searching for a new potential market for it, I get a little exasperated by the relative dearth of pro-paying genre markets. Then I remind myself that there are a lot of pro markets if I don't restrict myself to genre magazines. I would love to break into some of the more general or literary magazines with a short story, and it's not for lack of trying that I haven't yet.

I don't have anything against genre, but I think we limit ourselves when we don't try to find a wider audience. We want our stuff to be read, and not always by the same people over and over again. One of the reasons I'm thrilled to have a story in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine - besides the high regard people hold toward that venerable market - is the fact that it puts my story in front of many thousands of pairs of eyes, most of whom have never read anything by me before.

I also think that some writers tend to overlook non-fiction. If you're looking for a paycheck-and writers who are doing this full time surely are-it's hard to beat the pay rate for articles in magazines like Rue Morgue, for example. I did a couple of pieces for them in 2007 and was impressed by what they offered. I'm currently writing a 500-word essay for a desk calendar that pays more than I would get for a short story ten times that length. It's not all about pay, of course, but since I enjoy writing non-fiction, it's a very good avenue for me. I still get the most excited about acceptance letters for short stories, though.

4 - With Onyx Reviews, you've produced a large body of book reviews, primarily in the mystery genre. What do you look for in a good mystery novel? What are you hoping never to see again? And most importantly, how do you review mysteries without giving away the ending?

I've been a crime fiction reader since my early days. I read all the Hardy Boys before moving on to Agatha Christie as a teenager, and probably two thirds of what I read these days would be considered crime fiction, including courtroom dramas or suspense novels. I read very little horror at novel length. Science fiction or fantasy, either, all of which I read avidly in my twenties. Crime fiction speaks to me in ways those other genres don't.

In a good mystery novel, I am looking for character development and a rich setting. I like series where the main characters evolve, not only over the course of a single book, but have a complex trajectory over the entire series, like Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus. Though I liked Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels a lot, his characters were frozen in time for decades, so they lacked that extra dimension that made them seem more real.

My favorite mysteries are the ones where the solution to the crime is the least important part of the story, which makes them a lot easier to review without fear of divulging the ending. Books like Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels, for example. However, in the case of real whodunits, I can talk about whether the ending was predictable and whether the writer played fair with the readers. The worst whodunits are the ones where the killer was a bit player who was only on screen for a few pages until the big reveal. Agatha Christie did that from time to time and I always felt cheated when that happened.

As for what I'd like to never see again-I think that sociopathic serial killers have more or less run their course. I don't mind when a murderer is forced to kill more than once because he's at risk of being discovered. That being said, though, I like the Chelsea Cain books a lot, where the killer is essentially a female Hannibal Lecter.

5 - Is there any truth to the rumor that The Road to the Dark Tower is in fact the New Jersey Turnpike? Or are the horrors of the Vince Lombardi Service Area too much for even the Gunslinger to handle?

No, the Road to the Dark Tower is actually part of the Trans-Canada Highway that runs along Western New Brunswick. It's paved, like all such roads, with good intentions.

Suddenly, much about Canada - and the Gunslinger - is made clear. Thanks again to Bev for taking the time to sit down with these. You can find him online at his website, and his regular work in Cemetery Dance magazine. Until next time…

Five for Writing: Alethea Kontis

Very few people seem to have more fun writing than Alethea Kontis. Publisher, author, book buyer, editor and all-around cool person, she proudly wears the tiara of Genre Chick; it goes nicely with her status as a New York Times Bestselling author. There's also a rumor that she's hell on wheels when it comes to roller skates, but that one I can neither confirm nor deny. What I can confirm, though, is that she's an incredibly versatile and talented writer, capable of bouncing from children's fiction (Alpha-Oops) to non-fiction (The Dark-Hunter Companion) to the moderately indescribable bit of awesomeness that is Beauty & Dynamite. In between all that, Alethea was gracious enough to take time to answer a few questions. Here now are her thoughts on what you actually get for being a NYT Bestselling author, how Heisenberg affects writing, and how one becomes a Genre Chick (Hint: I'm not eligible). Without further ado, here's Five for Writing with Alethea Kontis.

1 - One of the clichés about writers is that you need to have some sort of insanely varied and unique background in order to write. Yours certainly fits the bill - child actress, scientist by training, descendant of pirates, and now artist. Does any of this feed into your writing? Why do you think so many writers have unusual backgrounds?

Little Women was one of my favorite books as a child - I read it every Christmas. It was where I first heard about "write what you know." The phrase instantly depressed me. I was the most boring kid on the planet, and therefore doomed to uninteresting mundanity. I think my Coming of Age as a Writer (and Creator of Messes in General) was less about developing my craft and more about realizing just how cool I really am...and just how awesome I have the potential to be.

I think all of our backgrounds could be described as "unusual." It's just we artists who exploit it.

2 - You are famously a "self-proclaimed Genre Chick". What are the entrance requirements for Genre Chickdom?

First Rule: One must love genre fiction.

Second Rule: One must be a chick.

Um....that's it, really.

Back in 2004, when Janet Lee and I launched our much-loved interview column in the Ingram newsletter, we originally wanted to call ourselves "The Geek Chicks." However, the industry needed not just hip, smart women...but hip, smart women who loved genre fiction. Mystery, romance, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, comics...the whole shebang. So we exchanged a few Scrabble letters and TA-DA! The Genre Chicks sprang forth, in full battle dress.

Now every time someone at work has a question about Nora Roberts, Dean Koontz, Alan Moore, or Sam Raimi, I'm the first one they call. Which is kind of awesome. I've only ever had those kinds of conversations in the elevators at Dragon*Con.

3 - Has your work as a book buyer affected your writing, or vice versa? Do you find yourself writing to what you'd buy, or do you keep those two aspects separate?

Well, yes, of course. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says it must.

Being a writer and editor (and what little bit I've flirted with micro-publishing) has definitely made me a better buyer. I am always keenly aware of the big picture, and the role my puny pixels play in it. Plus, knowing enough to be dangerous is rarely a bad thing.

Contrarywise...hmmm. Has my dayjob improved my contacts and visibility in the industry? Sure. Has it influenced what or how I write? Not really. Deep down, I'm still just a twelve-year-old writing fairy tales for my mother.

4 - What goes into writing a successful children's book? Are there any similarities to writing genre fiction?

Format wise, when I wrote the first AlphaOops, it was like a story with "background information" happening in brackets -- that way needed a lot of editing. So I wrote the sequel like a script, like all those plays I was in as a kid, complete with dialogue and stage directions. That made things a lot smoother. It was easier for Bob [Kolar, the artist] to "see" what was going on. (I'm told it's also very similar to writing for comics, but I haven't done that. Yet.)

Success? Every Greek knows that's entirely based on what animal you sacrifice, when, and to whom. (A rooster, midwinter, and Athena.)

5 - What happens when you officially make New York Times Bestselling Author? Do they give you a lapel pin? Is there a secret handshake involved? A decoder ring?

There's a lovely initiation ceremony, where you are gifted with a watch that counts down your fifteen minutes of fame.

I traded mine in for a tiara.

Can't really argue with that, depending on the tiara in question. Many thanks to Alethea for taking the time to answer these. You can find her online at her website, and find Beauty & Dynamite at Apex. Until next time!

April 6, 2009: Post-Travel Whew

There's some writeup-type text of the "Dating Game?" panel I did at GDC with Steve Meretzky, Wendy Despain and Dustin "Purple Face Bang" Clingman here and here. [Note: Wendy informs me that she was actually looking away from Steve because every time they made eye contact, he cracked her up.] The panel itself was, I think, a success - good discussion and audience participation, and a blessed absence of "Well, my personal experience was X, so the rest of you are poopyheads" comments. Instead, folks seemed really into the core idea of the panel, which was to get discussion going as to why people will, say, go to a movie on a date instead of gaming. The whole thing was inspired by the time Melinda and I went to see The Aristocrats and spotted a breathless young couple sitting a few rows ahead of us, gazing lovingly into each others' eyes and muttering things like "I'm so glad we're seeing a movie about free speech." Those of you who have seen The Aristocrats may now dissolve into helpless laughter at the thought of what happened roughly eight minutes into the film's running time.

This past weekend I headed north to the land of randomly triggered early morning fire alarms, aka Connecticut, for the 19th annual running of the Jim Vatcher Memorial League fantasy baseball draft. Basically, it's an excuse for a bunch of old friends to get together, rag each other about things we did fifteen years ago, and say things like "Travis Ishikawa, three dollars, you son of a bitch!" with a straight face. For a certain sort of nerdly gent, things like this are our Vegas, and we're just as happy that way. For all the likelihood that you will find yourself knowing way, way, way too much about the minutiae of Carlos Zambrano's BABIP [Batting Average on Balls In Play, in case you were wondering], there's really no chance that anything involving dead hookers, pissed-off drug lords, burying bodies in the desert or someone losing their pants will ensue. And, really, it's just as well that way.

Jumping back to GDC, the book signing for Writing for Video Game Genres went wonderfully well. Kudos to AK Peters' man on the spot, Kevin Jackson-Mead, for setting it up. We had fourteen or so of the twenty authors of the book there and signing, and a full house of folks buying that book and the Writing SIG's previous opus, with books going every this way as folks signed with devil-may-care abandon. It was also the first time a lot of the writers had met face-to-face, which made for fun convo in between the scribblings. Write Club, hosted at the legendary John's Grill (of Maltese Falcon fame) was also a rousing success. The new champion was Jeremy Bernstein, late of my old "run-around-the-woods-and-hit-people-with-plumbing-supplies" LARP and more recently The Dead Zone, but there was a great bunch of folks there, and a good time was had by all. Well, except maybe the waiters.

Switching gears, there'll be another Five for Writing going up this week, this time with legendary Genre Chick, roller derby goddess and NYT bestselling author Alethea Kontis. There are a few more lined up behind her - I somehow managed to get proactive this time - so look for interviews with Chris Klug (of James Bond RPG fame), new Southern gothic maven Cherie Priest, television and game writer Lee Sheldon (Charlie's Angels, among others), and Bev Vincent (The Road to the Dark Tower), with many more to follow.

Five for Writing: Douglas Clegg

If all Douglas Clegg had done was publish Naomi, he'd be remembered. After all, it was the first publisher-sponsored electronic print serial, and helped usher in our brave new reading world of Kindles and e-books, a sizeable and notable contribution no matter how you slice it. But that's not all that he has done, not by a long shot. A pioneer in fields from e-publishing to book trailers, over the last twenty years he's produced a superb body of work while championing the horror genre. Now, he shares his thoughts on going back to his serial roots, how to make a book trailer, and what you actually call someone from Connecticut (hint: It isn't "Connecticutian"). It is with great pleasure that I give you Five for Writing with Douglas Clegg.

1-One of your earliest successes was the serial novel presentation of Naomi. Now you're returning to the form with The Locust. Why go back to it now? How does writing a novel serially differ from a more traditional form of composition?

I wrote Naomi in 1999, 10 years after my first book came out -- which was called Goat Dance. 2009 is my 20th year doing this for a living. With the new serial at my website, The Locust, I just want to do something in the 20th year of my career as a thank you to readers.

I also want to offer something free during a very rough economic time for people on the internet. Why not a free serial? Plus, beginning this year, other projects are rolling out, some of which I can't quite talk about yet.

The serial begins in mid-summer. I'll write the book week by week and send out episodes as they're completed. It's essentially the process of writing the book itself, although I edit as I go.

I'll have structured the serial well-ahead of time. Story structure -- in my opinion -- is 80% or more of what makes a novel work.

2-While Twilight has made the world safe for vampire fiction once again, the Vampyricon seems to have the field of historical vampire fiction to itself. What's the appeal of writing vampires who don't listen to Bach or Bauhaus, and what drew you to the historical setting for the series?

The story dictates the historical environment. I've been writing several stories, novellas and even novels with historical settings.

I approach a story in this way: what do I want to write about, what aspect of human nature, what aspect of life and the human condition?

Once I've decided on that and find my point of view on it, I have a premise. And I think: where's the perfect time, environment and place for this?

That's the beginning of how a novel or story builds for me. Whether it's historical or contemporary, the central idea and its ramifications make the demand.

Nightmare House was set in 1926 because the story itself was a kind of old-fashioned ghost story that made me think the '20s were the era for it. Neverland is set in a fairly vague 1960s environment. Isis is set at the turn of the 19th century into the 20th.

With the Vampyricon trilogy, the story that came to me had an alternate medieval history slant to it.

I don't think a lot of the world has gotten too far from the medieval mindset, actually. Then, my personal connection to the material became the memories of travels from childhood on -- from the pyramids and ruins in Mexico to the Alhambra in Spain to my early 20s when I lived in France for a bit and slept in a beautiful forest in Brittany.

From that, I began to shape the story of Aleric as a boy, his mother, his grandfather -- and then it just grew. The premise and story structure shaped the trilogy.

3-You've put a lot of work into doing video trailers for your novels. Have they been worth it? How did you go about putting them together?

For me, it was easy work.

I sat back.

I hired a terrific creative team at COSProductions.com. Sheila English -- who runs the company -- came up with everything for the trailers. All I had to do was watch them.

Are they worth it? Absolutely. I've heard a few people say that book trailers do not get them to buy and read a book. That's true.

In movie theaters, the movie trailer doesn't exist to sell a movie ticket. It exists to announce the movie. Months later, the person may even forget they saw the trailer. But they might think they've heard of the movie or the movie seems familiar to them.

Book trailers can function in a similar way. They announce. As with movie trailers, they appeal to some people and not others.

The book trailers have been used as TV commercials on cable and as in-theater advertising. More than 150+ high traffic websites have carried those videos. I couldn't reach those with a message about those books otherwise.

And it's all COSProductions.com's doing. They've been very innovative with both video and distribution, and for what they over-deliver, the price is also right.

4-You mention in the bio on your website that you love travel. Have there been places you've traveled that have inspired stories for you? Conversely, are there places you don't want to see, for fear of overwriting the fictional versions of them you've created in your mind's eye?

Everywhere I go inspires writing.

When I was a kid traveling in Mexico with my parents and siblings, going from Mexico city to archeological sites, or at sixteen with friends in Spain, or in my 20s in Europe, or driving a car across the U.S. about 18 times or thereabouts over a 30 year period -- those places stayed with me.

I usually write about where I've been or else, in a few cases, where I'd love to go.

There is no place on earth I wouldn't like to go. I envy people who travel constantly. I feel like a nomad to some extent and yet I'm very home-centered, too.

5-You grew up in Hawaii, Virginia, and Connecticut. Someone from Virginia is a Virginian; someone from Hawaii is a Hawaiian. What, in your opinion, do you actually call someone from Connecticut?

A New Englander.

But I'm a Virginian at heart. Still, Connecticut is the southernmost of the New England states, so I'm a southerner -- just a Yankee southerner.

To be fair, even southern New England isn't exactly tropical, and if you say "Y'all" in Greenwich they look at you funny.. Many thanks to Doug for taking the time answer these questions! You can find his work, including The Lady of Serpents, at fine bookstores everywhere, and his website online here. Plus, you can sign up for his online newsletter! Until next time…

March 24, 2009: Write Club

It's my pleasure to announce that, in conjunction with Professional Media Services, I'll be sponsoring this year's edition of the IGDA Game Writing SIG's two-fisted improv game writing throwdown, Write Club, at the legendary John's Grill in San Francisco on Wednesday night. The carnage starts at 6PM. If you're in the area and want to see what an arterial spray of ink looks like (OK, maybe not), then come on down! And don't forget about the group signing for Writing for Video Game Genres, Thursday at 5:30!

Five for Writing: Gary Braunbeck

The acknowledged master of quiet horror, Gary Braunbeck is one of the most respected voices in the field. The winner of 5 Bram Stoker Awards, Gary has received extensive critical acclaim to go along with his IHG and Black Quill Awards. From his role as an instructor at Seton Hill to his editing work (Masques V, Five Strokes to Midnight) to his extensive body of fiction work, Gary is a major presence in the horror field. He's also got a cunning feline-related plan for winning more Stokers, strong opinions on "art", and the details on his repeated attempts to murder Cedar Hill. Without further ado, it's my pleasure to present Five for Writing with Gary Braunbeck.

1-One of the most famous out-of-context quotes in American literature is Flannery O'Connor's aside about universities not stifling enough writers. As someone who teaches writing at Seton Hill University, what's your take on O'Connor's comment?

As far as I'm concerned, the person who wrote "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" can make any comment about the education (or mis-education) of writers that she wants. But I think O'Connor was referring to the types of university writing programs that try to horse-whip a tunnel-visioned definition of "literature" into the heads of potential writers, as well as those writers who buy into the concept that they are creating "art" (ugh! That word!) every time they apply ass to chair and fingers to keyboard. Writers who believe that what they produce is "art" should be stifled (or at least given a couple of swift kicks in the nether regions) because -- for all their craft, for all their intelligence, and for all their high-brow goals -- there will never be anything of the humane at the core of their work. Yes, it may very well be technically perfect -- dazzling, even -- but if all that lies at the heart of a piece of writing is a deep-frozen heart, then any chance said writers have of touching upon something truthful to the human experience is lost forever. "Art" is not something that can be created -- it has to happen; and when it does, it's an intensely intimate, personal moment between the work itself and the individual who experiences spiritual, emotional, and intellectual communion with a piece (and, yes, as far as I'm concerned, all three must be present in order for "art" to happen).

Universities tend to teach writing-from-the-head rather than writing-from-the-heart because the latter seems too self-indulgent or is unjustly characterized as pandering to the lowest common denominator -- witness the brouhaha a few years back when Stephen King was given the National Book Award; throughout the halls of academia there was heard a cumulative groan of despair. There will always be those who believe (and teach this belief to others) that something that is Popular cannot possibly be Good. Charles Dickens would never have stood a chance were he writing today, because other writers, too full of self-importance and notions of "art" (a.k.a. writers whom universities should have stifled) would have mocked his notions of humanity and the manner in which he chose to focus on the heart and spirit instead of solely upon the cold intellectual.

2-In your discussion of Mr. Hands over at Fearzone, you mention that you don't particularly like putting monsters in your horror. To many readers, monsters are synonymous with horror. How do you reconcile that gap?

I think what I actually said was something along the lines of I try to "avoid using traditional tropes" in my work, and that I don't do that unless I can offer (from my POV as both a reader and a story-teller) a different angle or fresh perspective -- but, yes, I do feel that way. In the case of Mr. Hands, as much as the idea of using a traditional monster rubbed me the wrong way, in the end I had no choice because the story required that there be a physical manifestation of the anger and helplessness experienced by the 2 central characters. Their emotional and spiritual states were the main focus of the story, the monster entering the tale only when the 2 of them met and merged -- which is why the creature itself doesn't show up until just past the halfway mark in the book.

Bear in mind that what follows is simply my opinion, what I hold true for myself; I am not throwing down a gauntlet or issuing Absolutes. I don't have it in me to be that arrogant.

You are right when you say that for many readers monsters are synonymous with horror, but as far as reconciling the gap between my own views of what constitutes horror and those notions held by many readers (notions that are, let's face it, gotten mostly from horror movies, most of which tend to stink)... I don't reconcile that gap. I don't know that it can be reconciled -- or even if it should be. If the past decade has taught me nothing else, it's taught me that my work is never going to be embraced by the wider horror audience -- my notions and definitions are not based on the popular misconceptions of what constitutes horror, and they never will be. I have rarely sat down and said to myself, "Time to write a horror story!" (The 3 times I did set out to write a "horror" story all ended in utter disaster, disasters that were, unfortunately, published.) That's defeating the purpose not only of honest story-telling but of being true to one's individual worldview of the field, both within and without. Nothing can grow in a vacuum -- and, yes, I still find that many of the traditional/popular tropes of horror instantaneously create deadly vacuums of their own if you begin with the "horror" instead of the human heart in conflict with itself, as Faulkner put it. All monsters, all beasties, zombies, vampires, werewolves, Freddy/Jason/Pinhead-type of killers, what-have-you -- all of them spring from the darker places in the human condition and psyche, and that is where it all has to begin: the heart in conflict with itself.

3-Lovecraft had Arkham, Charles Grant had Oxrun Station, and you have Cedar Hill. What's the process in creating an enduring setting like that? Do they have a natural lifespan - a point at which there's simply too much weird stuff happening in one town - or is there an endless font of stories for a continuing locale?

I have tried 3 times in the past to bring the Cedar Hill Cycle to an end, and every time I think the end is in sight, I suddenly find a dark corner I hadn't noticed before and have to go exploring, only to find that this corner leads to another, and another, and another.

I don't think fictional locales such as Oxrun Station or Castle Rock or Green Town, Illinois have a lifespan (barring that of their creator). I think the wellspring of material for one's own fictional town (read: universe) is bottomless. Yes, a lot of weird stuff happens in Cedar Hill, but the weird has become so commonplace to most of the town's citizens that it's all accepted as a natural fact of life, something that cannot be avoided. Like traffic jams at rush hour, not enough money at the end of the month to pay all the bills, or Uwe Boll movies.

The process -- if it can really be called that -- isn't so much in the conceptualization and creation of a town, but in its exploration, getting to know its streets, its schools and churches, its citizens, its history and tall-tales, its economic status, all of the minutiae that makes for a rich, compelling, believable setting that readers will (hopefully) find mysterious and fascinating.

Creating Cedar Hill was actually fairly simple, in that I took the Newark, Ohio of my childhood in the 1960s and early 70s and made alterations to its every aspect. There is a singular melancholy to a hardcore blue-collar town that's slowly dying away, and I've tried to capture that desperation, that sadness, that loneliness, in all the stories and novels set there. The place hasn't run out of surprises for me yet, and I hope that extends to readers, as well.

4-In Silent Graves was originally titled The Indifference of Heaven, which is also the name of a Warren Zevon song. You've also got an extensive list of links to musicians' web pages on your site. How important, then, is music to your writing process, and how do you incorporate it into your workflow?

I cannot write without music. (Well, okay, I can, but it's not my preference.) I even go so far as to create "soundtracks" for whichever book or story I'm working on at the time, music that conveys some small part of the tone I want to capture in said story or book. Admittedly, it's not as "organic" or noble a method as writing in longhand by candlelight at 3 in the morning, but my guess is that if Poe or Shelley or Stoker had been given access to an iTunes playlist, they would have used it as part of their writing process.

I also listen to music as I write because just once, once before I shuffle off this mortal coil, I would like to capture the sublime beauty of something like Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze" in prose form.

5-You have five cats. You have five Stoker awards. Is the plan to get more cats in a nefarious plan to attract more Stokers, or do the Stokers actually demand their own feline servitors?

That memo was sent to you by mistake. Disregard it. You never saw it. You know nothing. Look up "plausible deniability" already, why don't you? Some secrets are best not leaked, Richard, and HWA knows where you live :-)

As I write this, the voting on this year's Stoker Preliminary Ballot has closed and the Final Ballot will be announced sometime in the next 2 weeks ... and there's a cat that has been hanging around the house at night, staring at me wistfully through the front window, so ....

Will Gary adopt another cat? Will the Stoker Awards committee demand more feline worshippers? Tune in next week - or keep up with Gary at his web site - to learn the shocking truth! As always, many thanks to Gary for taking the time to answer these. Until next time!

Five for Writing: Sande Chen

In RPG terms, Sande Chen is probably built on more points than you are. A graduate of both MIT and the London School of Economics, a Grammy nominee and a noted game writer, an author and an advocate for women in gaming, she also authored the chapter on serious games in Writing for Video Game Genres. Here now are her thoughts on games and social change, adapting Polish best-sellers, and why she hasn't taken over the world yet. I present Five for Writing with Sande Chen:

1-With Anne Toole, you've formed a successful game writing partnership at the Writers Cabal. Game writing is normally viewed as a solitary pastime; how do you make a partnership work?

I've had writing partnerships in the past and I think each one has a different dynamic based on the personalities of the individuals. With my first writing partner, who later became my design partner and is now someone important at NASA, we had an extremely collaborative vibe and discussed everything. So, pretty much everything that was produced in that partnership was collaborative.

With David Michael, my co-author on the Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform book, we divided the work by strengths and likes/dislikes. He's not really into doing interviews and so, I ended up conducting all the interviews for the book. Another big portion of our research was based on polling. David wrote and programmed the serious games questionnaire so that we got the data we needed.

With Anne Toole, it's been a mixture of both. When the partnership started, it was advantageous to the both of us because we were both working full-time in game development jobs at that time. I had The Witcher and I really didn't want to give it up. Yet, the schedule meant that I would need help. So, I reached out to Anne and convinced her that by working together, we could each put in 1/2 on The Witcher and still do our full-time jobs.

Actually, right now, Writers Cabal is on hiatus and we're not working together. Anne is pursuing other interests. So, we'll see in a couple months what happens to Writers Cabal.

2-Your chapter in the upcoming IGDA Game Writers' SIG book focuses on writing for serious games. What are the particular challenges associated with serious game writing as opposed to, say, something like The Witcher?

David and I wrote Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform especially for game developers who were interested in serious games because it is a completely different world. At one lecture at the Serious Games Summit, a military guy described the culture shock he had when he walked into a game company to discuss work for America's Army.

When you've been in the game industry for a while, you may not remember that other non-gamer people haven't the foggiest notion what you do or how games are made. I'm sure game writers understand this because often times, there's a follow-up question: "So what exactly does that mean? You're a game writer.... so you're a programmer?"

Meanwhile, people in non-profits or in the government know all about organizations known by acronyms and how to get grants - This is stuff that most game developers don't have to deal with at all. So, if you work in serious games, you are an ambassador from another world. You're bridging the gap and getting people to understand why it's beneficial to work together.

3-You've written about "social change games". How much change do you think games can really effect? Is this something we're just seeing the beginning of - video games as a larger social force? Or are games always going to be perceived as "fringe" when it comes to having a social impact?

It's hard to quantify the effect of games, especially when it has to do with human rights or revolution, but studies have come out about the benefits of games in marketing, training, and healthcare. More and more companies are using games or interactive media for non-entertainment purposes.

When we start to see games in the educational process, in workplace training, and in daily life, then the impact of games will be more widely accepted due to its ubiquity.

4-The Witcher was developed in Poland from a series of best-selling Polish fantasy novels. Did that present particular issues in writing the dialog for the game? How did you coordinate the writing for the project?

The short stories and the Witcher Saga hadn't been translated into English despite Andrzej Sapkowski's enormous popularity in Eastern Europe. The first short story actually was published in 1986. Initially, we were provided materials from CDProjekt RED and later I stopped by Atari, since their office was close to mine, and got English translations of two of the short stories. These translations were later included in the European box sets. Anne decided to buy the French translation of The Last Wish, the collection of short stories, since that was what was available in the U.S.

Mostly, though, we relied on the dev team for background info since the main characters in The Witcher are not from the short stories but from the Witcher Saga. From the beginning, our main contact person was Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz, the translator at CDProjekt RED. Sebastian Stepien at CDProjekt RED wrote the dialog in Polish and then it was translated, but it wasn't translated according to character. For instance, we got several lines of "You win," but we wrote "You win" and its variations for each character.

The dialog and quests were still in the process of being written when we were brought aboard and as soon as a bulk of it was done, it was sent to us, but of course, there were always changes happening as you would expect in game development. The main challenge for us was that when we got the translated lines, we were never sure about the order of the lines and who was speaking to whom, so we relied on our experience in RPG writing to figure it out.

Generally, companies call me to coordinate schedule and then deliverables are submitted via FTP. In the case of The Witcher, Skype really helped a lot because I had more of a chance of getting immediate assistance. I also think it helped to forge a more personal relationship. I was in Europe at the time of The Witcher premiere and I really wish I could have gone to Warsaw to see it, but alas, I was stuck in Paris during an Air France strike.

5-You have degrees from USC, MIT and the London School of Economics. Why are you working in games, instead of taking over the world, which is clearly what you seem to have trained to do?

Well, in games, you can take over the world as well as save the world. The world is always in jeopardy.

In all seriousness, though, game development is a field that successfully combines my fields of study. I've got advanced degrees in economics, writing, and cinema-television and I'm appreciative of what I've learned because it has been useful in my career. I haven't always taken the accepted path in that I didn't blindly follow my classmates, but I chose my own path. I have to be happy with that.

For instance, I combined theatre arts and literature into my writing major at MIT and in my first year, I had a play produced. At USC, I directed music videos and I became the first graduate screenwriting student at USC to be nominated for a Grammy. I definitely went after a career in game development after graduation and I'm glad that Vicarious Visions (now Activision) called me up in its formative years. I got my first game writing credit on an IGF winner.

But most importantly, I've met amazing, amazing people at these universities and when I run into them again, I'm always inspired by them, whether they are a documentary director, a professor, an exec at ABC, or the Japanese economic consul. One of my classmates even married a Malaysian prince!

To be fair, one of my classmates at Wesleyan was the son of the Bangladeshi minister of finance, but that doesn't quite have the same cachet. (And besides, he transferred to Tufts after our freshman year.) Many thanks to Sande for her thoughtful answers to the questions. You can find her online at her new project, Game Design Aspect, and pick up The Witcher at fine game stores everywhere. Coming up soon, look for Q&As with Chris Klug, Lee Sheldon, and more. Until next time!

Five for Writing: Stephen Dinehart

The keeper of the Narrative Design Exploratorium, Stephen Dinehart has lent his talents to projects for EA, Activision, THQ, and more. Now part of the team at Day 1 Studios, he also contributed the chapter on RTS to Writing for Video Game Genres - fitting, as he's worked on top RTS series like Dawn of War, Battle for Middle-Earth, and Company of Heroes. Here, then, are his thoughts on narrative design in other media, what a young game writer needs to break into the biz, and whether someone should stop touching him (virtually). I give you Five for Writing with the inestimable Stephen Dinehart:

1-You've written the chapter on writing for RTS games in the new book Writing for Video Game Genres. Seeing as RTS gameplay is generally short on character interaction, what sort of writing does an RTS require?

Yes indeed. I'm excited to have the company of so many talented writers. RTS is full of character, but not in the way we would consider typical game-like dramatic interaction. It's hard to deliver, but I'd say the same for all games. What is required is a combination of tactical information delivered with consistent tone and literary voice, but differentiated enough for the player to say, that's my Heavy Weapons Unit, or that's an enemy Heavy Armored Unit. The characters tend not to be singular, but plural in form, so that the character for large groups, a particular army or division of said army, as opposed to individuals. Since RTS puts the player in the perspective of a commander, or "God" view, the game type tends to deliver broader character strokes.

2- One of the most frequently asked questions game writers get is "How do I get into the field?" How did you break in, and what do you think a young game writer needs to do to get into the business today?

I went to grad school, and I crashed E3, and the GDC. I didn't have any connections, so I did my best, spent 100k+ (in loans) and found myself working at EA, Activision, and Warner Brothers. It wasn't graceful, but it worked. To that end there is no one path, visualize your goal and make it happen.

A video game writer needs to be savvy, and cross-disciplined, like a good multi-media designer. It's a bitch! Storytelling is hard enough as it is without thinking about interactivity, play and delivery systems! Also, experience life, and I mean first-life, real-life.

3- Do you think we'll ever get to a point where you can have emergent narratives in RTS games, or will they always need "baked" storylines for the sake of their campaigns?

Once a publisher is ready to invest in it, the potential for emergent stories is definitely there! Story tends to be a side note for RTS, despite the fact that most RTS players play the campaign mode; multiplayer is given more resources and attention. Multiplayer is awesome, I love and still play live ranked matches, but RTS campaigns could evolve into a whole new beast. As one example, like any good RPG does with player characters, an RTS could have a player grow their army/squads with investment of time and resources, to use again and again in campaigns of increasing consequence. Someone will try it, and soon, I don't think strategy gaming will ever die, despite the calls. I just hope to be there to play it, and if I'm lucky write and/or design the narrative of the experience.

4-No other storytelling medium has a role equivalent to that of "narrative designer". Does that help or hurt games as a storytelling medium, and is there anything that narrative design can potentially bring to other media?

One of the problems I have right now with the term is its abuse by posers. I can't tell you how many people saw what I and others are doing and said, "Oh, I'll call myself a narrative designer now too, and add it to my list of consulting services! Well looky there I'm a narrative designer too!" A narrative designer is not someone trying to steal writing credits, or trying to say 'just plain writing isn't good enough'. It's about the production of a video game and how to integrate well-written storytelling into the interactive experience. The aim is to create a cohesive user experiences that communicate a teams' vision from beginning to end. From start screen and GUI, to dialogue and implied verbiage. If anything it threatens game design as we know it.

It's a different way of doing things, like when you are in a meeting and someone says "Well we won't need any narrative for this segment; the player is just running around accomplishing objectives." This person clearly doesn't get it. Narrative design seeks to craft experiences with meaning, from beginning to end, and that includes having the semblance of purpose in sub-objectives that plays into the overarching vision. It's kind of like production design in film.

Yes it can help other mediums. I think any form of media could use narrative design. It's all about definition. Narrative is delivered in parts, pieces, are narremes. Whether designed with narrative intent or not, elements of a particular experience weave together in the mind of a viewer/user/player (VUP) to create a cohesive narrative, or not so cohesive; depending on the story created by that subjective viewing.

What well crafted narrative design can give to an experience is not that much unlike the well crafted branding of great companies and products, like Coca-Cola, or Nike, these brands are driven by divergent audio and visual elements throughout various marketing campaigns, which when combined in the cognitive blender of a consumer help that person to create consistent stories about the image of the brand. Its identity, identifying your vision and delivering on it, and video games still have a long way to come. Dead Space did it very well, I was surprised! It left me thinking, "This isn't my mom's EA!"

5-The single greatest piece of writing for an RTS came in Warcraft, when a unit you'd repeatedly clicked on would grumble "Stop touching me!" Agree or disagree, and why?

Agree. It's truly part of the RTS cannon now. Naturally, we did it in Company of Heroes too. It's great because we as writers actually get to directly acknowledge the players actions, "Stop clicking on me." Just spells it all out, when you get come click happy bastard scratching your back while your digging mortars pits or, as in the example you used, chopping wood, the system get's to acknowledge it. We try to hide and contextualize that the players are using some abstract input device to participate in the simulation, and this is the one time we can acknowledge it and break the reality of the RTS world. It can only make a developer smile. It's like "Hello numb nuts? WE are trying to create an experience here! Click, click, pass…"

Mind you, I was always a fan of "I've got a hammer for you", but that's neither here nor there. Many thanks to Stephen for taking the time to give thoughtful answers to these questions! You can find Stephen online at the Narrative Design Exploratorium here, and his work on gamestore shelves everywhere. Until next time!

March 5, 2009: More Congrats!

Kudos to my good friend Lucien Soulban, whose DragonLance novel Renegade Wizards has hit the shelves with a meaty thump!

Also, the authors of Writing for Video Game Genres will be doing an appearance en masse at GDC this year - Thursday, March 26, from 5:30 to 6:30 at the IGDA booth at GDC. See you there!

Five for Writing: Haris Orkin

Proof that there's more than one route into video game writing, Haris Orkin's road has taken him from advertising to critically lauded plays to Disney to the Call of Juarez series without missing a beat. One of the co-authors of the chapter on first person shooters in the upcoming Writing for Video Game Genres, Haris now shares his thoughts on Westerns, what 30 second ads can teach you about writing 20 hour games, and whether we'll ever see the Barbra Streisand FPS. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Five for Writing with Haris Orkin:

1-The Western is a genre that's seen a lot of success and a lot of re-invention in film, but which really hasn't had a defining videogame moment. What's it like approaching a genre like that for a game like Call of Juarez? Do you think there's something about the western that's resisting adaptation?

Well, first of all I'm a huge western fan. Even though I can't shoot worth a damn and horses scare me, I'm deeply into the history of the west. I've read lots of non-fiction books and novels about the west. I've seen all the classic western films as well as all the schlocky ones. Movies by John Ford, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann, Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone, and Clint Eastwood.

So I actually approached Techland when I saw a demo of their western game at E3 back in 2005. I had only written one game at that point, but I'd been a screenwriter for quite awhile and in the movie business westerns were pretty dead as a genre. There is the occasional exception, but if you go into a Hollywood studio and pitch a western they look at you like you're on loco weed. So I saw this as a chance to finally write a western in a medium I actually believe it's perfect for. It was a labor of love. But as you point out, there hasn't been a cowboy/western video game that's been a massive hit…yet. Now a lot of games actually are just updated versions of westerns. George Lucas has said that the original Star Wars is basically a western in space. So was Joss Whedon's Serenity. I'm playing Fallout 3 and it feels a lot like a western in some respects.

Maybe the lack of success for western themed video games is partly generational. My son, who's eighteen, isn't into the wild west thing, though he will sit down and watch a western if I twist his arm. Once he settles down, he usually enjoys himself. I mean, what's not to like about The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly? I guess there are a limited number of weapons in a western as opposed to something modern or more futuristic. (Fallout 3 has everything from laser rifles to combat shotguns to missile launchers.) And there obviously aren't any vehicles. (Well, there are horses…of course.) But I'm still optimistic that if someone finally creates a western game that's state of the art in terms of game play as well as setting and story, it will find an audience. Rockstar just announced Red Dead Redemption, the sequel to Red Dead Revolver. It will be an open world western ala Grand Theft Auto and that could do very well. Call of Juarez 2 is coming out this summer and I really think it could be the one that breaks through. The story is epic, the characters have a lot of depth, and from what I've seen so far, the game play and graphics will blow people away.

2-Part of your writing background is in advertising, which means you've gone from a medium that works in thirty second increments to one that potentially works over a stretch of thirty hours. Is there anything that corresponds between the two? What can game writers learn from copywriters?

Actually, I think I learned quite a bit in advertising. Mainly how to write economically, which is something very necessary for game writing. You learn to grab people's attention quickly and to impart exposition in a fast and entertaining fashion. Advertising is all about convincing people to pay attention to something they don't really care about. They way you do that is by finding an emotional hook. Something they can identify with. Something that speaks to their personal experience.

In games, many players just want to play the game and blow the bad guys away. They'll quickly escape through the cut scenes if they aren't compelling. Which, admittedly, is most of the time. As hardcore gamer, I feel their pain. I mean who enjoys a dull, wordy, awkward, badly acted cut scene? (Of course, sometimes they are so profoundly horrible they actually cross the line from awful to entertaining.) My challenge is to make the story as compelling as the game play and if it's done correctly, it should all feel seamless.

3-You have a knack for provocative titles, like "Sex, Impotence, and International Terrorism". Where does a title like that come from?

"Sex, Impotence, and International Terrorism" was inspired by the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the rumors that Muammar Gaddafi was an impotent cross-dresser. (Which I later learned was disinformation plan put out by the CIA to aid Libyan dissidents and exiles who wanted to overthrow him.) The play's about a professor who has written psychological biographies about dead world leaders. Mostly tyrants and despots. His agent convinces him that a book about a living dictator might generate more PR and sell more copies Soon after the book is published, his agent puts out a press release, claiming that a fatwa was issued against the professor, even though it wasn't true and the despot hadn't read the book. The PR move boosts book sales. But also catches the attention of the despot, who reads the book and then puts a price on the professor's head. Now everyone in the world is trying to kill him.

4-You've had two screenplays produced for Disney television. What are the keys to successful family-friendly writing? How did you jump from that to a heroic fantasy like Dragonshard?

For me, writing a family-friendly feature isn't any different than writing something for adults. There are standards and practices you have to follow when you write for television, but I don't find those very onerous. I purposely don't try to write down to kids, but instead try to remember what it was like to be a kid. Having a kid helps, but I wouldn't recommend having children just for research purposes. (You can easily borrow one from a family member instead.) Kids are very sophisticated and they hate it when they sense you are writing down to them. In both cases, those scripts weren't initially written to be family films. One I pitched to Paramount and one was a spec script I sold to Universal. Both coincidentally ended up at Disney. Because of those two scripts, I was hired by Disney Feature Animation to work on one of their projects, which took over a year, and unfortunately never came to fruition. Right around that time, a friend of mine, a producer at Atari, brought me in to work on Dragonshard. I wasn't a Dungeons and Dragons aficionado, but I was a big reader of fantasy fiction. I read the Hobbit and all the Lord of the Rings books to my son when he was little as a way to make him fall asleep. Hearing my voice drone on about the geography of Middle-Earth knocked him out like a Quaalude. So I was well-versed in that fantasy universe. (I also read him all the Narnia books.)

5-It is highly likely that you are the only working videogame writer who's also opened the Streisand Festival of New Jewish Plays. Is there room for more Streisand-videogame cross pollination? If there were one piece of Streisand's oeuvre you could adapt to a game, what would it be, and how would you do it?

Hmm. That is a fantastic question. Yentl Unleashed comes to mind. But would gamers want to step into the sensible shoes of woman pretending to be man and not just any man, but an Orthodox Rabbinical student? Not a lot of gunplay or fast driving involved obviously, but I guess there could be a "put on the tefillin" minigame.

If there's a third F.E.A.R. game I would love to see Babs cast in the part of Alma. It would be pretty scary for the player to see Barbara's face popping up randomly in hallucinations, kvetching and complaining as she sends her whiny minions (most likely agents and lawyers and personal trainers) to wreak havoc and destruction.

And so another interview ends, leaving us with only misty-colored memories of the way we were. Well, that and some wonderful answers from Haris. Until next time!

February 28, 2009: Yay Successful Friends!

Congrationations go out to, in no particular order, the mighty Mur Lafferty on a very successful signing for Playing For Keeps, over at Chapel Hill Comics, and Alice Henderson, on the release of her novel Voracious. If you have not yet read either of these two fine books, you are (in the words of Sam the American Eagle) "disgracefully lacking in culture." Well, maybe not, but you're missing a couple of great reads.

(and the quote in question is at about 2:26 of the link, but trust me, you'll want to watch the whole thing.

Five for Writing: Paul S. Kemp

Any number of best-selling authors have emerged from the ranks of those producing fiction set in Krynn, Faerun, and other such imaginary worlds. If you know what I'm talking about here, you've probably played Dungeons and Dragons; if you don't, there's still a good chance you've picked up and enjoyed a piece of D&D tie-in fiction at some point anyway. Among the more recent heavy hitters to emerge from those bringing D&D to the bookshelf instead of the gaming table is Paul S. Kemp. A lawyer by day, Kemp scribes the tales of Erevis Cale and his companions, a darker and more morally complex take on the Forgotten Realms setting than one might expect to see. Fortunately, Paul was able to squeeze in time between jurisprudence, scribing best-selling licensed fiction, finding representation for his new work of original fiction and a truly disastrous fantasy football season (three words: Quarterback Derek Anderson) to answer a few questions. So here are his takes on creative control of a character in a licensed setting, how best to bludgeon John Grisham to death, and getting that faint whiff of necrophilia into a Forgotten Realms novel. Ladies and gents, I give you Five for Writing with Paul S. Kemp:

1-You're best known for your Forgotten Realms writing, but you recently took the step of finding an agent to try to sell some original work. What led to that decision, and how did you go about tracking down the wild agent in its natural habitat?

I had the novel (a supernatural thriller/dark fantasy entitled Azazel) kicking around in my brain for a long time. I worked on it as time allowed, but my contracted work with WotC and Del Rey, combined with my day job, made it hard to carve out some time for Azazel. I got a bit of a jump start on it recently when my sons, Roarke and Riordan, started asking me to come home early from work (I'm a corporate lawyer by day). I thought that if I ever wanted to write for a living full time, I needed to turn it up a notch.

So, I researched agents online (Preditors and Editors is a great resource for that) and started sending queries. I was fortunate and got a few bites, then finally signed with Kristin Lindstrom of Lindstrom Literary Management. Azazel is making the rounds of publishing houses even now.

2-For all of the Jack Chick-induced hysteria, Dungeons and Dragons has always been the "cleanest" of the tabletop RPGs to spin off tie-in fiction. Part of that may be the fact that it's the most prominent RPG, part of it may simply be the subject matter of heroic fantasy tends to lend itself to that sort of fiction. On the other hand, your work includes - and let me know if I miss anything here - torture, sado-masochism, a faint whiff of necrophilia and all sorts of other goodness that's normally more at home in, say, the World of Darkness or Over the Edge. What has the reaction to that edgier material been, both from WotC and the fans? Did you have any trouble plumbing those sorts of depths in a Forgotten Realms novel?

"Torture, sado-masochism, a faint whiff of necrophilia" - and that's just one character in the first chapter! Ba-dum-ching.

Wizards was a bit iffy on some of the content in my novels, at least at first. I think some of the changes in the editorial staff that have happened over the last ten years have loosened the reins a bit on content. WotC seems genuinely interested in having lots of different styles and tones featured in Forgotten Realms fiction, and I think that's a great thing. It's a big place, with room for any different kinds of stories.

In terms of fan reception, it's been overwhelmingly positive. I've never gotten any emails from disturbed readers or parents worried over the content (and I'd note here that I'm not gratuitous with graphic material; I include it only when I think it's necessary to further the story). Obviously, darker, gritty stories are not every reader's cup of tea. But my style seems to appeal to enough folks such that I've been able to continue the story of Cale and his companions through eight novels and four short stories.

3-One of the trickiest bits of doing game tie-in fiction is satisfying the expectations of the fans - and their knowledge of their rules. Do you think game tie-in fiction has to hew to the game rules, or do you bend things for the sake of storytelling?

I think game tie-in fiction should be respectful of the underlying rules, but that the rules should never, ever handcuff the story. For me, the story is paramount. To the extent the needs of the story run afoul of the underlying rules, the story trumps them. This bothers some fans, but they seem to be a relatively small subset of the whole. Most readers want a great story in a setting they love, not a fictionalized account of the game rules in action.

4-Erevis Cale seems to be your signature character. But, if I'm guessing right, he belongs to Wizards of the Coast. How do you feel about someone else potentially writing him some day?

I feel filled with unspeakable rage and a murderous impulse. (Just kidding!)

Seriously, it is a real risk. Wizards seems disinclined to allow that kind of thing to happen today (largely, I suspect as a result of their grab years ago at Drizzt, created by R.A. Salvatore, and their attempt to have another writer continues Drizzt's adventures) but the perspectives of the editors could change and it could happen tomorrow. As you correctly note, I don't legally own the character. I'd like to think, however, that my fans consider me the owner of the character in the sense that matters - the creative sense - and they would be disinclined to go with another author purporting to write stories of Cale and his companions.

Honestly, it's hard for me to imagine another author with an ounce of creative pride willing to take over a character created and built over many novels by another author.

5-John Grisham and you in a no-holds-barred best-selling lawyer/author cage match. Who wins, and why?

I win. And here's why. Grisham writes mainstream fiction. I write speculative fiction. He is, at the outset, weakened from a dearth of imagination. He doesn't understand where he is or what's about to happen.

He enters the cage mumbling something about the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. I enter humming the theme song to Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

"Did you know that a fraud case requires specific intent?" he asks.

I punch him in the nose and he goes down, leaking twin strings of snot and blood from his nostrils. But that doesn't stop him from uttering more lawyer crap.

"Do you know that hearsay is not allowed into evidence unless one of the exceptions applies?"

"Boring procedural mumbo jumbo," I say, and put a boot in his ribs. They splinter like crystal. "No one cares."

He's gasping now, his bloody wheezes like a sodden bellows. He mumbles something about a Pelican Brief, more rules of evidence. "Hearsay!" he says, wincing, obviously confused by the pain. A froth of blood and spit squeeze from between his teeth, stains his chin.

I loom over him, the crowd noise long gone, just him and me in the center of a cage stained dark with his blood. "I remember law school now, John. You know my favorite exemption to the hearsay rule?"

He looks up, eyes hopeful, thinking I'm talking his language now. "What?" he asks. "Excited utterance? Present sense impressions?"

"The dying declaration."

His eyes swim in the cups of sockets already showing bruises. "Please," he says.

But there's no pity in me for lawyers who write about lawyers. A kick to the throat finishes him, and I swear his eyes show relief as he spasms through those final few breaths and empties his bowels on the canvas.

"Two men enter, one man leaves!" shouts the goggled dwarf who tends the gate.

"No," I say. "There are no men here. Just lawyers."

Having just killed my chances of ever getting an interview with John Grisham, Paul can now ride safely into the virtual sunset. You can find out more about Paul and his writing at his website, and pick up the adventures of Erevis Cale and company here or here. Many thanks to Paul for taking the time to answer these questions, and for doing so…emphatically. Until next time!

February 21, 2009: Gamasutra's 20 Best

The fine folks over at Gamasutra have published their list of the 20 best game writers, and I'm very pleased to announce that I'm one of 'em. Congratulations to my fellow list members; it's an honor to be mentioned alongside the writers who've worked on so many games that I've loved. I also think that the debate going on as to who should be on a list like that demonstrates how many good game writers there are out there, and how strong the craft of game writing has gotten.

February 16, 2009: With Honors

I'm very pleased to note that my story "Missing Pages", in the Hero Games anthology Astounding Hero Tales, received an Honorable Mention in the Year's Best Fantasy & Horror - 2008. The stories by Hugh Cave and William Messner-Loebs from the same anthology also made the Honorable Mention list, which makes for a pretty impressive showing. A tip o' the cap to James Lowder for his fine editing work, and to Hero for knocking it out of the park with their first dabble in fiction.

Five for Writing: Andrew S. Walsh

Andrew Walsh's talk on On-Demand Storytelling at Austin GDC 2008 was one of the surprise hits of the conference…unless, of course, you were familiar with Andrew's impressive and varied track record. Having written for stage, screen, and game, he recently took on the daunting task of collaborating to re-invent the venerable Prince of Persia franchise. He's also one of the co-authors of the IGDA Game Writers' SIG new book on videogame writing, having penned the chapter on writing for platformers. Here now are his thoughts on what accent a Persian prince ought to use, writing for soap operas, and what sort of egomaniac writes a play called "Me, Me and Me". Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Five for Writing with Andrew Walsh.

Few video game characters have been through more reinventions than the Prince of Persia. What was it like steering the story and character aspects of the latest incarnation of this classic character?

Daunting.

Being asked to help reinvent a character and a franchise is a scary thing. There is a loyal fan base that wants to re-experience something they have grown to love. Reviewers tend to compare the new game to the ones that came before rather than with a blank slate as they would with many other new titles. That said there is also a need to move on. Once there has been a decision made to carry out a fresh revisioning then the characters in this new game need to be clearly discernible from those that came before them.

One way to start any reimagining process is to look how the previous treatments of the Prince were received so as to get some clues as what elements to use in a new Prince. The problem here was that the Prince's character always seems to generate controversy. Sands of Time was hugely popular and has been well remembered, but at the time there were those who thought the character too cartoony, a little wishy-washy. The Prince was then reinterpreted as a darker character and this new incarnation was criticised from his design to his gothic character traits. There was even a split over the accents of the previous Prince (who was voiced with both an English and an American accent). On the other hand, alongside such criticisms came praise and a very successful series of games. The previous incarnations of the game were not, therefore, something that gave a clear pointer as to exactly what people wanted.

What makes this incarnation of the prince unique? Are there elements from previous versions that you felt were important to keep, or did you rebuild the character from scratch?

While the previous incarnations of the Prince were different they did have a number of underlying characteristics which we felt were important to us and to the majority of fans. The Prince needs to be an epic character, one drawn from legend rather than gritty modern realism, he had to have an underlying sense of morality and a powerful urge to 'do the right thing'. He has to be a hero rather than an anti-hero (while the split personality played with this, the Prince himself remained the moral man in the middle of the immoral web).

Another factor which fed into how the Prince needed to behave was the game's setting which is very Arabian Nights fantasy. Many of the characters in these tales (not the sanitised kids' versions, but the original tales) are very bawdy, brash characters. This and the need to differentiate the new Prince from old was a good part of our decision to give the Prince a sense of humour and to make him brassier than his earlier selves. This would give us a hero true to the setting but clearly different from this 'Prince's' predecessors.

A number of the other characteristics in the Prince arose from thinking where he came from…we learn he has spent a long time adventuring, probably mostly in the company of men with little female company; we learn that he has made no real emotional connections and that this could spring from losing his parents as a boy. He is a man with no ties, no causes…a drifter. He lives for the day, but although he presents a carefree attitude there is obviously something running deeper in him. Elika picks up on this.

As part of laying the ground for any character thought must be given to how the character will develop within the game. The cockiness the Prince has at the beginning of the game remains throughout, but it tones down and other elements of his character come through as he learns about having a cause beyond his own personal needs. This change happens as we see a bond with Elika forming. However, while the Prince does evolve, we didn't want anything too radical in terms of development. Prince of Persia takes place in 'real time' there are time jumps. This means changes in character and relationships are also limited to this timeframe. When you meet someone for the first time you are likely to get only an impression of them - the person is friendly, reserved, or boisterous. During this first meeting you often get just glimpses of other sides to these characters - they are reserved, but you know once they get to know you they will thaw, they are boisterous…the life of the party…but you can see this hides an anger and an aggression, but you don't get to see the whole picture. The adrenalised situations the Prince and Elika are in help to push this revealing process and to shed light on their characters but the player and the characters are left as anyone is after their first meeting, with an impression not the whole picture. The game's DLC continues this process and evolves both the Prince and Elika on from where the game left off…

How did you make the jump from television to games? What are the differences, and does the British series model have more in common with game writing than the American one does?

I worked on my first game around the time my television career was kicking off, the game wasn't released, it was dropped when Ocean was restructured. This was at a point in the industry that many companies were trying to work out what to do with writers and writers were trying to work out what to do with the medium.

Television served as a great apprenticeship. My first couple of jobs were working in the story office for soap operas. I got to work on a vast amount of story, to see what worked and what didn't in a very high pressure environment surrounded by very able storytellers. Soap gets a lot of criticism but it is a hard place to work and tell stories. When you step into a show that has been running for thirty, forty years, most stories you can think of have already been told and often several times! Resources, characters and deadlines are rigid forcing you to work within very specific parameters, which is a great way to learn discipline within your writing. Games writing tends to involve delivering a huge amount of material often with ridiculously short deadlines, the experience I gained early on in television definitely prepared me for this.

In terms of switching mediums, well, learning to work for an industry (having ideas rejected, or changed, how to write after feedback, how to deal with characters and settings that are not your own etc) is valuable whatever form of writing you do. Learning your craft is also a sadly underrated part of writing. Any writing you do, be it novels, television, or games can help you learn about storytelling (the three act structure, narrative drive etc) as well as character and dialogue. Learning this by testing your work on an audience, by taking courses, is a must. It is not all right just to know your medium as a writer, you also have to know your craft.

You've done extensive writing for the stage. What's the continued appeal of dramatic writing when you've worked in so many other media?, Do those other fields inform your stage writing?

As I said above I think all writing informs and cross-fertilises your other work regardless of the medium you are working in. As for why the stage is a lure…There's an immediacy in terms of time and audience that doesn't exist in other forms, you can sit there in the audience, breathe it in, not knowing what will come next, what spin the actors will put on things today, what the nuances will be. You can watch the material come to life which is a real adrenalin experience!

Your first play was a monologue called "Me, Me, and Me". Have you added other pronouns in your more recent writing, or just more iterations of the first person objective singular?

Well, they say you should always start with something you know…the play was written really quickly. I had promised to write something for a play festival but heard nothing back from the organisers until just before the event. I decided with the short time left (four days to write and rehearse in amongst everything else) that a monologue would be the best way to go. The 'me, me and me' is because the play takes the form of a man's life lived in a day, from waking up, to going to sleep, with the 'me's being the 'me past', 'me present' and 'me future' of the central character. It's a play about identity.

Strange to think that if the festival organisers hadn't nudged me to finish the play and I hadn't decided to act on that then I might not be here writing now. My 'me past' took that choice and the positive reception the play got gave me the confidence and interest to write more. Over the next three years at university I wrote and put on another five plays and a one-off comedy for television and haven't stopped writing since. My 'me present' is writing this in Stockholm where I'm working on a new game and I'm about to head home to work on two more. Where the 'me future' goes…only time will tell but it should be interesting getting there.

Many thanks to Andy for such a detailed look inside what was a challenging and fascinating project, and for taking the time to give great answers to nosy questions. (I'm keeping my end of the bargain - I'm not posting any pictures of him from the pirate-themed bar we hit together at Austin GDC in 2005.) You can find Andy's work on the shelves at any store that carries video games, and track him down online here. Until next time…

February 9, 2009: Did You Miss Me?

January was a month of madcap deadlines at work, capped off by a two-week trip to the frozen north. And when I say "frozen", I do in fact mean "Oh my God, my breath is solidifying in midair", as it was minus-nine in Montreal when I hit town. But now I'm back home, my computer actually has a working network adapter, and my office is re-arranged to my liking, so I can get back to the serious business of various writing-type things.

First up is GDC-related news. In addition to the traditional Game Writers' Roundtables I run, I've been asked to take part in a panel that's an outgrowth of my Project Horseshoe workgroup on gaming and dating. All the gory details are here.

You can now also pre-order the new book on videogame writing from the IGDA Game Writers' SIG. Edited by the mighty Wendy Despain and featuring twenty serious game-writing types (including Lucien Soulban, Lee Sheldon, Haris Orkin and more), it's called Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG.

Over at Green Man, there's a slew of new reviews - Christopher Golden's Strangewood, Micah Harris' Heaven's War, Otis Adelbert Kline's Swordsman of Mars, the art book written by and dedicated to the late Dave Stevens, a couple of Batman graphic novels...right, time for decaf, I think.

And, you can expect a lot more content in the next couple of weeks, starting with a Five for Writing from Prince of Persia scribe Andrew Walsh, and a few other announcements of variable and high strangeness. But for now, enough.

Five for Writing: James Swallow

If you read James Swallow's blog, you know that he keeps busy. Really busy. As in doing video game writing, radio plays, movie novelizations, tie-in novels, and more, all without missing a beat. With that in mind, it's a small miracle he had the time to tackle a Five For Writing, but he graciously took time out from his breakneck pace to answer a few questions. Now, here are his thoughts on proper anti-Dalek tactics, the virtues of Dr. Who as source material for radio plays, and the perils of charitable Tuckerization. I give you Five for Writing with James Swallow:

1-You've acquired some fame as the only British writer to work on a Star Trek television series. Seeing as the show was originally called "Wagon Train to the Stars", is there something quintessentially American about it that discourages non-American writers?

I think there's a perception that's true among writers from my side of the pond, but I don't believe it is - in fact I'm proof it isn't. There's certainly a strong sense of the American experience in Trek - very much so in the original series - but at the same time, the themes at the core of the Trek mythos transcend the show's nationality. Star Trek's central tenet, of diverse peoples working together for the betterment of humanity, is something that can speak to you no matter where you're from.

2-You've worked on properties as varied as Warhammer, Stargate, Star Trek, Dr. Who, and Battlestar Galactica. Which one offers the most freedom to you as a writer? Do you prefer having a lot of latitude when dealing with a licensed property, or is a tighter set of constraints preferable?

Different franchises are run in different ways - some licensors have little interest in the tie-ins based on their properties, and they're fairly indifferent to the whole process, while others are very invested in the project and want to ensure a good degree of parity with the source material. Both approaches have their positives and negatives. Then there's the type of franchise you're writing for; something like Stargate has a large cast of characters that are the focus of the franchise, whereas Warhammer has a strong fictional world at its heart. For the former you write stories about the characters, and in the latter you write stories set in that world. So, the question of how much "freedom" you get is a loaded one - it all depends! But the general rule of thumb is that you can't 'break' the world. As a tie-in writer, you're essentially playing with someone else's toys, so you can't expect to rip them to bits before you hand them back.

On the surface, this all makes it sound like a straight-jacket for creativity, or a crutch for lazy writers, but the reverse is true. Working inside a set of constraints is, for me, a challenge that I embrace. You have to work harder to tell a tale under these conditions, and that can be a spur to good story. Part of that challenge is to not only tell a tale that fits the texture of the fictional world you're writing in, but also to bring your own unique authorial voice to bear.

Tie-ins often get a bad rap from the lit-snob crowd, who decry the work as little more than hackery, and that's something that ticks me off no end; writing a tie-in novel is no different from the work that's done by TV or radio writers working on series that they didn't create, and yet tie-ins are looked down upon. As m'colleague Keith DeCandido, a fellow tie-in guy, recently said; writers who adapt a book into a movie are eligible for an Academy Award, while writers who adapt a movie into a book (which requires considerably more writing) are considered untalented.

3-More than once, you've auctioned off a "walk-on" role in one of your novels for charity. How has the response to that been? Have any of the winners wanted anything particularly special, and have they been happy with their portrayals?

I got the idea for doing these kind of 'Tuckerizations' as a charity thing from SF & Fantasy author Diane Duane, and I've done it a few times at conventions and the like. The winning bidder gets to have a minor character named after them, and a dedication in the finished book. I usually set the ground rules about what kind of character it will be, what they get to do, that kinda thing. I'm not likely to write them in as the love interest - not unless they bid a lot of money for the charity…

I've never had any complaints after the fact - most people are just happy to get killed off in unpleasant ways! The most memorable response I had was from a young lady who was borderline hysterical at winning the bid and the prospect of being immortalized alongside her fictional heroes.

4-There are a lot of audio plays on your C.V., with a fair number of them being tied to Dr. Who. What are the opportunities that an audio-only Who story offers that couldn't be done in a television or novel format, and how do you go about taking a license so strongly tied to a visual medium and making a radio play out of it?

I think the things that work on radio for Doctor Who are what work on radio for science fiction as a whole - SF is the literature of the imagination and radio is the medium of imagination, so they're a perfect match. Dramatically speaking, its as hard to write a radio scene of a billion starships racing past as it is to write a radio scene of two guys in a room - as long as you have good sound effects and a good script, you can sell the drama of it. Radio has the best effects budget ever - the listener's mind! Consequently, you can tell stories with a scope or with narrative styles that would be too costly or too difficult to render on the screen. Radio shares a lot of that with prose writing, but in the audio medium you can have a sense of immediacy and intimacy that you might not get so easily with the written word.

As for taking Doctor Who specifically from TV to radio, it's a good fit, and it always has been. I think the Doctor's adventures all have a sense of the theatrical about them and that translates well to audio drama. Iconic stuff like the sound of the TARDIS, the voices of the Daleks, they paint pictures the moment you hear them.

5-Would you agree or disagree that giving Daleks the ability to fly in the new television series is a betrayal of the classic "run up the stairs to get away from the most feared creatures in the universe" trope? Or is it a necessary reaction to advanced Time Lord escalator technology?

I could answer that, but first you force me to assert the strength of my geek-fu by pointing out that the Daleks actually defeated their staircase nemesis via levitation back in the 1980's, in 'Renaissance of the Daleks', not to mention the use of flying saucers by the militant pepperpots since their comicbook adventures in the '60's…

I hereby proclaim myself vanquished in the area of Who geekery, and bow to Mr. Swallow's mastery in this regard. That being said, I still figure that Daleks never bothered with stairs because they'd just blast the building in question to rubble. Many thanks to James for taking the time to answer these questions over the holiday season. You can find him online at his blog, and you can find his work in bookstores everywhere. Until next time...

Five for Writing: James Lowder

All that you need to know about James Lowder is that he's a Red Sox fan. Never mind that he's a bestselling author, a superb editor, and comics writer of some renown. Never mind that he's picked up multiple Origins Awards for books like Hobby Games: The 100 Best and Astounding Hero Tales. Never mind his critically acclaimed anthologies like The Book of All Flesh, the work he's done directing book lines for companies like Green Knight, and never mind the Stoker and IHG nominations.

Then again, maybe that stuff is important, which is why James has been kind enough to answer a few questions in the year-end edition of Five for Writing. Here now are his thoughts on why he stays connected to tabletop gaming, the difficulties in finding original work by work-for-hire writers, and exactly how much flesh is out there to get eaten. I am pleased and honored to present Five for Writing with James Lowder.

1-Recently, you seem to be wearing your editor hat more prominently than your author one, with award-winning titles like Hobby Games: The 100 Best and Astounding Hero Tales to your credit. What's appealing about editing as opposed to writing, and is it something you see yourself continuing to do frequently?

That's a knotty problem. I enjoy editing and find it much easier than writing - writing is a grim, painful process for me-but I consider myself an author first and an editor second. Yet it has been easier for me to land editing gigs recently. I have a diverse skill set for use on that side of the blotter: I can edit and typeset, put together a budget and negotiate contracts that equitably serve the writer and publisher. (The last is a feat akin to juggling rabid, radioactive Tasmanian devils, if most of the publishing industry legal types are to be believed; I don't share that opinion.) I've even done print buying and art direction on occasion. So I can wrangle projects in ways that make them cost effective for even small presses. I also really enjoy working with writers. The most rewarding part of editing is helping an author fine tune a story about which he or she is passionate and then get it into print.

I started out pitching some of the anthologies I've edited because no one in the hobby game part of the market seemed to be doing the types of fiction projects for which I'd want to write, particularly in terms of the contracts offered. After several of the books received positive reactions from readers and even some critics who normally frown mightily at anything vaguely game related, it snowballed. If someone else steps forward to champion these sorts of creator-friendly projects, I'd be happy to hand him or her the editor's hat and do more writing. Even without that, I'll be writing more frequently in the coming year. I have several writing projects in the works, so the balance is shifting back that way at least a little.

2-Tabletop gaming has been a fruitful conduit to other media for many years now, with "alumni" ranging from Raymond Feist to Warren Spector to Greg Rucka. A lot of those folks tend to distance themselves from tabletop RPGs once they've moved on to other media, but you've maintained a close association, editing tie-in anthologies, writing game-related material, and scooping up Origins Awards. What about tabletop gaming still inspires you? Do you always see yourself working with, if not necessarily in, gaming, or do you see a point where you'll be moving on as well?

I'm interested in a lot of different media. I would love the chance to work on computer games or film, but I don't see myself moving completely away from gaming or hobby industry publishing. In fact, my ability to work on projects across various media has always been a strong suit. It helped me land my first job in TSR's book division-I had a background in literary studies and academia, but also loved genre fiction and played games and read comics. I was frequently assigned the fiction projects at TSR that required a lot of interaction with the game designers because I could "speak both languages," as it were. For the first few years I worked in Lake Geneva, I was the only fiction editor who was also designing and editing RPG material.

Several facets of tabletop gaming inspire me - in particular the creative and storytelling aspects of roleplaying games and the social aspects of the hobby in general. Gathering around a table with friends and family and interacting over the night's entertainment-interacting as the night's entertainment-is a powerful reminder to all would-be storytellers of communication's centrality to their aspirations.

All that said, I understand why writers and editors, particularly of fiction, distance themselves at least a little from the hobby industry. To admit affiliation with, or affection for, roleplaying games usually opens you up to some pretty nasty sniping. Now, not all the criticisms leveled at game-related fiction are unfounded; there are a lot of things wrong with the way publishers and editors approach game-related material. They push out novels and stories that are less fiction than RPG support text or marketing gimmick, and treat authors as interchangeable typists. Those tendencies, coupled with the often-onerous contracts, maximize the chance for game-tied fiction to be merely product. But that's a tendency, not a necessary condition. I hope to distance myself, and the books I work on as a writer and editor, from the bad practices often used with game-related material, but I can't see distancing myself from gaming itself.

3-Were there any particular challenges with putting together the Worlds of Their Own project?

After the project got underway, I discovered that I would be drawing from a slightly smaller talent pool than I'd expected. As you know, Worlds of Their Own reprinted creator-owned stories penned by people known for their game-related novels and stories. The trouble was, several writers interested in participating didn't own any stories they'd published. Everything they had ever put into print was work for hire, mostly because their shared world assignments had been so steady they'd never found time to write anything else. Worlds of Their Own turned out to be a strong collection, but it took a little longer than expected to line up stories.

4-You've done some D&D-related comics writing, including "The Rigor of the Game" this year. Are RPG and comics stories similar? Does a good gaming story translate well to the comics medium, or is it more a case of adapting the setting than reproducing the game experience faithfully?

RPG narratives and comics narratives share some elements, particularly as sequential storytelling. But a good piece of prose fiction-whether tied to a game or not-does not necessarily translate well into a comic. The two media have different rules and conventions, a different artistic language. Each will be able to convey certain facets of a story or character or setting effectively, but don't do all the same things equally well.

I was thrilled when Devil's Due contacted me about adapting "The Rigor of the Game," which I'd written for Tales of Ravenloft some years back. That invitation grew into an assignment to do some editorial work on the Worlds of Dungeons & Dragons anthology comic, once DDP realized I understood comics, knew the D&D-related story pool (I'd been the original editor for some of the other stories they were considering), and could even get some of the original prose authors involved in the adaptations. My main task as co-editor on the book was to find works from the various Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, and Eberron anthologies that would translate well-meaning they had visual potential and required a minimum of tweaking to work as comics. Hasbro and Wizards were reluctant to approve of adaptations that required any substantial changes to accommodate the shift in medium.

Adapting "Rigor" was tougher than I'd expected. It wasn't originally conceived as an illustrated story, so it is fairly talky in places. I had to find a way to tighten up the dialogue and make the long dice game central to the second act more visually compelling. Fortunately, I was working with Tim Seeley, an absolutely stellar artist. He made the adaptation script work better than I probably had any right to expect. And his depiction of Azrael, the dwarven werebadger, was fantastic.

5-You've edited The Book of All Flesh, The Book of More Flesh, and The Book of Final Flesh. Exactly how much flesh is there, and is there a particular ratio for dividing it up per book, or did one get less flesh than the others?

If editing three "open call" zombie anthologies taught me anything, it's that there's an endless supply of interesting flesh out there and almost as many ways to slice it, gnaw on it, and spread it around. Each of the All Flesh books got its fair share, as will any future anthologies in the series. And there may be new volumes. As I said, there's a lot of interesting flesh out there….

I've had the privilege of working with James on three projects now, and I can say without hesitation that he's one of the very finest editors I've ever had the pleasure of collaborating with. Many thanks to James for taking time out of his busy schedule at this most hectic time of the year to share these answers. You can find his website here, and his work durn near everywhere. Until next time!