Welcome to the official website of Richard E. Dansky, horror writer, game designer and general cad. The site 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 Northeasterner. I've been living in the South since 1995, and find more and more of it – its landscapes, its folklore, its literary traditions, and more – seeping into my writing. At the same time, well, I'm just a guy from Brooklyn who grew up in the Philly 'burbs, and it's the collision of those two worlds that produces the stories I'm writing now.

Upcoming Appearances:

May 29-June 1 - Book Expo America, Los Angeles, CA
August 12 - Local Authors @ Eva Perry Public Library, Apex, NC - 7-9 PM

Current News:

May 8, 2008 - Last Bits

A couple of notes before Melinda and I take off on our long-postponed honeymoon...

I have in my hands my copy of Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing. It looks gorgeous. Kudos to editrix Wendy Despain (who will be gracing the site with a Five for Writing soon) and the writing and editing staff, including my Red Storm partner in crime Jay Posey and the estimable Ms. Rhianna Pratchett.

Also, here's a couple of pix from the Cameron Village talk. Thanks again to everyone who swung by. For those who didn't, here's what I look like when I'm simultaneously using Powerpoint and summoning evil:

And that's all for the next week and a half. When I get back, Five for Writing will resume, with David J. Williams, Wendy Despain, and more, and I'll have a few announcements, including something about a world of my own. Until then...

May 4, 2008 - Hiatus

There will be an interruption in your irregularly scheduled updates, as my wife and I are finally going on our oft-delayed honeymoon this upcoming Friday. Apparently, I am indeed a keeper...

On a completely unrelated note, the talk at Cameron Village went extremely well. Many thanks to Rob Lambert of the Wake County Public Library System for setting it up, and for being a gracious and excellent host. Pictures will be up as soon as I remember what exactly I did with my digital camera.

As for Five For Writing, the scheduled interviews for when I get back include game writer Rhianna Pratchett, comics writer Cullen Bunn, cyberpunk novelist David J. Williams, and more. Dates will be posted as soon as I have 'em.

April 27, 2008 - Switcheroo

Sorry, there's no Five for Writing this week. There is, however, a new essay up at Storytellers Unplugged. And, while you're over there, I'd recommend checking out this one by Mort Castle, and this piece by Janet Berliner, and maybe this one by Justine Musk as well. There's some talented folks over there, which makes me wonder why exactly they let me in...

April 22, 2008 - No Focus

First, the big news. Once again, I am an uncle! My new niece decided she couldn't wait, and arrived on Saturday night. Consider me to be feeling extremely avuncular.

Just a reminder for those in the RTP area - I'll be speaking at the Cameron Village Library in Raleigh on Saturday, May 3rd, on writing for video games. Waitaminute, that's less than two weeks away. Yikes!

Congratulations to Ubi-Boss Matz for his Eisner Award nomination for The Killer!

And in the media department, Erin Hoffman quoted me in a piece over at The Escapist on what aspiring game writers need to take in college. No, the beer pong elective minor is not on the list. Everyone knows that aspiring designers should drink scotch.

Five For Writing: Rob Rogers

Devil's Cape is Rob Rogers' first novel, one of the first releases on Wizards' new Discoveries line. By now, you've probably heard all about the book - modern-day superheroes in a gritty New Orleans-style setting - and about the excellent reviews it's been getting. But you probably haven't heard what's really important: Rob's take on whether Superman could beat the Hulk at thumb wrestling. I give you Five for Writing with Rob Rogers:

1-Your path seems to have taken you from Illinois to Tennessee to South Carolina to Texas. Why write about a fictionalized Louisiana?

You missed Massachusetts, too!

One of the themes of the book is that the city where it's set--Devil's Cape, naturally--has been corrupt since it was founded. I wanted to tie that in to a pirate founder (the masked pirate St. Diable), and pirates are a consistent part of the background of the book and the city. So I needed a flavorful coastal environment. Louisiana came to mind--after all, the Disneyland Pirates of the Caribbean ride starts out in the Louisiana bayou--and seemed to fit well with what I was trying to do. I took the Louisiana environment and ran with it, customizing it a bit to give Devil's Cape its own distinct flavor.

2-Superhero stories in non-traditional superhero formats are big these days, from Kavalier and Clay to Soon I Will Be Invincible to movies like Iron Man. And, of course, there's Devil's Cape. Why do you think we're seeing this explosion of superhero-related material, and where do you see yourself as part of that movement?

I've always been a huge superhero fan--some of my first "books" were comics like Spidey Super Stories or World's Finest. So they've always been a part of my own world.

It's neat to see superheroes coming into general popularity a bit more these days. That's something that seems to wax and wane over time. Superman came out and they peaked for a while, then dropped. Then there was Batman. Then the comic book industry went nuts for a while with a ton of companies popping up and a huge speculative market, followed by things kind of folding in on themselves for a while.

I'm not sure what's led to this latest surge. I think it maybe started kicking in big-time with the first Spider-Man movie and it's been carried along by other developments as well--the books you mentioned, the success of TV shows like Smallville and Heroes, etc. Graphic novels are getting more coverage in the general media, too, and hot properties like Stephen King's The Dark Tower and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are bringing people into the comic book stores more, too.

I hope that the interest sustains itself for a while longer, and that Devil's Cape is part of that.

3-You don't spend a lot of time on origin stories in the book, which sets Devil's Cape apart from a lot of modern superhero media. Instead, the world just accepts that superheroes exist. While we do get the origins of the main characters, they're born into a world that flatly accepts superheroes, and there's no attempt to rationalize it Why go that route, and are the origins of your heroes something you're going to go back and look at more later?

The whole "where do superpowers come from" concept often sets a clear point of demarcation from the real world. In the Wild Cards series, it's the alien virus getting spread in 1946. When Marvel Comics introduced its New Universe line in the 1980s, powers also came from a single event of some kind. In Heroes, the origins of the heroes' powers hasn't been revealed yet, but it looks like they're all tied together. This kind of "how'd they come about" process can fill whole books--and they can be very good books--but that's just not the story I wanted to tell. I wanted something different than a shared origin, something more like you get in the comic books-- some heroes get their powers from magic, some from radiation accidents, some are aliens or reincarnated hawk gods, etc. Not that I covered all of those in that way in the book, but that's the kind of vibe I wanted.

On a similar note, I didn't want to deal with the first person to fly or to put on a superhero costume or whatever. Again, those can be really cool stories. They just weren't this story. Devil's Cape has its roots in the types of comic book worlds that have been around since the late 1930s. It deals with legacies and history. Part of the pitch for Devil's Cape is that in a world filled with heroes, Devil's Cape is a city run by villains. And for the world filled with heroes part, I wanted superpowers to be part of the status quo--certainly not possessed by everyone, but known enough that some of the conventions of comic books, such as masks, superhero teams, or weird science, are accepted by the general population.

As far as the origins of the heroes in Devil's Cape go, I feel like I covered the basics in the book, but in each case, there is room for further exploration if I want. I'm trying to avoid spoilers here, but I could easily revisit the origin of those golden threads, the lives of the prior Doctor Camelots, the implications of Cain's curse, etc. And I plan to do that.

4-The book ends with what seems like a clear hook for a sequel, or a series of sequels. Was this your plan all along, or did the ending evolve naturally out of the action and the characters?

A little of both. A lot of the pleasure of writing Devil's Cape for me was in developing the setting and the characters, and I think I could write a lot more about these. My aim was to tell a complete story, with a sense of resolution at the end, but to leave room for more, and that's essentially where I ended up.

The ending of the book was something that evolved a bit for me as the book developed. I wrote the final scene quite a while before finishing up the rest of the book--it kind of started churning in my head until I just had to get it down, although I generally write things in sequence (I might add intermediate scenes in later drafts or move scenes around, but for a single draft, I usually start at the beginning and work forward).

5-Superman versus the Incredible Hulk, no holds barred steel cage match thumb wrestling. Who wins?

Tough, tough question. With the Hulk, you've got the advantages of rage, ruthlessness, and really, really big thumbs. On the other hand, Superman has intelligence, nimbler thumbs, and arguably greater strength (he's pushed the entire Earth before). I'm going to have to go with Superman on this one.

You can check out more Rob Rogers-related goodness over at his site. Many thanks to him for taking the time to answer these, and for shedding a little more light on the fascinating world of Devil's Cape. Until next time...

April 16, 2008 - Upon Further Review

There's a slew of new reviews of Firefly Rain available. You can find them at Hellnotes, Horror World, and School Library Journal. They call the book "a true southern treat", "an excellent addition to anyone's to be read pile" and "Compelling", respectively, which definitely makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Also, the estimable folks at Horror Fiction News Network have been gracious enough to post a chapter of the novel in their reading room. If you're curious, you can check it out here - and check out the rest of their site as well, which is chock full o' good stuff.

Five for Writing: Will Carroll

Normally, baseball fans love to see their favorite players' names in a nationally known sportswriter's column. The exception to that rule is Will Carroll's Under the Knife at Baseball Prospectus, a must-read for any serious fan these days. One of the pre-eminent writers on baseball injuries, Carroll has introduced terms like "subluxation" and "cascade injury" to a wider audience. The author of two books (Juiced and Saving the Pitcher) and a three-time Fantasy Sports Writers Association award winner, Carroll opens up on the history of baseball injury journalism, the doping crisis we all should really about, and how exactly a professional athlete can strain an eyelash. I give you Five for Writing with Will Caroll:

1-With your UTK columns at Baseball Prospectus, you essentially invented the field of writing about baseball injuries. Bearing in mind the fact that there are still people out there who think a SLAP lesion is something you get in a Bangkok massage parlor, do you think better awareness of injuries has penetrated the fan base? What sort of things should a fan know to consider himself reasonably well-versed on the topic?

Oh, I didn't invent it. Rick Wilton should get the credit for that. I think I took it in a new direction, focused more on the injury itself, what the trainers were doing, rather than the simple fantasy implications. I think that it was just one of those gaps, something that baseball fans, like baseball teams, took as part of the game. Now, I think we're at a stage where the better beat writers are getting it and where more need for content opens up a bigger space for this. What should a fan know...that's a good question. I treat my readers like they want to know more, but I also want to kind of walk them through it without being insulting. They read BP, I can assume some level of sophistication. I never know how often to "re-explain" something, since there's always new readers. Add in that every injury is individuated and it's always new. I don't think I'll get to a stage where I won't have anything to write about. One of the things I'd really like to do is get a serious injury glossary or even a book that's a reference without being a medical text.

2-A lot of the interest in baseball injuries seems to be driven by fantasy baseball fans. Do you think the rise of fantasy fandom has been a good thing for the game, particularly as it seems to have paralleled the rise of statistical analysis?

Yeah, why else watch the west coast games at midnight than to see if J.J. Putz gets the save? It's made everything meaningful in a way the game might not often seem. I don't understand the people that JUST want the fantasy angle, but hey, if that's how you watch the game, cool. I don't go to the ballpark and think pitching mechanics; I'm thinking "Do they have anything other than Bud Light?"

3-Writing about injuries by necessity involves a lot of medical jargon. The last column of yours I read included words like "Costochondritis", which is rarely something you see in the same paragraph with "Mariners" or "Josh Hamilton bomb". What's the key to taking such specialized, technical material and making it accessible to a baseball audience?

Explain without talking down. Most of the time, it starts with me having a very general understanding.

4-You've written one of the definitive books on steroid use in baseball with Juiced. In a post-MacNamee, post-multiple-Canseco-book-deal world, what changes would you feel would be needed to bring out a revised edition, and what other sources do you think readers should go to in order to get the - pardon the phrase - straight dope on PEDs?

Definitive is taking it a step too far, but thank you. If more people read it, maybe we wouldn't have a need for most of this discussion, but we're a TMZ society and Jose Canseco will always outsell me and outyell me. There's surprisingly little that's changed. The names of the drugs, the spread of the usage (it's significantly down, but it was always lower than most expected), and such. I think the biggest thing is that we're closer to some of the doomsday scenarios regarding genetic doping and I don't think anyone has any better clue what to do with that yet. That one is a world-changer, not just a game-changer.

5-How exactly does a professional athlete strain an eyelash, anyway? [Ed. - The late San Francisco Giants 3B Chris Brown once notoriously missed a game because of a "strained eyelash".]

Same way you get to Carnegie Hall -- lots of practice.

And so Chris Brown remains a mystery for the ages. Many thanks to the estimable Mr. Carroll for taking the time during this injury-riffic season (yes, that was the sound of another one of my roto league outfielders going down. Ow) to answer these questionsYou can find Will's writing at Baseball Prospectus, Football Outsiders, and SI.com, and hear him regularly on Baseball Prospectus Radio. Until next time…

March 27, 2008 - Off Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Just a quick news update before I head west for WHC. Due largely to travel and time constraints, there will most likely not be a Five for Writing this upcoming Sunday. With luck, things will resume next Sunday, and the list of upcoming interviewees includes comics writer Cullen Bunn (The Damned: Three Days Dead), science fiction novelist David J. Williams, French graphic novelist Henscher, and Devil's Cape-meister Rob Rogers.

On the other hand, to tide you over there's a new Storytellers Unplugged essay entitled "In Memory Yet Black and Twisted". There's also a raft of book reviews up over at Green Man Review - five at last count - for your reading pleasure. One Spider Robinson, one Jack Vance, two graphic novels, and one of the all-time great horror novels by Ramsey Campbell - it's a diverse lot.

Five for Writing: Keith Law

With baseball season just around the corner, today's Five for Writing is a special treat (for me, at the very least). Formerly one of the writers for Baseball Prospectus, Keith Law joined the front office of the Toronto Blue Jays in 2002. By the time he left the organization in 2006, he had risen to the role of Special Assistant to GM J.P. Ricciardi. Currently, he writes regularly about baseball for ESPN.com, as the senior baseball analyst for Scouts, Inc., as well as maintaining his own blog. From his thoughts on the Hall of Fame to what really happened in the Blue Jays' draft HQ on that fateful day in 2005, Keith was gracious enough to give us this week's Five for Writing:

1-With your writing for ESPN.com, you seem to be standing at the intersection of two different debates raging about baseball writing and analysis: statistics-based analysis versus traditional scouting, and mainstream media versus bloggers. How do you see yourself as straddling those divides and integrating all of those approaches?

The key point for me when I write about players, teams, or front-office decisions is to take a single view. I don't present the scouting argument, and then the statistical argument, and hedge every bet. I am responsible for doing the integration myself and presenting one argument to the readers. Because we have Rob Neyer to provide stat-based arguments, and because there are several popular and talented other writers on the net who do the same, like Joe Sheehan, I try to skew my arguments toward the scouting perspective. It's what I was hired to do, and I think it has helped me carve a separate brand identity for myself in a crowded space.

I don't think of myself as a member of the mainstream media or as a blogger. My work doesn't appear on dead trees. Mainstream media writers sit in the press box and collect vapid quotes from players and coaches after the game. I sit in the stands and evaluate players the way scouts do, and I speak to front-office execs and occasionally scouts, nearly always off the record, to gain insight or identify my own mistakes rather than gather quotes. It's a different job.

At the same time, I'm not the stereotypical guy-in-his-mother's-basement. (Other than summers between years in college, I haven't lived with my parents since I was 17.) I go to games. I have to comply with the ethical guidelines of a big media company. I know most of the people whose decisions I praise or criticize. I know most of the writers who draw bloggers' ire. And I have the experience of working within an MLB front office for several years. So I don't fit in either camp.

2-Most of the ex-baseball professionals working in the media are former players, or in rare cases, former managers. You're one of the very few former front office personnel to have moved to the media side of things. What do you think that perspective brings to the table that's different from, say, Joe Morgan's?

I think there's something to be said for having gone through certain processes - evaluation of amateurs, being in the draft room, being at the winter meetings and present at negotiations for trades or with agents, etc. It gives you a better idea of how those processes work in the real world, and it gives you some perspective on what actually matters in terms of winning ballgames or assessing trade value. You'll rarely if ever hear me spout the usual cliches about the game because I know they're bogus, either from my own work with statistics or from significant anecdotal evidence I accumulated during my four-plus years with Toronto.

There's an idea out there that being a former player or manager confers credibility on an analyst. I get that sometimes from readers who dislike what I say, trotting out the tired "well how many years did you play in the big leagues?" appeal to authority. Even before I joined ESPN, I never believed that that had value. Credibility is earned or destroyed by what comes out of your mouth. Every new person I see on TV starts with a blank slate, and the onus is on him or her to earn my trust.

3- Gary Huckabay recently announced on Baseball Prospectus that "baseball analysis is dead". Do you agree, disagree, or wish to analyze the statement further?

I said at the time that I felt the statement was wrong and hyperbolic. It seemed to be a way to garner attention, perhaps to stir up controversy. Baseball analysis is alive and well, but the standard is much higher today than it was five years ago.

4-Hall of Fame debates seem to be getting more and more heated these days, especially along battle lines like Jim Rice's candidacy. They also seem to be the new flashpoint for the stats vs. intangibles debate. Why do you think this is, and how do you think the situation will play itself out long-term?

There are myriad reasons, but one sticks out in my mind. Hall of Fame voting is sort of the last bastion of dinosaur baseball journalism. It's the exclusive province of the BBWAA, and the large number of votes each year ensures anonymity for writers who desire it.

Yet the aggregate results seem to regularly display an obstinate adherence to a completely discredited way of looking at value in baseball. Seventy-five percent of eligible voters thought that Tim Raines, one of the hundred best players to ever take the field, wasn't a Hall of Famer, yet nearly that many thought Jim Rice, who was the third-best player in his own outfield for a few of his prime years, is a Hall of Famer. I think it drives knowledgeable fans nuts that a group of people who, as a group, refuse to acknowledge the most basic facets of how baseball games are won and lost control so much of the flow of baseball information.

I'll make a confession: I don't care all that much about the Hall of Fame. Its relevance to the game is extremely limited, and Halls of Fame in general are exercises in self-congratulation. I speak up, loudly, about Hall of Fame elections because I despise the process, and the way that so many voters pat themselves on the back for objectively incorrect choices.

I should add the obvious caveat, which is that there are many intelligent and thoughtful baseball writers in the mainstream media, many of whom cast Hall of Fame ballots. They're just outnumbered by people who still think RBI are the measure of a hitter and W-L record is the measure of a pitcher. Those ideas are analogous to the idea that each human sperm contains a homonculus.

5-What are you going to do to the next person who asks you in a chat why the Jays didn't draft Troy Tulowitzki while you were there? {Ed. - The Blue Jays famously picked pitcher Ricky Romero over their expected - and Keith-Law-recommended - choice, shortstop Troy Tulowitzki in the 2005 amateur baseball draft. Last year, Tulowitzki helped lead the Colorado Rockies to the World Series; Romero struggled in the minor leagues.)

Oh, that never gets old. It's a textbook example of a managerial failure. The consensus of the people who were hired to evaluate players was to take Tulowitzki over Romero. (It wasn't unanimous, but it was the majority opinion.) The GM substituted his own evaluations, based on one observation for each player and a flawed one at that for Tulowitzki, who was just coming off of a wrist injury. Several of us made the case for Tulowitzki over Romero, myself included, but Ricciardi is not one to change his mind, and I always thought he rather enjoyed digging in his heels when anyone questioned a decision. There had to be a million dollars in salaries sitting in that draft room, and the GM overruled them. If you're going to hire talented people and pay them all that money, let them do their jobs. The fact that the decision has backfired so spectacularly just justifies that point - if the Jays had Tulowitzki at short, they'd probably be one of the top four teams in the AL.

It would probably be tacky of me to thank J.P. Ricciardi on behalf of my long-running N.L.-only fantasy baseball team, which is now built largely around Troy Tulowitzki. That being said, it is entirely appropriate to thank Keith Law for taking the time to answer these questions. You can keep up with Keith's work at ESPN.com, as well as at The Dish, where he shares his thoughts on literature, food, and occasionally baseball as well. Until next time…

March 22, 2008 - Reading at WHC

To quote Sean Connery in Dragonheart, "I am the lasht one!" 12:30 on Sunday, that's me. I fully intend to have "Carmina Burana" going in the background so it's suitably apocalyptic and finale-like.

March 21, 2008 - Congrats to Matz

Congratulations to Ubisoft coworker (and Five for Writing victim) Matz, a.k.a. Alexis Nolent, whose graphic novel Cyclopes just got picked up by Warner Brothers for a feature film deal. The movie will be directed by James Mangold, previously responsible for 3:10 to Yuma and Walk the Line.

Five for Writing: Susan O'Connor

Susan O'Connor is one of the best-known and most visible video game writers in the field. From her stellar body of work to her tireless advocacy for the role of game writing in game development to her leadership of the writers' track of the Austin GDC, Susan is a force to be reckoned with in the video game writing world. She also is a force to be reckoned with while interviewing, as you'll see below. From her thoughts on why game writing isn't a sausage factory to her criteria for projects to whether she'd kill a small child for the sake of mutagenic goo, here's Five for Writing with Susan O'Connor:

1-Every game writer is constantly asked "how do I get into game writing." Let's turn that around - how did /you/ get into game writing?

By accident, I'm afraid. I was looking for a writing position - any place would do; I was starting out so I would have written haikus on the sidewalk if somebody paid me for the trouble. A friend of a friend introduced me to a producer at a small games studio in Austin. They produced kids' games, and they were ramping up production on a slumber party game. Four little-girl avatars, onscreen jabbering all the time = lots of talk. So they needed a full-time writer, and I got the job, even though I was completely unqualified. Except for the fact that I had past experience as a little girl, and therefore understood the slumber-party phenomenon.

What makes video game writing different from, say, writing movies or television?

The player and the writer tell the story together. I think it's the game writer's job to feed the player's imagination, so that he can become engaged with the world. In a perfect world, the writer's story and the player's story connect - and in a REALLY perfect world, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Game development is, to be honest, very much still a boys' club. However, many of the best and best-known game writers (such as yourself, Marianne Krawczyk, Rhianna Pratchett, and many others) are women. Is this indicative of a larger change within the industry, or is there just something about game writing that lends itself to a different sort of gender balance than the rest of gamedev?

When you say boys' club, you mean sausage factory, right? HA! Well I'm flattered to be counted in such good company. I think writing is a gender-neutral exercise. Anybody can do it, as long as you don't mind opening a vein. Good writing is emotionally honest and revealing. And our society really teaches guys to shove their feelings way deep down inside. That becomes a handicap when it's time to put pen to paper and write a good story. The older I get, the better writer I become - because I'm slowly, painfully learning what it is that makes people tick.

You've been a part of numerous projects that have garnered both critical raves and financial success. What sort of criteria do you use when you're looking at a project?

I look for a couple of things. Well, more than a couple. What kind of story/story world/game do they already have in place - and is it compelling? Second, how do they collaborate? Third, have they worked on a story-heavy game before? Fourth, do they have somebody in-house (like a narrative designer) who will be running interference between story and game development? Fifth, who are they and what have they done? Sixth, are they guys I'd want to have a beer with? Wow! That's a serious list. I didn't realize I had one, to be honest. Well I'm sure they have a list of criteria they apply when they consider me for the job.

Would you, in fact, harvest a Little Sister?

No. It's too hard to have any objectivity when it comes to them. I used to be a little girl myself.

You can find Susan's website and check out her numerous credits, awards, and cool projects. Or, you can come to Austin GDC and just bask in her general coolness. Many thanks to Susan for taking time out of her insanely busy schedule to answer these questions. Until next time…

March 12, 2008 - World Horror Convention Panel Schedule

Here's my panel schedule for WHC, for those of you who are attending and looking to throw rotten fruit at me live and in person:

1:00-1:50 - Horror video games
Richard Dansky, Christopher Treagus

2:00-2:50 - Writing (and marketing) an RPG
Richard Dansky, Christopher Treagus

6:00-6:50 pm - Call of Cthulhu: the best horror RPG on the market?
Cullen Bunn, Richard Dansky, Cody Goodfellow

Sunday:

2:00-2; 50 pm - The best horror games
Cullen Bunn, Richard Dansky, Christopher Treagus

I'll also be part of the mass autographing session. Otherwise, I suspect I will be wandering around and generally causing trouble. I'm good at that, you know.

Five for Writing: Lucien Soulban

Confession time: Lucien Soulban and I have been friends for a long, long time. We first met face-to-face during the disastrous trip I took for the Montreal By Night book release party, but had worked together before that on numerous books for White Wolf: Buried Secrets, Guildbook: Haunters, and more. At the end of my White Wolf tenure, the tables were turned, and I wrote for Lucien on the critically acclaimed series Orpheus.

That was, as they say, years ago. In the intervening years, Lucien's made waves as a fiction writer (The Alien Sea, a story in the upcoming anthology Blood Lite), a video game writer (Warhammer: Dawn of War, Rainbow Six: Vegas) and RPG writer (Lockdown and Hero High for Mutants and Masterminds). The busiest man in Montreal, I give you Five for Writing with Lucien Soulban:

Necromunda, the World of Darkness, and Dragonlance are three of the most recognizable settings in tabletop RPGs, and you've done a novel set in each. Which is your favorite sandbox to play in, and why?

The diplomatic answer would be: Why, all of them, of course! That said, I'd have to say each of them lets me stretch a different writing muscle. The Warhammer 40K line is science-fantasy, and military to boot, so I get to write war fiction. World of Darkness allowed me to write horror… sort of. I'd have to say that I actually enjoyed writing the WoD novel the least. There was an element of the supernatural lacking for me, even though I was happy with the results. Well… that and I got tired of fans telling me I didn't write like another author and why that was bad.

Dragonlance, however, holds a special place in my life, primarily because I devoured the novels when I was growing up in Saudi Arabia. I drew war maps of the different armies and where they battled for a campaign that never saw the light of day. But I was hooked, so the opportunity to write for that world is both fulfilling and it's coming full circle from me as gamer to me as professional. Otherwise, Dragonlance also has the most leeway because it is fantasy. Magic can account for a great many original ideas, so I rarely feel constrained.

Your video game work, with credits including Kim Possible and Tom Clancy games, is very different from your fiction. Even the licensed novels you've done tend to have a dark edge to them, while Chicken Little…not so much. How do you see the dichotomy between the games you write and the fiction choices you make?

What, you didn't get the subtext of Chicken Little's cannibalism through his love of Chicken McNuggets? Oh wait… I think they excised that part of the dialog. Fact is, there is no real dichotomy for me. It's just different personality elements that rise to the fore or fade into the background as I need them. I would classify it more as an ability to compartmentalize different elements of my personality. Writers are afflicted with multiple personas…writing demands it in our characterizations and in our stories. We may feel comfortable with one or two voices, but it's the ability to tackle different voices and types of story that keeps our writing fresh and invigorated. In my case, there's my humor, there's my dark imagination, my childlike sense of whimsy, my fascination with history and war, etc. No dichotomy, just elements of myself that I let loose.

One thing that does help, however, is the profound difference writing fiction and writing in script format. They are two different muscle groups mentally, and I find that writing for either also requires I tap differing parts of the imagination. In fiction, I need to worry about setting and lighting… framing the shot essentially. In script format, I'm free to ignore those and focus on writing dialogs in as concise a manner as I can.

You've written extensively in both tabletop and video games. What, in your opinion, is the difference between the two forms, and are there any overlaps or similarities?

The most immediate difference is that writing for a tabletop game can be a solo experience. Your only lifeline is your editor and maybe your co-writers. The experience is very much insular… in your own head. That allows you to develop an idea and run with it through the first draft. Videogames, on the other hand, are a team effort… collaboration in the truest sense of the word. You can't go off writing whatever you want, everything you do relates to another team. Your environments are tied into level design, your character actions relate to animation and programming, your dialogs must fit a format outlined by the sound engineer. The list goes on, but writing for videogames is very modular and very reliant on the social dynamics of your coworkers. Check your ego at the door… you need to play well with others.

To borrow a line that I once used when comparing writing for novels and videogames, game writing can benefit from embellishment, but videogames will suffer from it. That said, videogames force you to be economical in a creative way. The dialogs can end up being far punchier than RPG writing.

Another difference is that videogames rely on dramatic conventions, because the voice you're writing in belongs to a character. Paper and Pen RPGs, however, are more technical in their approach, giving the reader the where, whys and hows of their subject matter.

Where they overlap is that at their mutual core, it's about imparting information. In the case of videogames, you're using dramatic elements to relate information, while in tabletop games, you're using rules and world-fact to do the same. In the end, however, the reader comes away knowing more about their purpose in the game environment.

With Orpheus, you pretty much pioneered the idea of an episodic RPG mini-series. What was that like, compared to working on longer-term properties, and did it provide any particular challenges or creative rewards?

Oof… prepare for a short answer made long. I loved working on Orpheus, possibly more than any other roleplaying game. White Wolf made my career and helped me improve as a writer. I felt like I was given a sacred honor by a company I held in high esteem, by editors and line developers I held in higher regard.

Working on longer-term projects is a bit of an assembly line mentality. You churn out books trying to detail as much of the world as you can, knowing that every book you release somehow diminishes the sense of wonder by demystifying everything under a pile of facts. Worse yet, each book detailing the world somehow locks the players and GM into running canon. They are part of a storyline that they can rarely hope to influence because the world is set or the timeline hasn't been determined yet. Thus, books can actually derail campaigns because they go against the wishes of its fans. With Orpheus, I could detail enough of the world to run people in a direction, I could still maintain a sense of mystery about the world and its monsters, and I could offer advice with each book for players who didn't want to follow canon.

More importantly, it allowed me to tell a story without the X-Files or Lost factor… where people want answers instead of being strung along with more questions. Orpheus was all about Setting the World, Presenting the Global Mystery, Investigating the Mystery, Discovering a Greater Truth, Taking Matters into Their Own Hands and Resolving the Situation. Six books… each pushing the storyline along and falling along those guidelines.

As for the challenges… let's start with trying to foresee potential hurdles that might arise in the future. With Orpheus, I used the old writing adage of "If you fire a gun in Act III, you better have shown the gun in Act I, and if you show a gun in Act I, you better damn well fire it by Act III." Orpheus forced me to take a global approach to the game, where I had to consider where the game was going to better foreshadow events in each book up to the ending. That said, man is it easy to overlook things and not realize how important they are until your actually writing about said event.

Another challenge was taking into account the fact that some people didn't want an evolving world. They might choose to play in one specific point in time, or not agree with where I was taking the story. While I couldn't account for every facet of the game, I could offer advice and acknowledge the reader's imagination and will. That proved to be a crucial lesson for me in game writing: Provide the tools and rules for people to contribute to the process just by running a game. It was no longer about what I wanted to do, but how I wanted to enable the player and game master to make the game their own. That way, no player or rules' lawyer could ever say: But that's not in the rules!

For the rewards, the fan enthusiasm about the project and the fact that it's still held up as a model of something done right is something that warms my heart. Could I have done more with it, sure… but that's experience talking. The end result is that I don't regret an inch of the process, and the fan support is what makes it all worthwhile.

You and I have known each other for a long time, and have shared many mutually amusing, embarrassing, and otherwise noteworthy incidents. What's the one anecdote you absolutely don't want related in this space?

One of those question, eh? You do realize that I'll expect quid pro quo the next time we go out to The Keg, right? Okay, but I do this knowing that I'll forever scar Maurice Broaddus, who is straight and yet still offended I'm not attracted to him whatsoever. When I first met you, I thought you were cute and considered hitting on you. Then that pesky hetero thing came up and, now, I couldn't think of having a finer friend.

Oh… and sometimes, my genitals fall asleep. Pins and needles asleep. You could almost call it a "prick-ly situation."

OK, this definitely qualifies as the most revealing interview I've done. And don't tell Lucien, folks, but even if I had hit on me, I probably wouldn't have noticed - I tend to be oblivious that way. In the meantime, you can find his work in finer videogame and bookstores everywhere, and more of his wit and wisdom at his website. Next week, we have award-winning game writer Susan O'Connor. Until then...

March 6, 2008

Congratulations to the inimitable Henscher (no, I'm not telling you his real name - all these French comics guys have cool aliases), whose first graphic novel has emerged from the presses into the light of day today! The book is entitled Brothers in Blood, and it's the first release in a planned series called Lords of the Knives. It's chock full of medieval skullduggery, so if you like getting your French comics schwerve on, check it out (and before you ask, yes, it's in French).

Switching gears, for a slightly different take on the whole interview thing, there's this one, done by old friend and Boston College classmate Tracy Montoya (whom you may remember from her Five for Writing a while back). Tracy drags back the curtain on the moment when I asked her to join my Vampire game back in Boston, among other things, and gives some seriously good interview. Just don't ask her about Denise Austin...

Last but not least, the cover for Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing is here , for your perusal and enjoyment. And yes, those are in fact evil pumpkins.

March 4, 2008

Rob Rogers, author of Devil's Cape, has a new interview with me up at his website. Check out his site for all sorts of goodness, and his novel for what looks to be some serious superpowered coolness. You can find the interview here.

Five for Writing: David Niall Wilson

David Niall Wilson is a busy guy. From co-wrangling the writers' collective blog Storytellers Unplugged (for which he received a Bram Stoker Award nomination) to consistently producing critically acclaimed, thought-provoking horror novels that meditate on faith, music, and more, David is a writer who is constantly, visibly writing. His most recent novel, Ancient Eyes, literally sold out before it was released, and his short story collection, Defining Moments is also up for a Stoker this year. With all of that heavyweight cred on David's side, it seems natural to get his take on how dismal the Great Dismal Swamp really is, what he really thinks of Tom Clancy, and what it will take to get him to sing, dance, and go to DisneyWorld. Without further ado, I give you Five for Writing: David Niall Wilson:

1-On your website, you've discussed tying together your novels Deep Blue and Ancient Eyes, as well as some of your other work. Is this something you've always had in mind, or did you find the threads of your work growing together on their own? And if so, how did it all come together?

I don't think I consciously set out to tie my works together, though several of the locations that made it simple to do so were created (originally) for stories and novels based on a particular set of characters. I think I thought it would be one of many worlds, perhaps, and didn't understand at the time how big the "entirety" of a world could become without the people and places overwhelming one another.

The three novel tie-in you are talking about is Deep Blue, Ancient Eyes, and an as-yet-unwritten third book titled "The Bone Witch." Deep Blue came first. I started it out in my fictional town of San Valencez, California, which is based loosely on my time in San Diego. They took off into the mountains of California, and ended their "quest" in a place called Friendly, California. Friendly is a TINY fundamentalist town way off the beaten track. It might amuse you to know that one of the characters, Dexter, roughly ties in to the Wraith: The Oblivion novel you edited for me so long ago, (Ed. - For the curious, it was Except You Go Through Shadow, in The Essential World of Darkness) and the snake-handling church that Love Constantine was associated with.

When I started writing Ancient Eyes, which began in my head late one night after watching the movie Next of Kin, I had my character, Abraham Carlson, walking back up a mountain, and when I brought that story fragment out and built a novel around it, I made it one peak over from Friendly, California. Not sure what made me do that, but it worked out beautifully. That snippet didn't end up as chapter one, but got stuck away in the middle somewhere…what it DID do was to help me tie it all together.

The idea for The Bone Witch was born in my novella "Roll Them Bones," which takes place in the fictional town of Random, Illinois. I knew I needed to send Brandt and the band from Deep Blue that way, and when it occurred to me that it would be cool to have Abraham along with him…I thought it was just possible they could all meet in a bar at the base of the mountain, and that old Wally could show up and shove them on their way.

Not to mention that in my (as yet unpublished) novel "On the Third Day" the Cathedral of San Marcos by the Sea, which is visible from the beach cottage where Abraham Carlson lives, is the setting for yet another strange novel, and my upcoming book Maelstrom takes place in Lavender, California, right outside San Valencez. Vintage Soul, my supernatural "urban mystery" takes place on the "dark side" of San Valencez…it's all one big happy world.

I think when I started to realize how much I loved what King did with his Dark Tower books, drawing everything from Salem's Lot all the way up through his new work into one intricate universe, I knew it was a direction that appealed to me as well…so consciously or subconsciously, it's all drawing in upon itself. Did I even come close to answering the actual question?

2-Having served in the U.S. Navy (and written about it memorably at Storytellers Unplugged), you'd nevertheless not gone the technothriller route that a great many writers with military experience seem to favor. What is it about horror, as opposed to the Andy McNab model, that appeals to you?

Even though my "thing" in the US Navy was electronics, and I've always been pretty much of a techno geek, it's always been function for me - just a means to an end. I got more than enough ships and yes sirs and no sirs from my time in the USN to last me a lifetime, and I couldn't imagine spending my creative time trying to build models of ships in words. I've written a few short stories based on sailors on liberty, and I used a lot of my military background in the novel The Mote in Andrea's Eye, which IS a technothriller - AND there's an unfinished novel titled "Faded Giant," which is another code word like "Broken Arrow," dealing with nuclear material. It just isn't what I love. I watch and read dark fantasy, horror, and mystery. Clancy bores the hell out of me (sorry Rich) (Ed. - No apologies necessary). I've always been more at home with things that go bump in the dark than I was with things that go "blip" on radar, and people can get all the terrorists and war from the news that they need…so for me it was never really a question.

I enjoyed my time in the military for the adventure and the wealth of experience, but I don't really enjoy "the military," if that makes sense. I was pleased to get out, and though I still work for Government contractors, I find it no more appealing to write about now than I did in the past.

3-You're one of the driving forces behind Storytellers Unplugged. At this point, it's been going strong for coming up on three years. What inspired it, and where do you see it going in the future?

The inspiration for it was all Joe Nassise. To be honest, I tried to talk myself out of it when Joe first brought it up. I was already involved, at the time, in a group blog for Five Star authors, and it was taking up too much time. Still, we started out with a pretty cool "core" group, and the idea grew on me. In the early days, it was hard to get people to be on time, it was hard to get people to take it seriously, and even Joe got pulled away for quite a while. At some point Janet Berliner and Thomas Sullivan convinced me that it was up to me to keep it going, so I started jumping in and putting up wall prints and coming up with new folks - and slowly the whole thing came together.

We've had everything from the original group of horror authors we started with to fantasy authors, audio book narrators, booksellers, mainstream and mystery authors - the group has become very diverse, and the content has evolved along with it. We are trying not to be another "how to" place for writers, but more of an experience for those interested in writing. The site is a place where authors share their lives, their work, their thoughts and processes. Sometimes they get "teachy" and "preachy," but that's okay too…it's the diversity that matters.

In the months and years to come, I'd like to see it become daily reading for aspiring and practicing authors everywhere. The more people who enjoy Storytellers Unplugged, the more people who are likely to try our books. The more Thomas Sullivan and Richard Dansky readers show up to read a David Niall Wilson essay, the more chances I have to win fans and influence people. We've also discussed, at some point, culling the archives for a print project or two. Who knows? For the moment it allows me to feed off the inspiration and words of my peers, and I can get mighty hungry…

4-Is there a better place on earth for a writer of dark fiction to live than in North Carolina's Great Dismal Swamp? Is it as horror-worthy as it sounds, and does it inform any elements of your writing?

We haven't gotten out into the "swamp proper" yet, but the area is amazing. I think it's not so much this particular area, but the out-in-the-boondocks sort of location that I love. I base a lot of my spookier, more memorable fiction on things I recall from very small town Illinois, and I have used this area - near Hertford and my fictional town of Old Mill - to build on that with a more southern flair.

I'm working on a story now titled "Hickory Nuts & Bones" that uses images from my childhood walking the railroad tracks with my grandfather…my story "The Call of Farther Shores" that got so much notice was born in the small-town barber shops of my youth. Big cities and small towns have very different fictional dynamics. In a big city, you withdraw into very focused imagery to keep all the sensory influences in hand. In the country, you can't get the walls close enough. Things are exposed. Things that would be ready to hand just aren't, and things you might take for granted - safe things- are not to be had at all. There is a deep, frightening vulnerability in the country, and particularly in the south, that I love to work with.

The history is still visible through the skeleton of the modern world. The graves are hundreds of years old, not ten. The old homes are really OLD homes, and the stories and legends linger. I love the idea of living on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp more even than the reality of it, and the swamp I write about is a bigger-than-life not-quite-like-it-is place that gives me a LOT of leeway I would have more trouble finding in an urban setting. The Gods knew what they were doing when they called me to the swamp.

5-You're currently nominated for the Bram Stoker Award in three categories: Fiction Collection (Defining Moments), Short Fiction ("The Gentle Brush of Wings") and Nonfiction (Storytellers Unplugged). If you win all three, will you in fact go to DisneyWorld?

I'm still reeling over the triple nomination. I've been on that final ballot a total of two times in all the twenty plus years I've been associated with the HWA. My novella "Roll Them Bones" was a finalist, but didn't win, and I won for poetry along with Rain Graves and Mark McLaughlin for the multi-author collection "The Gossamer Eye." All the hundred and fifty plus short stories and fourteen or so novels were passed over. Now - in one year - I feel things turning. It's not just the awards.

Ancient Eyes sold out before it even really went on sale. I have four, maybe five books due out in the near future…all at once. One of those books is with Neil Gaiman and Lisa Snelling - and could be a career maker, considering how far reaching the fandom associated with my two collaborators can be. It's like things shifted in some other dimension, and suddenly this IS Disney Land…and I'm already there, without a clue how it happened.

In any case, I'd like nothing better. It's a small world, after all - and I do have a four year old daughter. I'll go on record now…if I win a Stoker I'll dance. If I win two? I'll sing. If I win THREE - yep - check me out at Pirates of the Caribbean, because I'm on my way…

Many thanks to David for taking the time to answer these. You can find his work and writing at his websites, and order Ancient Eyes directly from David himself. Until next time…

February 27, 2008

I'm back from GDC and off the road for a couple of weeks (I hope), with plenty of catchup - and laundry - to do. Edits are proceeding well on Vaporware, and the mystery collaboration project is chugging along as well. GDC, for what it was worth, was a blast, a chance to see old friends, meet virtual acquaintances in the flesh, and pick the brains of some of the sharpest people in game development.

Highlights included meeting Yahtzee Croshaw (of Zero Punctuation fame) and game writer Rhianna Pratchett, sitting down with Green Ronin's Chris Pramas for the first time in years, and plotting world domination with Mark Terrano and Susan O'Connor of the AGDC Writers' Track board. Many thanks to the generous folks at Borderlands, who were wonderful hosts. Borderlands is one of those bookstores that has its own line item in the budget, if you take my meaning, and it was a pleasure seeing the store in the brick and mortar for the first time. Thanks also to the folks who came out (Hi, Simon!) - here's hoping you enjoyed the festivities as much as I did.

Speaking of books and San Francisco, the fine folks at A.K. Peters had a proof of Professional Techniques For Video Game Writing, the first look I'd gotten at it. With luck, it will be out on shelves soon, and I think it's going to be a valuable resource to anyone interested in the day to day of video game writing.

And lest ye be without reading material in the pixelated wasteland, there's a new Storytellers Unplugged essay up at the site, as well as a review of Peter Cannon's Lovecraft Chronicles over at Green Man Review.

Five for Writing readers, I haven't forgotten you. Look for interviews with Susan O'Connor, David Niall Wilson, Cullen Bunn, Lucien Soulban and more, coming soon.

February 18, 2008

A fast update before a long plane ride...

First of all, it's the last time I mention the signing at Borderlands on Saturday. Honest.

Second, it now looks like I'll be attending Book Expo America in Los Angeles at the end of May.

Third, GDC will witness the unveiling of Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing, the latest magnum opus from the IGDA Game Writers' SIG. Published by the fine folks at A.K. Peters, the book breaks down game writing by role and technique. For my part, I contributed the chapter on Script Doctoring (#15, if you're looking for which one to skip.) Other chapters were produced by luminaries such as Evan Skolnick and Rhianna Pratchett, and I'm looking forward to finally seeing the whole book. Street date has not yet been announced, but when it is, I promise I'll let you know.

On the game side, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements, an XBox 360 reworking of the original PC Dark Messiah, has hit shelves. The shelves, in turn, cast fireball and then tried a sword combo strike. Or maybe not, but what the heck, it was worth a shot.

And last but not least, the winners of the Attack of the Contest II were Alex Helm and Matt McElroy. Congrats, and thanks!

February 16, 2008

With both GDC and the Borderlands appearance sneaking up (OK, barreling toward me), I wanted to get in a quick update before hitting the road again. Last week I was in the frozen wilds of Montreal - maybe not so wild, but definitely frozen - so I just have a few quick tidbits whilst I thaw out. First up, I'm very pleased to note that Firefly Rain just got a starred review in Publishers Weekly. This is, as they say, a big deal, and you can read the extremely nice things they said about the book here.

Next up, over at Dark Scribe magazine, On Writing Horror copped a win for Readers Choice: Best Dark Genre Book of Non-Fiction. Kudos to the mighty editorial powers of Mort Castle, and to all of my fellow contributors to that particlar tome.

In a similar vein, Storytellers Unplugged has been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. Vote early, vote often! (Just kidding, rules committee - you can put the axe down now. Honest.)

There's a new appearance on the calendar, as I'll be giving a talk on May 3rd at the Cameron Village branch of the Wake County Public Library system. I was a library rat as a kid - hard to believe, I know - and I just love wandering around being surrounded by all those books and folks intently reading. So, it's always a pleasure to be asked to do something for or at a library. I'll post more details on this one as things get closer to fruition.

And on a last note, there's now an iMix up at the iTunes store of songs that were key in the composition of Firefly Rain. If you're so inclined to discover what was in my ears while the book was in my head, you can find the iMix here.

February 10, 2008

Many thanks to all the folks who joined us at the Regulator on Thursday. It was a blast, the reading went well (I think), and I managed to avoid either completely spacing on what I'd written or going through the entire book in one breath and run-on sentence. In any case, here's a few photos from the evening. A special thanks to nephew Michael, who manned the camera whilst I was psyching myself up.

That's Michael in the stylish knit cap. And yes, I am once again wearing my lucky author grey-shirt-and-braces combo. Tom Wolfe it ain't, but it's getting there...

Five For Writing: Evan Skolnick

Welcome back to Five For Writing, folks. This year's first interviewee is the multitalented Evan Skolnick, Editorial Director for video game studio Vicarious Visions. A writer on games including Spider-Man 3, X-Men Legends 2, and Ultimate Spiderman, Evan comes by it honestly - he's also a former comics writer and editor who's written for legendary characters like Dr. Strange, the Hulk, and of course Spider-Man. Evan's also a staple at game development conferences, including GDC and the Austin GDC, where his talks on game-writings are SRO. But for the moment, he's all ours, and has plenty to dish about comic book movie adaptations, how game writing relates to Star Trek, and most importantly, why the Hartford Whalers are dead to him. Without further ado, I present Five For Writing with Evan Skolnick:

1-Your first publication was a self-published gaming 'zine dedicated to Dungeons and Dragons, and your first comics work was as an editor. Do you view yourself as an editor or as a writer first, and how does the experience with one inform your work as the other?

A very perceptive question, and one that I've wrestled with over the years. While I find the writing experience extremely fulfilling and I'm proud of most of the writing work I've done, when I'm honest with myself I have to admit that I seem to be a stronger editor. Perhaps some of the writers whose work I've edited over the years would disagree, but I believe I have a particular ability to look at the work of another writer and quickly figure out what might make it better. Starting from a blank page isn't quite as effortless for me. And editing my own stuff, well... most writers are aware that it's almost impossible to effectively edit one's own work, due to being too close to it.

During the time I was writing and editing for Marvel Comics there was a very large editorial staff, and so it was a great opportunity to see firsthand the gamut of editorial styles, and figure out what attributes I did and didn't want to emulate. One area I specifically concentrated on was trying to keep my mind open. Sometimes a writer and I would agree on the phone about where a certain storyline was going to go, but when the script arrived I would find the writer had delivered something quite different. Rather than being annoyed and rejecting the new take simply on the basis of it not being what I expected, I would very consciously try to read it with an open mind and give it a chance to win me over. And I'd say at least half of the time that's exactly what happened, because the writer had discovered a superior solution during the writing process. I could relate to that, being a writer myself.

So, I like to think my experiences as a writer kept me from being a jerk of an editor - because I knew what it was like to be on both sides of that desk - but like a writer trying to edit his own work, I'm probably the person with the least perspective on that.

2-Your talk at last year's Austin GDC was titled "Everything I Needed to Know About Game Writing, I Learned From Star Trek". Everything?

Well, not quite. As I said during the lecture itself, I couldn't teach the audience everything I know about game writing because we only had an hour, and teaching everything I know could take up to 90 minutes.

My session's title, of course, was a reference to that sickeningly sweet book from the 1980's called All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. For anyone not familiar with the book, it's a collection of presumably heartwarming essays, including one after which the book is titled. In that essay, the writer muses that the simple lessons taught in kindergarten - sharing, being kind to others, cleaning up after oneself, etc. - are rules that adults should pay more attention to in their daily lives, as well as on a global scale. So, simple truths that should be obvious, but somehow aren't always applied.

I thought the title was catchy and appropriate for a lecture in which I lay down some solid foundational lessons in fiction writing, all drawn upon a common frame of reference: Star Trek. And yes, I did learn a hell of a lot about good storytelling from watching those wonderful repeats in the 1970's, which continue to inform my writing today. Long live Captain Kirk!

3-Comic book-related movies are big at the moment, but pretty much all of them seem to be leaning on much older stories from the various characters' mythologies. As a former comics writer, do you prefer the older stories, or would you like to see something more recent take center stage? And are there any characters you think would make compelling movies (or games) that haven't yet?

Generally I think the writers of these big-screen adaptations are drawing upon the foundational periods in the characters' lives - their origin, their first adventure, and so forth - because that's where the characters exist in their purest and simplest form. Later on, you tend to see a lot of complicated, messy stuff that may not translate as well outside the serialized comics medium and its intricate continuity.

And I was as guilty of that as anybody. When I look back on my run as writer of New Warriors - having taken over the reins four-and-a-half years into the series - I'd say nearly all of my issues were heavily tied into continuity I inherited, created, or purposely dug up from the rich history of the characters. I felt like it made for good monthly reading. But it would be next to impossible to extract any of my Warriors storylines from continuity and blow them up to the big screen without jettisoning and/or altering a lot of the material.

The movie writers do all this, and more. If you look at any of the recent superhero movies based on comics characters, you'll notice that the writers draw upon key moments from various points in the characters' decades of comic book stories, weaving unrelated characters, situations and scenes together. In Spider-Man 3, for example, you have Spidey's first encounter with Sandman - which occurred in the comics way back in 1963 - mixed together with the appearance of Venom, which didn't happen until 1988.

The older comic stories, pre-1985 or so, tend to be more naïve, simplistic and/or outdated, and so can need a good deal of sprucing up to match a modern sensibility - which is vital to maximize the mass market appeal of the movie. It can't feel old or cheesy. The modern comic stories, on the other hand, are probably more movie-script-ready, but the most prominent ones seem increasingly cynical and deconstructive of the heroic ideal. There's a certain movie audience who will appreciate that, but most moviegoers who attend a superhero movie aren't going in there looking for moral ambiguity or heavy questions. They want to be entertained by fantasy and special effects and a likeable hero. The older stories are more likely to deliver these.

And, of course, let's not forget that some comic books aren't about superheroes at all, and have made for compelling films, such as Road to Perdition and V for Vendetta.

But when it comes to superheroes, there are so many untapped comic book characters out there that the leading publishers could feed off their massive I.P. collections for decades to come and not run out of good material. A few characters I'd love to see make it to the big screen from Marvel are Turbo, Helix, Khaos, Timeslip, Tracer, and Hybrid. But I may be a bit biased on those... ;-)

4-There seems to be a growing trend of comics writers moving into games, spearheaded, of course, by yourself. What's the impetus behind that, and do you think there's anything about comics writing that lends itself to video games?

I hadn't really noticed that this was a specific trend, which is odd because I never miss an opportunity to claim myself to be a trendsetter.

I think what's happening is that writers in general are perhaps more transportable than they used to be. In the past it seems like writers who found success in a medium were pretty much stuck there. Maybe "stuck" is too strong a word, but they tended to stay put. Oh, occasionally you'd see a comics writer make good and "graduate" to TV or film writing, never to return to comics again. But for the most part you saw a writer reach the top of his form in one medium, and stay there for the rest of his career.

And there was a whole fiction-writing food chain, with "downward" mobility highly discouraged. Movie writers poo-pooed TV writers, TV writers poo-pooed novelists, novelists poo-pooed animation writers, animation writers poo-pooed comic book writers, and comic book writers didn't really have anyone to poo-poo, per se. I mean, we might have kicked a playwright in the groin if we passed one on the street, but how often did opportunities like that come up? Not often enough. So, we were essentially poo-poo-less.

Today comics writers who make the transition to movies or TV often keep their hands in comics. We also see established movie and TV writers moving over to comics, game writers writing for comics, comics writers moving over to novels, and other cross-media intermingling. With all of these writers jumping from medium to medium, they of course need to become cognizant of each new form's conventions, limitations and strengths.

As for comics writing in particular lending itself to that of video games, I'd say the parallels are limited to the common foundational rules of good storytelling that apply to any fiction-based medium, and the subject matter, which is often similar between comics and games (superhuman abilities, physical conflict, sci-fi/fantasy, wish fulfillment). Those elements aside, the comics writer who is not intimately familiar with video game development isn't any better prepared than any other professional fiction writer. They'll need to gain an understanding of the myriad differences, pitfalls and challenges of writing for an interactive medium.

5-You're originally from Hartford. How did it feel when the Hartford Whalers finally won the Stanley Cup in their reincarnation as the Carolina Hurricanes, and can you hum "Brass Bonanza"?

I'll answer the last part of the question first, as you've now got that victory theme song echoing through my head (thank you very much!). When I was a kid my dad used to take my brother and me to at least two or three Whalers games a season, starting when they were in the WHA as the New England Whalers and continuing on during their NHL tenure as the Hartford Whalers. We had a blast.

But it apparently wasn't enough for me to hear "Brass Bonanza" every time the Whalers were introduced or scored a goal. I actually used to own the 45 RPM single of "Brass Bonanza" (though I think on the record it actually just said "Whalers Victory Song"). So, yes, I can certainly hum the first few bars for you. And oddly enough, on the B-side of this single was a four-minute recording of the longest in-game fight in WHA history, between the Whalers and some other team [ed - it's the link at the bottom of the linked page]. Seriously, it's four minutes of sports announcers yelling things like, "Ohhh, he coldcocked him!" I didn't know what that word meant, but it didn't sound good.

Once the franchise left Hartford, abandoned the entire Northeast and then changed their name for good measure, the Whalers ceased to exist for me. I haven't followed the franchise since then and I wasn't even aware that they'd won the Stanley Cup until I read your question. I follow the Hurricanes with all the interest and investment that Boston baseball fans follow the exploits of the Atlanta Braves; i.e. none. You leave Hartford, you leave my heart, dammit!

Apologies to Evan for bringing up such a painful memory, and many thanks to him for taking the time to answer these questions. If you're going to GDC, you can catch Evan's excellent tutorial there. You can also look for his work from Vicarious Visions in game stores everywhere. Until next time...

February 1, 2008

I'm back in off the road from a short trip that weather made unexpectedly longer. I'll try to dig up an image of what it was like in Chicago last night - a bit of a far cry from the gorgeous, sunny afternoon weather in Durham. (The fact that it was miserable and rainy this morning when I landed is besides the point.).

In the news department, I'm very pleased to announce that I'll be doing a signing at the legendary Borderlands Books in San Francisco on February 23rd at 1 PM. I actually have a line item in my con budgets labeled "Borderlands", so getting to do a signing there is a huge thrill for me. If you're in the Bay Area, I'd love to see you there.

And, as a reminder for the local folks, I've got a reading this Thursday at the Regulator in Durham at 7 PM.

Firefly Rain keeps picking up good reviews. The latest two are from Macabre Ink and Flames Rising. Thanks for the kind words, folks, and here's hoping people continue to enjoy the book.

In the "good work by good folks" department, the James Lowder-edited Astounding Hero Tales has made it to the preliminary Stoker Award ballot. James did a great job of pulling the anthology together, and my story "Missing Pages" in the anthology is much improved for his having taken his red pen to it. Also on the ballot is Storytellers Unplugged, ably guided by David Niall Wilson and Joe Nassise. For the curious, my latest Storytellers essay is up here.

The next one, incidentally, has the working title Vaporware. No more clues as to what it's about - that would be cheating.

January 24, 2008

Attack of the Contest II: Return of the Contest

Because I am shameless, and because I am genuinely interested in hearing what folks think about the book, it's time for Attack of the Contest II: Return of the Contest.

Contest, you ask? What contest? Why, it's a very simple one - post a reader review of Firefly Rain on Amazon.com, and be entered to win valuable prizes. The rules of the contest are simple:

• Step 1 - Post a serious reader review of Firefly Rain to Amazon.com. If you loved it, great, I'm glad to hear it. If you hated it, warn the rest of the reading world. Either way - I'm interested in serious feedback.
• Step 2 - Email me to let me know you posted a review, and that will get you entered.
• Step 3 - Ideally, win. That's it.

Really. Honest.