Huh. Last time I updated this page was Feb 2020. Back then Covid hadn’t even hit the US yet. I was still still figuring it was something that might be confined to Europe, or blow over in a couple months once it hit American shores. Really whiffed on that one.
As much as I’d like to, however, I can’t really blame Covid as the reason it’s taken me more than 2 years to bring you another update. For those of you excited about my work at Archetype Entertainment, don’t panic – we are still working hard to build an amazing game for you! But this post isn’t about that.
Recently, I realized that it’s been seven years since my last book came out. SEVEN YEARS! Damn. In the immortal words of Steve Miller, time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping…
I admit, some of this is on me. I’ve been slacking a little bit when it comes to books. (Slacking for seven years, apparently!) It’s not like I’ve been sitting here doing nothing but golfing and taking trips to Vegas (though I’ve done plenty of that). There have been other projects… unfortunately, a lot of them have fallen by the wayside.
Video game wise, I was still working at BioWare for a few of those seven years. After that, I was the lead writer on a mobile interactive story game called Edge of Extinction released by Storyscape (RIP). And, as I said earlier, I’ve spent the past couple years working on a new project over at Archetype.
But it wasn’t just video games that were occupying my time. For a little while I was helping develop a live action sci-fi political intrigue series (think Game of Thrones in space), but that didn’t get any traction.
After that, I teamed up with one of my former BioWare co-workers to pitch a sci-fi comic series. Unfortunately, none of the publishers we approached were interested until we got an artists attached. We talked to a few artists, but the good ones were already working on other projects. We tried to work with a young up-and-comer, but she flaked on us, and my co-creator and I moved on to other things.
My next project was working with a production studio to write a pilot script for an animated TV series – think X-files meets Rick and Morty. But unfortunately the pilot didn’t get picked up. I finally got a win when I chipped in on Odyssey of the Dragonlords – a new D&D campaign world we launched through a Kickstarter campaign a few years ago.
But while all of that was going on, I was still working on my novels. I know a lot of fans have asked for another Bane novel, but that probably isn’t happening anytime soon. Once Disney took over, they chose to go in a different direction with the Star Wars novels. I (and many other established writers) were cut out of the loop. **shrug**
Some other fans have asked me about doing another Mass Effect novel. But now that I’m with Archetype, it would probably be a conflict of interest to work on a BioWare series… even one I helped create. And they’d already moved on with other authors before I left the company, anyway. **shrug again**
So for the past few years, I’ve been focusing on my own original stories. I’ve bounced around between a few ideas: a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story; a high-fantasy murder mystery; a contemporary action-horror vampire tale. I’ve even kicked around an idea for a historical conspiracy theory spy novel set in Elizabethan England. But in the end, I kept coming back to an idea that’s been rattling around in my brain for at least a decade: a sci-fi thriller set in 2019 Las Vegas! (Why 2019? Honestly, I just didn’t want to write something dealing with Covid… not yet, anyway.)
This project was what I needed to get me writing again. I love Vegas. I love this book. I’m excited, and I hope you are too. Because the book is done. Written, revised, edited… this thing is ready to go! Well, almost ready. You see, writing the book is only the first step. The next thing is figuring out a way to get it published.
And that’s where I am now. Exploring my options. Do I go traditional publisher? Self-publish? There are pros and cons for both. But for now, I feel like I’m just going to KICK the tires and START seeing how things unfold.
And that, my friends, is all I’ve got to say in this update. I know, I know… it’s more of a teaser than an actual update. But if this comes together like I hope, you can expect to see a REAL update here in a few weeks. And then the fun begins…
Drew