Those who know me well know that I have always been a fan of tabletop RPGs. I spent countless hours in my childhood playing games like D&D, Star Frontiers, Villains & Vigilantes, and Champions. Later, in college, I started playing again and that was my first flirtation with writing for games. I sold an NPC to Steve Jackson’s Pyramid magazine and though I never won, I did well in several open-calls. I thought for a while that writing for games was going to be my future, long before I was committed to writing fiction. Eventually, I fell out of gaming and got my first 9 to 5 job. For a while I was putting out an online gaming magazine called The Fireblade with a friend of mine, but eventually that fell to the wayside as I started taking fiction writing more seriously. It wasn’t until recent years that I rediscovered my love of gaming and realized the wealth of material available both from established companies and indie game developers. And this year, after creating some concepts for small gaming groups, I decided to try to put those ideas together as adventures and supplements.

For those familiar with D&D, they now have an online store called the DM’s Guild. Wizards of the Coast, who currently produces D&D, sells PDFs of older supplements there, but it’s also a marketplace for creators to put up their own creations and sell them. Figuring this would be the easiest route, I put together my first adventure and put it up for sale. Cavern of the Violator is a 5e D&D one-session adventure for low level characters centering around fungus and a strange disappearance, and was heavily influenced by the X-Files. It’s meant to be dropped into any campaign and I tried to give some tips to make it work for anyone. It’s currently for sale on DMsGuild.

That was only the beginning, though. After delving into the Warlock class, I wrote up Rykard’s Book of Patrons, an 87-page supplement with sample patrons for each of the official warlock subclasses, including optional rules and plot hooks. The goal was to create interesting patrons with their own backstories and personalities that players and DMs could either use as written or else make them a springboard for an original concept. The book also includes a new patron type, The Elemental, as well as a new patron category — Locations. Rykard’s Book of Patrons is currently on sale at DMsGuild for 7.95 with over 40,000 words of material (and lots of pretty pictures).

To celebrate the release of Rykard’s Book of Patrons, I dropped the price of Cavern of the Violator to $1.00. If you do check it out (or the patron book), I would appreciate it if you would leave a review and/or tell someone else about it if you like it.

Since I’m having so much fun, I’m sure there will be more game-related releases once I’ve worked them out. I can’t wait.

Nine years ago, at around this time, I was finishing up the Clarion West workshop. A little more than nine years ago, it was my 2nd week, and the first time we were expected to produce short stories. That’s a short story in a week, or in my case, since I chose to have my stories critiqued on Mondays, a story in just a few days.

So you may understand why I relied on a two sentence prompt I had hanging around my hard drive. It was about a young man, in a balloon, who was afraid to go down to the ground, but who knew he had to. I was thinking on it even during the first week, and so when Paul Park, our 1st week teacher, asked me if I had any ideas for my story, I told him.

I don’t remember everything he said, but I remember him asking questions and saying, in a cautionary tone, “It’s not a fantasy, right? Everyone doesn’t have their own balloon?”

And I heard myself saying, “No. Of course not.” That clearly would be silly. And so at that point I committed to something more science fiction in origin and things started to take shape.

My first story was called “Falling Sky” and it told the story of how cynical airship captain and forager, Ben Gold, met up with scientist and seeker of the cure, Miranda Mehra, and had his life changed forever. It was about how a person out for himself suddenly realized that his life could have more meaning than just survival.

I remember people liking parts of it, particularly the floating city in the sky, suspended from balloons and airships. People said that it hinted at a larger world. Mary Rosenblum, our 2nd week teacher, told me that it could be expanded into a novel. It was a surprise — the idea of doing that. But I filed it away. And I thought I should try that, make it into a novel since I liked the world I had created in that moment.

But it didn’t all come at first. I thought about possible stories, and I brushed up against the idea again and again but nothing ever seemed satisfying. The short story had been a standard 3rd person, past tense, and that was what I kept returning to. But somewhere in there, I started reading novels and stories — thrillers and urban fantasies — that used first person, present tense. And one day I experimented with that and knew I had found the voice I needed to write this novel.

I didn’t rehash the events of the short story, but instead picked up a little bit after that, extrapolated into the future. I found Ben still struggling with his decision to join the scientists, and then things rolled on from there.

Falling Sky was published, but I knew there was more and so that came in Rising Tide and by the time I finished that, I knew there needed to be more to finish up the story. So, I was rather thrilled when Pyr, my publisher, decided to buy Raining Fire.

And here we are, nine years after the original idea, with three novels coming out of that first story, born out of desperation and the guiding words of a talented and experienced author. I am grateful to everyone who has helped along the way, but it all started with Paul Park, and Mary Rosenblum, and the Clarion West Class of 2008. Thank you all for believing in me. It’s been a wonderful ride.

I am participating in the Clarion West Write-a-thon this year. Since it’s been 9 years since my own Clarion West class (2008), I have decided to have 9 goals:

1. Write 3 new short story first drafts
2. Revise and submit 3 existing short stories
3. Add 3 chapters to my current novel WIP

The idea of the Write-a-thon is simple — writers commit to certain goals for the period of the current Clarion West workshop and collect donations that go to help the workshop. As I said on the website, I truly think of it as investing in the future of great speculative fiction. I have seen so many scarily talented people come out of the workshop and so I think it’s a no brainer to help support many years of fulfilling, enjoyable fiction for everyone.

I am not giving a specific fundraising goal, but I have decided to offer perks for people who want to donate specific amounts

I will be raffling off a complete series of my first three books — Falling Sky, Rising Tide, and Raining Fire — in print or ebook, personalized however you’d like.

For each $5 donation you get one entry for the raffle.

You get one additional entry for each $5 donation to one of my Clarion West 2008 Classmates:

https://www.clarionwest.org/members/douglaslucas/

https://www.clarionwest.org/members/tracyharford/

https://www.clarionwest.org/members/kira/

https://www.clarionwest.org/members/psbains/

https://www.clarionwest.org/members/tdelucci/

https://www.clarionwest.org/members/aowomoyela/

https://www.clarionwest.org/members/mcroft/

https://www.clarionwest.org/members/shanusmagnus/

https://www.clarionwest.org/members/carolryles/

https://www.clarionwest.org/members/edenrobins/

https://www.clarionwest.org/members/owen08/

https://www.clarionwest.org/members/pamelarentz/

https://www.clarionwest.org/members/christopherreynaga/

For a $20 donation, you can read any of the revised stories before they’re published.

For a $50 donation (stolen from Caroline Yoachim),  I will write a story of indeterminate length (but probably short) based on 5-10 words that you supply as a prompt (I will only use some of them).

For $100 you will be tuckerized in an upcoming work, either a short story or novel.

I hope you will consider donating to what is a worthy source of future art and entertainment and sponsor me here. 

I’ve been trying to sneak out promotional links a little at a time, but today I have a few that all came at once:

• First up is an interview with me about writing and books and other things at Civilian Reader.
• Then there’s the video from Tuesday night’s NYRSF reading with Michael Swanwick. 
• Finally, LitReactor published my second writing post, this time about the writing of Rising Tide.
• And finally, just a reminder that Rising Tide is out on October 6. If you think you might want to read it, please consider pre-ordering it.

In two weeks, on Thursday, February 19 at 7:00 PM, I will be doing a Reddit AMA. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the AMA, it stands for Ask Me Anything. I’ll answer questions on any topic, but probably mostly about Falling Sky, writing, writing a first novel, airships, post-apocalypses, beer, writing groups, workshops and more. I hope you’ll tune in and ask me a question. Anything. It’s right there in the title. Do it.