Fiction, nonficiton--a large portion of my writing wanders somewhere between those nations, exploring the strange and murky land of game design for the computer and paper game industries. I've given much of that work its own section.

But for those who prefer to remain within the provincial borders of the established lands, I've culled out some of my work that fits firmly inside the bounds of fiction and nonfiction. Click the links below to find samples of the writing being discussed.

Enjoy.

FICTION/NONFICTION: MAGE KNIGHT
(WizKids Games, 2004-2005)
In the spring of 2004 I was hired by WizKids Games to be lead designer for Mage Knight, their flagship fantasy miniatures game. Along with the fun of designing figures and rules expansions for the game, I also enjoyed maintaining the continuity of the game world. Beyond the characters and artifacts created for game products and storyline-based tournament scenarios, the primary vehicle for communicating the ongoing Mage Knight saga to fans were my regular entries for the Scrying Chamber.

In the Scrying Chamber, I wrote interweaving short-short stories that explored the world, its races and events, and the background and destiny of the main character Kastali. Over time those entries added up to more than a novel's worth of text. If you're looking for some fun fantasy (or maybe just the largest writing sample on this site), here you go: my entries for the Scrying Chamber (900KB PDF.)

Generating daily fiction, maintaining the larger needs of the continuity and intellectual property, adjusting the world and steering events based on the day-to day needs of the company; it was definitely a challenge, but it was also a lot of fun.

FICTION: WARCRAFT
(Blizzard Entertainment / Sword and Sorcery Press, 2003-2005)
As a fan of Blizzard's Warcraft real-time-strategy games, I jumped at the chance to help Sword and Sorcery translate and expand that world into a pen-and-paper RPG. Once working on the line, I was told that what we developed would also be used as fodder for Blizzard's next project: a massively multiplayer game. Turns out we were helping plant the seeds for the now-massive World of Warcraft!

One of my favorite parts of writing for the Warcraft RPG line was the fiction I wrote to open chapters of the book. Though my favorite piece came when I was given the honor of describing the final battle of the Ancients, I also had fun writing lots of big battle scenes and (whenever possible) expanding on the adventures of the Kodosbreath clan.

FICTION/NONFICTION: RUNE
(Human Head Studios, 2000)
In the summer of 2000 I was approached by Human Head Studios to write an introductory short story for the manual to their upcoming Viking action game, Rune. I hit it off with the Heads and ended up coming back to do the scripts for the in-game cinematics and the rest of the manual. At the beginning of 2001, I joined the company full-time as an in-house writer and design assistant.

Since then I've done writing for many of the games and products in the Rune franchise including Rune: Halls of Valhalla, Rune: Viking Warlord, and Rune: the Official Soundtrack.

FICTION: PEOPLE OF THE SWORD AND STARS
(Sovereign Press, 2003)
I spent much of early 2002 writing this sourcebook for the Sovereign Stone Roleplaying Game, based on the series of novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. You'll find more samples from the manuscript in the Game Design section of this site, but here you can read the short-short story (clocking in at a welterweight 572 words) written as the introduction.

NONFICTION: COMICS: 2000
(The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection,
St. Martin's Press, 2001)
One of my first big breaks was given to me by Terri Windling, Ellen Datlow, and Jim Frenkel, who asked me to write a short annual summary of the year in comics for their respected anthology The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. I wrote the column for five years, from the Tenth Annual to the Fourteenth Annual, before handing the reins over to Charles Vess in 2001.

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