shannon_a

So in 2006 I started writing an RPG column called A Brief History of Game, driven largely by the RPGnet Gaming Index, which made me see interesting relationships between roleplaying games, and led me to start telling tales in my head about what was happening at all of the publishing companies. In the column, I wrote the more thoroughly researched histories of those companies, starting with Wizards of the Coast (though a never-published article on Imperium Games was actually the first one I wrote).

In 2007 my work on those histories was taking up increasing amounts of time, as I figured out what was going on at long-lived companies like ICE and White Wolf. I simultaneously reached an agreement to publish a book of the histories with a major RPG publisher. They wanted to have a book by Christmas, which meant I only had about 6 months to write the thing (as we came to an initial agreement that January); as my work on the volume reached a fevered pitch, the column fell away. Not only did I not have time to prep articles for the column, I didn't want to use up too much material, that I now intended to publish in hardcopy.

In July, 2007 I was working all out on the book, running through a final edit of 200k worth of words that had poured forth from my head like blood of the previous several months. I started mailing chapters to the publisher, because they wanted to start laying out immediately ... and 17 chapters in (which was about 50% of the actual text) I heard that they didn't want to publish after all.

I won't argue with the publisher's decision, because they did what they felt was best for the company. No hard feelings then, or now, as the publisher did its best to act professionally the instant they came to their new decision. However, to say that I was "devastated" was an understatement. I'd never written anything so long, and I'd never worked so hard on anything. For months previous I'd been working all day for Skotos, eating dinner, then working all night on the book. My only breaks were for gaming.

I put the book aside, too weary and disappointed to consider it. For the rest of 2007 I barely wrote, then in 2008 most of my creative writing energy instead went to a computer programming book (iPhone in Action, my second longest book ever, about as big of an investment of time as the history book, due to the effort required to right a long, technical book--and ACTUALLY PUBLISHED).

But I couldn't leave my Brief History of Game alone forever.

In 2009 I showed my first new interest in the book by writing a history of the previous year, something that I repeated a few days ago for 2009. I've now also started searching for a new publisher.

My current goal is to get a publisher, get a new contract in hand, then spend about 52 weeks filling the book with quotes, polishing up existing chapters, expanding them to 2010, and writing a few new chapters. If all goes well there will be a complete book in about 13 months' time.

(No super rush that half kills me this time, I swear.)

We'll see, but for now I'm feeling hopeful and interested.