The last few days, I've had a couple of really cool conversations about some potential/future products. I TRY not to get too excited about anything until we actually start working and it gets more real, closer to publication, etc, but both of these are just so neat they got me feeling jazzed.

Both of them, also, aren't straight-up prose for publication.

I've tried to branch out as much as I can, as a writer. I've tried to do new stuff, I've tried to learn new things, I've tried to stretch my legs and dabble in different aspects of the hobby/industry, from time to time. I put together Strays because I wanted to learn how to put a book together and run a Kickstarter (I tried my hand at art direction, at layout and proofing, oversaw the printing process, did all the shipping myself), but I've also tried to just write different stuff.

I got started with a couple of magazine articles, back in the day. Then I did short fiction and paragraph-super-short fiction as unit descriptions, for a wargame. Then I did intro/short fiction, then I did a chapter in a sourcebook (which, in Shadowrun's case, is actually kind of still fiction, since it's presented in-universe). Then I did a whole little e-book by myself, intro fiction, rules, and body of text.

Then I repeated most of those a few times. But then? Then things got weird on me.

I got my novella, which was a different experience than shorter fiction. In a way I guess you can think of it as just a short fiction (scene) on top of another short fiction (scene) on top of another scene, and another...but there's still a difference between a solid half-hour of television, and a collection of SNL sketches, right? Same thing, here.

Then came my first branching out to a new medium, even if it was still my dystopian cyberpunk genre; Satellite Reign. I was lead writer on the actual PC game, I didn't just write the tie-in novella (though I also did that), and it was waaaaaaaaaaaay different. You're not trying to tell a story, when you write in a video game. You're trying to carve out the space where the player tells a story, even moreso than when you're writing an RPG book. You're giving little interactive snippets of information, just little radio broadcast type of things, small boxes of text here and there, that folks are reading mid-gameplay. It's tricky. It's different. It was awesome.

The last few days, I've talked to folks about some similar stuff. Different mediums than I'm used to, even though it's in familiar genres. I'm excited about it. I'm excited to try and adjust how I work, and what I work on. I'm psyched. I think they'll both be really cool projects, and I'm looking forward to them.

I'll let y'all know when stuff gets closer, of course!