When I first recognized the numerical significance of this blog it was a simple matter to decide to write about Shadowrun. Those who know me as a writer know the particular joy I get from the years of opportunity I’ve had to write for the company. Shadowrun represented a fictional escape from the hardest parts of my life–both professional and personal–during a time when I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with myself as a writer. I toiled for most of my graduate program trying to sort out whether or not I was meant for literary fiction, fantasy, poetry, or straight up non-fiction essays. The answer came in the form of Nigel Findley and Charles Stross, two writers who led me to different corners of the same speculative room.. Stross injected a pulse of humor into hard science fiction while Findley painted around the edges of commercial sci-fi and even through in quite a bit of the magical with his Shadowrun work.
I was hooked.
I found myself engaged in a series of restless narratives that drove me deeper into this, lets face it, schizophrenic, idea of a world in which science and magic coexist. I was able to take the role playing game that I luxuriated in playing for so long and to at once design a narrative that took all that junk stored up in my head and gave it a very real place to live and even thrive.
I’m a lucky writer in that some of the characters and concepts I brought to the world continue to thrive and I myself continue to publish and to push forward these crazy ideas, hopefully in the vein of Findley and the others who came before me. I’m not the best there is, as continues to be a goal, but I am still in the game and still working to make something that sets the world on fire.
Burn on, shadows.