I recently sat down with Jenn from the Jennisodes to discuss my latest project, Streets of Bedlam, as well as future plans for the Little Fears Nightmare Edition line and a short rant on stories in video games. Jenn is a wonderful host and runs a fantastic podcast. Be sure to check out the latest episode for me, and then dig into her backlist for some amazing guests and insights into all sorts of gaming-related topics.

Huge thanks to Jenn for having me on, and I’d love to drop in again sometime.

I sat down with Josh Mannon from the Gamestarter podcast a couple weeks ago not once but twice! The first was a sit-down with Josh and fellow writer/designer Filamena Young to discuss various game projects currently seeking funding including Filamena’s own Flatpack: Fix the Future. The second time was an interview focused entirely on me, my upcoming neo-noir crime setting Streets of Bedlam, and the madness that is running a Kickstarter campaign.

Check out the panel with Josh and Filamena here.

You can hear me talk way too much about myself and Streets of Bedlam here.

Thanks to Josh for having me on and to Filamena for being a great co-guest.

I first wrote about Operation: Awesome back in June 2010 but I put the plan laid out in that post into practice much earlier. A lot of 2010 was focused on redefining myself, pushing myself, and changing my entire creative process. I realized how toxic it had become, how little was actually getting done, and I knew I had to do things differently in order to survive in the creative field.

Operation: Awesome was put to test in summer 2010 when I was brought in to work on High Voltage Software‘s Conduit 2. They put a lot of power in my hands and I did not want to disappoint. I worked hard on that game and had a lot of fun doing it. When it came out earlier this year, I was thrilled. I had a video game on the shelf that I could point to and go, “See that? I wrote that.” What an amazing feeling.

That gig was a big test of Operation: Awesome but it was just the beginning. I was still shuffling off a lot of bad habits and baggage. I decided to do some small projects to establish a better writing habit. I launched the Campfire Tales line for Little Fears Nightmare Edition. I originally intended for that series to run twelve straight episodes but had to stall it at three. I can say the reason was at least somewhat noble: I was busy working on the first full-sized supplement for LFNE, Book 2: Among the Missing. I was also doing some freelance work in that time, including fiction for an upcoming tabletop game line, some development work on a (sadly) cancelled project, and contributed to Chuck Wendig and Lance Weiler’s Sundance Film Festival transmedia project Pandemic 1.0/Hope is Missing. I launched Book 2: Among the Missing in March 2011. A ten-year retrospective of the original corebook from 2001 saw release as Happy Birthday, Little Fears over the summer. Also over the summer, I signed a contract with Human Head Studios to work on Prey 2. I was brought on as the Narrative Designer and Writer for the project. In that time, not only did I wrangle the story for Prey 2 but I lent some insight and ideas to a variety of projects.

On top of that, I had some fiction published, did some layout work for friends, and added to some really fun projects such as Clint and Cassie Krause’s Don’t Walk in Winter Wood. I even returned to the Campfire Tales line for three more episodes, putting out Season Two this past fall. No way I would have had the discipline to fit all this into my schedule prior to Operation: Awesome. While I certainly wasn’t a saint in my time management, I did far better than I ever did previously.

A lot of things started to fall into place this past year and I knew it was mine to fumble. I worked hard to make sure I didn’t do that. When my contract at Human Head ended, I began work on getting a new project up, running, and ready for public approval. I took the momentum of joy and satisfaction from working at Human Head and funneled it into new projects aimed at new goals. After launching the Kickstarter for a new Savage Worlds setting called Streets of Bedlam in November, my plan was rewarded almost immediately as generous backers fulfilled the initial goal in under three days. I am still in awe of that.

I’ve changed a lot as a creative and a person since starting Operation: Awesome and it really all came down to taking my ambitions seriously, investing in my dreams, doing the work, and no longer accepting excuses. One of the side effects of that, besides actually releasing product, was I started to expect more and better from others as well. I was fortunate enough this past year to find myself in a room with a half-dozen highly-creative people who were firing on all cylinders, demanding better from everyone else, and the sensation was exhilarating.

I still have a lot to do. I don’t think there is an endgame for Operation: Awesome, only a fail state. And I have no intention of failing.

2011 had a lot of ups and downs but it ended on some very high notes for me. I learned a ton, did some good work, got an award nomination from IGN, and have a lot more projects on my done list. I had some high ambitions for the year and, while I didn’t hit them all, I hit enough to mark the chalk in the win column.

Coming into 2012, I have even higher ambitions with much more at stake. As of this writing, over 150 people have put their money where my mouth is and backed Streets of Bedlam. My dance card for the first three months is almost fully booked with that one project. I’m leaving some wiggle room for a couple sweet pick-up gigs and plotting for the April project but Streets of Bedlam is my main focus for that time. I’m really excited for it.

I plan to spend April and May of next year writing a novel. I haven’t finished a novel since I completed my attempt at a Young Adult book for Little Fears back in 2007. I want published novels under my belt, both lit and genre. I plan to focus on Middle Grade but want to do some adult and YA as well. That may be the biggest test of Operation: Awesome yet. I look forward to it.

I have many other plans beyond as well. And I might even pick up some high-profile gigs, fates willing.

With Operation: Awesome, I took an honest assessment of myself and mapped out a battle plan to start changing who I was into who I wanted to be. For the above reason and beyond, I’m glad I did. Here’s looking forward to 2012 and even more awesome.

Aaron T. Huss, from Mystical Throne Entertainment, contacted me recently about doing a Designer’s Diary for his Roleplayers Chronicle website and I quickly agreed. The piece went live over the weekend and touches briefly on the work that went into my Little Fears Nightmare Edition project as well as some of the history behind the game.

You can check it out here.

Big thanks to Aaron for the opportunity!

The second book in the Little Fears Nightmare Edition line came out today in PDF. This book was a long time coming but I had a lot of fun writing it and I think I came up with some pretty terrifying stuff. Here’s the cover and blurb:

You were a normal kid once with a normal life and a normal family. Then things changed. There was a moment when your life took a sudden turn and you stopped being a normal kid. You became a headline, a statistic, a picture on the grocery store window. A warning for other children.

Maybe you were taken, stolen by a monster, or maybe you simply disappeared.

Whatever happened, at that moment, you became one of the missing.

Book 2: Among the Missing is an expansion to the Little Fears Nightmare Edition game. In it, we talk about what missing children mean in the world of Little Fears, how kids become missing, what happens to them next, how they can help in the fight against monsters, and how they can be saved. Includes expanded GMC rules, new monsters, information about the World In-Between, and a full-length episode titled “The Long Way Home.”

If that sounds like it’s up your darkened alley, check out the official Little Fears website for details on getting your own hardcopy when it comes out or you can grab the PDF right now for just $10 from the good folks at DriveThruRPG and RPGNow.

One thousand words. It’s not a lot. But neither is a single grain of sand.

Earlier this year, I hit a hard realization: Writing wasn’t working for me anymore. I was writing in spurts. Some days I’d hit 3000 words but most days I wasn’t writing anything. Operation: Awesome was stalling, and I needed to jumpstart the engine if it was going to survive.

Part of Operation: Awesome was collecting the tools I should’ve gathered a decade ago: the study, the concept of form and genre (Step One), the dedication to a path (Step Two), and reading regularly (Step Three). I was doing well at those. I obsessed over structure and story, knew the type of career I want to have, and have been reading stacks of books in my audience and genre. Operation: Awesome had fixed a lot of my flaws as a writer, or helped me work on fixing them anyway, but I was struggling with one very important thing. I lacked the discipline to write (Step Four) and with every day I became less motivated to work on that discipline.

I don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to writing. Most of my time is spent raising my kids (and my dogs and cat and, well, the chinchilla pretty much takes care of himself). My wife and I don’t have the cash to put my son into daycare so, even though my daughter is at school, my attention is elsewhere throughout the day. When my wife gets home, I want to spend time with her and the kids. By the time bedtime rolls around, I’m out of juice. Sometimes she doesn’t get home until after 8 o’clock at night which leaves me even more exhausted (and is she too). After 13+ hours of always-on fathering, I just don’t have the word count in me. I sit and read or catch up on television or play games. Or, maybe, on rare occasion, hang out with friends.

In recent months, that routine had worn me to a nub. I was stressed to my limit, and I started to resent writing. I felt too much pressure to cram all my week’s writing into two days. Any other time I wasn’t writing, when I was spending time with family or catching up on books/games/shows, I felt like I was wasting time I should be writing. I was stymied.

My work and my life were too muddled and I wasn’t dedicating the time and attention I should to either. I had hit a wall, and I had to make a choice: Write or find something else to do.

In order to make sense of this, I did what my pretentious teenaged self should have done, I turned to the professionals for advice. I read somewhere that Cory Doctorow (of BoingBoing and Little Brother fame) has (or maybe had) a writing goal of 250 words a day. Stephen King, one of the most popular American novelists of all time, writes 2000 words a day.

That blew my mind. These guys weren’t nose-first in their work from dawn to dusk as I imagined. A lot of aspiring authors I know huddle in front of their screens day-in and day-out and, hey, if I could, I would probably do the exact same thing. But I can’t. I have other, bigger responsibilities, but I knew I could find a sweet spot between Doctorow and King, something that worked for me.

I looked at my schedule and contracts and realized to hit my deliverables, I only needed to write 1000 words a day. That’s it. About an hour’s worth of work. While I can’t park my son in front of the television for six hours every day, I can set him in front of Sesame Street or a couple episodes of Dora (or, his favorite, Dino Dan) and crank out 1000 words.

I decided that was my plan. I would write 1000 words a day, every day. But, I added some rules to make that more meaningful:

A Thousand Words of Fiction or Other Paid Work. Not blog posts, Twitter, emails, LittleFears.com updates, or even the work I do for AdventureGamers.com. The thousand words had to be on projects I was selling (or hoping to sell) or paid gigs. All that other stuff had to be done outside the goal, at night or during the extra work hours my wife’s days off allowed me.

No Making Up Missed Days. I couldn’t push one day’s work onto another. Meaning: I couldn’t skip Tuesday but promise myself I’d write 2000 Wednesday. If I didn’t hit my goal on a day, I had to accept that as failure even if I did write 2000 words the next day. (I take this from something attributed to Jerry Seinfeld: When you hit your day’s writing goal, mark it on a calendar. As the chain of marked days grows, you become more motivated not to break the chain.)

I Couldn’t Write Ahead. Same idea as above. I couldn’t buy a half-day Tuesday by writing 1500 words on Monday. Each day’s goal was separate.

I Could Go Over. If I felt inspired, I could do 1500 or 2000 or more. But I didn’t have to. 1000 was the goal.

That was a couple months ago. Overall, I’ve done well. I’ve missed days but not enough to beat myself up. On the positive side, I’ve noticed some big changes beyond the increase in productivity:

I’m Happier. Writing is working for me again. I get my 1000 done and the writing stress is gone. I’m not up late berating myself for watching Supernatural or playing games instead of writing.

I Have Gained Control of My Schedule. Since I know my output, I can better gauge my workload. This means I know at a glance if I can take on other work or if I have to turn something down. This is new to me (and is a big reason I was not good at freelancing for so long). But now I know my schedule and I don’t overload it.

I Jump Into Writing More Easily. Another great piece of writing advice, attributed to multiple sources, is to stop writing in mid-idea so you know where to pick up the next day. Writing only 1000 words puts me mid-idea almost every time so I come back to a project knowing where to start. The words flow from there.

I Have More Writing Energy. Because I’m not squeezing 5000 words out of my day’s imagination reservoir, I come into the daily goal refreshed, with a full day’s creative rest between rather small bursts of output.

So, after a long time struggling with my goals as a writer, I have found a system that is working for me. I’ve already handed in a bunch of contract work and am almost done with a new book for Little Fears Nightmare Edition.

A side effect of the new plan saw my last bit of contract work line up with May 31st, meaning I was free to start new projects on June 1st. After some noodling, I put down designs for the Big Summer Project, which I’ve codenamed Operation: Last Chance. This is something that terrifies and excites me in almost equal measure. See, there’s more to this new phase than I have said, more at stake than simply hitting a daily goal, but I can’t talk about it just now. I’ll leave the details of that for another time.

A couple weeks ago, author and gamer Jonathan Reynolds interviewed me for Geekcentricity. Topics ranged from my geek cred (I have little) to the inspiration behind Little Fears, to my video game work, to what items I consider indispensable when it comes to exploring dungeons.

You can read the interview right here. Thanks to Jonathan and the folks at Geekcentricity for the chat!

I’m very excited to announce that Reactor 88 Studios is producing a film based on my property Little Fears. Filming is slated to start within the next year. I’m writing the script and will work hand-in-hand with Darren Orange and company throughout the process.

If you’re not familiar with Little Fears, a game about kids fighting back against the monsters from Closetland, I invite you to check out the official website where I will post news and updates as pre-production begins.

I released the original Little Fears game in 2001 and have been amazed at where that game has taken me. The reboot, Little Fears Nightmare Edition, was released October 2009 and I have some big plans for it. 2011 is shaping up to be an exciting year.

The past couple weeks have been fairly busy as I prep and execute some personal projects and prospective larger projects. One of those I’m most proud of is the work I’ve been doing to support Little Fears Nightmare Edition. It’s a great game that I love dearly and I’ve finally managed to make the time to release support material for it. First is the Campfire Tales line of standalone ready-to-use episodes and next after (well, during as Campfire Tales is a monthly release) is Book 2 in the LFNE line, titled Among the Missing. No date on that one yet but I’ll update the official Little Fears site when I do.

For those interested, you can get Campfire Tales #1: Beggars Night in PDF format over at DriveThruRPG.

Last week, I put a list together of all the books I had plots for. Nothing new, I didn’t invent on the spot, and I came up with eight titles. Later that day, I remembered another three. Today, I found another. Just typing this up now, I remembered another one.

That’s a lot of imaginary books.

And that’s what they are right now: imaginary. They don’t exist. I haven’t written them. And carrying around the ideas doesn’t make me a writer. After I jotted the first eight, I decided it was time to kick off the novel phase of Operation: Awesome.

The goal is to write three novels within the next six years. One novel every two years is doable. I hope to fill the remaining time with paying gigs and island vacations. The former more probable than the latter but while I’m hoping, why not?

So, three books. Okay, sure. But which ones?

Good question. I have a couple connections with some solid genre publishers. It makes sense to me that I aim in the sci-fi, fantasy, and/or horror direction. I said my goal with Operation: Awesome was to become a better writer first, sell second, and that still holds. I’m still in Phase Four, certainly, but I see no contradiction in rolling both goals into one action, if I can.

I’m aiming at one publisher in specific. I’ve read through their mission statement, history, and have researched their catalogue. I think some of my ideas are well-suited and am currently looking through them, trying to suss out which is the leader. There’s the one I’m sure I can write, write well even. It’s horror, a genre I’m comfortable with, but I wonder about its marketability. It’s a bit strange. There’s another that is in a genre dear to my heart (near-future sci-fi). It’s a thriller and, frankly, is probably too smart for me. It’d be a great challenge, would be impressive if I could pull it off, but I worry about plotting something so complex. Truth is, I’d probably worry about my ability to pull off a coloring book depending on the day. There’s a trilogy I’m psyched for I originally conceived for the Young Adult market. Could be converted though. It’s near-future again, conspiracy this time. There’s another horror one, a mystery, that like the near-future book is larger in scope than I do normally. But y’know what? I normally don’t write novels so maybe stretching out in all directions is exactly what I need to do.

(The other books are either non-genre or Young Adult- or Middle Grade-focused which is outside the purview of this publisher.)

So, anyway, there it is. The next phase of Operation: Awesome. I’m writing my second novel. My first adult fiction novel which means more swearing and twice as many words as I did on that Little Fears: The Wolf Pact book back in 2007. I don’t have a hard deadline yet. I’m already milling on some for-pay projects and am in the running for another gig I’m really excited for. Fingers crossed, I’ll have a very busy holiday season and into early next year. But this is a commitment I’m making to myself. It’s time to push forward.

The next step in this will be choosing the project. I need to think on that but eventually I’ll need to just pick one and go. Any advice on that? What criteria do you use when picking a project from a stack of potentials? How does one idea rise to the top?