I’ve been keeping this one under my hat for a while, because I didn’t want to tick off the people at Catalyst Games or my game designer buddy Aaron Pavao. Aaron (a friend for many years) has of late been getting his name into Shadowrun sourcebooks, mostly for playtesting and editing. The upcoming title Unwired, though, bears a big chunk of text written by his meaty hands. All the great content in there about ‘trix Security and a good hunk of the ‘life in the Matrix’ section? That was him. I have a ton of respect for the effort he put in to get there, and my hat is off to him.

I have to give him the respect, too, because (whether my name ends up in the credits or not) I’ve got some words in that book as well. I know it’s not something that shows up much of anywhere, but I’ve actually done a lot of fiction writing over the years. Most of it is on my hard drive or locked away in college projects. In one case I can reference it via an embarrassing high school literary magazine. If you get a copy of the Unwired book, you should know that the quick jots of fiction at the start of the security section and the ‘life in the Matrix’ were written by yours truly.

As if that wasn’t a treat enough, apparently my stuff was enjoyed by other people working on the project. The scene of the security hacker defending her garden from an interloper was re-interpreted from the other side for a section about illegal hacking. The image to the right (the full version of which is a click away) is an artistic vision of the other piece of fiction I wrote, about a young woman seeking escape from a sheltered corporate existence.

It can’t be more than 1000 words in an enormous book, and I didn’t get paid for it. That said, it’s some simple writing I’m smiling about seeing in print.