Thirteen Not Out

It’s taken me a few days to get around to writing the first of my annual New Year posts, mostly because 2013 has been a tough one to assimilate.

I went into last year thinking about times past and stuff done; see, 2013 was the year in which the original edition of Cyberpunk (one of my favourite role-playing games) was set, and off the back of that gameworld I spent around a decade of gaming in the same campaign with chums of mine who I still count as good friends today. Of course, 2013 hit and I wasn’t augmented with neural implants and cool cyberware, so that was a downer. But as this year drew on, it became a mix of lows and highs that have left me still trying to map it all.

Our family lost someone this year, and it happened in a matter of months. Add that to health scares for both my folks (which passed, thankfully) and illness closer to home, and 2013 left me feeling the very real weight of mortality...as well as reminding me to never, ever take anything in life for granted. So in that way, I’m glad to see the back of this unlucky number and turn the page.

But with the bad comes the good, and there was some of that too. 2013 was the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, and I was pleased to be asked to contribute something to AudioGo’s Destiny of The Doctor miniseries as part of that celebration – I wrote Shockwave, a 7th Doctor story narrated by Sophie Aldred, and it was fun to drop back into the Time Lord’s world after being away for a while. Out on the Final Frontier, I wrote my first dedicated digital work, a Star Trek: The Next Generation ebook novella called The Stuff of Dreams and then contributed the penultimate book to The Fall miniseries with The Poisoned Chalice; to my delight, Poisoned Chalice made it on to the New York Times bestseller’s list, making my third NYT charter. I did a little less this year for the Grim Dark future of Warhammer 40,000 and The Horus Heresy with five new short stories for The Imperial Truth, Angels of Death and Lords of the Space Marines collections – and talking of short stories, I also had another first with a tale I wrote for the Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters Kickstarter project. But perhaps the biggest writing milestone of 2013 for me was finishing up a personal project that I’ve been working on, on and off, since 2010. More on that – I hope – in the months to come.

In videogames, I got to work on a mobile title for the first time, scriptwriting for Deus Ex: The Fall, a game sequel to my tie-in novel Deus Ex: Icarus Effect. In addition, as part of the release for the Director’s Cut of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, I wrote Fallen Angel, another ebook to connect with the gameworld. Of course, most of what I was doing game-wise in 2013 remained under an ironclad Non-Disclosure Agreement until very recently when the existence of the as-yet-untitled Deus Ex 4 was officially announced; but by the same token, a big techno-fantasy action-RPG I spent many months working on was cancelled, reinstated, cancelled again, retooled and reinstated again and then finally definitively cancelled, this time for keeps.

Outside of work, I did less big events this year (just the Horus Heresy Weekender, Black Library Weekender II and Nine Worlds convention) but in return I had great vacations in the Canary Islands and the military museums of the Southeast; I got cross paths with cool folks like Rowland White, Joss Whedon and David Goyer, I learned archery...

But right now, if you ask me to guess at what 2014 holds, I can’t tell you. All I’m sure of is, it’s going be different.