Starting a book you've been looking forward to writing is like opening a box of Godiva chocolates. Actually, that's not a good anology in my case, seeing as I'd rather have a nice challenging bag of pork scratchings. And I mean the well 'ard British variety, which rate a 10 on the Mohs scale, not the softer US pork rinds. But I digress. The point is that you embark on a voyage of delicious discovery. Okay, you might lose a dental filling along the way, but the overall effect is one of diverse taste sensations and something truly satisfying to crunch down on.
As some of you might have gathered from the Gears of War forums, I spent last week at Epic HQ, so that's set me up to get on with book three of the Gears saga. There is, I can assure you, no substitute for sitting down with a team of solid-gold creative folk and kicking around ideas. Especially game pros. But you've already heard me do my spiel on why games are the ultimate storytelling, and why Epic is the pinnacle of that, so I won't bore you again.
Suffice to say that it's the most fun I've had with other people without being arrested or released on bail pending police enquiries. You'll be able to tell just just how much fun when a video interview with me appears on the Gears and Xbox sites. You know the kind of interview where the cameraman locks off the camera and wanders off to attend to something, leaving it running, and when he gets back, you're still yakking away? Yeah, that much fun. It is, as you young 'uns say, teh awesomeness.
You don't have to like the people you work with to do a good job. You don't have to admire or respect each other. You don't have to think that their product is the best invention since the Nespresso machine* and the domestic electricity supply**. But, to quote my buddy Moose, you sure do shine white-hot when you do. I could now power a city with the energy I generate from my Gears-fuelled reactor.
Gears has turned out to be that rare conjunction of planets for me that just makes my working day pure bliss. Obviously I love my job or else I wouldn't do it, but some parts of it are soul-destroyingly joyless, and some parts of it are glorious. You can work out which category Gears fits in. It even beats doing my own-copyright fiction (okay, okay, I do have more original*** books coming, be patient...) because of the Perfect Team factor. There's absolutely nothing like being in a group of like-minded and equally driven people to magnify the creative experience and the pleasure you get from it.
Anyway, book three (title to be announced) is the sequel to JACINTO'S REMNANT, which is out on July 28. That's the second book. Buy it. If you get half as much enjoyment out of reading it as I did from writing it, then you'll be...well, very happy indeed. Like me.
(*It so is. I love my Nespresso machine. Pry it from my cold dead hands.)
(** Okay, there's no caffeine in it, but it's still kind of pivotal, because without it there would be no Nespresso.)
(*** You know I hate that frigging stupid distinction and the lit-snob implications of the word "original", don't you? All my books are original, by the dictionary definition. I just don't own the copyright on some of them. It's only a difference in my profit margin.)
