How a Twitter conversation led to a nifty short story sale

It’s funny sometimes how things come about. Take this Twitter exchange from last year’s Book Expo America, which ultimately led to me being able to announce a new short story sale today. It all started when SF/F copyeditor Richard Shealy (a.k.a. SheckyX) talked about the books he scored at the event.

Yes, I brought homebrew for my peeps at BEA. I’m good like that. But his tweet was initially misunderstood.

As it happened, I had given Shecky The Enceladus Crisis , as well as a beer. So things got conflated a bit.

For those of you who are unaware, Pathfinder is a role-playing game by Paizo Publishing that’s built on the d20 license. It’s a fantastic high-fantasy setting with some really imaginative elements to it. Of course, I grew up on Dungeons & Dragons, and I really liked what I had seen of the Pathfinder setting to that point.

But it’s true, I hadn’t written a Pathfinder story. At the time, The Enceladus Crisis had just come out and I was busy working on The Venusian Gambit. The sentiments were super nice, though.

Then this happened: 

James is the executive editor responsible for all things Pathfinder over at Paizo, and a fine writer himself. To my surprise and great pleasure, all involved in the conversation agreed with him.

Seriously, that was pretty awesome, you guys. And, really, how else could I respond?

And so James and I talked. And talked some more. We roped in editor Chris Carey, who gave me a heap of Pathfinder downloads, and I became a lot more familiar with the setting. There were a few elements that really spoke to me, and an idea was born — which then had to be back-burnered while I finished my third book. After that, though, more conversations ensued. An agreement was struck.

Basically, because of this Twitter exchange a year ago, I’m happy to announce I’ve written a piece of Web fiction for Paizo Publishing, set in the world of Pathfinder. It’ll come out in four installments on the Pathfinder Tales serial site, tentatively starting some time in June.

For someone who spent many hours playing D&D as a kid, this is really special to me. Like my short story appearing in Cthulhu Fhtagn! this August, doing a D&D-style piece was very much on my authorial bucket list. I feel like I’m going home again, but at the same time, it’s fun and fresh and different thanks to that great setting. I’m really excited about it.

My thanks to James and Chris and the folks at Paizo for welcoming me aboard for this. And more importantly, a big thank-you to Shecky, Fred, Mogsy and Paul! You guys totally made this happen. Finally, I need to acknowledge this tweet:

Next round is on me, folks.

#SFWApro