T.B. Wright has been communicating with this fey tramp by text, email and phone since he became the 4th reader of The Sunset Saga and mentioned he was a novelist as well. Tyler and I both seem to have begun writing with the composition of game rules and guidelines. I will give my own trajectory.

...1. At about 6, I began building army man scenes with various historical soldier types, mostly in the Airfix half inch tall variety. I forget the scale.

… 2. I learned to swim and became fascinated with sailing ships, my favorite Golden book being Meet the Men Who Sailed the Seas, and the runners up biographies on Columbus, Magellan and Cook. I could not read the books but listened to my Mom read them to me. This triggered me to begin drawing side views of sailing ships and top views of fantasy islands that such a ship might discover.

… 3. 8 to 10, reading Sea Hunt stories in special ed reading class continued to stoke my wonder about sailing the seas.

… 4. At age 10 to 11 I became fast, strong, and got super bad acne, which kept me from swimming, which I forgot how to do. Hostility from older teens drove me on the single path of learning to fight. By age 11, fully psychotic, reading boxing magazines, military and ancient history and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Master Mind of Mars, gave me a bright idea: I would learn to read well enough to be able to converse with big brained men. I would find one of these nerds that built a time travel or interplanetary device, kidnap that geek, and ride him off this wretched planet of the gay apes. I still could not write a sentence.

… 5. By age 13, becoming a cynic, I realized that earth was a trap, a hell, a crucible where souls were cast down to rise from torment, and decided, that the only other world open would be of one’s own devise. Beginning to read Robert E. Howard and realizing that I could not understand what the teachers were barking at me. I decided to use gaming to practice world and character building while I hopefully read enough so that writing would somehow rise from the mess between these addled ears.

… 6. In 1988 I designed Pizza Wars, Tyrants of Yitar and Tribes RPG, all failures. But, by 1992, the Tribes world setting, which I have since sued for the novels Supplicant’s Song and Confessor, impressed some folks as highly unique. Stewart Weick of White Wolf Magazine was my patient coach.

...7 1996. However old I was, reading Black Belt Magazine at work at the grocery news stand, I realized that I had more actual information on violence collected by going about the life of an economic failure, that I could learn how to write better by using my personal information as material. Jon Ford and Donna DuVall, of Paladin Press helped me learn the rest of the writing trade that could be jammed into this tarnished brain.

Below are some aspects of T.B. Wright’s writing journey.

Hi James,

Here are links to some of my more recent writings (and games down below). I have mostly only published academic pieces, but I have quite a bit of unpublished fiction in the archive and am actively pivoting now in that direction.

HARRISON MIDDLETON UNIVERSITY BLOG

A select few of my recent writings when I was a Fellow at Harrison Middleton University. You might enjoy my article on Herman Melville and Hawthorne's budding friendship. Also a piece on classic literary examples of machine sentience:

Of Mosses and Whales:

Revisiting Samuel Butler’s Mechanical Kingdom in the Age of Artificial Intelligence:

Book Review: Journey Outside by Mary Q. Steele:

ACADEMIC

A bunch of my academic publications primarily discuss interactive fiction (IF) and game development.

Interactive Fiction as a Great Books Pedagogy: A Game Developer’s Position Piece:

Play My Resume: Exploring Resume and CV Differentiation Through Personalized Web-Based Games:

Current attitudes on digital interactive fiction and text adventure games within learning contexts: A systematic literature review:

Structuring a new interactive fiction mobile authoring tool taxonomy in accordance with evolving game developer preferences:

Exploring Digital Inroads into Nonlinear Storytelling (doctoral dissertation):

Tyler's Google Scholar page:

[Okay, Tyler, simply having read the headings above, I realize, that you are that genius I was supposed to abduct in my 12 year old thug brain. If I find out you have a time machine—I’m done writing, and we might be hauling Richard F. Burton’s baggage.]

GAMES

I also maintain a games portfolio which goes back a few years now. Small releases and prototypes mainly... Lots of my games are story-driven, but I also create all the other assets (art, music, programming).

I've discovered in the process of developing games that I'm actually a writer who uses games as the medium or vessel to get my worldbuilding out there, but ultimately I should be writing books! I will be refocusing my efforts accordingly.

Thanks in large part to you, I can see a future of bookwriting and blogging. Your vast output of works is inspiring and I'm grateful to study under your tutelage. Be on the lookout for some proper science fiction and miscellany!

Thanks James! I will most certainly contribute to your niece's Substack. I welcome the opportunity to collaborate.

Respectfully,

—

Tyler Wright