Hidden Agenda Author's Notes and Stuff

Wow, it sure was a long time since I started posting this story. I guess the first thing I should do is apologize for taking so fraggin' long, and express my surprise that anybody's still reading after all this time. Looking back at my posting history, I'm seeing four- and six-month breaks between posts, and still many of you guys still came back to read. Thanks! I hope it was worth it.

Will there be more? I hope so, but I can't say when. I'd really like to write Book 6, which I have some idea of the plot for (it'll be about Sean's first year at Dunk U, along with some developments for his dad that began setting up in Dark Reflection), but I'll have to be honest and say I really don't know how long it's going to be before I start that. My only excuse is that some time around 2002, something cool happened: the Powers That Be at FanPro decided to take a chance on letting me write something official, which ended up being a couple of small sections in State of the Art: 2063. Apparently I didn't mess up too badly, because shortly after that they let me do it again, leading to a decent-sized chunk of material for Dragons of the Sixth World. Wow--I was pretty stoked about that. Li'l ol' dragon-junkie me gets to write for the Dragons book? One thing led to another, and these days I've got the privilege of contributing to quite a few of the recent SR books, including, hopefully, the SR4 corebook. Am I happy? Well, considering that part of the reason I started posting SR stuff on the web was to maybe get the chance to work on the game itself, I'd say so.

The only downside of the whole thing is that all this stuff takes time. When you add it to the day job (boring, but it pays the bills and keeps the cats in kibble), music lessons, hockey, hanging out with the cats, and, oh yeah--a spouse who likes to see me occasionally, it means that something has to give. Unfortunately right now that something is writing fiction for the web. I doubt this will last forever, but it does mean that I can't commit to posting anything at any set time. I am about halfway through a short story that follows Hidden Agenda directly, but I gotta finish it before I can post it. I'm also working on another novel that takes Dr. Stone and Ocelot out of the Shadowrun world and puts them into an original world (with an eye toward maybe trying to get it published) but I haven't even been able to get very far on that.

sigh. So that's my excuse. Thanks again to everybody who stuck it out and read the whole thing. I can't even put my musical influences down for this one, because, frankly, I've forgotten them! Getting old sucks, but it beats the alternative. :)

That's about it, since I want to get this posted. See you all at the Forum! And if you're going to Gen Con this year, email me so I can say hi, 'kay?

--Rat
April, 2005
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