I've been trying to be a successful and published author since 1987.
I've been a published author since 1998.
I'm either persistent or stubbornly stupid, depending on who you ask.
The following is a sample of the stuff I've written over the years. Some of it's even been published.
I originally tried breaking into the gaming industry by writing unsolicited, full-length books for Palladium Books. It wasn't one of my smarter ideas, although, in a weird way, they ultimately led to my getting published as a freelance author. So they weren't a total failure.
Here's the original manuscripts, warts and all. The ideas are good, but some of the writing - well, I was young and inexperienced.
Rifts Dimension Book: The Banwok Hunters
Rifts Dimension Book: Demon Heart Falling
I wrote an article called "Tools of the Trade" for Dragon Magazine. I'd been trying to get published in the pages of Dragon and Dungeon since 1987. This was accepted in 1996, but due to the demise of TSR in 1997, it wasn't published until 1998.
The article covers various magical thieves' tools for 2nd edition AD&D. At the time, it was the scariest 2,000 words I ever wrote.
Shortly after "Tools of the Trade" was published, I dropped out of gaming for a few years, then got back in during the d20 boom. After a couple of false starts with various publishers on projects that never went anywhere, I somehow started writing for Fantasy Flight Games.
"Draconic Lore" was the first proeject that I worked on for Fantasy Flight. I got to write up a bunch of cool monsters like the woolly dragon and the diamondback dragon. My initial drafts weren't that good, but fortunately, I worked with a great editor named Kevin Wilson, who helped me out a lot, and gave me a lot of guidance as I started writing more and more in the gaming industry.
"Talons of the Horned King" is my sci-fi/fantasy homage to one of my favorite AD&D adventure modules, "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks". I learned a lot while writing this one ... namely, how not to write an adventure. I went through at least four drafts for this one, and had to endlessly rewrite certain sections of it. I originally hated this adventure when I finally finished it, and was glad to get the final draft out of my hands. I didn't read my contributor's copy for well after a year after it was published.
However, I've really grown to like this one, and have come to appreciate both it and the lessons I learned writing it over the past few years. It's slowly become one of my favorites, and probably my best attempt at writing in an old-school Gygax/Moldvay style. A First Edition AD&D conversion of this adventure is scheduled to be released at GenCon in 2009.
