I’ve been very luck to work on a lot of properties that have a personal connection to me over the course of my life. Writing my own Sherlock Holmes book, obviously, but also contributing to franchises like Transformers, Red Dwarf, Futurama, and so many more have always been career highlights for me.
So it’s a bit weird that last month I announced being able to write for the latest iteration of Marvel RPG (the original TSR version was my first-ever tabletop RPG), and this month I get to announce being able to write for the latest iteration of Cyberpunk (which was my third-ever).
Last month I was announced on the R. Talsorian Discord as one of the writers for the upcoming book Tales of the RED: Forlorn Hope.
Much like how writing for Marvel was a childhood dream of mine, this is a dream of a slightly older vintage. I’ve been reading, running, and playing Cyberpunk since it came out in a box set in 1988 (yes, I was one of those obnoxious teenagers in the 80s who got very wrapped up in the Cyberpunk/Shadowrun war). While all of my sourcebooks have disappeared in the winds of various moves around the world, I’ve bought nearly everything I used to own (and a fair bit more besides) in PDF so I can appreciate it all over again.
This isn’t my first touch with Cyberpunk RED, though. I was lucky enough to be able to do some beta reading on the manuscript as a disability consultant. I was chuffed to have the chance to do it, and I honestly thought it would be my only chance to have my name in a Cyberpunk book.
And now I have a chance to write for one of the most iconic cyberpunk bars in fiction, the Forlorn Hope. In fact, I get to… ah, but I can’t talk about that yet. Hopefully in the near future!
But don’t worry, because I have other things I can talk about!
News Roundup
As I mentioned last month, I’m more or less done with The Site Formerly Known as Twitter. I’ve also migrated my dice.camp account, mainly because my growth on BlueSky was miles better than on Mastodon, so it didn’t make sense to have two Masto accounts. The best place to stay in touch is this newsletter, but aside from that you can follow my other two accounts.
A couple of days ago I was on the Geek Pride Cast! We had some great discussion about Transformers, Babylon 5, working as a self-employed freelancer, and the struggle to create provocative art. Check it out!
My friends at Handiwork Games got an entire shipment of books stolen recently, losing some £25,000 of stock. This is potentially devastating to any small company, and while they’re putting a brave face on things, it’s got to be rough. If you’re interested in beautiful tabletop RPGs, now is a great time to pick some up and help them out as they get through this tough time. I backed their a/state Kickstarter, for example, and it was a fantastic experience from start to finish.
My Media
For those who have been following me since the beginning of the year, I’ve finally finished Deep Space Nine. I’m honestly glad I took my time working through the series, and I got a better appreciation this time around. I’ve since purchased a lot of Babylon 5 DVDs and now I’m making my way through that. I’ve watched the first few seasons about ten years ago, but I don’t think I’ve ever finished the whole show, so I’m looking forward to that.
Speaking of binging, I’ve been rereading a series of books that I love, and I don’t think I’ve talked about them before in this newsletter: the TARDIS Eruditorum series.
It’s an unofficial critical history of Doctor Who told through the lens of history. Each book roughly covers one Doctor (although Tom Baker gets two due to the length of his run, while Peter Davison and Colin Backer share a volume), and it not only analyses each televised story, but also talks about other media happening at same time, world events, cultural zeitgeists, and even spin-off media that goes back to earlier eras. I don’t agree with everything in every volume, but it’s insightful, funny, comprehensive, and deeply weird — Volume Five, for example, dives into the significance of Tom Baker’s last story, Logopolis, and presents it as a choose-your-own-adventure book.
The series started off as a series of blog posts, which I believe you can still find on Sandifer’s website. There you can also order the books, which are all revised and expanded from the original blog posts. They’re self-published, but honestly aside from the occasional bit of repetition, it has about as many typos and mistakes as a small-press publishing company. They aren’t for everyone (particularly if you’re not interested in the thoughts of an aggressively liberal trans woman), but I find them so fascinating I’ve torn through five volumes in just over a week.
And now, I’m back to reading about the intersection of Buddhist and Christian faith in Kinda. See you next month!