About the guy in the hat

I struggled for a good long while about whether or not to finally hang out a shingle and build a real home for my silly words to maybe find folks with whom they might resonate, but eventually, after trying out a few other possibilities and even attempting to snag one of those allegedly real writing gigs that still come with benefits and a consistent paycheck, having to do this the old-fashioned way became the obvious path forward.

I'm not young anymore, and it feels strange to brag about stuff I did sometimes decades ago now, but everybody's bio always includes things about credits, awards, and hot ex's, and I feel compelled to at least share why you might wanna stick around for the sentences and full paragraphs in the other posts.

So, here goes: I've been writing since I was a wee lad, garnering a small handful of accolades for poetry and short fiction, then I disappeared for awhile, selling various sorts of things in strip malls, shopping centers, and department stores, until I re-emerged as a writer for Riot Games, where I had the privilege of working alongside the gosh darn most talented folks I ever met on projects such as the release of IP all-star Jinx, the Loose Cannon, and events like Bilgewater: Burning Tides that included interactive websites, a full novella, gameplay missions that mattered, and the audacity of killing a main character from the roster. I was fortunate, too, to be able to travel around the world and to plenty of conventions where I hosted stage shows like trivia contests and interactive panels for massive audiences at places like PAX East and C2e2 in Chicago.

After all that, I moved back to my hometown and bought the local game store I grew up playing in, where I fell back in love with all the wide worlds of fiction I first entered so long ago.

With encouragement from my brother to finally type up the dozens of notebooks full of stories I've accumulated over the years, I managed to finish multiple novels and screenplays, as well as plenty of short stories, novellas, and what I usually call "sketches," and actually started to get them all transcribed so other folks can make sense of my scribbling instead of just me.

So, yeah, that's pretty much where this all came from. I dunno how much my story really matters to whether or not you'll think the World of Veilfall is worth exploring, or whether or not you wanna spend time in a cozy, south Florida neo-noir with Joan and Nixy, but now you at least know I've been doing this awhile, and hopefully I managed to learn something along the way.

• B. James Snyder