When I chose to step away from regular middle grade spotlights a year ago I really–honestly–intended to still be a regular around this place! But as we all know, this past year didn’t go according to plan. And…that’s an understatement.

The ugliness of our country’s exposed systemic racism has wrung my heart and I’ve grieved with friends who lost loved ones to Covid-19, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the pandemic upheaval has also brought good things into my life. For one, it’s helped my daughter be at peace with this stage of her life. She was a 2020 graduating senior, but thanks to her health challenges wasn’t going to be able to walk across the stage with her class, and wasn’t moving into dorms this fall. When almost all the rest of her age group found themselves in a similar boat it gave us a sort of grace. Things were still hard, and maybe especially for her since her health means we have to set an extreme standard in safety. But for one significant, right-of-passage moment in time she was in sync with her peers, and experiencing everything alongside them. Instead of being invisible she felt seen as we held our little lawn ceremony and listened to President Obama’s broadcasted commencement speech. So, a silver lining, for sure!

The biggest gift for me personally this past year also began as glimpsed sunshine around thunder clouds. I was thrilled early this year to welcome my second full-length Lily Black book, but the timing for a romantic suspense with a giant festival as the background has, well, felt off since the pandemic hit. Not only have the cancellations made research for the next book, which would have featured a renaissance festival, been much more difficult, but I haven’t really had the heart to push it forward. And, if I’m being brutally honest, reviews are indicating that maybe I should try my hand at women’s fiction for future Lily Black books, because critical response says this latest novel was more that category than romance. Thankfully that’s not a bad idea and my publisher is encouraging and open to my doing that! However, I found as the summer unraveled around us that I needed to clear my head and re-center my goals before committing myself in a direction like that. My most core desire as a writer has always been to reach kids who’re on the fringes, like I was, and give them stories that will help them open themselves to potential they never dreamed of before. I want to light a spark of hope in their lives, and show them how to keep it burning bright.

What all of that means is–

*drum roll, please*

I have enrolled in a simulation and game design program, and am learning how to make games!

I just wrapped up my first semester, and while at first I was super intimidated by the idea of *me* learning to program, I was shocked to find I actually love it. The pieces of code click together like the best parts of math, and make sense all the way down to my bones. I also really love creating game levels, and figuring out ways to bring the stories in my head to life in this fresh new way. Will you indulge me in showing off one of my pet projects from this past semester? I can’t help geeking out a bit over my own stuff, even though that’s bad form, because it was really just such an astounding amount of fun!

For one project, I was tasked with making a basic, single level in Unreal, using only the content available in the starter package–no going to the Unreal store or using the market to get extra assets. That meant getting creative, since the only chair supplied in the starter pack was a boring modern kitchen thing that really didn’t fit the fantastic castle of mythical beasties that I had in mind.

For my solution, I took some random shapes and blew them up in size, then squished and reshaped them a bit–manipulating the x and y axis–and, ta da! I have one-of-a-kind puffy moss-covered chairs for my star tower. 😀

There beside the chair you see an odd kind of pedestal I created from other random parts, and within it a pile of my small mirrored spheres, which play a significant role in my plans for the level as a playable game. Why the lightbulb is photobombing everyone I can’t say. Perhaps I should have used more lightbulbs in my designs…except, truly, in Unreal it takes about a thousand lightbulbs to light up one room so trust me, they’re extremely well-represented!

Just in case anyone wants to see the whole mini-castle, I’ve created a video and shared it on my youtube channel–you can watch that here. As I show in the short video, the star tower sits on top of a kind of main hall, which is flanked by the phoenix tower and the dragon tower, and underneath the rooms are secret tunnels leading out from under the castle. Creating the firepit and phoenix nests, the dragon hoard, and the torches for the secret tunnels was also immensely fun! The video is the only way to do them justice, though, so no pics. Oh! And I’m proud of how the mirrored spheres in the star tower turned out, as well. For those I had to do some independent sleuthing outside the scope of my class and learn how to make a mirrored material–much easier than I thought it would be and soooo cool!

Truly, it was all such a blast and I’m really looking forward to creating the code that will go with this level and let me turn it into a real, playable game. What’s fun about all this is I’m finding that as I work on my latest middle grade project–because I am still writing!–I’m able to brainstorm the games that would companion the novel, and doing that helps me focus the story and zero in on the emotional core of my character’s journey. I want to create games to companion all my novels, which I think will help readers connect with them and will provide another access point into these worlds. For example, this castle I’ve created in Unreal will be an easy way to introduce readers to Fairyland’s Witness Protection Island, and give them a first tiny taste of that large and lovely world. Once my skills have progressed a little further I have another idea, to create an RPG focusing on Prince Robin’s story, in which players have to manage his anxiety. You see, he’s actually much more comfortable navigating life as a frog so when something frightens him–and everything frightens him–he slips into his frog form. Some parts of the game will require he be human, while other parts will work best if he’s Frog Robin, and the player will have to use anxiety and stress management techniques to keep him how they want him!
The best part is, those games will both act as support for my middle grade novel set on Fairyland’s Witness Protection Island, that my agent is currently shopping. And in a beautifully symbiotic way, all the different stories–whether games or in novel form–will support each other in fleshing out the world and deepening the characters and lore.

That’s my dream, anyway! I’m working toward making it reality, and in the meantime, I’m also planning to work with game development teams as their writer and/or narrative designer, working to bring those stories to life with stronger stories. This possibility took me totally by surprise, since I hadn’t realized game developers use writers, but I’m thrilled to be able to pursue this new direction, and loving all the cool stuff I’m learning!

I’ll try to update throughout this coming semester a little better, both on how the game development thing is going and this new draft of my current project. So…here’s to silver linings! I’m so grateful that even in the darkest hours of these challenging days–when simply being human and able to feel or think means also often feeling scrubbed raw–that this ray of light has been a bright beam in my life.

What has given you a ray of light over this past year?