Everyone writes, just as everyone does art. The difference is that some of us don’t stop. Most people are storytellers at heart, and I’m no different than anyone else in that sense. Even during periods when I wasn’t writing fiction, I spent a lot of time playing and running role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, and Champions. There’s a strong collaborative storytelling aspect to that form of gaming, and I was always drawn to that.

After many years of writing without success, I finally made some decisions about my goals and the process. The thing that led to creating publishable work in my case was switching from novels to short stories. I had two complete novels, some aborted attempts, and a screenplay, but the fiction wasn’t good enough to take to a publisher or an agent. I think the screenplay is adequate, but the novels are…