In 2019, that changes. Here’s what I’ve got coming:

Violet Dawn

The Last People fled the legendary “world beyond” long ago; now, a young guardian leaves the only home he knows and discovers the true nature of an alien and wondrous land...

This one’s been in the works for ages. Launched in 2018, Violet Dawn is a reader-supported webcomic updating Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays telling an epic fantasy story in the realm of Avadnu. This is weird fantasy with a character-driven focus–there are swords and bizarre creatures but what matters most is the souls and scars of the beings who inhabit their strange, magical world.

If you’re feeling very generous, call it The Dark Crystal by way of Michael Moorcock, or the three-way child of Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and Ursula LeGuin. Look to role-playing games like Skyrealms of Jorune and Empire of the Petal Throne for influence, along with the comic book works of Moebius.

I’m enormously proud of Violet Dawn, and penciller Louis Sollune has done brilliant work bringing Avadnu and its inhabitants to life. Louis has been a fantastic creative partner throughout, and I can’t imagine what the comic would be without him. Editor and letterer Jeffrey Visgaitis has been a dear friend and colleague for years, and Violet Dawn is his vision more than anyone’s. Gaston Zubeldia and Frank Walls can never receive too much credit as our fantastic colorists, and Laure Henri-Garand has, with thought and artistry and diligence, translated the whole thing into French.

Violet Dawn is a project close to my heart–my history with the setting goes back decades, to when I was a freelancer hired to write for a series of Violet Dawn role-playing game books. The setting’s developed quite a lot since then, but it retains an element of wild imagination that appeals to me.

Go give it a read–after all, it’s completely free. And if you enjoy it, I urge you to click on the Support link and find a way to send us a little money to keep the comic going. We can’t do it without you, and we really want to keep going.

Violet Dawn is available to read now at violetdawn.com.

Anthem (the game) and Anthem (the comic)

On a world left unfinished by the gods, a shadowy faction threatens all of humankind. The only thing that stands between these villains and the ancient technology they covet are the Freelancers.

BioWare’s latest video game is Anthem, a multiplayer action RPG in which the player characters don suits of “Javelin” power armor to protect outposts of civilization on a mysterious world.

I spent a number of months consulting with the Anthem writing team, offering editorial feedback as well as designing and writing portions of an early iteration of the storyline. Ultimately, on a project as vast and long-running as Anthem, my contribution was a small one. Nonetheless, I’m proud to have had the chance to work with the team and hope I managed to kindle a few creative sparks here and there.

When Kismet’s family is ambushed while traveling between settlements, the young boy is rescued by one of the exosuit-clad warriors known as Freelancers. Now an orphan, it’s up to him and his adoptive sister, Jani, to build a future for themselves–and humanity–on a planet filled with danger.

When it comes to the Anthem tie-in comic (a 3-issue miniseries from Dark Horse Comics), my contributions are more immediately visible. The comic was plotted by Anthem developer Mac Walters; I worked off his story outline to create a detailed comic script for artist Eduardo Francisco and colorist Michael Atiyeh, similar to my work as scripter on the Dragon Age comics in collaboration with David Gaider.

While the comic story feeds directly into the game’s narrative (it’s a prequel, introducing characters and events seen in the game proper), it’s intended to be a relationship-driven adventure tale exploring “ordinary” life in the world of Anthem in a way that the video game can’t. My hope is that we created something fans will enjoy.

Anthem is out now for PC, Xbox, and Playstation 4. The Anthem comic book releases monthly (for three months) starting in February.

Alphabet Squadron, Book 1

On the verge of victory in a brutal war, five New Republic pilots transform from hunted to hunters in this epic STAR WARS adventure. Set after Return of the Jedi, Alphabet Squadron follows a unique team, each flying a different class of starfighter as they struggle to end their war once and for all.

It’s been a little while since my last major Star Wars project–if you don’t count my short story in From a Certain Point of View, you’d need to go back to the Rogue One novelization in 2016. But every time I wonder if I’m done with the Star Wars galaxy, something new comes along. It’s an honor and a privilege every time.

In this case, the “something new” isn’t just one book but a trilogy of novels chronicling the rise (and fall?) of the titular Alphabet Squadron of starfighter pilots. Book 1 is scheduled for release in June of this year, and while I can’t yet add a lot beyond the description below I hope folks who enjoyed my previous Star Wars novels will find something appealing here, as well. Alphabet Squadron isn’t exactly the same as tone and style as Battlefront: Twilight Company, but it’s fair to say it exists in the same tonal world.

Here’s the remainder of the description from the official website:

The Emperor is dead. His final weapon has been destroyed. The Imperial Army is in disarray. In the aftermath, Yrica Quell is just one of thousands of defectors from her former cause living in a deserters’ shantytown—until she is selected to join Alphabet Squadron.

Cobbled together from an eclectic assortment of pilots and starfighters, the five members of Alphabet are tasked by New Republic general Hera Syndulla herself. Like Yrica, each is a talented pilot struggling to find their place in a changing galaxy. Their mission: to track down and destroy the mysterious Shadow Wing, a lethal force of TIE fighters exacting bloody, reckless vengeance in the twilight of their reign.

The newly formed unit embodies the heart and soul of the Rebellion: ragtag, resourceful, scrappy, and emboldened by their most audacious victory in decades. But going from underdog rebels to celebrated heroes isn’t as easy as it seems, and their inner demons threaten them as much as their enemies among the stars. The wayward warriors of Alphabet Squad will have to learn to fly together if they want to protect the new era of peace they’ve fought so hard to achieve.

But there’s more! The Alphabet Squadron trilogy also has a sister series: Marvel’s TIE Fighter comic books, written by Jody Houser, tell the story of Shadow Wing from an Imperial perspective. Both the novels and the comics stand alone perfectly well, but add up to a greater whole. Jody and I swapped many late-night e-mails making sure we were coordinating, and I expect the final works will complement one another nicely.

Alphabet Squadron, Book 1, releases in June 2019. Issue 1 of Jody Houser’s TIE Fighter releases in April.

Storyscape and Eternal City

A single choice can change everything. Enter Storyscape, where world-class writers bring you tales of romance, intrigue, and adventure and every decision you make transforms your story. Discover love aboard James Cameron’s Titanic or confront the unknown with the X-Files. Find romance in a new city or explore a magical realm as a slave-turned-revolutionary leader. New shows and seasons drop often, so there’s always something exciting to play.

Last but certainly not least: In 2017, I joined a new company called Fogbank Entertainment as Studio Writing Director. Fogbank began as part of 21st Century Fox’s FoxNext interactive unit, and since the start we’ve been quietly working on Storyscape: a free-to-play branching narrative story platform for Android and iOS. Or, in less jargon-y terms, we’ve built an app packed with a whole bunch of interactive stories in the tradition of a BioWare or Telltale game.

This feels very much like the next stage of the branching work I’ve been doing for over a decade–a chance to apply the tools I’ve developed in branching narrative to a more “pure” story-focused experience, stretching into a variety of genres (more “mainstream” content–romance, drama, comedy–along with a mix of the usual science-fiction and fantasy work). I’ve had the privilege to build a team of tremendously talented writers and edit them on projects I could never, ever write myself. I feel like the editor-in-chief of an ambitious publishing house bringing unique voices to the world and pushing the boundaries of the medium.

Storyscape is already live in Canada with a limited slate of shows and a small selection of episodes from Meg Jayanth’s Titanic (based on the James Cameron film), Laura Jacqmin’s Life 2.0 (an original romantic comedy), and Eternal City (more on that below). It’s very much early days, and we’ve already announced Sean Kelley McKeever’s The X-Files (based on the classic paranormal investigation franchise), Drew Karpyshyn’s Edge of Extinction (a science-fiction survival story), and Meghan Thornton’s Ageless (vampiric horror) as “coming soon.” That’s just for starters.

That said, while my most important role on Storyscape has been an editorial one, I’ve also contributed as a writer…

In an ancient metropolis ruled by power-hungry factions, magic, and secrets, a single life will change everything. The City once provided for its citizens richly, but corruption lives at the heart of the Garden and the people are growing desperate as food grows scarce. From child slave to powerful elder, you will live an entire lifetime and your choices will shape or destroy this world.

Eternal City is my own Storyscape show–a fantasy epic drawing inspiration from the likes of Gormenghast and Twin Peaks. This is a very different flavor of fantasy from Violet Dawn–while Violet Dawn uses bizarre visuals and action sequences to intimately chart the course of one soul, Eternal City is about the impact of interpersonal relationships over time on a volatile world.

I’m being intentionally vague (as I trust my marketing department), but I think the project is every bit what a person would expect based on my past work. For better or worse, Eternal City is the closest I’ve come to publishing an original fantasy novel, more intricately branched than my work on Star Wars: The Old Republic, massive in scope, and with a flavor and identity all its own.

Storyscape is available in Canada now on iOS and Android. A worldwide release date has not yet been announced.

• My short story “One Thousand Levels Down” was published in Star Wars Insider 151, available on newsstands and in electronic format.
• BioWare announced Shadow Realms, a multiplayer action RPG. As I was Lead Writer in the very early days of the project, I’m both excited to see it reach the public eye and interested to see how it’s changed and evolved since my departure.
• Marvel Comics announced that my Star Wars: Purge – The Tyrant’s Fist comics will be among the comics reprinted in STAR WARS LEGENDS EPIC COLLECTION: THE EMPIRE VOL. 1.
• I continue to take on new video game projects (and continue hammering away at old favorites) which I can’t yet talk about. Sorry. I’m hoping to mention some soon.
• Lastly, I’ve become enamored of the CRPG Addict blog, in which one dedicated player is working his way through virtually every computer role-playing game ever published. It’s a fascinating history of the genre.

Hoping to get back to a semi-regular schedule upon my return. In the meantime, a few bits and pieces:

I’ll be attending New York Comic Con from October 10th through 13th. Not currently planning any signings or events, but feel free to say “hi” if you see me on the show floor or ping me via e-mail or Twitter if you’d like to meet up.

Game Update 2.4, “The Dread War” is coming out soon for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Quite a lot of the writing for the planet Oricon is my work–my first (though not last) work for BioWare as a freelancer instead of as an in-house employee. It’s short and focused (and leads into the update’s Operations), but I think fans of story-based content will enjoy it.

My third Dragon Age comic book miniseries, Dragon Age: Until We Sleep is out in a lovely hardcover edition. The trilogy is now complete and bookshelf-appropriate! My latest Star Wars comics (the two-issue miniseries Star Wars: Purge – The Tyrant’s Fist) have also been collected in Star Wars: Purge–a trade paperback that also includes stories by John Ostrander and Haden Blackman.

That’s it for now. Once again, forgive my sporadic posts, and I’ll try to get some new content up after NYCC!

But I’ve still got some items in the pipeline. Here’s a handy list of things that will be out shortly:

Star Wars: The Old Republic – Rise of the Hutt Cartel. There’s a little more detail on my involvement in this project on the Bibliography page, but suffice it to say I did a substantial amount of work on the first SWTOR expansion before I left BioWare. It’s out some time this spring, and I’m looking forward to it.

Dragon Age: Until We Sleep. The third Dragon Age comic book series by David Gaider and myself, sequel to The Silent Grove and Those Who Speak. It wraps up the trilogy starring Alistair, Varric, and Isabela. The first issue comes out in print and digital format on March 27th, and Dark Horse has a pre-order form you can take to your comic shop.

If you missed my two-issue comic miniseries Star Wars: Purge – The Tyrant’s Fist last month, Dark Horse Comics has just announced that it will be included in Star Wars: Purge, a trade paperback collection of my series and three one-shots written by John Ostrander and Haden Blackman. It’s scheduled to be out in July.

Also, if you want to meet and chat or discuss business, I’m going to be showing up two places in March:

I’ll be at Emerald City Comic Con, which runs March 1st through 3rd in Seattle, WA. I’ve never been before, and am very much looking forward to it. The plan is that I’ll be signing at the Dark Horse Comics booth first thing on Saturday, at 10 AM. If this changes, I’ll post here or on Twitter (and hey, feel free to poke me on Twitter if you want to catch me wandering around the convention–I’ll be in and out throughout the weekend, particularly on Friday).

Lastly, I’ll be at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco from March 25th to March 29th, catching up with my fellow games writers and learning a few things at the Narrative Summit. (Also, skipping out from time to time to play tourist.)

More updates as they come!

In March, the first issue of Dragon Age: Until We Speak will be published by Dark Horse Comics. Until We Speak is the final part of the trilogy that David Gaider and I have been working on since Dragon Age: The Silent Grove began in February of 2012; the trilogy tells a story set in the Dragon Age video game universe revolving around the familiar game characters of King Alistair Theirin, Varric Tethras, and Isabela the pirate. Dragon Age: Those Who Speak–the second part of the trilogy–has just been collected in a lovely hardcover edition.

That being the case, I thought now was a good time to talk about how we put the story for these comics together. All three series have been a collaboration between myself and David Gaider, Lead Writer for the Dragon Age video games (and author of several Dragon Age novels). It’s been different than my usual work and an intriguing challenge…

Each series follows roughly the same process: David Gaider starts with some key points of the story he wants to tell and sends them to myself and Dave Marshall, our editor at Dark Horse. At this stage, my job is just to pay attention, flag anything that strikes me as potentially tricky, and maybe suggest a few minor items I’d like to see included. David is the vision-holder for the comic, so I want to stay out of his way so he can do what he’s best at.

Next, David puts together a detailed plot synopsis, breaking things down issue-by-issue and scene-by-scene, even including portions of dialogue. Once again, this comes to Dave Marshall and myself, and we both take our red pens and start giving detailed feedback. I do my best to approach this part with an editorial mindset–not asking “What’s the story I most want to tell#8221; but rather, “What’s the best way to tell this story#8221;

At this point, I’ll also start making notes on how to translate the synopsis into a comic–estimating how many pages a given scene might take and adjusting the pacing accordingly, checking to make sure that every scene is going to be visually interesting for the reader (and for Chad Hardin, our artist!), deciding what “layering” of narrative captions, dialogue, and art will best convey the tone of an issue, and so forth.

Once David Gaider provides the final version of the synopsis and I’ve finished making my notes, I start scripting–breaking everything down into page by page, panel by panel descriptions, writing out every line of dialogue, and so on. I do so knowing that my job is to find the absolute best way to express David’s story from the synopsis in comic form–but if I see a way that diverging from the plan will improve the story as a whole, I’ll either ask David for his thoughts or just go ahead and make the change. After all, there’s still one more step…

…and that’s when my script goes to David Gaider and Dave Marshall, who both have a chance to give their feedback. In particular, David can make sure that everything is true to the Dragon Age lore and that all the dialogue suits the established characters–as well as offering any general suggestions that might be useful! Once I resolve any outstanding issues in the revised draft, it’s on to Chad Hardin for art and then (after coloring, lettering, and several other vital steps) to the printer.

That’s about it–but I didn’t want to upload this post without giving David a chance to give his perspective. I asked him to take a glance at my writeup and see if he had anything to add from his side, and he kindly sent the following:

I think the thing I was most surprised by was how hard it is to condense your story into a set number of pages. In a game, there’s always room to extend the scene or write some more words. In a novel, there’s always room to expand the number of pages. Yes, you can’t go overboard, but you’re looking at the big picture rather than saying things like “this chapter can only be 12 pages and you’ve written 14.” So thankfully Alex had way more experience on how to pace a comic, as naturally my first impulses were to write something that would require a lot more talking and far too many scenes. You get better at it, but this process made it far less painful than if I’d tried it on my own… and as is typical for me, I thought the collaboration had some nice results. Alex often thought of ways to have a scene play out (Isabela’s flashbacks in “Those Who Speak” are a good example) which I’m pretty certain I’d never have thought possible.

I should emphasize that David was always more than willing to make accommodations when the medium demanded it–it’s always difficult to see someone else take hold of your work, but he was game all the way through.

The end result, I think, is a David Gaider story filtered through an Alexander Freed lens–not quite what either of us would have done alone, and hopefully unique and stronger because of it! That’s not even addressing the role the artist has to play, which is pivotal for any comic book (and a different essay on collaboration); Chad Hardin has done wonderful things to translate and expand what’s given him onto the page.

If we do our jobs, you get an engaging and thoughtful adventure fantasy and a solid addition to the Dragon Age universe. If that sounds interesting, give it a shot. And let us know what you think!

Dragon Age: Until We Sleep #1 will be in comic shops on March 27th. A preview is available here. Dragon Age: The Silent Grove and Dragon Age: Those Who Speak are available now in hardcover and digital formats.

All images in this post come from DarkHorse.com and are used without permission.