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.