Glad you asked!

Let me give you a bit of background. I first got Wizardry 5-7 (a box set!) for Christmas when I was only 12 or so. My stepfather was a huge fan of the original trilogy in his college days, and decided to pass on the legacy to me.

I was blown away! I remember the first encounter with the Savant Trooper outside of New City. He was creepy... but it didn't stop me from thumping him good. :)

Anyway, it was about ten years later when I was 21 (and several years had gone by without playing Wizardry) that the nostalgia bug got me. I fired up another party, and had a blast.

But this time was a little different. For some reason, I just felt like making a party that would suit an interesting story, rather than a powerful group of the best race and class combinations. As I rolled the stats for these six heroes, I created simplistic backstories for each of my six characters.

During this time I was going to college, and I was commuting from Los Angeles to San Diego twice a week on a motorcycle. That gave me a lot of time to think, as you might imagine. And during these nearly unending trips, the simple backstories of these characters became more fleshed out. "What ifs" and possible relationships began to take form. Pretty soon, I had a mind full of ideas for these characters... and those ideas soon went from mind, to pen, to paper.

After a few weeks, my jumble of ideas started to resemble a storyboard. I was amazed when I first sat down to write a few sample chapters, just to see what it was like, only to find myself finishing all six of the characters' introductory stories in one sitting.

It was two full years of non-stop writing, checking, re-writing, writer's block, writer's storm and a torrent of other emotions before the trilogy was finally complete. And it was at this time that I looked back on the books and realized that, at least to me... they were good.

That's when I started to look for a publisher.

So what happened?
Ok, let's go back.