Fanart (!) for Ghost in the Machine, and Announcement

My friend Gladius created this phenomenal illustration for the Virmire chapters of Ghost in the Machine. The joy of seeing an offscreen moment such as this, that would otherwise exist only as a vague idea in my imagination, would be hard to overstate. Perhaps more importantly, this is hugely motivating and invigorating as a token of interest. I am honored and deeply grateful.

For anyone wondering, I am in fact working on Ghost again. I have written two new chapters and a good portion of a third. The new material has almost nothing in common anymore with the first draft I wrote during Nano 2011, but I have a broad outline to follow and some hopefully good ideas.

In parallel with writing new content, I’m revising the stuff that’s been published already. These revisions will not touch on the events of the story, and so re-reading from the top won’t be required (only heartily recommended). The largest changes will happen in chapters written from Shepard’s POV, because the gap between how I envisioned her character and how it turned out in the text is fucking huge. I will also strive to cut down the repetition of game dialog and action sequences and replace them with [insert wisdom here].

Anyway, there will be no ETA or promises of any sort this time. The perceived failure to deliver chapters according to my own, self-imposed schedule played a significant role in the burnout I suffered seven years ago and I won’t let that happen again. I will, however, post about the progress and the process when/if there’s anything interesting to say.