Earlier this year, I found myself with little to do. I’d planned to spend my summer writing another pair of novels for the Knights of the Silver Dragon line. However, when Wizards canceled the line, I looked down and saw I had an empty plate.

I filled that space with a number of smaller gigs while I went out hunting for big game to bring to the table. How’d I get myself in such a situation? I’d forgotten one of the first rules of freelancing:

Never stop looking for work.

When 2005 started, I’d lined up a five or six novels to write, and then came the work on Marvel Heroes Battle Dice and R.E.V.s for Playmates, plus a few other things. I found myself double or triple booked some months, and the thought of tracking down more work seemed insane. I figured my time would have been better spent looking into human cloning, accelerated growth stimulation, and in-creche education initiatives instead.

I finally brought my head up for air this past summer, just when I was about to start work on those two Knights novels. Yikes.

Being a freelancer is like running on a treadmill. You need to keep a good pace, something strong enough to keep you busy and feed your family but not so fast that you wear yourself out. This summer, it seemed like someone had pulled the plug on the machine and I’d run right off the end of it.

As I dusted myself, I tried to look at this as a crisis in the Chinese sense (in which “crisis” means “danger” and “opportunity”). I decided to stretch beyond the same stuff I’d been doing and try a few new things. Some of them would probably wash out–most of them, likely–but I only needed one of them to pay off for the plan to work.

I lined up a few other gigs while I set up my new plans of attack. I wanted to write more tie-in novels, do some serious computer game work, write a creator-owned series of novels, write more comics, and get more involved in toy work.

I founds loads of good leads, but for months nothing panned out. It frustrated me, but i consoled myself with the fact that my wife had just gone back to work full-time, which meant my family needed more of my time than ever. Still those bills don’t go away when you need more time, and I had to get something going soon so I could pay them.

Then the week before Thanksgiving everything seemed to come together–all at once.

At the moment, I’m working on:

1. The Mutant Chronicles film novelization.
2. A fourth Blood Bowl novel (yes, the Black Library asked me for another!)
3. A non-fiction book (another in the Complete Idiot’s Guide series, one that’s more in line with my experiences than The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Manga Fantasy Creatures Illustrated).
4. A story for a big-budget computer game.
5. The questions for a mass-market trivia game.
6. The logic flowchart for a mass-market electronic toy.

That puts me back in the no-rest-for-the-weary category once more, but as my friend Henrik Strandberg says, “ I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” One thing I’ll make sure I do this time around though: I’ll never stop looking for work.

Last week, a copy of the German edition of Races of Faerûn showed up in the mail from Wizards of the Coast. It’s always sort of strange to see my words in a language I can’t read, but the people at Feder & Schwert did a fine job of creating a great-looking book, which is the only basis upon which I can judge it. So, if you speak German, keep your eye out for Völker Faerûns, by Eric L. Boyd, James Jacobs, and myself.

Shannon Appelcline recently posted on RPG.net the latest in his series of articles about the histories of various companies in the adventure gaming industry. This is a two-parter about Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE).

I worked for ICE back in the early ’90s. In fact, ICE published the first large book I wrote entirely on my own: Western Hero (also produced as Outlaw, a supplement for Rolemaster). I added bits to a number of books in their Middle-earth Roleplaying line, and I handled the second edition of Silent Death for them and worked on retainer as that line’s developer for a good while.

Shannon does a fine job of summing up ICE’s history. Of course, there are many tales that can’t be told in public about any company, but he dug up some great sources (including myself) and got them to talk, so this is about as good a history as you’ll find without cornering one of the company’s ex-employees over a beer at a convention.

To add to what he says, I’ll tell you that ICE owed me a large chunk of change at one point. I never badmouthed them about it, though, and I worked with them to get what I could out of them. When they published the Middle-earth Collectible Card Game–a huge hit–they paid off every dime and even handed me a complete factory set of the cards as a way of saying thanks for being so patient.

I still run into many ex-ICE folk over the years. Pete Fenlon and Coleman Charlton are now with Mayfair Games. Monte Cook co-designed the third edition of D&D, and he and his wife Sue now run their own successful Malhavoc Press. Kevin Barrett moved back to Canada where he wrangles all the writers for Bioware. Terry Amthor works as a Mac tech in DC. Jason Hawkins co-designed Parthenon: Rise of the Aegean, published by Z-Man Games–which won the Origins Award for Board Game of the Year last year. Bruce Neidlinger and his wife Heike Kubasch run the new Iron Crown. There are others, of course, who I’ve lost track of over the years, but I enjoyed working with them all.

This summer, I attended Protospiel as the guest of honor, and I had a wonderful time. I just learned that a West Coast spinoff–Protospiel West–is set for January 27, 2007, in Santa Monica, CA. Best of all, they have my pal Marcelo Figueroa of Playroom Entertainment set up as a guest speaker for the event. If you’re an aspiring game designer looking for solid, intelligent feedback on your designs–and you live closer to California than Michigan–give it a shot.