Game On.

I'm sat here on a Friday night near the end of January enjoying some much-needed quiet time. Despite me having bought a ticket to a thing tonight, after the day I've had (which included picking family up from the airport), I've opted for a quiet night in to rest and catch up on some work.

'All work and no play...'

Anyhow.

The past year has been my busiest yet. Also one of milestones. Having hit a record number of seven conventions on both sides of the Atlantic. Taking on an additional mentee as part of the HWA mentorship scheme, and while that's in an official capacity, there are more that I may support outside of that. Publishing my first hardback book with Demain Publishing which, if I understand correctly, is a first for them as well. Having one of my works appear on the HWA Bram Stoker Award® Reading List.

And, in driving these milestones, we get to the thrust of this entry.

Because, in order for me to have reached these milestones, I would have evolved - even if it's 'only' as simple as becoming more resilient. More focused. Better at multi-tasking. Or better at prioritising. Regardless, what in particular is key here is having engaged with another horror author at a convention last year and thinking, 'With people like you around, I feel the need to run another series of guest posts on game talk.'

Game: 'how you do what you do.' And ever since I got into the nuts and bolts of Game 101, I'd been curious how others with game had approached theirs.

Over the course of the last year, I've had the absolute privilege and pleasure to engage with people who live and breathe game. Not only do they do it with savvy, but they do it with joy; a vast enthusiasm that lights up their face when they talk about it. Doesn't matter whether writing, editing, selling and curating books, reviewing books, uplifting the genre exponents who write and publish those books, do the artwork for those books, etc. You get the idea.

In much the same way that when you put together a playlist, you think not only about the songs in the playlist but the order, so it is with hosting another series of Game Talk sessions. It has truly been a joy compiling such a list of dedicated, talented and passionate genre individuals - and gratifying as hell that they'd dedicate some time to talk game. All I've done here is curate the who's who - that said, I can't wait for you to see for yourself who's actually going to talk game. No doubt you'll know some of them, if not all of them. But, at the time of writing this, I've no idea what answers will come back, so I'm eager to see their take on wins and losses, evolution, and dropping pearls of wisdom.

So there it is. Starting as early as the middle of February, we'll get into Game Talk once again.

Game on, people.

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