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Welcome to the world of Vixen!
Vixen began back in 2007 when I set out to write a novel. I still have the original versions, and believe me, it was a mess. But, I didn’t know that at the time, so I submitted query letters to potential agents anyway. I never heard back from most of them, but a few did ask for a sample chapter, which I dutifully sent… never to hear from them again.
For a year, the Word doc collected dust on my hard drive, before I had time to take another look at it. For the next year, I went through a complete editing and rewriting pass. Again, I sent out query letters, and again met with failure.
Another year passed.
Again, I dusted off the hard drive and took a peek. In looking at it with a year’s break, I had to admit the agents were right. So, I started a complete story overhaul, and switched the narrative from third person to first person. I also learned about a thing called “active voice” which I am still mastering. On the good side, my progress with active voice is going far better than my struggle to figure out the difference between “effect” and “affect”.
By this time, my tabletop game company “Dan Verssen Games” had launched and was meeting with some success. This was great from a paying the bills point of view, but it also kept me very busy for the next several years. It turns out running a game company involves as much running the business time as game design time.
During this time, I designed several tactical combat games, such as Special Forces, Rise of the Zombies, and Frontline. Each game was good, but none were great. What I didn’t know at the time was, each game was honing my skills for the 2014 release of Warfighter.
Warfighter started out as a modern Special Forces card game. You select a squad of soldiers, assign them gear, and fight your way through a series of locations (yes, there is a point to all this), until you reach your objective, and do your best to take out the mission’s objective. Warfighter has since massively expanded in both modern era games as well as into WWII era games with dozens of expansions.
It wasn’t until 2017 that I realized that the missions depicted in the Vixen novel fit perfectly with the game mechanics in Warfighter.
I dug out the last Vixen document and gave it a read with fresh eyes, to find that while I liked it, it wasn’t great. I began to edit it at night until I was happy with it. I then sought out the editing services of a wonderful gentleman, Ray Vallese. Ray’s editing pen sharpened Vixen to a whole new level, and after several passes, I knew the novel was ready for release.
Which brings us to 2019. It is my hope to release both the Vixen novel, as well as the Warfighter Vixen game toward the end of 2019. It is already April, and already it has turned into a busy year! I will continue to post updates to this site in the coming months.
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