Patreon Forward to the Introduction
Just like with Cycle of the Muse, Gamer Zone Revisited is getting it’s own online-only forward about the book. Unlike Cycle of the Muse, The Story of Gamer Zone didn’t languish in dusty digital drawer, unreleased. It was my first published effort. And woo-buddy did it suck.
I’ve been told by many people that they really enjoyed the story. It’s even been a blueprint for some people to try and avoid some of the mistakes I (well, we) made. But the editing was… wow. A thing to behold. Actually, I don’t recommend beholding it at all.
Cycle of the Muse and The Story of Gamer Zone were tied together in a really odd way. TSoGZ (abbreviating the unwieldy title here) is a semi-biographical work set here in the real world. There’s things edited in and out, and timelines squished a bit to make things a bit easier to follow. Overall, it’s the real deal.
Cycle of the Muse isn’t autobiographical, but it does loosely follow my life – I act as the background for the action, but not the action it’s self. That sounds a little confusing, but if you start reading Cycle of the Muse, you’ll understand after a bit. I promise.
These two things don’t exist in the same “universe”, but they also sort of do: at one point, Cycle of the Muse references a book in development. Muse (the original title of Cycle of the Muse) started out at the same time I was writing TSoGZ. While TSoGZ never references Muse, Muse references it in a fictional way. Yes, writing more than one book at a time is kind of confusing.
So why a new version of The Story of Gamer Zone? First off, if you ever read the original book, it’s editing sucks badly. There’s also been things move on since then, and people ask me questions on rare occasions (not as often as when it was originally published.) It was done fast – and that probably was a wise choice. Muse – er, Cycle of the Muse – is a good example of what happened if I had too much time to think about it. I would have hesitated, and it might have been a decade before it saw shelves.
I suppose without The Story of Gamer Zone hitting shelves, The Horror Game and The Plastic Army Game would have never happened either.
I sincerely hope you enjoy the book. I enjoyed writing it the first time, and hopefully I enjoy rewriting, editing, and rereleasing it as Gamer Zone Revisited.
Also, you might check back here from time to time. One thing that print books can’t do that online tales can do: I can update this with more information that’s not directly a part of Gamer Zone Revisited, but may fill in information about the process, history, or other cool factoids that do not fit in the framework of the story.
Thanks for Reading,
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr – November 28th, 2022