My New Side Hustle: Spaceship Piloting

People who know me know I love the game Elite in all its forms since it first came out in the mid 1980s. When the current form of the game came out, Elite Dangerous, I pretty much lived there for years.

Now, writers playing games is nothing new. Terry Pratchett loved to play Elder Scrolls, for example. It’s not just a way to unwind, but a place for the mind to play. And that play informs what we choose to write.

It should come as no surprise that my Get Lost novels are inspired by this game. In fact, the first book, Lost Souls, started life as an Elite Dangerous novel. When the game first launched, there were a number of official novels put out, perhaps most notably by Drew Wagar. I edited his second novel, Premonition, and around that time was finishing up my own. I had the publisher on board when Frontier Developments decided to stop putting out Elite-themed novels.

Sigh. Just my luck.

However, I had been working with Lauren Smith on a science-fiction romance series she wanted to write, and it got to the point where I wasn’t just her editor, but a co-writer. My focus was on the world building side of things and working all that into her story, which became the novel Across the Stars.

The world she set her story in intrigued me, because it felt like “Star Trek Gone Horribly Wrong” and I built on that. It was a world where humanity’s creations, physically and mentally superior to them, had taken over and left their creators as little more than slaves. Yet at the same time, there was a huge galactic community out there and, compared to them, humanity in all its forms was little more than an interesting novelty.

I wondered if my homeless Elite novel might be reworked into Lauren’s setting, and the Get Lost Saga was born!

Changing the setting allowed for a lot of interesting themes to be developed, but at its core it’s still about a guy (and a gal) and a ship.

Which brings me back to the game. It’s been years since I last played Elite, and a lot has changed in that time. But rather than grind my way up to a top tier ship with all the best parts, a fleet carrier, and all the rest… I’m going to play this more immersively. Roleplay it in my head. Roleplay it is Moss, back in the And Then Things Got Worse days, where he’s walking the line between playing it safe, and making credits.

And maybe once in a while, just for kicks, I’ll write about my experiences here, not as a game, but as a story.

See you in the black, commanders!