While I’ve told this story to fans at Cons and book signings lots of times, I realized that I’ve never actually written it down. So here it is, how I originally got the idea for Keltin Moore!
This happened back in the mid 00’s. I was playing an old CRPG called Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura which is kinda a steampunk version of Baldur’s Gate. I was doing an iron man run (one save file) and took on a quest that ended up being about ten levels too high for my character. I was already twenty hours into the game, so I didn’t want to restart. Instead, I inched my steampunk marksman character through this forest full of monsters, waiting until I saw just a few pixels of a beastie on the edge of my screen, then I paused, quick-saved, and tried to shoot it. If I got a critical hit, I would one-shot kill it. If not, I was dead before my next turn. What should have taken me five minutes ending up taking me an hour and a half. It was a gloriously nerdy experience, and I still remember the feeling of accomplishment when I found the monster-spewing portal and closed it to finally receive my reward: a top hat that had a magnetic field to repel incoming bullets. Feel free to add that to your Christmas lists for this year.
Anyway, a few days later, I was doing a writing session, and I realized that it had been a while since I’d last written an action sequence. It’s funny to think of now, but I can remember that at the time I was worried that I hadn’t somehow forgotten how to write a fight scene. So I determined to do a one-off action sequence. I sat and tried to come up with an idea, and I remembered my recent, gloriously nerdy gaming experience. I started to think about a monster hunter who had to get his first shot absolutely right, or he was dead.
That’s where Keltin Moore first came from. He started as just a little short story that I put on my website so I could have something on it beside my bio, but then people started asking when the next one was coming out. Keltin’s first story became an online serial on my site, which then became The Beast Hunter, and it’s been going ever since. So yes, I owe Keltin’s success to a video game.
…and yes, it would be a dream come true to one day to have it all come full circle and see Keltin Moore adapted into a video game. Thank you for asking.
Would you like to see Keltin Moore adapted into a game? What kind? Comment below!
As always, a big shout-out to the fantastic members of my Readers Community:
Randall Hodgson, Mandy Vincelette, Matthew Paxman, Brenda Hayward, Yoshiyuki Nishikawa, Wil Sisney, Jarred Walton, Joel Stanger, and Kelly Wilbur.
If you’d like to learn more about my Readers Community, check out the following link:
