In the second half of 2006, and into the early part of 2007, BattleCorps and InMediaRes partnered with BattleTech players worldwide to create something amazing: a serial novel, covering the Word of Blake attack on the Federated Suns capital, New Avalon, for which the players would game to determine the outcome.
That’s right: the players determined how the book came out, through sanctioned campaign play.
It was amazing.
It was giant.
It spawned a darn good story.
Now, for the first time, Catalyst Game Labs has collected all thirteen of the Isle of the Blessed serial novel pieces into one package and presented it for sale. The novel is a pulse-pounding combat tale of battles between two different sets of true believers: the Davions, defending their capital, and the Word of Blake, fighting their Jihad.
“It was an incredible challenge,” says author Steven Mohan, Jr., “and it also turned out to be one of the most exciting and entertaining writing projects I ever got to work on. I’m deeply grateful to the folks at BattleTech for giving me the opportunity to write this story. It was a blast!”
Available now for e-book readers worldwide, Isle of the Blessed contains all the serial fiction published, as well as the companion journal entries published on the BattleCorps website, and a new foreword from the author.
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Isle of the Blessed describes a desperate, heroic struggle by a likable underdog struggling to triumph over an overwhelming and implacable foe.
As it so happens, that’s also what the writing experience was like.I’m not sure if I’m likable or heroic, but there were times that the writing of Isle was desperate and overwhelming! I think Isle hangs together well as a novel, but that’s not how it was conceived or written. It was designed to be a serial.Writing a serial is a little like performing on a trapeze—without a net. What happens when you get to chapter seven and realize something you wrote in chapter two undercuts the entire book? In a normal writing experience, you just revise the error in chapter two—no big deal.Not if you’re writing a serial.If you’re writing a serial, the mistake in chapter two is already published. You can not fix it. Somehow you have to, have to, make it work. Like I said, no net.But wait, there’s more!Isle of the Blessed was written to promote the introduction of the (then) new BattleTech rulebook Total Warfare. The serial was meant to run alongside a world-wide BT game, and, here’s the good part, the outcome of the game was supposed to determine the outcome of the serial.Got that? You can’t afford to make any mistakes and you don’t know how the story’s going to end.Oh, and produce 5,000 to 10,000 words a week, every week.It was an incredible challenge—and it also turned out to be one of the most exciting and entertaining writing projects I ever got to work on. I’m deeply grateful to the folks at BattleTech for giving me the opportunity to write this story. It was a blast!Of course no writer works alone, especially one laboring in a gaming universe. I’d like to thank the incredible team of BattleTech experts captained by Herb Beas and Randall Bills. Without the team’s insights and generosity, there’s no way this effort could have been a success. They deserve the credit for the correctness of the game details. Any errors that slipped through are on me.And last of all, I want to thank you for picking up this book. My fondest hope is that BattleTech readers have as much fun with Isle of the Blessed as I did!
