Team Lead, Narrative Designer
- Flexible, organized, deadline-focused designer with 5 years leadership experience; 12+ years writing/editing experience; and over 20 shipped games
- Nebula Award-nominated writer experienced in all speculative genres with over 90 publications over 10 years, a novel, and a short story collection
- Experienced with direct implementation in Twine, Ink, Unreal Blueprints, and Yarnspinner
- Favorite games: Spider-Man, Spyro, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, Baldur’s Gate 3, Dream Daddy, Super Mario 3, Boyfriend Dungeon, Monster Prom, Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure
Games
Bad Heroes – a Beat-Em-Up/Dating Sim
My goal in creating this beat-em-up and dating sim is to learn Unreal Blueprints. I recruited a team of indie devs to make the art and help with the writing, but I’ve done all the Blueprint programming and UI design with the assistance of online tutorials and tutors. I also created all the characters, came up with the storyline, and wrote the first scene of the visual novel.
Inspired by games like Boyfriend Dungeon and Monster Prom, Bad Heroes is an indie project where players start off in a visual novel playing as the newest staff member of a Heroes-for-Hire temp agency. They must dispatch superheroes to beat-em-up style levels, and the visual novel elements combine with the beat-em-up to form a cohesive narrative with an otome-style romance element.
Challenges: To complete this project, I’ve been learning Unreal Blueprints, while also managing a team of artists and writers. Over the year I’ve been working on it, I’ve encountered multiple challenges, such as people dropping out or not being able to deliver final work, or more technological issues that required problem-solving and quick thinking.
UI Design Samples
Blueprint Scripting Samples
Direct Script Implementation Sample
Portfolio Game, in progress
Project Duration:
2 years (still in-progress)
Genre
Fantasy
For Chapters, I’ve directly written and edited over 25 visual novel games over four years, plus served as Lead for 20 games annually (4 per year, per each team member) most of which have performed in the top 5% of all games on the app in terms of retention and monetization. As a result, I’ve been promoted three times within my time at the studio.
Ice King for Chapters
Playthrough Video – Google Drive
Inspired by the IP Tomboy by Avery Flynn, Ice King is a 20-chapter visual novel game on the app Chapters. Using the IP, I adapted the game into visual novel format, writing a complete outline, editing the script, and performing all art direction; editorial QA; promotional writing; and data collection.
Challenges: When I received these scripts, they were in rough shape. The prior writer hasn’t prioritized conflict or chemistry and had de-emphasized the hockey aspect. Knowing the popularity of hockey in the romance industry, I re-wrote the bulk of the material on a tight deadline and made this book into one of the top-performers on the app of all time.
Zach Blackburn is hockey’s hottest bad boy, and you’re a nurse trying to make a difference. When the paparazzi snap a photo of you together, everyone decides you’re his lucky charm. Will you agree to help him up his game– and be the one to melt his icy heart?
Client:
Chapters
Project Duration:
12 weeks
Genre
Romance
Yaga Saga – a Twine Game
Yaga Saga
This Twine game was created as a portfolio piece during the six-week class I took with The Narrative Department. The assignment was to create a Twine game based on a fairy tale and include editorial notes explaining process within the game. I wrote and implemented all aspects of this game, including free-to-use art assets to break up the text.
Challenges: To complete this project, I had to learn Twine. Since I’m technologically savvy, however, that only took about one week. The main challenge with this game was implementing the stat meter, which required several rounds of QA and several hours of trouble-shooting.
Portfolio Game, created during The Narrative Department class
Project Duration:
2 weeks
Genre
Fantasy
Fiction
For a complete list of my short stories, click here. My fiction and poetry has appeared in over 90 magazines, anthologies, podcasts, and foreign-language publications. Additionally, I’m the author of a short story collection, Where You Linger and the horror novella, Glorious Fiends.
“Party Tricks” for SyFy’s The Magicians
Based on the IP The Magicians on SyFy, “Party Tricks” is a five-part animated short series created by SyFy as promotional material for the TV show. Writing the story took one week, but the whole project took 6 months for the full animation to publish.
Challenges: Writing for a beloved franchise required lots of research. I read the books and re-watched the show, then seeded references to major events and minor character attributes within the story.
Client:
SyFy
Project Duration:
1 week
Genre
Fantasy
“The Memory of Tomatoes” for Popular Science
Process Description – Simply Secure
After I was recommended to Consumer Reports and Popular Science for their Data Futures Project, the project’s leaders paired me with data experts from universities and research facilities to explore what the future of data collection might look like when it comes to health care. After the first round of discussions, I wrote a rough draft of the story, which the data experts read and offered feedback on. We then went through two more rounds of revisions before it was published.
Challenges: Because I was working with about six experts in data, six stakeholders had varying opinions about the future of data in health care. Many of their opinions conflicted one another, which meant I had to figure out how to appease each of them. We had to meet to discuss compromises, and eventually, they were all satisfied with the result.
In a world of the near future, a woman cares for her mother who is persevering through Alzheimer’s and has uploaded her previous thoughts and memories to her own AI.
Client:
Popular Science
Project Duration:
4 weeks
Genre:
Science Fiction
Grim Root, a novel
My debut novel Grim Root released in 2024. TILL DEATH DO THEM PART… Embark on a darkly humorous journey of reality TV meets the macabre. On the set of The Groom, a group of women must compete for the heart of Midwestern bachelor Tristan by spending a week in a haunted house. Divorcee Linda, resigned to her role as the show’s underdog, finds her resolve cracking when she begins to fall for fellow cast mate Charity. Meanwhile, Sabrina, groomed by her witchy mother to deliver their family from poverty by marrying a rich man, sees winning the competition as her predestined path. But after a shocking demise, the game takes a sinister turn. As the remaining contestants grapple with their desires for love and survival, they uncover dark secrets within and without the house’s walls. Trapped in a twisted new competition, they must confront their own demons or face elimination.
Challenges: Although this novel was released by a traditional publisher, I had to do a good deal of marketing for the book myself, as most publishers these days require extensive author involvement in the marketing process. As with my other publications, the publication of my first novel taught me a lot about writing marketing copy and selling story to as many readers as possible.
Publisher:
Dark Matter Ink
Project Duration:
2 years
Genre:
Horror
More Dialog Examples
“The Mammoth” – Dialog from a Short Story
As part of a script-writing exercise I did for my MFA program, I reconfigured the dialog from a published short story of mine into a script, and the college hired local actors to read it aloud. The experience taught me a great deal about dialect and how to write natural-sounding dialog.
In a world where children are only born through IVF, men are no longer seen as necessary to the child-rearing process, and the skeletons of extinct animals walk among us, a woman goes camping with her father. Her goal is to tell him about her pregnancy–even knowing her old-fashioned father won’t agree with her decision to have a child on her own.
Client:
University of Southern Maine
Project Duration:
1 week
Genre:
Sci-fi/Fantasy
“The Stink of Horses” – Short Story in Dialog
This short story was inspired by an actual Chekhov quote. I wanted to explore telling a story through dialog, using the unique voices of four characters. I’ve included it here as an example of a lyrical, dark tone.
Challenges: For this story and for the novel I ended up writing about these characters, I had to do extensive research on Imperial Russian ballet. I read various first-person accounts from ballerinas; historical books on the ballet; and several books on the historical period outside of ballet.
Marina is a ballerina cursed by the director of the ballet for which she dances–or is she? When a patron discovers her secret, everything she’s worked for may crumble, unless she can set the record straight.
Client:
Hobart Magazine
Project Duration:
1 week
Genre:
Fantasy
Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam 