The other day, I did my first author interview. It was with Robert Esparza of Audiobook Guild–the licensor for the Primogenitor Saga audio–and yes, I will provide links to everyone as soon as I have them to provide.

But…

During the pre- and post-conversation, Robert and I swapped a couple stories, and I told him where the name of my publishing company (Knightsfall Press) came from.

In my teens, I played a game published by Microprose called “Master of Magic.” It was basically a clone of Civilization, except that it was Fantasy-themed. You were a wizard who started with one town, and you either had to militarily conquer everyone else or research and cast the Spell of Mastery to win the game.

Every time I’d start a new game in Master of Magic, I always named my starting town either “Knightsfall” or “Knightfall.” To this day, I have no idea why I did that, but when it came time to file the paperwork for my publishing company, Knightsfall seemed far too perfect to choose something else.

After the interview, I started up my Windows gaming box, went to my account at gog.com, and downloaded Master of Magic. It was originally a DOS game, so it didn’t take too long to download… even on my crappy satellite connection.

I installed it and double-clicked the icon and felt like I was almost transported back to my teens as I watched the opening cinematic. The graphics are atrocious if you compare the game to anything even remotely modern, but I still love it all the same.

Except…

The game is so old, developers hadn’t included an option to auto-advance the turn. So, I was always clicking the “Next Turn” button every time I finished my turn. I had forgotten that little ‘feature’ of the game, and if I’m being wholly honest, that was a little bit of a turn off… given that every turn-based game now can automatically end the turn once you’ve moved all your units and handled any important notifications.

Still, though…

The handful of hours I played the game were fun, and I’m willing to trade clicking “Next Turn” every time.

In other news, we are now at the stage of waiting for the official death certificates to handle all the legal stuff involved in settling everything with Mom. I don’t know when those will arrive, but I’m not going to sit idle while we wait for them.

It’s time to write… and build (more on this later)… and learn to be both a better storyteller and a better publishing businessman… and, well, everything else.

Like one of Mom’s favorite news anchors likes to say, “Watch this space.”