How Karen Travis turned her Gears over


Here's a pretty cool interview with author Karen Travis. You may know her from Star Wars books. You may know her from Gears of War books. You may not realise you know her from Gears of War 3. You may get to know her from her upcoming Halo novel, Halo: Grasslands.

The follow is a cut from the interview about how she found herself immersed in the Gears of War world:

So the story is, you first fell for Gears of War when you saw the TV advert for the original game which used the Gary Jules version of Mad World as its soundtrack. How did you get from there to actually writing novels for the games?

Travis: In January 2008 I got a call from a publisher I'd done some work for who told me they needed a book to be written urgently. They said it was a game tie-in, a shooter… Sometimes they're a bit cagey about what the IP is before you show interest, but it was a publisher I was a little wary of so I said I wasn't going to commit myself until they told me what it was.

When they said Gears of War, it just rang no bells at all, which is good because if I know too much about a project I can't come to it clean and cold. So I told them I was going to check it out; I mean, when someone comes to you with a rush job you think, 'oh God, what's the problem with this?!'

So I sent a very discreet email to Jerry Holkins at Penny Arcade. I wrote, 'I can't tell you why I'm asking, but if I said Gears of War to you, what would your response be?' He shot back an email saying, whatever it is, do it! So I did a search for YouTube clips, and the first one that came up was that Mad World advert. I just thought, yes, I'm having that! It was meant to be! And in the first conference call I had with Epic, we just hit it off so well, it was instant.

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