Cold Fusion XT & Armored Vendetta

.The First Novel and The Game That Never Was

9/11 was one of the major global events that took place during high school. By the time I became a Senior, a few years had passed, and there was a lot of angst directed toward Patriot Act policies and how the law targeted rights. This sentiment combined with a wild dream I had the night of September 10, 2001 to forge the dystopian/rebellious world of Cold Fusion XT. There are probably places where the old PDF can be dug up, but nearly two decades after the fact, the story reads exactly as one would expect—an angsty piece that feels like total cringe. By the time I got into college, I had largely moved on from the work, but there was an interesting turn along the way.

My illustrator for McCallister Chronicles, Raden, was approached by a game developer to work on a new project. When they got to talking, he learned that the dev team didn't have a script yet, and Raden pointed them to me. The result of the subsequent discussions was to take Cold Fusion, rewrite it into a new script (with slightly different characters and names to not stomp and copyrights and trademarks), and produce a variable/destructible world platformer that honestly would have been a decade ahead of its time. Imagine if Mercenary Kings came out mega early, for example. Unfortunately, the dev team vanished, and Raden and I grew scared that they had just taken the materials and ran, so we hunkered down, got the copyrights on everything, and mothballed the project. That script is less cringe, and Raden drew a bunch of things for it, so to honor the memory of Cold Fusion XT, the amazing art is posted below, and:

The Armored Vendetta script can be read here.