My Journey After Writers of the Future

Our journey in life is a series of every-days. Some are joyful and some downcast; some are too long, while others contain far too few hours.  If you’re lucky, you can point to a pivotal moment or two that changed the course of your journey in consequential ways.

For me, one such moment was my contest win with L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future and the appearance of my story “Riches Like Dust” in Volume VI. That was over 34 years ago now, in 1990. Wow, how the every-days mount up!

As I look back, I can see how my journey diverged mightily after receiving this unique recognition. At the time it was “pretty cool,” but I had no illusions of making a living as a writer; I wanted to work in technology. Computers were starting to make inroads into small business, and I longed for a place in that fast-changing world.

Who would have thought my writing award would catch the attention of an up-and-coming computer game developer? I soon found myself writing novellas and in-game content for this fledgling industry. Even more exciting, everything I could want to do was soon open to me: voice director, associate producer, producer, project manager. My game credits include award winners like Anvil of Dawn and Sanitarium, along with highly regarded efforts like Chronomaster, where I was privileged to work with Roger Zelazny and Jane Lindskold.

I loved both the creative aspects of game development and the cutting-edge technical aspects. I got to see the advent of multi-player games, CD and DVD technology, the Internet, A.I., and more. I was privileged to work with some of the most creative, passionate, and intelligent people anyone could expect to meet in a lifetime.

One of these was Jane Yeager, our Art Director, with whom I determined I would spend the rest of my life. For better (not worse, I hope), she’s been Jane Noel now for 26 years!

In 1999, Jane started her own business, Jane’s Computers Made Easy, and a year or two later I left the world of computer games to help. In time, her entrepreneurial adventure became what it is today: Choma Marketing Essentials, an award-winning web-development and digital marketing company. It’s a playground in which I’m privileged to research and write for a wide range of industries.

Along the way, I’ve kept my hand in genre fiction too, publishing short stories in the zombie-themed anthologies from Eden press The Book of All Flesh and The Book of More Flesh, Algis Budrys’ Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, and more.

In 2019, Jane and I joined creative forces once again to found DreamForge Magazine, a full-color print and digital science fiction and fantasy venue that is now in its 5th year of publication. DreamForge is founded on the idea that “The Human Adventure Is Just Beginning.” We publish positive genre fiction, some of which now goes by the appellations solarpunk and hopepunk.

We’ve been honored to publish both first time writers and known masters like Robert Silverberg, David Weber, Jane Lindskold, Scott Edelman, Bruce McAllister, Marie Brennan, and more.

In 2021, working with UpRoar Books and Space & Time Magazine, we published the anthology Worlds of Light and Darkness, of which Booklist said “the combining of stories by these two publications is genius.”

What’s up next in my life adventure? Learning to work with Large Language Models and A.I. to help small businesses compete against larger corporations. While acknowledging there are creative and societal problems with new A.I. systems, they are nonetheless, like computers in the 1990’s, a disruptive and democratizing force of remarkable promise that is sure to unfold some amazing results in the years and decades ahead.

Thank you, Writers of the Future, it’s been a remarkable path you opened up on this writer’s journey through life.

Scot Noel is a winner of L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Contest (Vol VI), with stories in Algis Budry’s Tomorrow Magazine, two Eden Studios’ zombie anthologies, and in various small press venues. He has written novellas and interaction text for a variety of computer games, as well as being a project manager of game development in the late 90’s at DreamForge Entertainment. These days he works with his wife Jane at their digital marketing agency Chroma Studios, and in his spare time has fun as the editor and publisher of DreamForge Magazine, now in its 6^th year of publication.

In all worlds and times, DreamForge tales revolve around those individuals and groups who bring meaning and value to the world, whose actions are of consequence, and whose dreams are the vanguard of things to come.