Fanfic and Original Writing

...well, okay, short story as defined by the word count maximum for the Writers of the Future contest. The overall word count is about 12k words, and I have to say, that was actually less than I initially was going to write. Of course, I'm going to put more words in before the end of the calendar month, as part of the editing process.

Oh, wait, you want to know what the story is? Well... I was loosely inspired by The Martian, but I never saw the movie, nor did I read the book. I wanted ...

So, for those of you who don't know, I am a gamer of tabletop RPGs. It's something I don't keep secret, mainly because I don't think it should be kept secret, though I don't actively announce it at times. I just wanted to make sure you all understood the context for what I'm about to say next.

Now, about a month ago, I was reading a Google+ post by the CEO of a website called High Level Games. I saw that they were hiring, so I decided to apply, namely by submitting an article to their ...