Hello, I’m David Jones. I’ve written games and now I’m writing mostly science fiction. I added the X middle initial to my name when writing science fiction because there are over 14,000 people sharing my name in the UK alone. That was less of a problem when writing games back in the mid-1980s, but there are a LOT of fiction authors and I want to be able to be found in Google searches.
What I do
The day job
I work at Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, teaching students how to be games programmers. If you want to know more about BUAS or if any of your younger relatives are looking to become games programmers (or designers, artists or producers) then you can find out more here
https://www.buas.nl/
On the games developers course we employ people from the games industry and teach in a very practical, project-based style to develop the next generation of game developers.
While at BUAS I chose to complete a Master’s degree in Novel Writing. This introduced me to a wider variety of genres and styles which has enhanced my own writing.
Writing
The long holidays allow me plenty of time to develop my writing skills and produce my science fiction novels. The Books page of this blog shows details of the novels I’ve written and published so far. There are three at the time I’m updating this, with the next three all in an advanced stage of editing.
The next series will feature a detective known as Deadman. He dies in chapter one of book one and then works to discover who killed him. It’s still science fiction, but with a mystery/crime twist.
Games
I bought my first computer in 1979 and by the time home computers became more widely available I was ready to create my own games.
I designed and wrote the popular Magic Knight games, which most British retro games fans who play or played 8-bit games will at least have heard of.
I’ve been interviewed on stage at retro game events, which were great fun, so I intend doing more.