Who am I?

I’m a writer / creative director / producer who has enjoyed nearly two decades working with scores of incredibly passionate and innovative creatives across a wide range of media. For the last twelve years, I’ve spent my days as a director / producer at one of the industry’s most respected videogame studios, where I currently lead three separate teams of designers, engineers, and artists in telling new interactive stories. Last year, I lucked out and won awards for outstanding videogame writing from both the WGA and Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences for my work on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Between the hours of 9 PM and 2 AM, I write my own stuff. Among my list of credits are dozens of comic books for Dark Horse Comics, numerous videogame stories and scripts, and several books for Random House and Del Rey. I’ve also worked as a freelance ghost writer, editor and script consultant.

What is the Dark Divide?

The Dark Divide is a huge and beautiful expanse of wilderness in the Pacific Northwest. Within its 75,000 acres can be found old growth forests and lava tubes, waterfalls and huckleberry fields, black basalt and ancient volcanoes. It is home to a huge diversity of life, including wolverines, elk, deer, cougars and bobcats, wolves, black bears, and possibly even Bigfoot. Like its name, the area is mysterious and haunting,  transformative and poetic, exciting and filled with possibility. And maybe just a little bit frightening. 

For me, “crossing the Dark Divide” has become a metaphor for the often scary and arduous journey writers, artists, game designers, filmmakers, and other “creatives” undertake when attempting to create art. The trip is difficult, exhausting, fraught with deadfalls and switchbacks and dead-ends canyons. But it is always exhilarating and it always changes us.

I’d like to use this site to explore my own journeys across the Dark Divide, and hopefully provide some ideas, inspiration, tools, or whatever else I can think of to help others make the trek.  And eventually, I hope the site will also become home to information about some of the stuff I’m currently working on. 

Comments, criticisms, rants, feedback of any kind welcome.

If you want to e-mail me, I can be reached at haden@hadenblackman.com.