Part of the story is here:
I always wanted to write, and I’ve always loved interactive fiction. As mentioned in that other thread, I loved telling choose-your-own-adventures as a kid; as soon as I got over my evangelical heebie-jeebies and discovered D&D I started running games in my parents’ basement, and continued that in college with some friends who are now at CoG.
I also had a chance to write a narrative nonfiction book under my real name, published almost exactly a decade before Choice of Rebels. Unlike Gower, the experience taught me absolutely nothing about keeping to deadlines. But it meant I could pitch for the CoG brand rather than HG, and in the fullness of time I eventually delivered on (part one of) that pitch…