I really appreciate the reviews, everyone. I'm always game for constructive criticism. I'll try and address some of the things I've been seeing.
I'm glad folks saw that the real story is about the pack and Chicago. Red is just the medium.
That being said...
The original form of this story was just a piece of short fiction as background for a character I'd been running for a long time. Then Rob Boyle asked if I'd expand it. So I somehow turned it into a novel. I'd just recently been diagnosed with porphyria, and Shadowrun and Red were part of my coping mechanism. And then he dropped it, so it sat on a shelf. One of the original intents of the story was to help players get the transition into 4th ed, but by the time I was a freelancer, it was 5th, and I'd gone to college for writing. Going back and reading it now, I can feel the difference in the writing between how I write now and how I wrote back then, something like a decade ago.
One day on the boards, it came up in conversation that I had a novel sitting on my shelf. John took a look, said he wanted it, and we set about updating it.
I might have miscommunicated Red's origin, since a lot of people keep calling him a spike baby, which he is not. Part of the intent of the book is to talk about vampires that have been around since the 5th age, and how they might spread or survive in a low-mana environment. Red being an Elf or Awakened is the result of latent SURGE activated by Infection. Again, we wanted to show some of the other angles of Infected, much like Patrick's Dwarven vampire. The book, I hope, gave a glimpse into life as an Infected, the things they have to deal with, and Chicago in general. At least, before the corps get their hands on it. And we have things cooking for the Infected, for Chicago, and more things I can't even mention, all of which I tried to give a little advance notice of in this book.
A few folks mentioned that Red having done runs into the Arcology during it's shutdown, or tangling with bug spirits in the 50s, means he was there for all the big plot developments. Personally, I look at the number of runners who had done the same and just lump him in with them. And I was kinda surprised, considering how many major events he's missed on, given his age.
There's something my group reflected on after a three year campaign. They'd been through a lot, survived much, and not all of them had made it from the beginning. And as they accumulated successes and stories and strange encounters, even the least exotic of them became more and more exceptional. By the end, we shouted together, "It's snowing!" And we realized that any given runner is already a weirdo in the cosmopolitan Sixth World. If they keep surviving and evolving, they are just that stranger. If you've got ten years of running under your belt, you're either a cliche, or a snowflake. Either way, if it makes for a good story, I say embrace it. Because in the end, RPGs are getting together with your friends to tell stories. Different folks have different ideas about what makes Shadowrun and even stories in general great. For my money, I think the Sixth World is big enough for all kinds, and I like a novel about someone on the fringe. Hopefully for at least one idealistic, anachronistic vampire.
I do hope everyone who picks it up enjoys reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. If not, it's cool. Even Shakespeare has his detractors, and I'm no bloody Shakespeare.
If so, I'm thrilled to have brought a smile and some escapism. Passing on that legacy from the likes of PN Elrod and Aaron Alston is all I could ask for.
This is becoming more sweeping than I intended.
tl;dr
So, yeah, there's some of me in Red. In that, he's definitely Mary Sue. I own that freely.
