Ease the Tragic Ending of A Romance Writer’s Epic Love Story

I was a game writer at the height of my career - author, frequent GDC speaker, researcher, writer of various and sundry video game stories, specializing in romance. Then in 2022, my 24yo son died by suicide, worsening my rheumatoid arthritis, and then in 2023, I lost my dad and my industry job. In September 2024, the writing job I performed all that year was replaced by Ai, and since then I’ve been taking small contract work as I can find it (for much less pay) to keep my resources from running all the way out. As I continued to search for full-time

work, I desperately begged 2025 not to take anything else from me.

I have been with my partner, Travis, since 2018, and cohabited with him since 2020. The best quarantine buddy ever, he is a swaggering, towering Cryptid fan who cooks a mean barbecue and gets annoyed at my puns. We weren’t always fairytale, but there was adventure, there was humor, there was creativity, intellectual curiosity, and such love as I’ve never felt in my life…one of those magical loves for the ages.

He taught me so much, not just about life and my own misconceptions, but about honor, loyalty, opossums, and living in the moment. He has always had my back. He is thoughtful and attentive. He kept me on the rails when things got harder again and again. He’d always grin with that dimple and say, “At least you still got me, butthead.” He is unapologetically himself and does everything he does at a 100% effort level. As I told a laughing party guest who listened to him tell the story about that time he got drunk, passed out on a cow, and woke up in Johnson County… “He’s not a man, he’s an experience.”

He is the moon in my sky. He has eyes as green as the sea and once had a voice like velvet which I referred to as a “panty-droppin’ drawl.” He’s Han Solo, Jack Sparrow, Poldark, Solomon Kane, Van Helsing, Boyd Crowder, and Daryl from the Walking Dead, rolled into one, with a side of Mothman, James Dean, and animated fireside storytellers. He is my Halloween, he is my iodine sky, he is the song I will sing forever.

In January, he said he’d bit his tongue and it was taking an annoyingly long time to heal. Now in the hospital with inoperable, metastasized tongue cancer and horrifying complications (multiple infections at once that he cannot fight in the condition he is in), we will be losing him within days. I have held out on asking for help because I know that after folks helped when my son died (thank you) this will need to be my last card to play, my last ask, and it will be, so I’ve waited until I’m sure there’s nothing else I can do. So much loss in such a short time will render me incapable of work after this happens, and I will lose my home and my pets and have to relinquish everything I own that’s in storage because I can no longer afford the payments and my mother’s home has no room for my stuff (and I cannot live unassisted any longer because losing him will massively exacerbate my RA). Other than my mom and my two adult kids (who aren’t in a position to help me because GenZ), I’m losing everything. I don’t know how or if I can come back from that. Of all the anchors that tether me to this world and reality, I will have lost one too many when he flies away.

We had date night last Sunday night. No longer able to speak, we sat on the couch together holding hands and watching Tales From the Cryptkeeper. The next morning I had to call 911 as he fell and could not breathe. Now, we are told that the hour draws near. I’m not at all ready for this story to end, but he was here for a good time, not a long time. He is only 41 years old.

I will need funds to sustain me as I look to help with his final expenses, relocate one last time to my mother’s home in Ohio, and try to figure out what life is now (especially as it’s highly unlikely I will find another remote writing job now, in this market, at my age, in the condition I’m about to be in). This will most definitely include mental healthcare that I have been without access to since 2023 because of my employment situation and lack of insurance.

I was as strong as I could be for as long as I could be, but my boat is going to sink, even though I’ve fought the hardest in my life to bail the water out since 2022. I hate that. It’s not fair. And I hate that I’ve seen so many of my friends also suffering these days. Anyway. If I have ever been kind to you, inspired you, made you laugh, taught you something, been your friend, made work that you enjoyed, or if you ever felt bad for a fellow gamedev fallen on hard times…I am asking that you donate or share this request. It’s my “all hands on deck” moment, after which I will thank you deeply, and then with love in my heart, make like Frodo and sail away with the elves, to fade quietly into whatever life will be for me once he’s gone. I know many of us are strapped at the moment so sharing may be the biggest help. Every little bit helps.

I don’t know what happens now but I can tell you that the funds I get here are what will keep me alive for the foreseeable future. Thank you so much, I’m sorry for having to ask again.

I guess the only other thing I’ll say is that while I would never judge people for their personal habits or tell them to quit smoking, I will tell everyone: if you use tobacco and experience a persistent mouth sore: Don’t ignore it. GO TO THE DOCTOR. Please. It could save your life.

”A-down the wind like a running pack

the hounds of the ocean bayed,

And Solomon Kane rose up again

and girt his Spanish blade.

In his strange cold eyes a vagrant gleam

grew wayward and blind and bright,

And Solomon put the people by

and went into the night.

A wild moon rode the wild white clouds,

the waves in white crests flowed,

When Solomon Kane went forth again

and no man knew his road.

They glimpsed him etched against the moon,

where clouds on hilltop thinned;

They heard an eery echoed call

that whistled down the wind.”

~Robert E. Howard, from “Solomon Kane’s Homecoming,” his favorite poem which I had always hoped to record his amazing from-memory recitation of.